'I've not asked you for a written report because in these matters it's better that paperwork doesn't exist. When you deal with security and intelligence people the only safe course is to believe that they know best, otherwise you're in a can of worms. I am formally instructing you not to discuss this episode with any person without my express permission. If a slanging match is going to start I won't have my force as the punchbag in the middle. Is that clear?'
'Perfectly, sir. I'll be away back to the village then, sir.'
The Chief Constable watched his man leave. Perhaps he had overplayed the heavy hand, but it would be for the best.
The Chief Constable had available to him lines of communication through to the Director of the Security Services. The channels existed, protocol would not be breached if he were to utilise them. It was possible for him to warn Peter Fenton of the information gathered by Sir Charles Spottiswoode. Possible, but not desirable. What applied to his subordinates was also relevant to himself.
The Trabant jeep bumped and whined along the concrete patrol strip.
Three kilometres west of Walbeck, where the frontier split the Roteriede woods. The jeeps were always noisy, victims of the petrol that was mixed for the sake of economy.
To the left of the driver was the 'Sperrgraben', the deep vehicle ditch.
Beyond that the 'Kontrollstreifen', the ploughed strip that was harrowed and virgin and waiting to betray footmarks and human disturbance.
The driver's eyes ranged from the road to the smoothed earth and on towards the 'Metallgitterzaun', the metal mesh fence, dark from weather, lightened only by the cement poles and the close set 'Automatische Schubanlagen'. All of this section was covered by the automatic guns.
The driver would be the same age as Ulf Becker, but a smaller, slighter boy. Short in conversation, high in a patronising parade of his sense of duty. Boring little pig, Becker thought.
But Ulf Becker also followed the orders of their NCO and studied closely the cover and terrain that slipped past them. Becker looked right.
Past the occasional signs that warned of mine fields. Past the watchtowers and earth bunkers. Past the communications poles where a portable telephone could be plugged in if there were radio failure. Past the scrub bushes that grew on the ground that had been cleared. Past the high tree line of pines that lay a full 100 metres back from the patrol road. The border here followed inevitably on the rolling contours and gentle hills of the woods. The engine would strain to the minor summits before the coast down into the next valley. Not like Weferlingen, not flat and easily observed. Dead ground, covered ground, hidden and secure.
A good place this, two kilometres on from the watch- tower on the Walbeck Strasse where he had spent a night on duty. But the earth bunkers were manned at dusk and the men there carried the infra-red binoculars… they could be skirted. The jeep patrols were frequent after darkness… their lights and their engines removed the possibility of surprise. But there were the Grenzaufklarer, the specialist troops whose duty patterns were not posted, whose patrol programmes were not divulged… that was a chance.
Becker's hands gripped the stock and barrel of the MPiKM that rested against his legs.
The whole matter was a chance.
In the pocket of his blouse was Jutte's photograph, encased in cellophane protection. He would have liked to have looked at it, drawn it out, and gazed at the grey shades of her face in the picture. Not in front of this bloody pig.
The whole matter was a chance.
But the greatest barriers were away in the seclusion of the woods. Not here in the final metres but back and beyond the Hinterland fence, back and beyond in the Restricted Zone. Not one obstacle there, but a dozen.
Did Ulf Becker have the guts for the challenge?
Not until he had seen the Hinterland fence… but that was evasion of the principle.
He must see the Hinterland fence. What if that, too, offered the possibility?… Then he must see the Restricted Zone.
And if that, too, offered the possibility? Then… they would shoot them here. Shoot them if they were found near the wire. The high velocity bullets in the magazine of the MPiKM, capable of killing at a range of a kilometre. What would they do at 25 metres to the body of Jutte? A sweet, clean and perfect shape. How would she seem to him when the clip of shells had dropped her.
They would butcher the two of them, the guns on the wire, the guns of the patrols. Arc lights flashing, illumination flares falling, attack dogs barking. Jutte, bloody in death and thrown into a jeep such as this one.
Ulf Becker, bones fractured, bowels ripped by gunfire, slung beside her.
No mercy inside the Hinterland fence, no pity within the Restricted Zone. He could not make the commitment until he had seen more. And he remembered her, on the platform at Schoneweide, heard her voice that was ringing and sharp, saw her eyes that were bright and bold in the dimness of the station lights.
Ulf Becker spat down onto the roadway.
There were many who had entertained the possibility, and where were they now? Shuttered in the flats and factories of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, bound to women and babies, trapped in stinking apathy. The opportunity would only come once, it would go with the sureness of night, it would-never be repeated. If he did not tind the place at Walbeck then he must stand amongst the ranks of those who had harboured a dream and who had failed to discover the determination for the final assault at the fence.
Even to contemplate it was idiocy… Then Ulf Becker was a creature of the herd.
Better alive and a machine tool worker, than dead… Then he had deceived the girl.
The driver brought the jeep to a halt. Becker waved to the earth bunker and was rewarded with a white hand acknowledging his gesture and protruding through the firing slit. The driver swung on his wheel and drove back the way that they had come.
The slow routine of holiday was settling on Otto Guttmann. The pace of Padolsk was abandoned, the endeavour of the laboratory sidestepped.
In those first three days he had been to the Palast-Theater to see an old Italian film. He had cruised at snail pace in the Weisse Flotte boat on the Elbe-Havel Kanal to Genthin — all day and for 7 marks. He had browsed in the bookshops of Karl Marx Strasse and beside the Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, handling with something like reverence the range of books in his native tongue. He had sat with a magazine and a small beer, at the open air cafe looking across the Alter Markt towards the old and renovated Rathaus. He had watched the young people of Magdeburg, laundered and fresh in their uniform of sports shirts and floral frocks. He had dreamed, and closed his mind to the slide rules and drawing boards and the firing range.
The sunshine blessed, warm and clear air bathed him.
Now he went, slowly and in his own time, to visit his valued friend at the Dom, the cathedral. A friend of his own generation and one long revered because he was a pastor of the Evangelical order, living in a dilapidated cottage sandwiched between the high cathedral walls and the sloping banks of the Elbe, a man who had not compromised.
Not easy he thought as he walked beneath the great twin towers of the cathedral, to carry on the work of a pastor under the rule of socialism.
Not simple to watch the church that one treasured stripped of its influence and authority, left merely as an institution of worship to the elderly, denied its former role of administration over the kindergartens and the youth clubs and the hospitals. The erosion of the church's position had been managed with a subtlety. No jackboots and no padlocks. The sprawling new housing estates rose without a church in their midst, young Christians found it even harder to gain the coveted places in secondary and higher education, political precepts ruled. His friend, the pastor, had struggled on through succeeding years, prepared for boldness when bravery would win the day, prepared for acquiescence when subservience dictated the greater advantage. A man who over many years had earned Otto Guttmann's admiration and love.
Men in the latter days of their lives. Men who could gossip and chuckle with a private and closed humour. The pastor would shrug with pain when the scientist told him of his work at Padolsk and put his short and muscled arm up to Guttmann's shoulder and squeeze the sparse flesh. Old men, who in their talk could offer comfort the one to the other.
Their meeting was heavy with affection and cheeks were kissed in a spontaneous happiness and they gazed into each other's faces. The advances of age were ignored and they complimented themselves on their health and
