' Wunderbar! ' Luhr snapped. 'And you think we're going to catch this
man with standard tactics? Christ! We've got to do something more.'
'What?' Funk asked, almost pleading.
Luhr shook his head angrily. 'I don't know yet. But I know this: you'd
better inform Pretoria of what's happened, and the sooner the better!'
Funk blanched. Greener heaved himself from his chair and reached for
his cap. 'I should get back to Kreuzberg.'
'Yes, I suppose so, Otto,' Luhr mocked. 'We'll be sure and tell Phoenix
you mentioned him.'
Greener slammed the door.
Luhr laughed. 'What an old woman. How did he ever survive twenty-five
years on the force?'
'By doing just what he did then,' Funk replied, lifting the phone,
'making judicious exits. Besides, nobody wants Kreuzberg. It's the
shithole of Berlin. Nothing there but filthy Turks and students-is that
you, Steuben? You're still on duty?' Funk cut his eyes at Luhr.
'This is the prefect. Get me an international operator again.
Same number.
Right, Pretoria. I need some advice from an old friend in the NIS.
Those fellows down there really know how to handle a problem.
Crack a few heads and no more problem. Yes, I'll wait .. .'
In the first-floor communications room, Sergeant Josef Steuben reached
under his computer desk and activated a small tape recorder.
After surveying the main station room through the window behind him he
logged Funk's call into a small notebook he had kept religiously for the
past four months. Steuben had no university degree, but Hauer
considered him an electronics genius. It had taken him less than a
minute to piggyback the signal cable coming from the thirdfloor office
Funk had commandeered. -There were no voltage-measuring devices
monitoring Abschnitt 53, so he felt reasonably safe.
Besides, he thought, if this thing ever gets to court, wild charges by a
computer technician and an accused murderer will be worthless. We've
got to have physical evidence.
'Dieter will love this,' he said aloud. 'Catch the buggers in the act@'
A voice like cracking ice froze Steuben in his chair. 'Are you the only
man on duty in here?' it asked.
Steuben whirled. Lieutenant Jijrgen Luhr stood in the doorway of the
communications room, his right hand resting on the butt of his Walther.
'Stand back from the console,' he ordered.
11:06 Pm. Prinzenstrasse: West Berlin Blindness, Hans thought.
This must be what blindness is like.
He felt as if he were staring backward into his own skull. He couldn't
see his father's face, although he knew it was only centimeters from his
own. Cramped and disoriented, he reached out.
'Be still!' Hauer grunted.
'Sorry.'
Somehow, he and Hauer had stuffed themselves into the boot of Benjamin
Ochs's Jaguar. Ochs had thrown an old blanket on top of them, and
luckily they had gone in head first, so that what little heat passed
through the rear seat by convection kept their heads reasonably warm.
Now they sped across the city, the nattily dressed old couple staring
sternly ahead whenever they passed a green police vehicle.
In the lightless boot, Hans struggled to keep his limbs awake.
One leg was completely numb already, and his left shoulder felt as
though it might actually be dislocated.
'Captain?' he said. 'I've been thinking about what you said.
About Stasi officers working for reunification. It just doesn't make
sense to me. If the Wall came down, wouldn't the Stasi be dismantled?
Even prosecuted for criminal actions?'
'Yes. And that should tell you something. Someone in the West must be
guaranteeing them some kind of immunity in exchange for their
assistance. Don't ask me who, because I don't know.'
Hans digested this in the rumbling blackness. 'Do you really think it
could happen?' he asked at length. 'Reunification, I mean.'
'It's inevitable,' Hauer said. 'It's just a question of when and how.
Mayor Diepgen himself said as much this year: 'this year with the 750th
anniversary we begin with the idea of Berlin as the capital of all
Germany.' No one outside Germany took any notice, of course. But they
will, Hans. You're young. People on the other side of the Wall seem
different to you. And they are in some ways. Big things separate us.
The Wall, our educational system, ideologies. But little things join
us. What we eat ... our old songs. The mothers in the East tell their
children the same fairy tales your mother told you at night. The
fathers tell the same stories of heroism from the same wars. Little
things, maybe. But in my experience, the little things outlast the big
things.' Hauer shifted position. 'We Germans are a tribe, Hans. That's
the best and the worst thing about us.'
Hans nodded slowly in the darkness. 'Where are we crossing?' he asked.
'Staaken?'
'No. That's what everyone will expect. They'll assume that if we run,
we'll run west. That's where the heaviest security should be.'
'So where are we crossing?'
'Heinrich-Heine Strasse. We're going right into the heart of East
Berlin, then swinging south around the city. That old Jew has balls,
I'll tell you.'
'How are we getting out, exactly?' Hans asked above the drone of the
Jaguar's engine. 'You don't think they're going to let this car through
without checking the boot?'
Hauer chuckled softly in the dark. 'I'd hoped you wouldn't ask.
The truth is, I'm glad the old man demanded to come. Now we've got
three things going for us: glasnost, the weather, and the reluctance of
the border guards to bother two old Jews traveling to a funeral.'
'Funeral? What are you talking about? Whose funeral?'
Before Hauer could answer, Benjamin Ochs leaned back and struck the rear
seat with his balled fist. Two muted thuds sounded in the boot. 'That's
it,' Hauer whispered. 'We're there.'
Two more thuds reverberated through the closed space.
'Damn, ' Hauer muttered. 'Extra security. Don't say a word, Hans. And
pray the Vopos are lazy tonight.'
