I knew there was someone standing there even before I saw the slight movement. And I recognized the sort of movement it was. It was the movement a man made when his long period of waiting is at last near an end.
'Don't do anything,' said a whispered voice.
I inched back into the shadow and reached in my pocket for a knife, the only weapon I would risk in a town where stop searches were so common.
'Bernie?' It was Werner, one of the few Germans who called me anything other than Bernd.
'What is it?'
'Did anyone see you come in?'
'No. Why?'
'Rolfs got visitors.'
'Who?'
There came the sound of two cars arriving. When two cars arrive together at a residential block in Prenzlauer Berg, it is not likely to be a social call. I followed Werner quickly down the narrow corridor, but he could not get the door to the courtyard open. Two uniformed policemen and two men in leather overcoats came into the entrance and shone their flashlights at the names on the mailboxes.
'Mauser,' said the younger of the uniformed cops, directing the beam of his torch on one of the boxes.
'Master detective,' growled a leather-coated man in mock admiration. As he turned, the light of the torch showed him to be a man of about thirty-five with a small Lenin-style goatee beard.
'You said number nineteen,' said the young policeman defensively. 'I took you to the address you gave me.' He was very young, and had the sort of Saxon accent that sounds comical to most German ears.
The boss ordered me to be here fifteen minutes ago,' growled Lenin in the hard accent of working-class Berlin. 'I should have walked.'
'You still would have ended up at the wrong address,' said the cop, his Saxon accent stronger than before.
The leather-coated man turned on him angrily. 'Maybe someone told you it's a softer touch being drafted into the police service than into the Army. I don't care that your daddy is a Party bigshot. This is Berlin. This is my town. Shut up and do as you're told.' Before the young conscript could reply, the leather-coated man started up the stairs. The other three followed him, and his harangue continued. 'Wait till this KGB Colonel arrives. You'll jump then, boys, you'll jump then.'
Werner was still twisting the handle of the door to the yard when he realized that the cops were not going to shine their lights and discover us at the end of the corridor. That was a close thing,' he said.
'What's going on?'
'Two of them; Stasis. Upstairs in Rolfs apartment. They got here about three hours ago. You know what that means.'
'They're waiting for someone.'
'They're not waiting for someone,' said Werner grimly. 'They're waiting for you. Did you leave anything in the apartment?'
'Of course not.'
'Let's get out of here,' said Werner.
'Do you think they'll have a guard posted outside?'
'Let me go first. My papers are good ones.'
'Hold it a minute.' I could see a shadow, and then a cop came into view. He moved into the doorway as if he might have heard our voices, and then went outside again.
We waited a few more minutes and then the four security policemen brought Rolf Mauser downstairs to the car. Rolf was making a lot of noise; his voice came echoing down the stairwell long before he came into sight.
'Let me go. What's all this about? Answer my questions. How dare you handcuff me! This could wait till morning. Let me go!'
Rolfs angry shouting must have been heard in every apartment in the building. But no one came to the door. No one came to see what was happening.
The front door crashed closed and we heard Rolfs voice in the empty street before the sound of the cars' engines swallowed his protests.
Only after the police had departed with their prisoner did the apartment doors upstairs open. There were whispered questions, and even quieter answers, for a few minutes before all went completely quiet.
That's the only way to do it,' I said. 'A silent prisoner might just as well confess. Rolfs shouting might make them pause to think. That might give us a chance to do something to help him.'
'He didn't shout to convince them he was innocent,' said Werner. 'He was shouting to warn you off.'
'I know,' I said. 'And there's nothing we can do to help him, either.' Was Rolf Mauser Fiona's first victim, I wondered. And would I be the next one?
25
Officially, Werner Volkmann had no accommodation in East Berlin, but his riverside warehouse in Friedrichshain, with an office on the ground floor, contained four upstairs rooms that he had converted into comfortable living quarters, complete with tiny kitchen and a sitting room. It was against government regulations for him to stay overnight there – no one could let a guest stay the night without police permission – but because Werner was earning foreign exchange nothing was ever said about his little 'home'.
Werner unlocked the massive warehouse door using three keys. 'Refrigerators, colour TV sets, real – made in the USA – blue jeans, Black and Decker drills, all the most sought-after delights of the decadent West are stored here from time to time,' he said, explaining the need for the complex locks.
'Black and Decker drills?'
'To improve and enlarge living accommodation. Or, better still, fix up some little weekend place that they are legally permitted to sell.' He went up a steep staircase and unlocked another door.
'Plenty of Black and Decker here,' I said looking at the newly decorated hall hung with two well-framed watercolours: a contorted nude and a crippled clown. I bent closer to see them. German Expressionist painters, of course. There is something in their tragic quality that touches the soul of Berliners.
'Nolde and Kirchner,' said Werner, taking off his coat and hanging it on an elaborate mahogany hallstand. 'Not your sort of thing, I know.'
'But worth a packet, Werner,' I said. I looked round and saw some fine pieces of antique furniture. Werner had always been a clever forager. At school he'd been able to get American candy bars, pieces of broken tanks, military badges, roller-skate wheels and all the other treasures that schoolboys wanted then.
'Westmarks will buy anything on this side of the wall. And there are still mountains of treasures locked away in cellars and attics.'
I put my hat and coat alongside Werner's and followed him into the next room. Light came in through the window. Werner went across the room and looked out. Here was the River Spree. Bright moonlight fell on a grimy stretch of riverside land. Drawn against the sky was the complex ironwork of the elevated railway, chopped off abruptly on its way to the West, and left to rust. Nearer was a roofless factory building, derelict and untouched since the fighting stopped in 1945. To the right I could see along the dark river to the glaring arc lights of the Oberbaum bridge, one of the border crossing points, for here the river is the boundary between the East and West Sectors.
Werner closed the curtains abruptly and switched on the table lamps. 'We need a drink,' he said. There being no opposition from me, he produced a bottle of German brandy and some glasses. Then he got ice and a jug of water from a refrigerator alongside his big stereo TV.
'That's a sure sign of a separated man,' I said. 'A man with ice available in his living room. Married men have to go to the kitchen to get ice in their booze,'
'And what about a bachelor?'
'Ice in the bedroom,' I said;
'You've always got an answer,' said Werner. 'That used to irritate me when we were kids.'
'I know,' I said. 'I'm good at irritating people.'