She explained about Bruno Morenz’s evacuation during the war.
“A farm?” said Voss. “Which farm? There are hundreds in that area.”
“She didn’t know the name. Just that it was not ten miles from Weimar itself. Draw your ring, Colonel. Bring in troops. Within the day you will have him.”
Colonel Voss called Abteilung XIII, the intelligence and security service of the National People’s Army, the NVA. Phones rang in the NVA headquarters out at Karlshorst, and before dawn trucks began to roll south toward Weimar.
“The ring is formed,” said Voss at midnight. “The troops will move outward from Weimar town, sweeping by sectors, outward toward the ring. They will search every farm, barn, store, cowshed, and pigsty until they reach the ten-miles ring. I only hope you are right, Major Vanavskaya. There are now a lot of men involved.”
In the small hours he left in his personal car for the south. Major Vanavskaya accompanied him. The sweep was due to start at dawn.
Siegfried lay on his belly at the edge of the treeline and studied the dark contours of the forest three hundred yards away that marked East Germany. McCready lay beside him. It was three A.M. on Saturday.
Five years earlier, also in darkness, Siegfried had cut his rabbit run from the base of a particularly tall pine tree on the eastern side, in the direction of a gleaming white rock high on the hill slope on the Western side. His problem now was, he had always thought he would see the rock from the east, gleaming palely in the dim light before dawn. He had not foreseen that he would ever have to head the other way. Now the rock was high above him, screened by the trees. It would become visible only from a position far out in No Man’s Land. He judged the line as best he could, crawled forward the last ten yards of West Germany, and began to snip quietly at the chain- link fence.
When Siegfried had his hole, McCready saw his arm rise in a beckoning motion. He crawled out of cover toward the wire. He had spent the five minutes studying the watchtowers of the East German border guards and the sweep of their searchlights. Siegfried had chosen his spot well—halfway between two of the watchtowers. An added bonus was that the tree-growth of summer had caused some of the pine branches across the minefield to extend outward by several feet; one searchlight, at least, was being partially blocked by this extra growth. In autumn, tree surgeons would come to prune back the branches, but they had not done so yet.
The other searchlight had a clear view of their intended path, but the man behind it must have been tired or bored, for it sent off for minutes on end. When it came on again, it was always pointing the other way. Then it would make its sweep toward them, sweep back, and go out. If the operator kept up this pattern, they would have a few seconds’ warning.
Siegfried jerked his head and crawled through the hole. McCready followed, dragging his gunny sack. The German turned and pushed the cut mesh back into place. It would not be noticed except at close range, and the guards never crossed the strip to check the wire unless they had already noticed a break. They did not like minefields, either.
It was tempting to run across the hundred yards of plowed strip, now thickly grassed with extra-tall dock, thistle, and nettle growing at intervals in the grass. But there could be tripwires linked to sound-alarms. It was safer to crawl. They crawled. At the halfway point they were shaded by trees from the searchlight to their left, but then the one to their right came on. Both men froze in their green smocks and lay face down. They had blackened their faces and hands, Siegfried with boot polish, McCready with burnt cork that would wash off more easily on the other side.
The pale light splashed over them, hesitated, moved back, and went off again. Ten yards farther on, Siegfried found a tripwire and gestured McCready to crawl around it. Another forty yards, and they reached the minefield. Here the thistles and grasses were chest-high. No one tried to plow up the minefield.
The German looked back. High above the trees, McCready could see the white rock, a patch of paleness against the darkness of the pine forest. Siegfried swiveled his head and checked the giant tree against the rock. He was ten yards to the right of his line. He crawled again, down the edge of the minefield. When he stopped, he began to feel tenderly in the long grass. After two minutes McCready heard his breath hiss out in triumph. He held a fine strand of fishing line between finger and thumb. He pulled gently. If it was loose at the other end, the mission was over. It went tight and held.
“Follow the fishing line,” Siegfried whispered. “It will take you through the minefield to the tunnel under the wire. The path is only two feet wide. When do you come back?”
“Twenty-four hours,” said McCready. “Or forty-eight. After that, forget it. I will not be coming. I will use my pencil light from the base of the big tree just before I make the run. Hold the fence open for me.”
He disappeared on. his belly into the minefield, not quite hidden by the tall grass and weeds. Siegfried waited for the searchlight to wash over him one last time, then crawled back to the West.
McCready went forward through the mines, following the nylon line. Occasionally he tested it to make sure it was still straight. He knew he would not see any mines. These were not big plate-mines that could throw a truck in the air. They were small antipersonnel mines made of plastic, not responsive to metal detectors, which had been tried by escapers and had not worked. The mines were buried, pressure-operated. They would not explode for a rabbit or a fox, but they were sensitive enough for a human body. And vicious enough to blow away a leg or the entrails, or to tear out the chest cavity. Often they did not kill quickly but left the would-be escaper screaming through the night until the guards came after sunrise, with guides, to retrieve the body.
McCready saw the rolling waves of razor-wire looming ahead of him, the end of the minefield. The fishing line led him to a shallow scrape under the wire. He rolled on his back, pushed the wire upward with his totebag, and kicked with his heels. Inch by inch, he slid beneath the entanglement. Above him he could see the glittering razors that made this kind of wire so much more painful than barbed wire.
There were ten yards of it, but piled eight feet high above him. When he came out on the Eastern side, he found the nylon strand attached to a small peg that was almost out of the ground. Another tug, and it would have come loose, aborting the whole crossing. He covered the peg with a mat of thick pine needles, noted its position directly in front of the outsize pine tree, held his compass in front of him, and crawled away.
He crawled on a heading of 90 degrees until he came to a track. There he stripped off his smock, bundled it around his compass, and hid them beneath more pine needles ten yards inside the forest. If any dogs came down the track, they would not be able to smell the buried clothing. At the edge of the track he broke off a branch above head height and left it hanging by a thread of bark. No one else would notice it, but he would.
On his return he would have to find the track and the broken branch and recover his smock and compass. A heading of 270 degrees would bring him back to the giant pine. He turned and walked away toward the east. As he walked, he noted every marker—fallen trees, piles of logs, twists and turns. After a mile, he came out on a road and saw the spire of the Lutheran church of Ellrich village ahead of him.
He skirted it, as briefed, walking through fields of cut wheat until he intercepted the road to Nordhausen, five miles farther on. It was just five o’clock. He stayed by the side of the road, prepared to dive into a ditch if a vehicle appeared from either direction. Farther south, he hoped his scuffed reefer jacket, corduroy trousers, boots, and forage cap, worn by so many German farm workers, would escape scrutiny. But here the community was so small that everyone would know everyone else. He did not need to be asked where he was going, even less where he had come from. Behind him, there was nowhere he could have come from but Ellrich village or the border.
Outside Nordhausen he had a lucky break. Over the picket fence of a darkened house, a bicycle was propped against a tree. It was rusty but usable. He weighed the risks of taking it against its usefulness in covering distance faster than a pair of legs. If its loss remained undiscovered for thirty minutes, it was worth it. He took it, walked for a hundred yards, then mounted it and rode to the railway station. It was five to six. The first train to Erfurt was due in fifteen minutes.
There were several dozen working men on the platform waiting to head south to work. He presented some money, was issued a ticket, and the train steamed in, an old-fashioned steam locomotive but on time. Accustomed to British Rail Commuter services, he was grateful for that. He consigned his bicycle to the luggage van and took his place on the wooden seats. The train stopped again at Sondershausen, Greussen, and Straussfurt before rolling into Erfurt at 6:41. He retrieved his bicycle and pedaled away through the streets toward the eastern outskirts of the city and the start of Highway Seven to Weimar.
