Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

One week to the day after Comrade Vo was taken away, Pham came through our door. He was thin and his clothes were ragged, but to Uncle Thanh he had never looked better.

Following hugs and kisses and tears and laughter, Pham said, “It is a miracle. A man from this neighborhood arrived, a counterrevolutionary traitor of the worst sort. We were ordered to avoid him whenever possible. He was put to work in the paddies, doing the hardest stoop labor at the hottest time of the day. The camp commissar came to me and said the traitor had denounced me. Therefore I must have chosen the correct path. My rehabilitation was complete. Can anybody explain what this means?”

“We changed the direction of the wind,” Uncle Thanh said.

YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.

The chilling words were printed in black block letters on the large white board in four languages: English, Russian, French, and German. It should have also said, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” Dante’s inscription at the entrance to Hell. For Hell was on the other side of Checkpoint Charlie.

It was a gray Hell, with gray buildings and gray people, made grayer on this particular day by the gray clouds and the rain that fell steadily on everything. Gerhard Johnson had a knot in his stomach the size of a basketball as he showed his papers to the American soldier at the newly painted white guardhouse made of wood that looked out of place in this drab setting, partly because he was afraid the East German guards wouldn’t let him through—and partly because he was afraid they would. But he had to go.

He was waved through the American side as he had expected he would be. He approached two of the East German guards with their long coats and unsmiling faces in his borrowed Volkswagen Beetle. One stood in front of the car and motioned for him to stop. The other came to his window and took his passport and visa.

Gerhard tried to look casual, as if he did this every day. However, he hadn’t crossed the border for over a year. That was before the Wall was erected, when people could pass freely back and forth between East and West Berlin, before the brain drain of highly educated and skilled East German citizens fleeing to the West had become a rushing torrent, threatening to bring the economy to a standstill.

The guard stared at the visa for a long time, as if trying to find something wrong with it. It was perfectly legal. Gerhard had jumped through the proper hoops to get it. As an American citizen he carried a U.S. passport, and the visa had been issued to him by the American Embassy in West Germany.

The guard spoke to him in broken English. “Why you go to GDR?”

Gerhard phrased his answer carefully. “My aunt lives here. I’m going to visit her.” He wasn’t about to mention that he had a one-year-old daughter here. That would surely raise a red flag.

“How long you stay?”

“Two days.”

It was all the time he had. He was in West Berlin on business for the import-export firm he was employed by, and the vacation days had been reluctantly granted him by his boss to use before he had to fly back to the U.S. Business was booming in Europe, and the company needed his ability to speak German.

The guard suddenly spoke to him in German. “Do you know what we do to spies in the GDR?”

In spite of having prepared for this situation, it was all Gerhard could do not to react to the statement. If they found out he spoke perfect German they would never let him in. Young foreigners passing through Checkpoint Charlie were automatically suspected of being spies. He looked at the guard in what he hoped was a questioning and uncomprehending manner.

The guard watched him. Had an eye blink given him away? His heart pounded and the basketball in his stomach grew larger. The guard looked at the other guard, who motioned for him to pop the hood, which was the storage space for the rear-engine VW. It contained only a small suitcase with clothes and toilet articles, unlocked. Meanwhile, the first guard peered into the backseat, which was empty.

The guard with the suitcase took his time looking through it, while Gerhard hoped the sweat he was feeling on his back wouldn’t show up on his face. He had considered leaving a pile of West German marks on top of his clothes. They were valuable in the black market here. But he didn’t know how they would react. A bribe could be taken as an indication of guilt, and he wasn’t guilty of anything.

The guard closed the hood and walked up to the window. The two men spoke together in German about whether Gerhard was a spy, keeping an eye on him for a reaction.

Perhaps his German first name had spooked them. His mother had been German. He had learned to speak German before he learned English. His father had met her when he was studying in Germany, and he had asked her to marry him. She was part of an upper-class family in the city of Halle, where she grew up, and she never adjusted to life in the U.S., being married to an itinerant minister who had trouble holding a job. She took Gerhard and his sister back to Germany several times when they were young, and on one occasion his father had to come over and take them home.

She became a psychological cripple during the war, partly because her brother was in the German army. He died somewhere in the frozen expanses of Russia. She died soon after, perhaps from a broken heart.

The guards stopped talking, and one of them handed Gerhard his passport and visa. He motioned for Gerhard to go on. It happened so quickly he was unprepared, and it took him a few seconds for his shaking hand to get the car into first gear. Then he had to be careful not to drive away too fast. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw they had turned their attention to the next car.

The autobahn to Halle was bumpy and potholed. It even had a speed limit, although few cars observed it, at the risk of their tires and suspensions. Gerhard did, however. The VW wasn’t his, and he wanted to return it in one piece.

He had no trouble negotiating the streets of Halle with its churches and double spires, and a population approaching 300,000. He had been here many times while stationed in West Berlin with the military, first to visit his aunt, who was his mother’s sister, and then to visit Inga, a friend of Brunhild with whom he fell in love.

Inga. Gerhard had beseeched her to come and live with him in West Berlin until his tour of duty was over, and then to go to America with him. She said she would, but she had to take care of her grandmother, who was in failing health. His pleas had increased in volume when he found out she was pregnant. Still she put it off. Then the East Germans closed the border in 1961 to prevent the exodus of the freedom-loving, and it was too late. Inga was trapped inside.

Inga had died giving birth to Monika. Her doctor had been smart enough to head for the West while the border was open, leaving Inga in the bumbling hands of the mediocre medical people who remained. If she had made her escape while it was still possible, she would be alive today. Gerhard could never stop thinking about the “what ifs.” He reflected that he had good reason to equate East Germany with Hell.

Gerhard looked at the blue-eyed, blond miniature of Inga, and couldn’t believe he had helped to create this beautiful creature who was smiling at him and picking his teeth with her fingers. He had left Germany before she was born, his army career ended, not being able to bear living fairly close to Inga but not with her. There was no way he would ever live in East Germany.

He had seen pictures of Monika, but the reality was far superior. If only he could take her with him. That was impossible. The tales of people who had tried to escape and failed were legend. Peter Fechter, a teenager who had made the attempt, had been shot and left to bleed to death beside the Wall in full view of both sides, while the soldiers of neither side went to help him.