‘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!’
Anna, her face almost as white as the duvet, had sat up and was reaching for her clothes, which she had left scattered on the floor. ‘Tom, what’s happening?’
‘What’s happening, my love, is that we’ve just been arrested by the Security Police of the sweet German Democratic Republic.’
‘But why?’
Hawn felt a stab of irritation. ‘How the hell do I know? Either it’s a mistake, or we’ve been set up. But why we’ve been set up, God knows. We’re not going to be a lot of use to anyone in an East German clink.’
They finished dressing and opened the door. The young Vopo took up the rear and followed them down the stairs.
‘I will say this for them,’ Anna said, ‘their timing was perfect.’
‘That’s about the only consolation we have.’
The other three were waiting in the passage. Without word or gesture they turned and marched towards the door, the plain-clothes man in the lead. Outside stood a small olive-green truck with no windows in the back. One of the Vopos opened the double rear doors and motioned Hawn and Anna to get inside. He and a second Vopo followed, while the other two got into the front.
As the engine started, a dim blue light came on. The interior of the truck was empty, except for the two steel benches along each side and a grill at the front end, opening into the cabin.
The two of them sat together on one of the benches, with one of the Vopos on one side, another opposite. Hawn turned to the one beside him: ‘Where are we going?’
The boy shrugged. It was the second Vopo who answered: ‘Security Headquarters, Oranienburg.’
‘Do you know what the charges are?’
He was answered by the first Vopo. ‘We are not permitted to talk to prisoners.’
Hawn squeezed Anna’s hand, and they rode in silence.
The truck slowed down, took a sudden right turn and stopped. Above the throb of the diesel engine, the rhythm of marching feet. A bell rang; the truck drove forward again; stopped after about thirty yards. The rear doors clanged open and the inside was flooded with light. The third Vopo, from the cabin, motioned them to get out.
They were in a broad courtyard surrounded by grim five-storey walls in which few lights showed. Two platoons of Vopos were goose-stepping at the far end. The plain-clothes man led Hawn and Anna through an archway, down a bright corridor and up two flights of stairs. The three Vopos followed. They came to a polished wooden door with a black plaque marked PRIVAT in white lettering. The plainclothes man knocked twice and entered.
It was a spare room full of cheap office furniture: grey steel filing cabinet, plastic Venetian blinds drawn across the window. The only luxury was a carpet. Like the rest of the building, the room was very bright, lit by two strips of neon, one of which fizzed and blinked at uneven intervals. On the wall a photograph of Lenin.
The man behind the desk had haggard, heavy features behind horn-rimmed spectacles. Hard, questioning, suspicious: but not an altogether bad face, Hawn decided. He was dressed in a dark business suit and wore a wedding ring. A couple of small red and gold badges adorned his buttonhole.
The plain-clothes man from the truck handed him the two passports and visas, then withdrew, followed by the Vopos. The man gestured Hawn and Anna towards two straight-backed chairs, then offered them a box of cigarettes. When they declined, he lit one himself, and Hawn saw that he had two fingers missing from his right hand.
‘I am Colonel Kardich, of People’s Security.’ He spoke slowly in English, with a thick, awkward accent. ‘First there are certain questions I must ask you. You entered the German Democratic Republic from West Berlin earlier this evening. You entered with Doktor Oskar Wohl. Wohl obtained your visas. Is that all correct?’
‘Perfectly correct,’ said Hawn.
‘Can you think of any reason why you should have been detained?’
‘None at all. We came as Doktor Wohl’s guests. As such, we assumed we would receive a proper, decent welcome.’ A faint, apologetic smile crossed the man’s severe features. ‘You have already observed that I address you in English — not in French.’ He leant out and gently drummed the three fingers of his right hand on the two passports. ‘These documents are forged. You know that?’
Hawn was silent for a moment. He was fairly certain that the Grenzpolizei would not have spotted the forgery unless they had been told. ‘How do you know?’ he said at last.
‘It is not important how I know. The fact is, they are forgeries. You are therefore in the German Democratic Republic with false documents. That is a serious crime.’
Hawn felt Anna flinch beside him. He put his hand out and touched her arm. ‘You said you had several questions to ask us. That’s only one. And you seem to know the answer. What about the others?’
‘Who supplied you with these passports?’
Hawn paused only a fraction of
