AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Twenty-four hours,” said McCready. “Or forty-eight. After that, forget it. I will not be coming. I will use my pencil light from the base of the big tree just before I make the run. Hold the fence open for me.”
He disappeared on. his belly into the minefield, not quite hidden by the tall grass and weeds. Siegfried waited for the searchlight to wash over him one last time, then crawled back to the West.
McCready went forward through the mines, following the nylon line. Occasionally he tested it to make sure it was still straight. He knew he would not see any mines. These were not big plate-mines that could throw a truck in the air. They were small antipersonnel mines made of plastic, not responsive to metal detectors, which had been tried by escapers and had not worked. The mines were buried, pressure-operated. They would not explode for a rabbit or a fox, but they were sensitive enough for a human body. And vicious enough to blow away a leg or the entrails, or to tear out the chest cavity. Often they did not kill quickly but left the would-be escaper screaming through the night until the guards came after sunrise, with guides, to retrieve the body.
McCready saw the rolling waves of razor-wire looming ahead of him, the end of the minefield. The fishing line led him to a shallow scrape under the wire. He rolled on his back, pushed the wire upward with his totebag, and kicked with his heels. Inch by inch, he slid beneath the entanglement. Above him he could see the glittering razors that made this kind of wire so much more painful than barbed wire.
There were ten yards of it, but piled eight feet high above him. When he came out on the Eastern side, he found the nylon strand attached to a small peg that was almost out of the ground. Another tug, and it would have come loose, aborting the whole crossing. He covered the peg with a mat of thick pine needles, noted its position directly in front of the outsize pine tree, held his compass in front of him, and crawled away.
He crawled on a heading of 90 degrees until he came to a track. There he stripped off his smock, bundled it around his compass, and hid them beneath more pine needles ten yards inside the forest. If any dogs came down the track, they would not be able to smell the buried clothing. At the edge of the track he broke off a branch above head height and left it hanging by a thread of bark. No one else would notice it, but he would.
On his return he would have to find the track and the broken branch and recover his smock and compass. A heading of 270 degrees would bring him back to the giant pine. He turned and walked away toward the east. As he walked, he noted every marker—fallen trees, piles of logs, twists and turns. After a mile, he came out on a road and saw the spire of the Lutheran church of Ellrich village ahead of him.
He skirted it, as briefed, walking through fields of cut wheat until he intercepted the road to Nordhausen, five miles farther on. It was just five o’clock. He stayed by the side of the road, prepared to dive into a ditch if a vehicle appeared from either direction. Farther south, he hoped his scuffed reefer jacket, corduroy trousers, boots, and forage cap, worn by so many German farm workers, would escape scrutiny. But here the community was so small that everyone would know everyone else. He did not need to be asked where he was going, even less where he had come from. Behind him, there was nowhere he could have come from but Ellrich village or the border.
Outside Nordhausen he had a lucky break. Over the picket fence of a darkened house, a bicycle was propped against a tree. It was rusty but usable. He weighed the risks of taking it against its usefulness in covering distance faster than a pair of legs. If its loss remained undiscovered for thirty minutes, it was worth it. He took it, walked for a hundred yards, then mounted it and rode to the railway station. It was five to six. The first train to Erfurt was due in fifteen minutes.
There were several dozen working men on the platform waiting to head south to work. He presented some money, was issued a ticket, and the train steamed in, an old-fashioned steam locomotive but on time. Accustomed to British Rail Commuter services, he was grateful for that. He consigned his bicycle to the luggage van and took his place on the wooden seats. The train stopped again at Sondershausen, Greussen, and Straussfurt before rolling into Erfurt at 6:41. He retrieved his bicycle and pedaled away through the streets toward the eastern outskirts of the city and the start of Highway Seven to Weimar.
Just after half past seven, a few miles east of the city, a tractor came up behind him. It had a flat trailer behind it, and an old man was at the wheel. It had been delivering sugar beet to Erfurt and was heading back to the farm. The old man slowed and stopped.
“Steig mal rauf,” he called above the snarl of the dilapidated engine, which belched rich black smoke. McCready waved his gratitude, hurled the bicycle onto the flatbed, and climbed on. The noise of the tractor engine prevented conversation, which was just as well, for McCready, fluent in German, did not possess that strange accent of Lower Thuringia. Anyway, the old farmer was happy to suck on his empty pipe and drive.
Ten miles out of Weimar, McCready saw the wall of soldiers.
They were on the road, several dozen, spread out across the fields to left and right. He could see their helmeted heads among the maize stalks. There was a farm track off to the right. He glanced down it. Soldiers lined it, ten yards apart, facing toward Weimar.
The tractor slowed for the roadblock and stopped. A sergeant shouted up to the driver, telling him to switch off his engine.
The old man shouted back in German, “If I do I probably won’t start it again. Will your men give me a push?”
The sergeant considered, shrugged, and gestured for the old man’s papers. He looked at them, gave them back, and came down to where McCready sat.
“Papiere,” he said. McCready handed over his ID card. It said he was Martin Hahn, farm worker, and had been issued by the Weimar administrative district. The sergeant, who was a townsman from Schwerin up in the north, sniffed.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Sugar beets,” said McCready. He did not volunteer that he was a hitchhiker on the tractor, and no one asked.
Nor did he point out that before carrying the sugar beets, the trailer had borne a much fruitier cargo. The sergeant wrinkled his nose, gave back the papers, and waved the tractor on. A more interesting truck was coming toward them out of Weimar, and he had been told to concentrate on people—or a man with gray hair and a Rhineland accent—trying to get out of the ring, not a smelly tractor trying to get in. The tractor went to a track three miles from the town and turned off. McCready jumped down, pulled his bicycle to the ground, waved his thanks at the old farmer, and pedaled into town.
From the outskirts on, he stayed close to the curb to avoid the trucks disgorging troops in the gray-green uniforms of the National People’s Army, the NVA. There was a fair sprinkling of the brighter-green uniforms of the People’s Police, the VOPOs. Knots of Weimar citizens stood on streetcorners staring in curiosity. Someone suggested it was a military exercise; no one disagreed. Maneuvers normally happened in the military, though not usual
ly in the center of a town.
McCready would have liked a town map, but he could not afford to be seen studying one. He was not a tourist. He had memorized his route from the map he borrowed from the East German desk in London, which he had studied on the plane to Hanover. Coming into town on the Erfurterstrasse, he rode straight on toward the ancient town center and saw the National Theater looming up in front of him. The paved road became cobbles. He rode left into Heinrich Heinestrasse and on toward Karl Marx Platz. There he dismounted and began to push the bicycle, his head down, as the VOPO cars rushed by him in both directions.
At Rhathenau Platz he looked for Brennerstrasse and found it on the far side of the square. According to his recall, Bockstrasse should lie to the right. It did. Number fourteen was an old building, long in need of repair, like just about everything else in Herr Honecker’s paradise. The paint and plaster were peeling and the names on the eight bell-pushes were faded. But he could make out, against flat number three, the single name, Neumann. He pushed his bicycle through the large front door, left it in the stone-flagged hall, and walked up. There were two apartments on each floor. Number three was on the second floor. He took off his cap, straightened his jacket, and rang the bell. It was ten to nine.
Nothing happened for a while. After two minutes there was a shuffling sound, and the door opened slowly. Fräulein Neumann was very old, in a black dress, white-haired, and she supported herself on two canes. McCready judged her to be in her late eighties. She looked up at him and said, “Ja?”
He smiled broadly as if in recognition.
“Yes, it is you, Fräulein. You have changed. But not more than me. You won’t remember me. Martin Kroll. You taught me at primary school forty years ago.”
She stared at him levelly, bright blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses.
“I happened to be in Weimar today. From Berlin, you know. I live there now. And I wondered if you were still here, The telephone directory listed you. I just came on the off chance. May I come in?”
