ANTHONY WAS VERY QUIET AS HE drove, concentrating on avoiding the rusty little Trabant cars that veered past us in the opposite direction as their drivers stared open-mouthed at the strange sight of a sleek Mercedes in their midst. I began to think about Emilie and pulled her little portrait out of my handbag. Giving it a fleeting glance, I renewed my promise, that I would find her wherever the past had hidden her, before tucking the portrait away again. We were all looking around for police patrols, afraid that if we were held up now it would surely be the end of our adventure. We were aware that Anthony was exceeding the speed limits, but there were more frightening thoughts than being stopped for speeding, such as missing our chance of reaching the ministry before it closed and arriving late back at Checkpoint Charlie.
“What’s that noise?” I asked when we were about halfway to our destination, picking up a growing droning noise. “It’s right above us. What is it?”
“It’s a helicopter,” Anthony said, glancing in the mirror, his lips tight. “It’s been following us for the last few miles, but I didn’t want to say anything. I was hoping it would go away.”
“Just keep going,” I said before either of the others could protest. “If they were going to stop us, they would have done it by now.”
“They’re just keeping an eye on us to make sure we don’t go anywhere we shouldn’t,” Ken agreed.
The helicopter tracked us for another ten minutes or so before peeling away. Maybe it had decided we were now someone else’s problem. We drove into the built-up outskirts of Potsdam nearly an hour later. Potsdam had once been a famous city, where Prussian kings lived on beautiful lakes in fabulous royal palaces built during the reign of Frederick the Great. It had also been a center for scientific research since the nineteenth century. To our eyes, however, it looked more like a battle zone. It didn’t seem like any of the buildings had been repaired or even given a lick of paint since the end of the war. The walls were still pockmarked with bullet holes and there were bomb craters and piles of sandbags everywhere we looked. All the scarred and shabby buildings were coated in what looked like centuries of coal dust. As we drew close to what we hoped was the address on the piece of paper, we slowed down and three enormous soldiers bearing Kalashnikov rifles appeared from nowhere and headed towards us, shouting orders, forcing us to pull up sharply.
“Vyhodite iz mashiny pozhaluista.”’
“Oh, my God,”’ Ken muttered, “we’ve crossed over into the Russian sector.”
The lead soldier gestured with his gun for Ken to get out of the car before snapping out another order.
“Documents?” Ken asked, reaching gingerly into his pocket for our passports, “Yes, yes.”
Anthony and I waited in the car, watching anxiously as Ken tried to explain what we wanted to the soldiers. We saw him showing them the scrap of paper we had been given by Frau Steglitz and one of them pointing toward a nearby building.
“I won’t be a minute,” Ken called back to us as he walked away.
“Where are you going?” I shouted, alarmed at the thought of our being separated, frightened that by being so impetuous I had put all our lives in danger. What if he disappeared into the building and never emerged again? What would we do then? I wanted to go with him, even though he had ordered me to stay in the car. But he was already climbing the steps in front of the building the soldier had directed him to.
Inside, I found out later, he nearly fell straight into another uncovered bomb crater. The whole area was wrecked. Recovering himself and adjusting his eyes to the gloom, he managed to find an East German soldier he could communicate with. He showed the man the typed address with the same authoritative flourish he had used when producing the fictitious invitation letter.
Anthony and I both breathed a sigh of relief as we saw the two of them emerging back through the door and Ken waved for us to get out of the car and come with them, our every move followed by the suspicious eyes of the Russian guards. The soldier led us a few yards down the street, and another official poked his head out of a cubbyhole in the side of the building as we approached.
“What is your business here?” he demanded angrily.
“We have come to see someone about permission to study at the Merseburg Archive,” Ken said, presenting our passports yet again. No one listening to his firm tone of voice would have guessed how anxious he actually was. We had stepped through a door back into the fearful darkness of Europe in the 1940s and knew that we would be at mercy of the Russians should they discover we were not even allowed to be there.
The man in the cubbyhole seemed used to being ordered around and scuttled away with the passports, leaving us under the watchful stare of the guard with no idea what was going to happen to us next. He returned a few minutes later, but it was impossible to tell from his expression what reaction to our arrival he had received.
“The minister will see you now,” he said.
Ken and I exchanged disbelieving looks. We were shocked. Had we really managed to reach the heart of the government in just one day? We hardly dared to accept what was happening. Things were moving so fast it was unnerving. If Frau Steglitz had been scary, I wondered, what was this man going to be like? We followed our guide up a flight of stairs with a quickening pace. I wondered if the ministry was about to close, since it was now nearly four o’clock.
“Please,” the man said, stopping outside an imposing door, “enter.”
Ken allowed me to go through first, and I stepped cautiously around the corner and straight into another world. I was instantly dazzled by the splendor of the room and didn’t notice the man inside until he spoke.
“Welcome to you,” a friendly voice greeted us. “Please come in and make yourselves comfortable.” This was not what I had expected at all.
The minister was standing next to a great, handsome mahogany desk, which sat in front of a window overlooking a tranquil courtyard garden glowing with the colors of its spring flowers. The atmosphere was calm and the room was warm and welcoming. The minister’s swept-back black hair glistened with Brylcreem, and he beamed as he shook our hands with exaggerated courtesy and invited us to sit down and relax in the splendor of his office.
“What can I do for you?” he inquired, walking back to his chair and sitting down.
It was quite possibly the first smile we had seen since leaving West Berlin, and we probably responded with grateful expressions, despite our puzzlement at the effusiveness of the welcome.
“So,” he beamed, directing his gaze at me, “do tell me, why have you come here, Mrs. Haas?”
“I have written a letter to the archive in Merseburg to ask for their permission to look for my great-great-grandmother,” I explained. “She lived with the Prince August of Prussia for many years.”
“Have you had a reply to your letter?” he asked.
“No.”
“I fear you never will.” He beamed apologetically. He seemed to be saying that he understood completely and shared my frustration, but what could be done in the face of such an inflexible system? “They have been very naughty. Your letter should have been handed to me to deal with, but instead it ended up there,” he said, pointing to his wastepaper basket. At that moment East–West politics meant nothing. It was as if we were both allies in our shared lost cause, two human beings engaging in conversation for no other reason than we seemed to like each other. My guard went down under the full glare of his charm.
“Mr. Haas, please will you write down details of your request for me,” the minister said, and Ken proceeded to write down the details as he was asked.
“Your courtyard is absolutely delightful,” I told him.
He turned to the garden, following my gaze through the window. “Spring is such a lovely time of year, isn’t it?”
Most of the people we had come across so far had concentrated all their attention on Ken rather than me. He was, after all, the senior member of our mission because of his age and gender. But now the minister’s eyes were locked onto me so fiercely it was as if there were no one else in the room. His attentiveness and courtly politeness quite knocked the stuffing out of me. I had been preparing myself to be met by more suspicion and aggression and I was not expecting this flirtation. I felt a surge of relief to be with someone who acted like he was our supporter. It seemed like nothing was going to be too much trouble for this man.
“So, let me get this straight,” he said, leaning forward and furrowing his brow to show just how hard he was concentrating on what I was saying. “You came here all the way from England, through all our border controls, deep into the heart of our country, in order to find your great-great-grandmother?”
“Yes, I did,” I said. “That is why I am here.”
“Incredible. Are you a gardener?” he asked, seeing my eyes flicker once again to the scene outside the window.
“Um, well yes,” I said, a little startled by the sudden change of subject.
He leaned closer toward me, talking to me and ignoring Ken and Anthony completely. They might as well not have been in the room. The minister’s eyes were fixed on mine. I tried to ignore Ken’s growing irritation, and then, just as suddenly, the minister changed the subject again.
“I will help you find your great-great-grandmother, Mrs. Haas. Please let me have the paper, Mr. Haas. In ten days’ time you will receive an official permission to study in our archives. You can be certain of it.”
This man had access to the secrets of my family’s past; perhaps he even held the key to what really happened more than a century ago. I still couldn’t hope to know whether I would ever find Emilie and learn about her life with August, but as we walked out of the minister’s office there was a spring in my step because I felt sure now that Emilie’s spirit truly was willing me on.
A few minutes later we were back outside in the real world, in the grimy, rundown street, picking our way through the potholes and past the Russian soldiers to the waiting car. Had it been a dream? Did it really happen? It didn’t seem possible that the minister’s little oasis was no more than a few meters away, safely hidden behind these shabby walls.
“Don’t think just because he made eyes at you that you will actually receive the permission from him,” Ken muttered as the three of us hurried back to the car. And just as I was thinking I had detected a hint of jealousy in his voice, he added, “Don’t you believe a word of it.”
I pretended to agree, not wanting to seem that I was gullible or had been flattered by the minister’s attentions. But I felt I had to believe it because if I didn’t my search would be at an end. I knew that without the minister’s permission, gaining access to the files that held all the secrets I was so desperately looking for would remain a distant dream. Although I kept quiet in the car as we sped back toward the border, not wanting to seem naïve, I secretly bubbled with optimism. I couldn’t believe how much we had managed to achieve in just one day, and I didn’t want anything to dampen my spirits. It had gone so well we had over an hour to spare before our eight o’clock deadline as Checkpoint Charlie came into sight and I heaved a sigh of relief. I was hankering for the comfort of our hotel room in West Berlin, a warm bath and a well-earned dinner.
“They’re waving me to pull over,” Anthony said as we got closer to the East German guards, and I felt my heart sink again. “They want us to get out.”
We were no longer in the warm, welcoming office of a minister, but rather now standing beside a bleak piece of road having questions fired at us by unsmiling and suspicious soldiers who didn’t seem remotely impressed by our passports or any letters we might have. They questioned us minutely about everything we had done that day and everyone we had seen. If they were impressed by the minister’s name they didn’t show it with even a flicker of their stony expressions. It seemed they wanted to ensure that we didn’t think we were anyone special just because we were driving out of their country in a nice car, having spent the day talking to important people. They certainly wanted to remind us that they were the ones in charge. They were, after all, the ones with the guns and the authority to arrest us if they wanted to.
Eventually, they could think of no more reasons to delay our departure and nodded us through without even a flash of eye contact. As far as they were concerned, we were beneath their contempt. By then we didn’t care what they thought of us, just as long as we were safely back in the West. The moment we drew up at the next barrier, we asked the soldiers to inform the British consul that we had returned. It had been an incredible day, but would we ever be allowed to get any further in our search for the truth?