Marion Kummerow - From the Ashes

“All right. Walk from the Brandenburger Tor in the direction Tiergarten at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. Someone will ask you for directions to Alexanderplatz. Follow this person,” he instructed Böhm, while his mind fervently tried to come up with a plan to take it from there. “Don’t take anything with you, except for a briefcase with your dearest things.”

Böhm nodded and made to get up.

“One more thing. If you’re not alone or are followed, we scrub the entire operation, and there won’t be a second chance,” Dean said.

“Understood. And, thank you.” Böhm hesitated for a split second, but then turned around and left the room, leaving Dean frantically thinking about a way to get the defector out of Berlin.

By air, obviously, but how to get him safely to Tempelhof airport? And whom should he send to the meeting point? It had to be a civilian, someone entirely innocuous. A woman.

He picked up the phone to dial the number of his deputy and organize Böhm’s escape from the Soviet sphere of influence.

July 1947

On his way home, Werner was plagued with doubts. For one thing, he didn’t have anything but Dean Harris’ word. What if the American turned on him and called Sokolov? Cold sweat broke out and ran in rivulets down his back.

He balled his trembling hands into fists and hid them in the pockets of his coat. He had no option but to trust Harris, since he’d gambled his life on the premise that an American promise had more substance than a Russian one. What if he had misjudged the American Kommandant?

Suddenly he began to see NKVD police at every corner, ready to pounce on him. Completely shaken and exhausted he arrived at his office in the Haus der Einheit.

“Hey, Böhm, running late today?”

His head snapped in the direction of the caller, instinctively raising his hands to parry an attack. “Oh, good morning Comrade, the bus had to stop because of an accident.”

Renk shook his head, “I really don’t understand why you insist on using public transport when your position comes with the availability of a driver.”

“Because it gives me a glimpse into the minds of the Berliners, which is useful for my propaganda work,” Werner said and hurried into his office, before he could give Renk a piece of his mind.

What was more non-communist than the political elites driving by car, while the highly praised workers had to use public transport? Didn’t his colleagues notice the irony of it all? Didn’t anybody question whether all these spoils and privileges were compatible with Marx’s theories? The cars, the food, the pajoks, the villas, the trips to special recreation homes for party functionaries… the list went on and on.

Nobody expected Norbert Gentner to live in a rotten basement with twelve other comrades like the industrial workers had to, but did he have to reside in a twenty-five-room villa with an old stock of trees in Pankow?

Werner shrugged and settled at his desk to read the headlines of several newspapers, including the Soviet Tägliche Rundschau, the American Neue Zeitung and the British Die Welt.

The usual bickering. Nothing of substance. He turned to the correspondence on his desk and diligently worked through it until the phone rang. He stared at the black apparatus and then at the watch on his desk. Way past noon. He’d forgotten to go for lunch.

“Werner Böhm, SED headquarters, department for media and…”

“Comrade Böhm, you’re requested at SMAD immediately,” a Russian voice barked into the phone.

Hot and cold shivers attacked Werner and he stammered, “Yes, Comrade, I’ll take a car this very instant and will arrive within the hour. The other person hung up, leaving Werner frozen into place with fright.

The only explanation for this was that Harris had broken his promise and alerted the Soviets. He pondered whether he should run, try to flee from Berlin on his own. But how, and where to? Or maybe it wasn’t Harris who’d talked, but they’d been observing him and now wanted to find out the reason for his visit with the American Kommandant.

Werner clung to this notion like a lifeline. He would play for time, trust that the American hadn’t sold him out. He had only twenty more hours to endure. Putting on a confident smile, he told his secretary that he was needed in Karlshorst and might not return in the afternoon.

Sweating like a decathlete his nerves were strung tight as he arrived Karlshorst, where he’d been not long before for the celebrations of the anniversary of Germany’s unconditional surrender. What a different setting it had been back then.

Today the sentry looked grim and beckoned him to enter the huge ballroom. The room was crowded with mostly men in uniform and Werner gave a silent sigh of relief. They surely hadn’t called half of the garrison just to expose him as a dissenter. He nodded at familiar faces and finally found Norbert in the crowd.

“Comrade Norbert, what’s going on?” he asked his boss.

“An awful thing happened. Sokolov will speak in a few minutes,” Gentner said.

When Sokolov climbed the podium twenty minutes later and told the crowd that France and Britain had had the guts to invite twenty-two European countries to the so-called Marshall Conference in Paris, Werner wanted to weep with joy.

“This is a direct affront against the first socialist state, the Soviet Union, and all our brother countries in the world. The imperialist warmongers and enemies of the people are finally showing their real faces. They have succumbed to the American capitalists’ intent on destroying the world and flung the gauntlet against the peace-loving people’s democracies.” Sokolov droned on and on about the perceived impudence of the Americans wanting to help war-ravaged Europe and even include the socialist Eastern European states. It was a vile plan for interference in the domestic affairs of other countries and showed once again the American quest for economic imperialism and domination.

Werner stopped listening. In reality, the Soviets objected the Marshall Plan for more petty reasons. They didn’t want to tolerate economic aid to Germany, because this nation had greatly devastated the Soviet Union just a few years earlier and should pay the price for decades to come.

When the British and French representatives wouldn’t agree to the Soviet’s demands of having complete control over any aid given to Germany plus the knowledge which nation was given how much money by the Americans, the Soviet Foreign minister stormed out of the meeting. And now he was offended, that the other Allies pursued the plan without him?

Distortion of facts and fear-based reporting had become such an ingrained part of the Soviet-style communism, that he wanted to puke. Any doubts whether it was the right thing to defect instead of trying to reform the system from within vanished not only with Sokolov’s words, but also with the subsequent unanimous condemnation of the American effort to actually help starving people.

There was no way Werner could stand behind this cruel system one moment longer. He anxiously awaited the next morning when he’d leave all of this behind and start a new life.

After lengthy discussions and dinner, he didn’t return to his office, but told the driver to take him directly to the apartment in Pankow he shared with Horst. Much to his relief, his roommate wasn’t home, which gave him the time to say goodbye. He wandered through the apartment, impressing every detail upon his memory.

Then he packed his briefcase, taking only the most precious things with him. His identity documents, money, a picture of his parents, a small booklet his first politics teacher had given him back in Moscow.

His fingers caressed the heavy paperweight Marlene had given him. Memories of her saddened his soul. He’d never see her again, and he couldn’t even take her gift with him. In case he was stopped and searched, he could only take things that wouldn’t awaken suspicion.