Edge of Eternity (149 page)

‘We have kept going by borrowing,’ Krenz told Gorbachev, sitting on a black leather chair in the grand yellow-panelled Kremlin room. ‘Ten billion deutschmarks a year.’

Even Gorbachev was shocked. ‘Ten
billion
?’

‘We have been taking out short-term loans to pay the interest on long-term loans.’

Dimka put in: ‘Which is illegal. If the banks find out . . .’

‘The interest on our debt is now four and a half billion dollars a year, which is two-thirds of our entire foreign currency earnings. We must have your help to deal with this crisis.’

Gorbachev bristled. He hated it when East European leaders begged for money.

Krenz wheedled. ‘East Germany is in a sense the child of the Soviet Union.’ He tried a masculine joke. ‘One should acknowledge the paternity of one’s children.’

Gorbachev did not even smile. ‘We are in no position to offer you assistance,’ he said bluntly. ‘Not in the present condition of the USSR.’

Dimka was surprised. He had not expected Gorbachev to be this tough.

Krenz was baffled. ‘Then what am I to do?’

‘You must be honest with your people, and tell them that they cannot continue to live in the manner they have become used to.’

‘There will be trouble,’ Krenz said. ‘A state of emergency would have to be declared. Measures must be taken to prevent a mass breakthrough across the Wall.’

Dimka thought this was approaching political blackmail. Gorbachev did, too, and he stiffened. ‘In that case, do not expect to be rescued by the Red Army,’ Gorbachev said. ‘You have to solve these problems yourself.’

Did he really mean it? Was the USSR really going to wash its hands of East Germany? Dimka’s excitement mounted with his astonishment. Was Gorbachev willing to go all the way?

Krenz looked like a priest who has realized there is no God. East Germany had been created by the Soviet Union, subsidized from the Kremlin’s coffers, and protected by the strength of the Soviet military. He could not take in the idea that that was all over. He clearly had absolutely no idea what to do next.

When he had gone, Gorbachev said to Dimka: ‘Issue a reminder to commanders of our forces in East Germany. They must not
under any circumstances
get involved in conflicts between the government there and its citizens. This is an absolute priority.’

My God, Dimka thought, is this really the end?

*  *  *

By November, there were demonstrations every week in major towns in East Germany. The numbers grew larger and the crowds grew bolder. They could not be crushed by brutal police baton charges.

Lili and Karolin were invited to play at a rally in the Alexanderplatz, not far from their home. Several hundred thousand people showed up. Someone had painted a huge placard with the slogan ‘
Wir sind das Volk
’, we are the people. All around the edges of the square were police in riot gear, waiting for the order to wade into the crowd with their truncheons. But the cops looked more frightened than the demonstrators.

Speaker after speaker denounced the Communist regime, and the police did nothing.

The organizers permitted pro-Communist speakers, too, and to Lili’s astonishment the government’s chosen defender was Hans Hoffmann. From her position in the wings, where she and Karolin were waiting for their turn on stage, she stared at the familiar, stooped figure of the man who had persecuted her family for a quarter of a century. Despite his expensive blue coat he was shivering from the cold – or perhaps it was fear.

When Hans tried to smile amiably, he succeeded only in looking like a vampire. ‘Comrades,’ he said, ‘the Party has listened to the voices of the people, and new measures are on the way.’

The crowd knew this was bullshit, and they began to hiss.

‘But we must proceed in an orderly fashion, acknowledging the leading role of the Party in developing Communism.’

The hissing turned to booing.

Lili watched Hans closely. His expression showed rage and frustration. A year ago, one word from him could have destroyed any of the people in the crowd; but now, suddenly, they seemed to have the power. He could not even shut them up. He had to raise his voice to a shout in order to be heard, even with the help of the microphone. ‘In particular, we must not make every member of the state security organizations into scapegoats for whatever mistakes may have been made by the former leadership.’

This was no less than a plea for sympathy on behalf of the bullies and sadists who had been oppressing the people for decades, and the crowd was outraged. They jeered and yelled: ‘
Stasi raus
,’ Stasi out.

Hans yelled at the top of his voice: ‘After all, they were only obeying orders!’

That brought a roar of incredulous laughter.

For Hans, to be laughed at was the worst fate. He flushed with rage. Suddenly Lili recalled the scene, twenty-eight years ago, when Rebecca had thrown Hans’s shoes at him from the upstairs window. It had been the scornful laughter of the women neighbours that had driven Hans into a fury.

Now Hans remained at the microphone, unable to speak over the noise, but unwilling to give in. It was a battle of wills between him and the crowd, and he lost. His arrogant expression crumpled, and he seemed close to tears. At last he turned from the microphone and stepped away from the lectern.

He cast one more look at the crowd, laughing and jeering at him, and gave up. As he walked off, he saw Lili and recognized her. Their eyes met as she walked on stage with Karolin, both carrying guitars. In that instant he looked like a beaten dog, so tragic that Lili almost felt sorry for him.

Then she passed him and moved to centre stage. Some of the crowd recognized Lili and Karolin, others knew their names, and they roared a welcome. The two women went up to the microphones. They strummed a major chord, then together they launched into ‘This Land Is Your Land’.

And the crowd went wild.

*  *  *

Bonn was a provincial town on the banks of the Rhine river. It was an unlikely choice for a national capital, and had been picked for precisely that reason, to symbolize its temporary nature, and the faith of the German people that one day Berlin would again be the capital of a reunited Germany. But that had been forty years ago, and Bonn was still the capital.

It was a boring place, but that suited Rebecca, for she worked too hard to have a social life, except when Fred Bíró was in town.

She was busy. Her area of expertise was Eastern Europe, which was in the throes of a revolution whose end no one could see. Most days she had working lunches, but today she took a break. She left the Foreign Office and walked on her own to an inexpensive restaurant where she ordered her favourite dish,
Himmel und Erde
, Heaven and Earth, made of potatoes and apples with bacon.

While she was eating, Hans Hoffmann appeared.

Rebecca pushed back her chair and stood up. Her first thought was that he had come to kill her. She was on the point of screaming for help when she noticed the expression on his face. He looked defeated and sad. Her fear vanished: he was no longer dangerous.

‘Please don’t be afraid, I mean no harm,’ he said.

She remained standing. ‘What do you want?’

‘A few words. A minute or two, no more.’

For a moment she wondered how he had managed to come from East to West Germany, then she realized that travel restrictions did not apply to senior officers in the secret police. They could do anything they liked. He had probably told his colleagues that he had an intelligence mission in Bonn. Perhaps he did.

The restaurant proprietor came over and said: ‘Is everything all right, Frau Held?’

Rebecca stared at Hans a moment longer. Then she said: ‘Yes, thank you, Günther, I think it’s okay.’ She sat down again and Hans sat opposite.

She picked up her fork and put it down again. She had lost her appetite. ‘A minute or two, then.’

‘Help me,’ he said.

She could hardly believe her ears. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Help
you
?’

‘It’s all falling apart. I have to get out. The crowds laugh at me. I’m afraid they’ll kill me.’

‘What on earth do you imagine I might do for you?’

‘I need a place to stay, money, papers.’

‘Are you out of your mind? After all you’ve done to me and my family?’

‘Don’t you understand why I did those things?’

‘Because you hate us!’

‘Because I love you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I was assigned to spy on you and your family, yes. I dated you in order to get inside the house. But then something happened. I fell in love with you.’

He had said this once before, on the day she escaped over the Wall. He really meant it. He
was
out of his mind, she decided. She began to feel scared again.

‘I told no one of my feelings,’ he said, smiling nostalgically, as if he were recalling an innocent youthful romance rather than a wicked deception. ‘I pretended to be exploiting you and manipulating your feelings. But I really loved you. Then you said we should get married. I was in heaven! I had the perfect excuse to give my superiors.’

He was living in a dream world, but was that not true of the entire East German ruling elite?

‘That year that we spent together, as man and wife, was the best time of my life,’ Hans said. ‘And your rejection broke my heart.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Why do you think I haven’t remarried?’

She was stupefied. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘I have no interest in other women. Rebecca, you are the love of my life.’

She stared at him. She realized that this was not just a stupid story, a hopeless attempt to gain sympathy. Hans was sincere. He meant every word.

‘Take me back,’ he pleaded.

‘No.’

‘Please.’

‘The answer is no,’ she said. ‘It will always be no. Nothing you could say would change my mind. Please don’t force me to use harsh words to make you understand.’ I don’t know why I’m reluctant to hurt him, she thought; he never hesitated to be cruel to me. ‘Just accept what I have said to you and leave.’

‘All right,’ he said sadly. ‘I knew you’d say this, but I had to try.’ He stood up. ‘Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for that year of happiness. I will always love you.’ He turned away and walked out of the restaurant.

Rebecca stared after him, still deep in shock. God in heaven, she thought; I wasn’t expecting that.

62

It was a cold November day in Berlin, with an obscuring mist and a brimstone smell of sulphur in the air from the smoky factories in the infernal East. Tania, hastily transferred here from Warsaw to help cover the mounting crisis, felt that East Germany was about to have a heart attack. Everything was breaking down. In a remarkable repeat of what had happened in 1961 before the Wall went up, so many people had fled to the West that schools were closing for lack of teachers and hospitals were running on skeleton staffing. Those who remained behind became more and more angry and frustrated.

The new leader, Egon Krenz, was focussing on travel. He hoped that if he could satisfy people on that issue, other grievances would fade away. Tania thought he was wrong: demanding more freedom was likely to become a habit with East Germans. Krenz had published new travel regulations on 6 November that would permit people to go abroad, with permission from the Interior Ministry, taking with them fifteen deutschmarks, about enough for a plate of sausages and a stein of beer in West Germany. This concession was scorned by the public. Today, 9 November, the increasingly desperate leader had called a press conference to reveal yet another new travel law.

Tania sympathized with the yearning of East Germans to be free to go where they wished. She longed for the same liberty for herself and Vasili. He was world famous, but he had to hide behind a pseudonym. He had never left the Soviet Union, where his books were not published. He should be able to go and accept in person the prizes his alter ego had won, and bask a little in the sunshine of acclaim – and she wanted to go with him.

Unfortunately, she did not see how East Germany could ever set its people free. It could hardly exist as an independent state: that was why they had built the Wall in the first place. If they let their citizens travel, millions would leave permanently. West Germany might be a prissily conservative country, with old-fashioned attitudes on women’s rights, but it was a paradise by comparison with the East. No country could survive the exodus of its most enterprising young people. Therefore Krenz would never willingly give East Germans the one thing they wanted above all else.

So it was with low expectations that Tania went to the International Press Centre on Mohren Strasse a few minutes before six in the evening. The room was packed with journalists, photographers and television cameras. The rows of red seats were full, and Tania had to join the crowd around the sides of the room. The international press corps was here in force: they could smell blood.

Krenz’s press officer, Günter Schabowski, came into the room with three other officials at six sharp and sat at the table on the platform. He had grey hair and wore a grey suit and a grey tie. He was a competent bureaucrat whom Tania liked and trusted. For an hour he announced ministerial changes and administrative reforms.

Tania marvelled at the sight of a Communist government scrambling to satisfy a public demand for change. It was almost unknown. And on the rare occasions when it had happened, the tanks had rolled in soon afterwards. She recalled the agonizing disappointments of the Prague Spring in 1968 and Solidarity in 1981. But, according to her brother, the Soviet Union no longer had the power or the will to crush dissent. She hardly dared to hope it was true. She pictured a life in which she and Vasili could write the truth without fear. Freedom. It was hard to imagine.

At seven, Schabowski announced the new travel law. ‘It will be possible for every citizen of East Germany to leave the country using border crossing points,’ he said. That was not very illuminating, and several journalists asked for clarification.