Lili Franck and her family were astonished.
They were watching the news on West German television. Everyone in East Germany watched West German television, even the Communist Party apparatchiks: you could tell by the angle of the aerials on their roofs.
Lili’s parents were there, Carla and Werner, plus Karolin and Alice, and Alice’s fiancé, Helmut.
Today, May 2, the Hungarians had opened their border with Austria.
They did not do it discreetly. The government held a press conference at Hegyeshalom, the place where the road from Budapest to Vienna crossed the border. They might almost have been trying to provoke the Soviets into a reaction. With great ceremony, in front of hundreds of foreign cameras, the electronic alarm and surveillance system was switched off along the entire frontier.
The Franck family stared in incredulity.
Border guards with giant wire cutters began to slice up the fence, pick up great rectangles of barbed wire, carry them away, and throw them carelessly into a pile.
Lili said: “My God, that’s the Iron Curtain coming down.”
Werner said: “The Soviets won’t stand for this.”
Lili was not so sure. She was not certain of anything these days. “Surely the Hungarians wouldn’t have done this unless they expected the Soviets to accept it, would they?”
Her father shook his head. “They may think they can get away with it . . .”
Alice was bright-eyed with hope. “But this means Helmut and I can leave!” she said. She and her fiancé were desperate to get out of East Germany. “We can just drive to Hungary, as if we’re going on holiday, then walk across the border!”
Lili sympathized: she yearned for Alice to have the opportunities in life that she herself had missed. But it could not possibly be that easy.
Helmut said: “Can we? Really?”
“No, you cannot,” said Werner firmly. He pointed at the television set. “First of all, I don’t see anyone actually walking across the border yet. Let’s see if it really happens. Second, the Hungarian government could change its mind at any time and start arresting people. Third, if the Hungarians really do start to let people leave, the Soviets will send in the tanks and put a stop to it.”
Lili thought her father might be too pessimistic. Now seventy, he was becoming timid in his old age. She had noticed it in business. He had scorned the idea of remote controls for television sets, and when they rapidly became indispensable his factory had had to scramble to catch up. “We’ll see,” Lili said. “In the next few days, some people are bound to try to escape. Then we’ll find out whether anyone stops them.”
Alice said excitedly: “What if Grandfather Werner is wrong? We can’t just ignore a chance like this! What should we do?”
Her mother, Karolin, said anxiously: “It sounds dangerous.”
Werner said to Lili: “What makes you think the East German government will continue to allow us to go to Hungary?”
“They’ll have to,” Lili argued. “If they canceled the summer holidays of thousands of families, there really would be a revolution.”
“Even if it turns out to be safe for others, it may be different for us.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re the Franck family,” Werner said in a tone of exasperation. “Your mother was a Social Democrat city councilor, your sister humiliated Hans Hoffmann, Walli killed a border guard, and you and Karolin sing protest songs. And our family business is in West Berlin, so they can’t confiscate it. We’ve always been an irritant to the Communists. In consequence, unfortunately, we get special treatment.”
Lili said: “So we have to take special precautions, that’s all. Alice and Helmut will be extra cautious.”
“I want to go, whatever the danger,” Alice said emphatically. “I understand the risk, and I’m prepared to take it.” She looked accusingly at her grandfather. “You’ve raised two generations under Communism. It’s mean, it’s brutal, it’s stupid, and it’s broke—yet it’s still here. I want to live in the West. So does Helmut. We want our children to grow up in freedom and prosperity.” She turned to her fiancé. “Don’t we?”
“Yes,” he said, though Lili sensed he was more wary than Alice.
“It’s mad,” said Werner.
Carla spoke for the first time. “It’s not mad, my darling,” she said forcefully to Werner. “It’s dangerous, yes. But remember the things we did, the risks we took for freedom.”
“Some of our number died.”
Carla would not let up. “But we thought it was worth the risk.”
“There was a war on. We had to defeat the Nazis.”
“This is Alice and Helmut’s war—the Cold War.”
Werner hesitated, then sighed. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said reluctantly.
“Okay,” said Carla. “In that case, let’s make a plan.”
Lili looked at the TV again. In Hungary, they were still dismantling the fence.
• • •
On election day in Poland, Tanya went to church with Danuta, who was a candidate.
It was a sunny Sunday, June 4, with a few puffy clouds in a blue sky. Danuta dressed her two children in their best clothes and brushed their hair. Marek put on a tie in the red and white colors of Solidarity, which were also the colors of the Polish flag. Danuta wore a hat, a white straw bowler with a red feather.
Tanya was in an agony of doubt. Was all this really happening? An election, in Poland? The fence coming down in Hungary? Disarmament in Europe? Did Gorbachev really mean it about openness and restructuring?
Tanya dreamed of freedom with Vasili. The two of them would tour the world: Paris, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Delhi. Vasili would be interviewed on television and talk about his work and the long years of secrecy. Tanya would write travel articles, maybe a book of her own.
But when she woke up from her daydream she waited, hour by hour, for the bad news: the roadblocks, the tanks, the arrests, the curfew, and the bald men in bad suits coming on television to announce that they had foiled a counterrevolutionary plot financed by the capitalist-imperialists.
The priest told his congregation to vote for the most godly candidates. As all Communists were in principle atheists, that was a clear steer. The authoritarian Polish clergy did not much like the liberal Solidarity movement, but they knew who their real enemies were.
The election had come sooner than Solidarity expected. The union had rushed to raise money, rent offices, hire staff, and mount a national election campaign, all in a few weeks. Jaruzelski had done this deliberately, to wrong-foot Solidarity, knowing that the government had an organization firmly in place and ready to go.
However, that was the last smart thing Jaruzelski had done. Since then the Communists had been lethargic, as if they were so sure of winning that they could hardly be bothered to campaign. Their slogan was “With us it’s safer,” which sounded like a condom ad. Tanya had put that joke in her report for TASS, and to her surprise the editors had not taken it out.
In the people’s minds this was a contest between General Jaruzelski, the country’s brutal leader for almost a decade, and the troublemaking electrician Lech Wałesa. Danuta had her photograph taken with Wałesa, as did every other Solidarity candidate, and the photographs had been put up everywhere. Throughout the campaign the union published a daily newspaper, written mostly by Danuta and her women friends. Solidarity’s most popular poster showed Gary Cooper as Marshal Will Kane, holding a ballot paper instead of a gun, with the slogan HIGH NOON, 4 JUNE 1989.
Perhaps the incompetence of the Communist campaign was to be expected, Tanya thought. After all, the idea of going cap in hand to the people and saying “Please vote for me” was totally alien to the Polish ruling elite.
The new upper chamber, called the senate, had one hundred seats, and the Communists expected to win most of those. The Polish people had their backs to the wall, economically, and they would probably vote for the familiar Jaruzelski rather than the maverick Wałesa, Tanya expected. In the lower chamber, called the Sejm, the Communists could not lose, because 65 percent of the seats were reserved for them and their allies.
Solidarity’s aspirations were modest. They figured that if they won a substantial minority of votes, the Communists would be forced to give them a voice in the government.
Tanya hoped they were right.
After mass, Danuta shook hands with everyone in the church.
Then Tanya and the Gorski family went to the polling station. The ballot paper was long and complicated, so Solidarity had set up a stall outside to show people how to vote. Instead of marking their preferred candidates, they had to put a line through the ones they did not like. The Solidarity campaigners gleefully showed model ballot papers with all the Communists crossed out.
Tanya watched people voting. For most this was their first experience of a free election. She observed a shabbily dressed woman moving her pencil down the list, giving a little grunt of fulfillment each time she identified a Communist, and running her pencil through the name with a smile of pleasure. Tanya suspected the government might have been unwise to choose a system of marking the paper in which rejection could feel so physically satisfying.
She talked to some of them, asking what was on their minds when they made their choices. “I voted Communist,” said a woman in an expensive coat. “They made this election possible.” But most seemed to have picked Solidarity candidates. Tanya’s sample was of course completely unscientific.
She went to Danuta’s place for lunch, then the two women left Marek in charge of the children and drove in Tanya’s car to Solidarity headquarters, which was upstairs at the Café Surprise, in the city center.
The mood there was up. The opinion polls gave Solidarity a lead, but no one relied on that because almost 50 percent were don’t-knows. However, reports coming in from all over the country said morale was high. Tanya herself felt cheerful and optimistic. Whatever the result, a real election seemed to be taking place in a Soviet bloc country, and that alone was reason to be glad.
After the polls closed that evening Tanya went with Danuta to see her votes being counted. This was a tense moment. If the authorities decided to cheat, there were a hundred ways they could fix the result. Solidarity scrutineers watched closely, but no one saw any serious irregularity. This in itself was amazing.
And Danuta won by a landslide.
She had not really been expecting it, Tanya could tell from her look of pale shock. “I’m a deputy,” she said unbelievingly. “Elected by the people.” Then her face broke into that huge toothy grin, and she began to accept everyone’s congratulations. So many people kissed her that Tanya began to worry about hygiene.
As soon as they could get away they drove through the lamplit streets back to the Café Surprise, where everyone was gathered around the television sets. Danuta’s result was not the only landslide: Solidarity candidates were doing better than anyone expected, by far. “This is wonderful!” said Tanya.
“No, it’s not,” said Danuta gloomily.
Tanya realized that the Solidarity people were subdued. She was baffled by this glum reaction to triumphant news. “What on earth is wrong?”
“We’re doing too well,” Danuta said. “The Communists can’t accept this. There will be a reaction.”
Tanya had not thought of that.
“So far the government hasn’t won anything,” Danuta went on. “Even where they’re unopposed, some Communist candidates haven’t even gained the minimum fifty percent. It’s too degrading. Jaruzelski will have to disallow the result.”
“I’m going to speak to my brother,” Tanya said.
She had a special number that enabled her to get through to the Kremlin quickly. It was late, but Dimka was still at the office. “Yes, Jaruzelski just called here,” he told her. “I gather the Communists are being humiliated.”
“What did Jaruzelski say?”
“He wants to impose martial law again, exactly as he did eight years ago.”
Tanya’s heart sank. “Shit.” She remembered Danuta being dragged off to jail by the ZOMO thugs while her children cried. “Not again.”
“He proposes to declare the election null and void. ‘We still hold the levers of power in our hands,’ he said.”
“It’s true,” Tanya said dismally. “They have all the guns.”
“But Jaruzelski is scared of doing this on his own. He wants Gorbachev’s support.”
Tanya was heartened. “What did Gorbi say?”
“He hasn’t responded yet. Someone’s waking him up right now.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
“He’ll probably tell Jaruzelski to solve his own problems. That’s what he’s been saying for the last four years. But I can’t be sure. To see the party rejected so completely in a free election . . . that could be too much even for Gorbachev.”
“When will you know?”
“Gorbachev is just going to say yes or no, then go back to sleep. Call me in an hour.”
Tanya hung up. She did not know what to think. Clearly Jaruzelski was ready to clamp down, arrest all the Solidarity activists, throw civil liberties out the window, and reimpose his dictatorship, just as he had in 1981. It was what always happened when Communist countries got the smell of freedom in their nostrils. But Gorbachev said the old days were over. Was it true?
Poland was about to find out.
Tanya stared at the phone in an agony of suspense. What should she tell Danuta? She did not want to panic everyone. But maybe they should be warned of Jaruzelski’s intentions.
Danuta said to her: “Now you’re looking glum, too. What did your brother say?”
Tanya hesitated, then decided to say that nothing had been decided, which was the simple truth. “Jaruzelski called Gorbachev but hasn’t reached him yet.”
They continued to watch the screens. Solidarity was winning everything. So far, the Communists had not won a single contested seat. More results just confirmed the early signs. Landslide was hardly a strong enough word: it was more like a tsunami.
In the room over the café, euphoria mingled with fear. The gradual shift in power for which they had hoped was now out of the question. One of two things would happen in the next twenty-four hours. The Communists might again seize power by force. Or, if they did not, they were finished forever.
Tanya forced herself to wait a full hour before calling Moscow again.
“They talked,” Dimka said. “Gorbachev refused to back a crackdown.”
“Thank heaven,” said Tanya. “So what is Jaruzelski going to do?”
“Backpedal just as fast as he can.”
“Really?” Tanya could hardly believe such good news.
“He’s out of options.”
“I suppose he is.”
“Enjoy the celebration.”
Tanya hung up and spoke to Danuta. “There will be no violence,” she said. “Gorbachev has ruled it out.”
“Oh, my God,” said Danuta in a voice that mingled incredulity with jubilation. “We really have won, haven’t we?”
“Yes,” said Tanya, with a feeling of satisfaction and hope that went all the way to the bottom of her heart. “This is the beginning of the end.”
• • •
It was high summer and sweltering hot in Bucharest on July 7. Dimka and Natalya were there with Gorbachev for a Warsaw Pact summit. Their host was Nicolae Ceausescu, the mad dictator of Romania.
The most important item on the agenda was “the Hungary problem.” Dimka knew it had been put on the list by the East German leader, Erich Honecker. Hungary’s liberalization threatened all the other Warsaw Pact countries, by calling attention to the repressive nature of their unreformed regimes, but it was worst for East Germany. Hundreds of East Germans on holiday in Hungary were leaving their tents and walking into the woods and through holes in the old fence to Austria and freedom. The roads leading from Lake Balaton to the frontier were littered with their tinny Trabant and Wartburg cars, abandoned without regret. Most had no passports, but that did not matter: they were transported to West Germany, where they were automatically given citizenship and helped to settle. No doubt they soon replaced their old cars with more reliable and comfortable Volkswagens.
The Warsaw Pact leaders met in a large room with flag-draped tables arranged in a rectangle. As always, aides such as Dimka and Natalya sat around the edges of the room. Honecker was the driving force, but Ceausescu led the charge. He stood up from his seat next to Gorbachev and began to attack the reformist policies of the Hungarian government. He was a small, bent man with bushy eyebrows and wild eyes. Although he was talking to a few dozen people in a conference room, he shouted and gesticulated as if addressing thousands in a stadium. His twisted lips spat as he ranted. He made no bones about what he wanted: a repeat of 1956. He called for a Warsaw Pact invasion of Hungary to oust Miklós Németh and return the country to orthodox Communist Party rule.
Dimka looked around the room. Honecker was nodding. Czech hard man Miloš Jakeš wore an expression of approval. Bulgaria’s Todor Zhivkov clearly agreed. Only Poland’s leader, General Jaruzelski, sat unmoving and expressionless, perhaps humbled by his election defeat.
All these men were brutal tyrants, torturers, and mass murderers. Stalin had not been exceptional, he had been typical of Communist leaders. Any political system that allowed such people to rule was evil, Dimka reflected. Why did it take us all so long to figure that out?
But Dimka, like most of the people in the room, was watching Gorbachev.
The rhetoric no longer mattered. It was of no consequence who was right and who was wrong. No one in the room had the power to do anything without the consent of the man with the port-wine stain on his bald head.
Dimka thought he knew what Gorbachev was going to do. But he could never be sure. Gorbachev was divided, like the empire he ruled, between conservative and reformist tendencies. No speeches were likely to change his mind. Most of the time he just looked bored.
Ceausescu’s voice rose almost to a scream. At that moment Gorbachev caught the eye of Miklós Németh. The Russian gave the Hungarian a slight smile as Ceausescu sputtered saliva and vituperation.
Then, to Dimka’s utter astonishment, Gorbachev winked.
Gorbachev held the smile a second longer, then looked away and resumed his bored expression.
Maria managed to avoid Jasper Murray almost until the end of President Bush’s European visit.
She had never met Jasper. She knew what he looked like: she had seen him on television, as everyone had. He was taller in real life, that was all. Over the years she had been the secret source of some of his best stories, but he did not know that. He only met George Jakes, the intermediary. They were careful. It was why they had never been found out.
She knew the whole story of Jasper’s being fired from This Day. The White House had put pressure on Frank Lindeman, the owner of the network. That was how a star reporter came to be exiled. Although with the turmoil in Eastern Europe, plus Jasper’s nose for a good story, the assignment had turned out to be a hot one.
Bush and his entourage, including Maria, ended up in Paris. Maria was standing in the Champs-Elysées with the press corps on Bastille Day, July 14, watching an interminable parade of military might, and looking forward to going home and making love to George again, when Jasper spoke to her. He pointed to a huge poster of Evie Williams advertising face cream. “She had a crush on me when she was fifteen years old,” he said.
Maria looked at the picture. Evie Williams had been blacklisted by Hollywood for her politics, but she was a big star in Europe, and Maria recalled reading that her personal line of organic beauty products was making her more money than movies ever had.
“You and I have never met,” Jasper said. “But I got to know your godson, Jack Jakes, when I was living with Verena Marquand.”
Maria shook his hand warily. Talking to reporters was always dangerous. No matter what you said, the mere fact that you had had a conversation put you in a weak position, for then there could always be an argument about what you had actually said. “I’m glad to meet you at last,” she said.
“I admire you for your achievements,” he said. “Your career would be remarkable for a white man. For an African American woman, it’s astonishing.”
Maria smiled. Of course Jasper was charming—that was how he got people to talk. He was also completely untrustworthy, and would betray his mother for the sake of a story. She said neutrally: “How are you enjoying Europe?”
“Right now it’s the most exciting place in the world,” he said. “Lucky me.”
“That’s great.”
“By contrast,” Jasper said, “this trip has not been a success for President Bush.”
Here it comes, Maria thought. She was in a difficult position. She had to defend the president and the policies of the State Department, even though she agreed with Jasper’s assessment. Bush had failed to take leadership of the freedom movement in Eastern Europe: he was too timid. But she said: “We think it’s been something of a triumph.”
“Well, you have to say that. But, off the record, was it right for Bush to urge Jaruzelski—a Communist tyrant of the old school—to run for president in Poland?”
“Jaruzelski may well be the best candidate to oversee gradual reform,” Maria said, though she did not believe it.
“Bush infuriated Lech Wałesa by offering a paltry aid package of a hundred million dollars, when Solidarity had asked for ten billion.”
“President Bush believes in caution,” Maria argued. “He thinks the Poles need to reform their economy first, then get aid. Otherwise the money will be wasted. The president is a conservative. You may not like that, Jasper, but the American people do. That’s why they elected him.”
Jasper smiled, acknowledging a point scored, but he pressed on. “In Hungary, Bush praised the Communist government for removing the fence, not the opposition who put the pressure on. He kept telling the Hungarians not to go too far, too fast! What kind of advice is that from the leader of the free world?”
Maria did not contradict Jasper. He was one hundred percent correct. She decided to deflect him. To give herself a moment to think, she watched a low-loader go by bearing a long missile with a French flag painted on its side. Then she said: “You’re missing a better story.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. That accusation was not often leveled at Jasper Murray. “Go on,” he said in a tone of mild amusement.
“I can’t talk to you on the record.”
“Off it, then.”
She gave him a hard look. “So long as we’re clear on that.”
“We are.”
“Okay. You probably know that some of the advice the president has been getting suggests that Gorbachev is a fraud, glasnost and perestroika are Communist flummery, and the whole charade is no more than a way to trick the West into dropping its guard and disarming prematurely.”
“Who gives him this advice?”
The answer was the CIA, the national security adviser, and the secretary of defense, but Maria was not going to run them down when talking to a journalist, even off the record, so she said: “Jasper, if you don’t know that already, you’re not the reporter we all think you are.”
He grinned. “Okay. So what’s the big story?”
“President Bush was inclined to accept that advice—before he came on this trip. The story is that he has seen the reality on the ground here in Europe, and has altered his view accordingly. In Poland he said: ‘I have this heady feeling that I’m witnessing history being made on the spot.’”
“Can I use that quote?”
“You may. He said it to me.”
“Thanks.”
“The president now believes that change in the Communist world is real and permanent, and we need to give it guarded encouragement, instead of kidding ourselves that it isn’t really happening.”
Jasper gave Maria a long look that, she thought, had in it a measure of surprised respect. “You’re right,” he said at last. “That is a better story. Back in Washington the Cold Warriors, like Dick Cheney and Brent Scowcroft, are going to be mad as hell.”
“You said that,” Maria said. “I didn’t.”
• • •
Lili, Karolin, Alice, and Helmut drove from Berlin to Lake Balaton, in Hungary, in Lili’s white Trabant. As usual, it took two days. On the way Lili and Karolin sang every song they knew.
They were singing to cover their fear. Alice and Helmut were going to try to escape to the West. No one knew what would happen.
Lili and Karolin would stay behind. Both were single but, all the same, their lives were in East Germany. They hated the regime, but they wanted to oppose it, not flee from it. It was different for Alice and Helmut, who had their lives in front of them.
Lili knew only two people who had tried to leave: Rebecca, and Walli. Rebecca’s fiancé had fallen from a roof and been crippled for life. Walli had run over a border guard and killed him, a trauma that had haunted him for years. They were not happy precedents. But the situation had changed now—hadn’t it?
On the first evening at the holiday camp they came across a middle-aged man called Berthold, sitting outside his tent, holding forth to half a dozen young people drinking beer from cans. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he said in a voice that was confidential but carrying. “The whole thing is a trap set by the Stasi. It’s their new way of catching subversives.”
A young man sitting on the ground, smoking a cigarette, seemed skeptical. “How does that work, then?”
“As soon as you cross the border, you’re arrested by the Austrians. They hand you over to the Hungarian police, who send you back to East Germany in handcuffs. Then you go straight to the interrogation rooms in Stasi headquarters in Lichtenberg.”
A girl standing nearby said: “How would you know a thing like that?”
“My cousin tried to cross the border here,” said Berthold. “Last thing he said to me was: ‘I’ll send you a postcard from Vienna.’ Now he’s in a prison camp near Dresden, working in a uranium mine. It’s the only way our government can get people to work in those mines, no one else will do it—the radiation gives you lung cancer.”
The family discussed Berthold’s theory in low voices before going to bed. Alice said scornfully: “Berthold is one of those men who know it all. How would he find out that his cousin is working in a uranium mine? The government doesn’t admit to using prisoners that way.”
But Helmut was worried. “He may be an idiot, but what if his story is true? The border could be a trap.”
Alice said: “Why would the Austrians send escapers back? They have no love of Communism.”
“They may not want the trouble and expense of dealing with them. Why should the Austrians care about East Germans?”
They argued for an hour and came to no conclusion. Lili lay awake for a long time, worrying.
Next morning in the communal dining room Lili spotted Berthold regaling a different group of young people with his theories, a large plate of ham and cheese in front of him. Was he genuine, or a Stasi faker? She felt she had to know. He looked as if he would be there some time. On impulse, she decided to search his tent. She left the room.
Tents were not secured: holidaymakers were simply advised not to leave money or valuables behind. All the same, Berthold’s entrance was tightly laced.
Lili began to untie the strings, trying to appear relaxed, as if she had every right to do it. Her heart was like a drumbeat in her chest. She made an effort not to glance guiltily at people walking by. She was used to sneaking around—the gigs she played with Karolin were always semi-illegal—but she had never done anything quite like this. If Berthold should for some reason abandon his breakfast early and come back sooner than she expected, what would she say? “Oops, wrong tent, sorry!” The tents were all alike. He might not believe her—but what would he do, go to the police?
She opened the flap and stepped inside.
Berthold was neat, for a man. His clothes were folded in a suitcase, and there was a drawstring bag full of laundry. He had a sponge bag containing a safety razor and shaving soap. His bed was made of canvas stretched across metal tubing. Beside the bed was a small pile of magazines in German. It all looked innocent.
Don’t rush, she told herself. Look carefully for clues. Who is this man and what is he doing here?
A sleeping bag was folded on top of the camp bed. When Lili picked it up she felt something heavy. She unzipped the bag and rummaged inside. She found a book of pornographic photos—and a gun.
It was a small black pistol with a short barrel. She did not know much about firearms, and she could not identify the make, but she thought it was what they called a nine-millimeter. It looked designed to be concealed.
She stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans.
She had the answer to her question. Berthold was not a know-all braggart. He was a Stasi agent, sent here to spread scare stories and discourage escapers.
Lili refolded the sleeping bag and stepped out of the tent. Berthold was not in sight. She quickly laced up the tent flap with trembling fingers. Another few seconds and she would be safe. As soon as Berthold looked for his gun, he would know that someone had been there, but if she could get away now he would never know who. Lili guessed he would not even report the theft to the Hungarian police, for they would surely disapprove of a German secret agent bringing a pistol to one of their holiday camps.
She walked briskly away.
Karolin was in Helmut and Alice’s tent, and they were talking in low voices, still arguing about whether the border crossing might be a trap. Lili interrupted the discussion. “Berthold is a Stasi agent,” she said. “I searched his tent.” She drew the gun from her pocket.
“That’s a Makarov,” said Helmut, who had served in the army. “A Soviet-made semiautomatic pistol, standard issue for the Stasi.”
Lili said: “If the border really were a trap, the Stasi would be keeping the fact secret. The way Berthold is telling everyone pretty much proves it’s not true.”
Helmut nodded. “That’s good enough for me. We’re going.”
They all stood up. Helmut said to Lili: “Would you like me to get rid of the gun?”
“Yes, please.” She handed it over, relieved to be rid of it.
“I’ll find a secluded spot on the beach and throw it in the lake.”
While Helmut was doing that, the women put towels and swimsuits and bottles of sun lotion into the trunk of the Trabi as if they were going off for a day’s outing, maintaining the fiction of a family holiday. When Helmut came back, they drove to the grocery and bought cheese, bread, and wine for a picnic.
Then they headed west.
Lili kept looking behind, but as far as she could tell no one was following them.
They drove fifty miles and turned off the main road when they were close to the border. Alice had a map and a magnetic compass. As they wound around country roads, pretending to look for a picnic spot in the forest, they saw several cars with East German plates abandoned at the roadside, and knew they were in the right area.
There was no sign of officialdom, but Lili worried all the same. Clearly the East German secret police had an interest in escapers, but there was probably nothing they could do.
They were passing a small lake when Alice said: “I calculate we’re less than a mile from the fence here.”
A few seconds later Helmut, who was at the wheel, turned off the road onto an unpaved track through the trees. He stopped the car in a clearing a few steps from the water.
He turned off the engine. “Well,” he said into the silence. “Are we going to pretend to have lunch?”
“No,” said Alice, her voice high-pitched with tension. “I want to go, now.”
They all got out of the car.
Alice led the way, checking the compass. The going was easy, with little undergrowth to slow their steps. Tall pines filtered the sunshine, throwing patches of gold onto the carpet of needles underfoot. The forest was quiet. Lili heard the cry of some kind of waterfowl, and occasionally the distant roar of a tractor.
They passed a yellow Wartburg Knight, half-hidden by low-hanging branches, its windows broken and its fenders already rusting. A bird flew out of its open trunk, and Lili wondered whether it had nested there.
She scanned the surroundings constantly, looking for the patch of green or gray wool that would betray a uniform, but she saw no one. Helmut was equally alert, she noticed.
They climbed a rise, then the forest ran out abruptly. They emerged onto a strip of cleared land and saw, a hundred yards away, the fence.
It was not impressive. The posts were of rough-hewn wood. There were several rows of wire, which presumably had once been electrified. The top row, at a height of six feet, was plain barbed wire. On the far side was a field of yellow grain ripening in the August sun.
They crossed the cleared strip and came to the fence.
Alice said: “We can climb over the fence right here.”
Helmut said: “They have definitely switched off the electricity . . . ?”
“Yes,” said Alice.
Impatiently, Karolin reached out and touched the wire. She touched all the wires, grasping each firmly in her hand. “Off,” she said.
Alice kissed and hugged her mother and Lili. Helmut shook hands.
A hundred yards away, from over a rise, two soldiers appeared in the gray tunics and tall peaked caps of the Hungarian Border Guard Service.
Lili said: “Oh, no!”
Both men leveled their rifles.
“Stand still, everyone,” said Helmut.
Alice said: “I can’t believe we got this close!” She began to cry.
“Don’t despair,” said Helmut. “It’s not over yet.”
Coming closer, the guards lowered their rifles and spoke in German. No doubt they knew exactly what was going on. “What are you doing here?” one said.
“We came to picnic in the woods,” Lili said.
“A picnic? Really?”
“We meant no harm!”
“You are not allowed here.”
Lili was desperately afraid the soldiers would arrest them. “All right, all right,” she said. “We’ll go back!”
She feared that Helmut might put up a fight. They might be killed, all four of them. She felt shaky and her legs were weak.
The second guard spoke. “Be careful,” he said. He pointed along the fence in the direction from which he had come. “A quarter of a mile from here is a gap in the fence. You might accidentally cross the border.”
The two guards looked at one another and laughed heartily. Then they went on their way.
Lili stared in astonishment at their retreating backs. They kept on walking, not looking back. Lili and the others watched them until they were out of sight in silence.
Then Lili said: “They seemed to be telling us . . .”
“To find the gap in the fence!” Helmut said. “Let’s do it, quick!”
They hurried in the direction in which the guard had pointed. They kept close to the edge of the forest, in case they needed to hide. Sure enough, after a quarter of a mile they came to a place where the fence was broken. The wooden posts had been uprooted and the wires, snapped in places, lay flat on the ground. It looked as if a heavy truck had driven through it. The earth all around was heavily trodden, the grass brown and sparse. Beyond the gap, a path between two fields led to a distant clump of trees with a few roofs showing: a village, or perhaps just a hamlet.
Freedom.
A small pine tree nearby was hung with key rings, thirty, forty, maybe fifty of them. People had left behind the keys to their apartments and cars, a defiant gesture to show that they were never coming back. As the branches were moved by a light breeze, the metal glittered in the sunlight. It looked like a Christmas tree.
“Don’t hesitate,” Lili said. “We said good-bye ten minutes ago. Just go.”
Alice said: “I love you, Mother, and Lili.”
“Go,” said Karolin.
Alice took Helmut’s hand.
Lili looked up and down the cleared strip alongside the fence. There was no one in sight.
The two young people walked through the gap, stepping carefully over the fallen fence.
On the other side, they stopped and waved, even though they were only ten feet away. “We’re free!” Alice said.
Lili said: “Give my love to Walli.”
“And mine,” said Karolin.
Alice and Helmut walked on, hand in hand, up the path between the fields of grain.
At the far end they waved again.
Then they entered the little village and disappeared from sight.
Karolin’s face was wet with tears. “I wonder if we’ll ever see them again,” she said.