Dead Secret Page 24

‘I’m going to have another Schnapps.’

  ‘You’ve had enough.’

  ‘I’m having another.’

  At that moment Wohl returned. He stepped jauntily up to the table, rubbing his hands. ‘All set! No problem, the car’s outside. D’ you have any baggage?’

  ‘We weren’t told to bring any.’

  ‘That’s OK. You got your passports? Fine! You need anything, you ask for it.’ He began putting on his camel-hair coat, left some money on the table, and without waiting for the change led the way into the street where a beige Mercedes stood parked on the pavement, its colour exactly matching that of his coat. It had a five-digit registration number, which was not from West Berlin, or West Germany. Wohl motioned Anna into the passenger seat beside him, Hawn into the back. Wohl was driving.

  He drove with the confident arrogance of a man who likes cars, giving way to nobody, shooting red lights with a split-second margin of safety, using the automatic gears to brake, with a great deal of flashing of lights; but rarely touching the horn.

  They sped along Bismarckstrasse, turning down by the Zoo, past the Europa Centre again, east through the garish shabby lights of Hallesches Tor, the pavements busy with pimps and tarts and drag queens, acrobats and jugglers and tourists and tottering drunks, bouncers and bored policemen in cruising patrol cars. A black man lounged in a doorway grinning under a lighted sign, SEXY SNAKEPIT. Wohl swerved and just missed a monkey walking on its hind legs, led by a girl in a Stetson and cowboy boots.

  ‘I guess you could say this is decadent?’ Wohl grinned over his shoulder, only one hand on the wheel, scarcely touching it. ‘But y’know, funny thing is, I find it all rather old-fashioned. All rather déjà vu. La nostalgic, and so on.’

  ‘Looks like any other big western capital,’ Anna said with deadpan disdain: ‘Rich, ugly and dirty. So much for your Socialism, Doktor Wohl.’

  ‘Now don’t go and misunderstand me, Anna! Maybe you’ll see different if I explain about Berlin before the War. Before the Hitler time, when it was famous for what you call transvestites, yes? Well, I’ll tell you something — something real crazy. The ultimate in degeneration. You know what I saw here in West Berlin a few weeks back? I saw a guy, a normal guy, get on stage and dress up as a girl — a beautiful girl. Fishnet stockings, lovely legs, sexy knickers, all his equipment tucked away and disguised, very clever, very effective. Gold lamé bra, lots o’ red hair and a hat like Sarah Bernhardt. Real nice. But wait! Here’s this guy got up as a beautiful girl, and the next moment — without removing his makeup or hair — the guy dresses up as a guy again.’ He turned his head slightly, smiling: ‘You get it? A transvestite dressing up as a transvestite. Isn’t that the ultimate in craziness?’

  Hawn said, ‘Almost as crazy as a fully-paid-up Party member driving around the fleshpots of the West in a brand new Mercedes, and setting up deals with shifty fat foreigners like Charles Pol, so we can all crap on one of the biggest oil companies in the world.’

  ‘No, no, Tom, I don’t rise so easy. Anyway, this car’s coming up to nine months old. And hell, Brezhnev’s got a dozen cars — including a Cadillac from his friend, ex-President Nixon. There’s nothing wrong with a little style, providing it doesn’t go to your head.’

  Hawn saw no point in further comment. Trying to rile a man like Doktor Wohl over a matter of social conscience was about as effective as trying to spear an oyster with a fork. Wohl had heard it all before. In any case, he seemed to be only half listening.

  They were past the bright lights now, driving up Zimmerstrasse towards the glow of arc lamps. They bumped over a web of tram lines and could see now the Wall — a long strip of breezeblock, flesh-coloured under the lights and freckled with furious graffiti, which included wobbly aerosol crosses and dates, each marking the spot where an escapee had been shot dead trying to climb over. The watchtowers, at every hundred metres, looked like toy signal boxes, except for the moving searchlight on the roof.

  A West German policeman in a shiny black raincoat made a note of the car’s number and checked their passports. A couple of American MPs sat in an open jeep, staring at nothing. ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ was a prefabricated shed with a single concrete lane for cars, ending at a red-and-white pole. A Grepo — an East German frontier guard — in smart field green, with an AK47 machine-pistol slung at his hip, peered in, saw Wohl and straightened up with a Prussian salute, then gestured Hawn and Anna to get out.

  The shed was full of glaring blue neon. There were holiday posters of resorts on the Baltic, castles and lakes, the reconstructed main square of Dresden. A lot of reading matter was spread around — pamphlets with titles like Art and Culture in the GDR, Socialism Rebuilds, Trade between the GDR and the Republic of North Korea. On the bench beside Hawn were several copies of Neues Deutschland; he noticed that most of them were several days old.

  They were called at last to the desk. A young officer, whose eyes were too old for his face, handed them two pink forms, and was about to embark on his little homily, in French this time, warning of the severe penalties for currency smuggling, when a voice shouted from inside the glass cabin.

  Hawn did not understand what it said, but the young Grepo came to attention, took their passports away, returned a couple of minutes later, saluted and wished them a happy visit to the German Democratic Republic. They got back in the Mercedes — Anna in the back this time — the pole swung up, and they drove across towards Friedrichsplatz.

  Hawn was at once aware of an antiseptic cleanliness, scented with the distinctive bitter-sweet smell of Russian petrol. The graffiti and noisy lights on the Western side had given way to red banners turned purple under the refracted glow of the arc lamps, with white and yellow lettering that proclaimed the virtues of Peace, Work, Solidarity and Detente.

  Wohl drove more slowly here, although there was far less traffic and the streets seemed wider and more orderly. ‘This your first time in a Socialist country?’

  ‘Only Libya and Chad,’ said Hawn. ‘Unless you count Islington and Merseyside.’

  ‘You don’t wanna turn your noses up at the GDR,’ said Wohl. ‘Everything you see around you was built up from nothing by the people themselves. We didn’t have the luxury of American aid. The Soviet Union helped, of course, but they couldn’t spare much. Most of it was done by the sweat of the people.’ His manner had become noticeably slower, even solemn, like his driving.

  He drove straight on down Karl-Marx-Allee — formerly Stalin-Allee — the dubious pride of the German Democratic Republic. The seven-storey blocks of white Soviet rococo were beginning to age, with the ugly charm of some gim-crack memorial to a bygone dynasty. The lavatory-tile bricks were leaking at the joints, the windows were too small, the pavements too wide; the expanse of grass verge down the centre looked like an abandoned fairway.

  Wohl offered no comment; and the other two were silent. There was nothing very new you could say about Karl-Marx-Allee, except that it was one of the most depressing streets in the world. Instead, Wohl said, ‘You pick up your visas at the Tierpark, at the end of here.’

  After nearly two miles, the Allee grew dim and forlorn, as though either its builders or its inhabitants had lost interest in it. The frontier between the East Sector and East Germany proper was bristling with more flags and armed police. There was a row of heavy lorries lined up on the side of the road, but few cars. Wohl parked, told them both to stay where they were, and got out. Once again the Volkspolitzei — discourteously known as Vopos — evidently recognized the car and saluted.

  Wohl stood chatting to some of the police. They seemed in no way to object to his camel-hair coat, which Hawn and Anna decided must be one of the most offensive objects ever to have been flaunted in the name of Socialism.

  ‘So what do you think?’ said Anna.

  ‘It seems to be going fairly smoothly. They haven’t arrested us yet. It’s odd that they don’t seem to need our passports. Or perhaps Wohl’s the sort of man who can make up the rules as he goes along. You
’re not frightened, are you?’

  ‘A bit. I think I’d be rather stupid not to be.’

  ‘Well, there’s one consolation. ABCO can’t touch us here. We should be all right just as long as we play Wohl’s game. I don’t know what’s in it for him, except that he must be acting on orders. And providing we play ball with him, I don’t see what advantage there is — either from his point of view or the Communists’ — to have us set up. After all, we are trying to break the biggest Western consortium. That’s not the sort of charge that makes a Communist show-trial.’

  ‘It’s funny to hear you trusting the Communists.’

  ‘Trusting them isn’t the same thing as liking them. But the one thing about the Communists is that their motives are usually pretty straightforward, even if their methods aren’t.’

  Wohl returned, accompanied by an officer with whom he was talking rapidly. He stopped at the car and they shook hands. Wohl got in. He was holding two yellow cards, made out in their French names and impressively stamped. There were also two photographs, identical with the ones in their new passports. ‘You see — everything arranged, hunky-dory!’

  ‘How did you get these?’ said Hawn, pointing to the photographs. ‘From the Frenchman?’

  ‘You guess correctly, sir. You got a lot to thank that Frenchman for — he looks after you two real good!’

  A policeman waved them on, and they drove forward, up a steep ramp that curved round on to the autobahn, east to Oranienburg.

  CHAPTER 26

  After less than a quarter of an hour they left the autobahn, turning north up a bumpy, ill-kept main road, its surface cracked and broken by heavy lorries travelling between Rostock and Berlin. There was only the occasional car — usually an ugly, hump-backed Russian saloon, or a smaller mud-spattered Skoda.

  They passed through the dreary suburbs of Oranienburg — the site of one of the original Nazi concentration camps, now containing the largest political prison in East Germany; then north, between black pine forests that grew right up to the margin of the road.

  Wohl had hardly spoken since leaving the frontier. He was again driving carefully, slowing and pulling over for oncoming trucks, and negotiating the ruts and potholes so as not to damage the suspension of his beautiful Mercedes.

  Anna slept, her head resting on Hawn’s shoulder.

  Forty minutes after leaving the border of Berlin, they reached a small town called Fürstenberg, a damp dark place lying in marshland amid small lakes. Wohl drew up outside a modern hotel just off the main square. A pitiful spray of red flags and bunting provided the only colour to the scene. The door was locked. An old man let them in, grumbling behind his spectacles, although it was not late.

  Hawn and Anna were beginning to feel hungry. They asked Wohl about arranging some dinner, and he answered — a trifle impatiently, Hawn thought — that he would see to it in due course. Wohl’s zest and humour, which had become so excruciating back in West Berlin, had vanished; with the crossing of the border he seemed to have assumed an entirely new personality. Here in the East he was methodical, businesslike, as befitted a senior and privileged citizen of the German Democratic Republic. Even his transatlantic accent seemed to have assumed a distinctly Teutonic ring.

  The hotel was built of breezeblock and pine. The pine was fresh and varnished yellow, and up in their small bedroom, with its two narrow twin beds, some of the boards were oozing sap at the joints, like bubbles of honey. It was very clean, very functional. The only decoration was a pale watercolour of mountains at sunset.

  Wohl was waiting for them down in the dining room, sitting at a plastic-topped table patterned like wood. There was no bar, no other guests. As Hawn and Anna entered, a door at the other end opened and a white-haired woman peered suspiciously at the three of them, then disappeared again.

  Wohl, with obvious reluctance, went through to the back to order something to eat. He returned and lit one of his gold-tipped cigarettes. ‘They have cold sausage, salami and potato salad. And I ordered you both some beer.’ He did not sit down again, but paused, then consulted his watch. ‘I have to be back in Berlin tonight. So I’ll be saying goodbye, or rather, au revoir.’ He tried to turn on his smile, but this time it failed to work.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Hawn said, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice. ‘You said you’d fix us up with some things for the night. We haven’t even got toothbrushes.’

  Wohl’s eyes flickered oddly, avoiding them both. ‘You are being sent some stuff round. They shouldn’t be long. Enjoy your meal.’

  ‘We’ll be seeing you again?’

  ‘Very possibly. You are in good hands. But for God’s sake don’t lose your passports and those visas. As for money, the hotel is all taken care of.’ He waved and they watched him stride away towards the door, his expensive shoes making no sound on the concrete floor.

  For some time Hawn sat staring at the glum framed photograph on the wall of Erich Honecker, Chairman of the Council of State. He said at last, ‘Well thanks a lot, Comrade Wohl. I suppose we can hardly blame the bastard. We certainly can’t say that we didn’t go with him of our own free will. As it is, without any East German money we can hardly move out of the hotel. And if we start fooling around with the Black Market, they’ll have got us just where they probably want us — without having to rig the evidence. Still, they must be able to do better than that. I mean, the personal services of Doktor Oskar Wohl can’t come all that cheap — in whatever kind of currency they pay him.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Nothing. We wait. It’s their move.’

  Anna looked around. ‘Do you suppose the hotel’s bugged?’

  ‘Probably. Fact tends to follow fiction in these sort of places. I don’t suppose it matters much.’

  ‘I mean, shouldn’t we be speaking in French?’

  ‘Oh Christ, angel. Do we have to act out the whole of Pol’s script for the benefit of the East German Secret Police?’

  ‘All right. Be serious for a moment. Did you notice how Wohl’s manner changed when he got here?’

  ‘I know. He seemed far too eager to get away just now. I can only think that he may have heard something at the border, when he collected our visas. Wohl’s a big wheel over in the West, where he’s his own master and can call all the shots. But here he’s on home territory and has to toe the line.’

  The white-haired woman slouched over to them with a couple of plates of cold food and two glasses of frothy beer. They began to eat, but with diminished appetites. Anna said, ‘Maybe we could hitch a lift back to Berlin? I imagine those visas are in order?’

  Hawn had them both in his pocket, folded inside his French passport. He examined them now for the first time. They looked genuine enough, valid from that day, for seven days. There seemed to be no restrictions on travel within East Germany; the only stipulation being that they return via the East Berlin crossing point.

  ‘Wohl said he’d send us over some stuff tonight. Maybe that means he’s passing us on to another contact — someone even more senior.’ He drank his beer; it was thin and warm, and when the froth had settled the glass was barely half full. ‘I can make do for one night without a toothbrush,’ he added, ‘and I don’t mind too much going unshaven. But what I’m going really to miss is something to read. I don’t much fancy sitting here for a couple of days, trying to screw the odd beer out of that old bitch, and reading about the latest hydroelectric complex in Turkestan.’

  ‘Well, what else can you think of doing in the middle of a dark, cold night, in East Germany?’

  They drained their glasses, leaving the two cups of brown coffee which the old woman had placed, unsmiling, in front of them: walked out of the deserted dining room, up the pine staircase to their bare pine room. Anna undressed and had a shower in the narrow cubicle, while Hawn stripped off and got into one of the cheap lumpy beds. She was still slightly wet when she climbed in beside him, and for a moment they both almost toppled on to the floor. Anna began to giggle;
and he held her close, caressed her, gently, skilfully, then raised himself on his hands and entered her. Her giggling became a soft mewing sound, growing louder. Vaguely Hawn wondered whether there were other guests, whether they could hear through the pine walls. He delayed for as long as possible, until she uttered a little shriek and he gave way to the moment of mindless delirium.

  As he sank down on to her, kissing her mouth and eyes and hair, he was only dully conscious of sounds outside. A steady hammering, growing closer, louder. Heavy footsteps on the pine stairs, along the pine corridor. Boots — several pairs of them. Then the firm knocking on the door. He called in German, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Sicherheitspolizei. Aufmachen!’

  Hawn sprang up and dragged on his trousers, while Anna pulled the duvet up round her throat. Hawn went over and unlocked the door and opened it. Four men came in. Three of them wore the grey-green uniforms of the Vopos, and they were all carrying machine-pistols. The fourth man was older, squat and greying, in a sports jacket and open-necked shirt. ‘Your papers,’ he demanded. The three policemen, who were all very young, glanced at Anna, then looked away.

  Hawn fetched their passports and visas. The plain-clothes man rifled through them several times. Hawn saw that he had big square fingernails, bitten down to the quick. He finally snapped both passports shut and put them in the side pocket of his jacket. ‘You will please dress and accompany us,’ he said in German.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Hawn said, with forced indignation. ‘We entered the GDR in the company of one of your leading lawyers, Herr Doktor Oskar Wohl. He obtained our visas, which are valid and correct.’

  ‘You will explain all that to Headquarters. I leave you both to get dressed. One of my men will wait outside the room.’ The four of them withdrew, and the door closed behind them.

  Hawn took off his trousers again, put on his pants and vest, then sat down on the other bed and picked up his socks. ‘Fuck. Fuck Wohl — fuck Pol — fuck the whole bloody lot of them!’