At the edge of the Südpark in the Wilhelmstadt section of Spandau is a highrise block of flats with a clear view across Gatower Strasse to the Allied Prison. At a window on the twenty-fourth floor, Jane was standing with a pair of Zeiss binoculars focused on the main gate. It was 5.35 a.m. At her side, in a nightdress and curlers, was the hausfrau, a stout, cheerful person in her fifties, whose name she had not discovered. Things had happened too swiftly for social exchanges.
Willi Becker had brought her here from his flat in Kreuzberg, driving one-eyed through the almost deserted city streets at speeds that had scared her, though she had tried not to show it.
He had already alerted the people in the flat by phone, so the woman’s husband, a tall, bearded man called Alfred, had been dressed when they arrived. After a few words in German, both men had gone down by the lift to the car.
‘You are afraid?’ the woman asked Jane in halting English that sounded as if she had been putting it together for some time.
Without lowering the glasses, Jane answered, ‘Yes, but not for myself. For someone else.’
‘Your lover?’
For all her anxieties, Jane managed a faint smile. ‘Yes. My lover.’
‘Red?’
‘Yes. You know him?’
‘Of course. Willi and my Alfred.’
‘I see.’
‘Cold War, ja?’
‘Yes?’ responded Jane, not quite following.
‘Die Fluchthelfer?’
She had heard the word, but where?
‘Die Mauer? Berlin Wall, ja? Willi, Alfred, Red help many peoples. Over, under.’
Belatedly, it dawned on Jane, and she was angry with herself for being so obtuse. The shocks of the past twelve hours had dulled her brain. These were the people Red had written about in that series of articles she had read and admired: the escape-helpers, the daring or reckless men and women who secretly schemed the crossings of fugitives from the East. Over the beer on Saturday night in that weekend at Cedric’s, he had told story after story about them. The woman appeared to be saying Red had been one of them; and it was not too incredible, thinking back. His writing and his stories had burned with the passion and vigour of personal experience. And now the Fluchthelfer were scheming to help him.
The knowledge warmed Jane like a brandy. The odds against rescuing Red were still enormous, but thank God the attempt would be made by an experienced team.
Twenty minutes went by.
Then Jane told the woman, ‘Something is happening down there.’
There was movement at the prison entrance. A Soviet soldier came out of the small door in the blue double gates and moved forward under the arc-lamps, his gun levelled. He was followed by another.
‘Two guards,’ Jane reported. ‘They seem to be checking that no one is outside.’
‘I tell Willi.’ Her companion picked up the two-way radio the men had left her and spoke into it.
Down below, they were opening the gates and a brown saloon car was visible under the turreted entrance. Jane trained the binoculars on the registration-plate as the light caught it and spoke the number aloud, adding, ‘A dark brown saloon, very large.’ Before the message was passed to Willi Becker, she had shifted her sights upwards to the windscreen. The car glided forward across the cobbles. For a moment, the faces inside were illuminated: a chauffeur in a dark uniform, not military; beside him, a girl in a close-fitting blue and white tracksuit-top – a pale, staring face, framed by short, dark hair. Heidrun.
‘Oh, God! They must have got Red.’
‘Red?’ said the German woman. ‘You see him?’
‘No. Wait!’ Jane watched the car accelerate and swing across the carriageway. ‘One man in the back, not Red, I’m certain. Tell them Heidrun Kassner is in the car, but I can’t see Red.’
Waiting in a narrow street between two blocks of flats off Wilhelmstrasse in his VW Golf, Willi Becker took the message and made his decision.
He made radio contact with the third section of his team, giving them the description and registration number. ‘A Lada, I guess. Don’t miss it.’ To Alfred, seated beside him, he commented. ‘You can bet they’ve got Red in there somewhere. They wouldn’t make two trips.’ He turned the ignition and moved forward to the intersection to wait for the brown saloon.
The early morning traffic, was already starting to build. When the Lada cruised past, Becker swung the Volkswagon smoothly on to Wilhelmstrasse behind it. They travelled in the fast lane for about a kilometre, Becker driving one-handed and speaking instructions into his handset. Then the traffic slowed. Unusually for this time of day, there was a hold-up ahead, a short way before the junction with Pichelsdorfer Strasse. The cars were actually stationary and three men in bright yellow safety-jackets were moving forward, stooping to speak to the drivers.
The Lada drew up behind a petrol tanker.
Becker brought the VW to a smooth halt, and said calmly, ‘Guns.’
Alfred had two loaded sub-machine guns ready on his lap. He passed one to Becker.
They waited for one of the yellow-jacketed men to approach the Lada. As the chauffeur wound down his window, the other men in safety-jackets moved fast to the rear of the car. One of them looked through the rear window and raised his arm in a signal to Becker.
‘Now!’ said Becker, thrusting open the door of the Golf.
In the same split-second, a shot was fired from inside the Lada. The man who had made the first approach keeled back and crashed over the bonnet of another vehicle.
The Lada’s engine roared as the chauffeur swung the wheel and bumped the big car over the raised strip of grass that formed the central reservation. A container lorry in the slow lane of the opposite carriageway was forced to veer on to the cycle-way with a shriek of tyres. The Lada completed its U-turn and raced away from the ambush.
Becker crouched on the grass and fired a volley of shots. One of them must have pierced a front tyre, because fifty metres down the street the Lada careered into the fast lane, almost jumping the reservation again.
‘Come on!’
Becker was back in the Golf with Alfred, over the grass, into the fast lane and in pursuit. Ahead, the Lada was under some kind of control, but clearly too handicapped to burn off the VW.
‘They’re trying to make it back to the prison,’ Becker told Alfred.
The prison wasn’t far ahead. They were already past the red-brick barrack-blocks and approaching the trees that partly screened the entrance. The limping Lada slewed off Wilhelmstrasse on to the cobbles.
As the Golf skidded to a stop a few metres away, Becker saw that the doors of the Lada were open and the passengers were already heading for the blue prison gates. Two men and a girl. One of the men was trying to resist.
‘It’s Red,’ Becker shouted as he snatched his gun and leapt from the car.
A shot screamed past him and smashed into the side of the Golf. The Russian chauffeur was behind the Lada, trying to give cover. Alfred peppered the brown saloon with gunfire and the chauffeur fell.
Becker raced forward a few paces and then had to take cover behind the Lada. The KGB officer who had been in the back was brandishing a silver automatic.
They had reached the prison gates. Heidrun was shouting into the grille. Suddenly Red broke loose and threw himself against the KGB man. They both fell. The gun clattered across the cobbles.
Heidrun started forward to recover it. Becker pulled the trigger and picked her off. Her body thudded against the prison gates as the bullets ripped into her flesh.
The KGB man struggled upright and was hit by the same volley. His hands clawed at the prison door.
Becker sprinted forward and grabbed Red. There was shouting from inside the prison gate. With Alfred’s help, he hauled Red across the cobbles and thrust him into the back of the Golf.
Soviet guards streamed out of the prison gate and stepped over the bleeding bodies to fire at the accelerating Golf as the Fluchthelfer made their getaway.
‘So you’re back in Berlin?’ Becker remarked conversationally to Red.