Sounded great, of course, but as the newspapermen liked to say, the story buried the lead — the East German government had just increased work quotas by ten percent in order to help the country dig itself out of an economic slump. Any worker who didn’t meet the quota would see their pay docked. Oh, and they were raising prices, too, which amused no fewer than three economists in Frank’s head.
Frank closed his eyes and concentrated to silence the voices. He really, really wasn’t interested in hearing from them. Not after what happened last month in Moscow. Instead, Frank used his own know-how, honed by the lessons received through the years from the memories of those who had died, to scan the room. It was a good exercise, using what he had already learned in the past rather than continuing to rely on the real-time expertise of those now-suspect personas in his mind. And he saw plenty of discontent, especially from the men — and a handful of women — dressed as factory workers. The guys in suits were less perturbed, but even they were talking intently, a few making reference to Neues Deutschland or its young persons’ counterpart, Junge Welt.
They had good reason to be unhappy, even beyond the latest government indignity. The East German plan for postwar recovery was to turn the country into the preeminent industrial powerhouse of the Eastern Bloc. Problem was, however, that they had to import far more raw materials than they had before, since West Germany drew the lion’s share during the post-War divorce. And because they kept busing in all the young men to work in those new factories, the agricultural sector was in sharp decline. So they had to import food, too, and so prices for even the basics were high. And now the government was going to raise prices again, while making the workers meet higher quotas.
So basically, work more to get less. Even without a PhD in economic theory, most folks could see how that would make zero sense. But then, Frank always felt that Communism was an exercise in hand-waving the details anyway.
Folding the newspaper, Frank paid his tab and, grabbing his hard hat and lunch pail, headed off to work. For the past two weeks, Frank had been working in construction in East Berlin’s burgeoning building sector — probably the only part of the economy where supply and demand still worked, given the massive amount of reconstruction still necessary eight years after the war, combined with the drive to build all kinds of factories and warehouses. When he’d gone to the job site to ask about work, the foreman had barely scanned his forged work papers, instead eagerly asking him about his qualifications. Having kicked around Europe for a few years after the war while trying to get his voices straight in his head, Frank had plenty of construction experience. By noon, he’d been riveting girders together, and his cohorts seemed happy to have another hand.
Honestly, the work was a welcome distraction, a little oasis of calm amid all the other crap that had happened. Frank and Danny had spent a week smuggling themselves out of the Soviet Union, at one point walking two entire days just to avoid a popular train station. They’d bugged out near Leningrad, using a pair of Mrs. Stevens’s body suits for the still-cold swim to Finnish territory. Frank had hoped to be welcomed by Cal and Rick Yamato in Helsinki — they’d been out of contact with Washington during their travels, and Frank thought they might have finally put Korea behind them — but there was no sign of them, and it turned out Washington was assuming the two were MIA. Frank had been in favor of heading to Korea to find them, but Danny was adamant that they continue with the approved East German op.
So, after a luxurious night at Helsinki’s Hotel Seurahuone, they liaised with the CIA station there and wrangled passage aboard a Finnish trawler to Stralsund. Frank was covered as a farmhand seeking better work prospects, while Danny came in as a Russian academic. The Stasi, East Germany’s answer to the MGB, didn’t have much of a presence in Stralsund, so they were able to come ashore outside the town, walk to the train station, and buy tickets to East Berlin without anybody once checking their forged papers. Danny busied himself by hanging out in the beer halls and coffeehouses around Humboldt University, trying to gauge the level of academic resistance to Communist rule. There wasn’t much thus far, as best he’d been able to tell, but Frank had found fertile ground among his fellow construction workers.
“Come on, Franz,” one of his new colleagues said as he arrived at the work site. “Those quotas won’t fulfill themselves.”
Frank just smiled. “I heard the quotas may increase.”
The other worker just grimaced. “The foreman is furious about it, but there’s nothing he can do, so he takes it out on us,” the other man whispered, in case there were unfriendly ears nearby. “Better get moving. I’d like to see my family before they go to bed tonight.”
Once they climbed the superstructure and began riveting in earnest, the words flowed more freely; the men had known each other a while, and Frank had already let slip some of his own “discontent” with the working conditions. He enjoyed losing himself in the rough-and-tumble community of iron workers, and did his level best to subtly encourage their conversations. Most of them were young men — too young to have fought in the war, but old enough to remember the Nazis and their depredations. Nearly all of them had lost someone during the fighting, and remembered well how the Russians had treated them during the initial occupation. The current government was seen as a collection of Soviet stooges, selling out the German people to yet another dictatorship. Some had family in West Berlin or West Germany, and told stories of the largesse enjoyed by their relations on the other side of the Iron Curtain — easy access to food and jobs, good education, the freedom to travel and speak one’s mind.
Frank felt for them. Sure, he remained under MAJESTIC-12’s thumb, but America was still America, and he’d long ago resigned himself to his own circumstances, knowing that his work was helping his countrymen preserve their freedoms. Here, if anything, the East Germans suffered more than even the Soviet people. The Muscovites could at least enjoy some simple pleasures and, since Stalin’s death, were even beginning to speak a little more freely. The East Berliners saw the shadows of Stasi informants nearly everywhere — except eight stories up, dangling from girders above the city.
The late spring sun was well on its way down when Frank and his coworkers descended to the ground again, their quotas met and their bodies exhausted. He wanted nothing more than to go back to the crappy flat he shared with Danny, eat some crappy food, and get some sleep on a crappy mattress. But instead, he accepted an invitation to drink beer at the flat of someone named Ernst, one of the older veterans of the iron workers’ cohort. So he threw some money and ration stamps into the pool and went with another young man, Max, for the beer run. It took forty-five minutes, all their ration stamps, most of their money, and two bribes to get enough beer, but soon they were heading back to Max’s flat with enough alcohol to drop a horse.
Max had a young wife and a baby boy, Lucas, who slept in his mother’s arms as she hosted six burly, sweaty iron workers, sitting around the tiny apartment wherever they could find room — the little kitchen table, the ratty couch, the floor. Cigarette smoke filled the room, and Frank couldn’t help but worry for the baby’s lungs. Blessedly, Max’s wife put the little one down for the night after about a half hour.
“So what do we do if they raise quotas again?” Max asked. “All of you heard the news. They are now talking about pay cuts if we don’t meet quotas. I can barely afford to feed my family as it is.”