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
