Edge of Eternity (50 page)

This was not the answer he had been expecting, and he found it hard to understand. ‘I was scared, too,’ he said. ‘But we made each other a promise.’

‘I know.’

He could see that she was in an agony of remorse; but there was something else. He did not want to torture her, but he had to know the truth. ‘I took a terrible risk,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have backed out without a word.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I wouldn’t have done it to you,’ he said. Then he added accusingly: ‘I love you too much.’

She flinched as if he had struck her. But her answer was spirited. ‘I’m not a coward,’ she said.

‘If you love me, how could you have let me down?’

‘I’d give my life for you.’

‘If that was true, you would have come with me. How can you say it, now?’

‘Because it’s not just my life at risk.’

‘It’s mine, too.’

‘And someone else’s.’

Walli was baffled. ‘Whose, for God’s sake?’

‘I’m talking about the life of our child.’

‘What?’

‘We’re going to have a baby. I’m pregnant, Walli.’

Walli’s mouth fell open. He could not speak. His world turned upside-down in an instant. Karolin was pregnant. A baby was coming into their lives.

His child.

‘Oh, my God,’ he said at last.

‘I was so torn, Walli,’ she said in anguish. ‘You have to try to understand that. I wanted to go with you, but I couldn’t put the baby in danger. I couldn’t get in the van, knowing you were going to crash through the barrier. I wouldn’t care if I got injured, but not the child.’ She was pleading with him. ‘Say you understand.’

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I think.’

‘Thank you.’

He took her hand. ‘All right, let’s talk about what we’re going to do.’

‘I know what I’m going to do,’ she said firmly. ‘I already love this baby. I’m not going to get rid of it.’

She had been living with the knowledge for some weeks, he guessed, and she had thought long and hard. All the same, he was taken aback by her strength of purpose. ‘You speak as if it’s nothing to do with me,’ he said.

‘This is my body!’ she said fiercely. The cleaner looked round, and Karolin lowered her voice, though she continued to speak forcefully. ‘I will not be told what to do with my body by any man, you or my father!’

Walli guessed that her father had tried to persuade her to have an abortion. ‘I’m not your father,’ Walli said. ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do, and I don’t want to talk you into an abortion.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘But is this our baby, or just yours?’

She began to cry. ‘Ours,’ she said.

‘Then shall we talk about what we’re going to do – together?’

She squeezed his hand. ‘You’re so grown-up,’ she said. ‘It’s a good thing – you’re going to be a father before you’re eighteen.’

That was a shocking thought. He pictured his own father, with his short haircut and his waistcoats. Now Walli would be required to play that role: commanding, authoritative, reliable, always able to provide for the family. He was not ready, no matter what Karolin said.

But he had to do it, anyway.

‘When?’ he said.

‘November.’

‘Do you want to get married?’

She smiled through her tears. ‘Do you want to marry me?’

‘More than anything in the world.’

‘Thank you.’ She hugged him.

The cleaner coughed reprovingly. Conversation was permitted, but physical contact was not.

Walli said: ‘You know I can’t stay here in the East.’

‘Couldn’t your father get a lawyer?’ she said. ‘Or exert some political pressure? The government might issue a pardon, if all the circumstances were explained.’

Karolin’s family were not political. Walli’s were, and he knew with total certainty that he was never going to receive a pardon for killing a border guard. ‘It’s impossible,’ he said. ‘If I stay here, they’ll execute me for murder.’

‘So what can you do?’

‘I have to go back to the West, and I have to stay there, unless Communism collapses, and I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.’

‘No.’

‘You’ll have to come with me to West Berlin.’

‘How?’

‘We’ll go out the way I came in. Some students have dug a tunnel under Bernauer Strasse.’ He looked at his watch. Time was passing quickly. ‘We need to be there around sundown.’

She looked horrified. ‘Today?’

‘Yes, right away.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Wouldn’t you prefer our child to grow up in a free country?’

She grimaced, as if in pain at the conflict within her. ‘I’d prefer not to take terrible risks.’

‘So would I. But we have no choice.’

She looked away from him, at the rows of pews and the assiduous cleaner, and at a plaque on the wall saying: I
AM THE
W
AY
,
THE
T
RUTH AND THE
L
IFE
. It was not helpful, Walli thought, but Karolin made up her mind. ‘Then let’s go,’ she said, and she stood up.

They left the church. Walli headed north. Karolin was subdued, and he tried to cheer her up. ‘The Bobbsey Twins are having an adventure,’ he said. She smiled briefly.

Walli considered whether they might be under surveillance. He was pretty sure no one had seen him leave his parents’ house this morning: he had gone out the back way and no one had followed him. But did Karolin have a tail? Perhaps there had been another man waiting outside her college for her to emerge, someone expert at making himself inconspicuous.

Walli started to look behind him every minute or so to check whether there might be one person always in view. He did not see anyone suspicious, but he succeeded in spooking Karolin. ‘What are you doing?’ she said fearfully.

‘Checking for a tail.’

‘You mean the man in the cap?’

‘Maybe. Let’s catch a bus.’ They were passing a stop, and Walli pulled Karolin to the end of the queue.

‘Why?’

‘To see if anyone gets on and off with us.’

Unfortunately, it was rush hour, and millions of Berliners were catching buses and trains home. By the time a bus came, there were several people in line behind Walli and Karolin. As they boarded he looked hard at each of them. There was a woman in a raincoat, a pretty girl, a man in blue overalls, a man in a suit with a trilby hat, and two teenagers.

They rode the bus three stops east then got off. The woman in the raincoat and the man in overalls got off behind them. Walli headed west, going back the way they had come, figuring that anyone who followed them on such an illogical route must be suspicious.

But no one did.

‘I’m pretty sure we’re not being tailed,’ he said to Karolin.

‘I’m so scared,’ she said.

The sun was going down. They needed to hurry. They turned north, heading for Wedding. Walli checked behind him again. He saw a middle-aged man in the brown canvas coat of a warehouseman, but no one he had noticed earlier. ‘I think we’re all right,’ he said.

‘I’m not going to see my family again, am I?’ Karolin said.

‘Not for a while,’ Walli replied. ‘Unless they escape, too.’

‘My father would never leave. He loves his buses.’

‘They have buses in the West.’

‘You don’t know him.’

Walli did know him, and Karolin was right. Her father was as different as could be from the clever, strong-willed Werner. Karolin’s father had no political or religious ideas and cared nothing for freedom of speech. If he lived in a democracy, he probably would not bother to vote. He liked his work and his family and his pub. His favourite food was bread. Communism gave him everything he needed. He would never escape to the West.

It was twilight when Walli and Karolin reached Strelitzer Strasse.

Karolin became increasingly jumpy as they walked along the street towards where it dead-ended at the Wall.

Ahead Walli noticed a young couple with a child. He wondered if they, too, were escaping. Yes, they were: they opened the door to the yard and disappeared.

Walli and Karolin reached the place, and Walli said: ‘We go in here.’

Karolin said: ‘I want my mother with me when I have the baby.’

‘We’re almost there!’ Walli said. ‘Through this door there’s a yard with a hatch. We go down the shaft and along the tunnel to freedom!’

‘I’m not scared of escaping,’ she said. ‘I’m scared of giving birth.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Walli said desperately. ‘They have great hospitals in the West. You’ll be surrounded by doctors and nurses.’

‘I want my mother,’ she said.

Over her shoulder Walli saw, four hundred yards away at the corner of the street, the man in the brown canvas coat talking to a policeman. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘We
were
followed.’ He looked at the door, then at Karolin. ‘It’s now or never,’ he said. ‘I have no choice, I have to go. Are you coming with me, or not?’

She was crying. ‘I want to, but I can’t,’ she said.

A car came around the corner, travelling fast. It stopped beside the policeman and the tail. A familiar figure jumped out of the car, a tall man with a stoop: Hans Hoffmann. He spoke to the man in the brown coat.

Walli said to Karolin: ‘Either follow me, or walk quickly away from here. There’s going to be trouble.’ He stared at her. ‘I love you,’ he said. Then he dashed through the door.

Standing over the hatch was Cristina, still wearing the headscarf and the gun in her belt. When she saw Walli, she threw the iron doors open. ‘You may need that gun,’ Walli said to her. ‘The police are coming.’

He took one look back. The wooden door in the wall remained shut. Karolin had not followed him. Pain twisted in his stomach: it was the end.

He scrambled down the steps.

In the cellar the young couple with the child were standing with one of the students. ‘Hurry!’ Walli yelled. ‘The police are coming!’

They went down the shaft: mother first, then child, then father. The child was slow on the ladder.

Cristina came down the steps and shut the iron trapdoor behind her with a clang. ‘How did the police get on to us?’ she said.

‘The Stasi were following my girlfriend.’

‘You stupid fool, you’ve betrayed us all.’

‘Then I’ll go last,’ Walli said.

The male student went down the shaft, and Cristina made to follow.

‘Give me your gun,’ Walli said.

She hesitated.

Walli said: ‘If I’m behind you, you won’t be able to use it.’

She handed it to him.

He took it gingerly. It looked exactly like the pistol his father had pulled from its hiding place in the kitchen, the day Rebecca and Bernd had escaped.

Cristina noticed his unease. ‘Have you ever fired a gun?’ she said.

‘Never.’

She took it back from him and moved a lever near the hammer. ‘Now the safety catch is off,’ she said. ‘All you do is point it and pull the trigger.’ She put the safety catch on again and handed the gun back to him. Then she went down the ladder.

Walli could hear shouts and car engines outside. He could not guess what the police were doing, but it was clear he was running out of time.

He saw how things had gone wrong. Hans Hoffmann had had Karolin under surveillance, no doubt hoping that Walli might come back for her. The tail had seen her meet a boy and go off with him. Someone had decided not to arrest them immediately, but to see whether they would lead their watchers to a group of co-conspirators. There had been a slick change of personnel after they got off the bus, and a new follower had taken over, the man in the brown coat. At some point he had realized they were heading for the Wall, and had pressed the panic button.

Now the police and the Stasi were outside, searching the rear of the derelict buildings, trying to figure out where Walli and Karolin had gone. They would find the trapdoor any second now.

With the pistol in his hand Walli went down the shaft, following the others.

As he reached the foot of the ladder he heard the clang of the iron hatch. The police had located the entrance. A moment later there were gruff shouts of surprise and triumph as they saw the hole in the floor.

Walli had to wait a long, agonizing moment at the mouth of the tunnel, until Cristina disappeared inside. He followed her, then stopped. He was slim, and he was just about able to turn in the narrow passage. He peeked out, looking up the shaft, and saw the bulk of a policeman stepping on to the ladder.

This was hopeless. The police were too close. All they had to do was point their guns into the tunnel and fire. Walli himself would be shot, and when he fell, the bullets would pass over him and hit the next in line – and so on: the slaughter would be bloody. And he knew they would not hesitate to shoot, for no mercy was shown to escapers, ever. It would be carnage.

He had to keep them out of the shaft.

But he did not want to kill another man.

Kneeling just inside the mouth of the tunnel, he moved the safety catch of the Walther. Then he put his hand holding the gun outside the tunnel, pointed it upwards, and pulled the trigger.

The gun kicked in his hand. The bang was very loud in the confined space. Immediately afterwards he heard shouts of dismay and fear, but not of pain, and he guessed he had scared them without actually hitting anyone. He peeped out and saw the cop scrambling back up the ladder and out of the shaft.

He waited. He knew the escapers ahead of him would be slow, because of the child. He could hear the cops discussing in angry tones what they were going to do. None of them was willing to go down the shaft: it was suicide, one said. But they could not just let people escape!

To reinforce the danger to them, Walli fired the gun again. He heard sudden panic movements as if they had all pulled back from the shaft. He thought he had succeeded in scaring them off. He turned to crawl away.

Then he heard a voice he knew well. Hans Hoffmann said: ‘We need grenades.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ said Walli.

He stuck the gun in his belt and began to crawl along the tunnel. There was nothing for it now but to get as far along as possible. In no time, he felt Cristina’s shoes in front of him. ‘Hurry up!’ he yelled. ‘The cops are getting grenades!’

‘I can’t go faster than the guy in front of me!’ she yelled back.