The Berlin Assignment (22 page)

“I can give you a lift,” Gundula Jahn offered. Hanbury, confused by this, didn't immediately respond. He was about to remark it would be a bother when von Helmholtz said, “Accept, Tony. I would.” He shrugged and mumbled thanks.

At the door von Helmholtz kissed Gundula on both cheeks and shook the consul's hand. Walking towards Gundula's car, Hanbury said the air had become chilly. She agreed. “At least it's no longer raining,” he said, “but it's damp. Look at the halo around the streetlight.” She sent him the same, amused, full-marks-for-trying look von Helmholtz had received. Across the street a small square car, a little box on four spindly wheels was waiting. “This is it,” she said. “Ever ridden in a Trabi?” She got in, reached over, and undid the other door. Crouching down, squeezing in, Hanbury said, “No, but better late than never. Years ago I visited East Berlin a few times, but had no chance to ride in a Trabi. If I'd got in one, I'm sure the Stasi would have arrested me, plus the person taking me along. Isn't that the way they operated? Were you ever arrested?”

“Not arrested,” Gundula said softly. “But they spied on me. I've seen my file. It's thorough.”

Hanbury wanted to ask more. But in the night's cold damp the motor wouldn't catch. Gundula turned the ignition key repeatedly. “I actually like this car,” she said, “but it's really shitty when it doesn't start.” She turned the key a few more times and beat the gas pedal to the floor. The motor turned over pointlessly. As the battery emptied, the sound became a slow sick breathing, and with a last groan the machine was dead. “Shit,” Gundula said, hitting the steering wheel with both palms. “Shit, shit.”

“I'll give you a push. We used to do that all the time in winter in Indian Head. The winter made people feel they were part of a collective.”

“How wonderful,” Gundula said sarcastically. “There's only you here. Hardly a collective.”

“Two is all we need. I push, you steer. When I yell you let the clutch up. OK?”

The Trabi was light and the road had dried. Even in dress shoes, Hanbury had enough traction. Gundula steered down the middle of the road, the consul yelled, the Trabi bucked and heaved, but the motor caught. Gundula raced off. At the end of the block, she turned around and made her way back in first gear. The Trabi made an uneven, tinny noise, the sound of something sick coughing into an empty drum. As the motor sputtered, clouds of smoke pulsed out the back. “We could have used you in the GDR,” said Gundula, all smiles.

The consul felt on top. “Collectivism has its moments.”

“That's not funny,” laughed Gundula, driving off.

“When I first saw you this evening, I took you for a BMW woman,” he said. “All the women in Berlin who look like you drive silent BMWs. I guess they want to feel power, but not hear it.”

“I like my Trabi,” said Gundula.

“What does that mean? Lots of noise; not much speed?”

“That's mean.”

They were soon driving through the blackness of the Grunewald. The Trabi was beginning to produce some warmth and the defrost was making progress. The car's comfort wasn't much, but Gundula's company made up for it. She said, “Good thing you took on that Richard. Why are lawyers like that? It doesn't matter where they get their training: East, West, they all turn into shitheads.”

“Some of them are nice enough,” Hanbury said, thinking of Müller.

“The ones in the East were bad. They didn't even stick to the law. So you're from some place called Indian Head. It made me think back
to my childhood. I liked stories about Indians.”

On the city autobahn, Gundula pushed her Trabi to the limits. It clattered like a skeleton. Over the noise, the consul asked if it needed a tune-up, maybe a ring job.

“A what?” asked Gundula just as loudly.

“A ring job,” Hanbury called above the noise. “You're burning oil!”

“It's supposed to burn oil. It's a two-stroke engine.”

“That's for lawnmowers.”

“Lay off,” laughed Gundula.

Near the exhibition grounds, Hanbury gave directions for leaving the autobahn. When they turned into his neighbourhood, Gundula said she'd never been to this part of town. She lived on the other side, in East Berlin.

“You're welcome to come this way anytime. That's my place.”

“A lovely house.”

“A bit small. I'm supposed to entertain. It isn't big enough for that.”

“Squeeze them in. It's cosier. Well, good night. Thanks for playing cowboy.”

“Next time I'll wear my boots,” Hanbury said, getting out.

He wanted to ask her other questions – about a childhood spent reading Indian stories, about her relationship with the Chief of Protocol, about her Stasi file – but he had time for only one. “Tell me,” he said leaning down into the car, “talking about being spied on by the Stasi, ever heard of somebody called Günther Rauch?”

“Of course,” Gundula said. “Everybody's heard of Günther Rauch. He was famous for a while. Good night. And thanks again for pushing.” She revved the engine. Blue smoke spewed out. Hanbury slammed the door. As the Trabi disappeared, the acrid smell of half burned oil lingered in the air.

East of Berlin, sixty kilometres away runs the Oder River, an idyllic waterway which the Allies decided should be Germany's new eastern border in 19ffl. The land is relatively flat, an exception being a ridge not far from the river. German defenders massed here as the war was ending; thirty thousand Red Army soldiers died getting to the top. From there, their run to the capital of the Third Reich was unhindered.

A different age.

The geography that once allowed the Soviets to shift their tanks into high gear is also good for cycling, and weekend racers attack the landscape like a Tour de France. It isn't only youth that's burning up the roads. The over-sixty crowd is out too, like Albert Müller, except he's over eighty. Shortly after the Wall came down, the Eagles claimed the roads winding from village to village east of Berlin. Since the distance
from the Oder to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin is a good day's run, they organized a race. Every autumn now, old men in a thin line streak through the Brandenburg countryside. Fifty years after the Russians, they're the ones encircling Berlin. The event,
To Olympia
, helps them fantasize they're still in their prime.

Albert Müller didn't simply fantasize when on his bicycle. He also had a brutal wish to win, despite most of the competitors being twenty years his junior. He wasn't the oldest Eagle. Scrappy Rudi Metzger, club
doyen
, admittedly in good shape for someone past eighty-four, would take the
Oldest Rider
trophy – from Müller – by eight months. The year before they were both junior to the legendary Ulli Schmieder, eighty-six. But Ulli contracted a cold that spring and passed away. Rudi and Albert joked about their age. “You're too fast for me,” Rudi would say to Albert. “But that's fine. What you're really beating me to is the grave.” This year Müller felt fit, better than last year when he placed twenty-third. His training was peaking; he wanted victory; he had a chance. Who cared about Rudi's predictions that beyond the finish line a grave lay in wait?

“Come and watch. Take my picture,” Müller said to Hanbury. They had resumed their old habit of tipping a few glasses of
Pils
in
The Tankard
once a week. On the Thursday night before the race they sat in the same corner as before, as if there had been no intervening years. “Take my picture when I slip the winner's jersey on.”

“You don't have to win,” Hanbury said. “At your age finishing is pretty good. I couldn't do ten kilometres, let alone a hundred.”

“Not a hundred. A hundred and fifty.” Müller sounded irritated. “Your problem is you're not ambitious. It makes you likeable, but you'll never get anywhere. Why set your sights low? Me, I've got a few things to do before my ashes get scattered.
Prost
.”

The starting point for the race was the village of Hohenwutzen near
a bridge crossing the Oder to Poland. In the first years after the Wall came down the race was an obstacle course. Brandenburg's roads were disastrous. Bike frames got bent, wheels twisted, limbs bruised. The competition ended in darkness. But once Western money poured in the roads became smooth as laminated tennis courts. This year's race would be hours shorter.

On the morning of the race the Eagles and their equipment arrived in Hohenwutzen in the early hours in trucks and minibuses. It was still dark. A soupy fog hung over the river. Poland on the other shore seemed not to exist. Silently, like a commando group, they checked their bikes. Drinking bottles were fixed; watches set. As the hour neared, they took positions on the edge of a nearby ditch. Old men no longer pee fast and this essential ceremony took some time. Standing there, featherless scalps hunched between shoulders, looking less like eagles and more like buzzards, they pumped themselves up as they emptied their bladders.

“That's morning coffee for you. Drink one cup, piss two.”

“You drank coffee this morning? What an adventurer! My old lady serves me warm milk. Coffee's bad for the ticker. It goes crazy.”

“So what's wrong with that? Use it as a metronome. Get your legs going. That way you might win!”

“
Win
? What's that? A new drug from America?”

“Hey, Rolli. The last time we stood like this was when we were prisoners of war in Russia!”

“That was different. At that latrine, I remember, we always pissed
into
the wind.”

“They wanted us to savour the aroma of defeat.”

“Defeat? That's done with. If it weren't for the fog, the Slavs would faint seeing what we've got on show.”

“Mine, sure. Not yours.”

“I'm talking about my prick. You're talking about your prostate.”

Up and down the line, Eagle solidarity bounced around in salvos.

Müller, next to the doyen, heard him grunting. “Easy Rudi,” he cautioned. “Push too hard and you'll eject your bladder.”

“Rudi needs a catheter.”

“Tied to his saddle.”

At eighty-four Rudi was good at ignoring things he no longer wished to hear. When he finished, he croaked out a pep talk. “Go Eagles! Let's soar!”

Having shaken themselves dry, the racers did a round of knee-bends, some stretching of stiff joints, and a half-hearted warm-up by running on the spot. Track suits came off. Paunches in tight racing pants bulged out above naked legs. Finally, silhouetted against the light strengthening over Poland, they shook hands. They waited for the shot. Punctually, at eight-thirty they were off. The bunched field quickly thinned into a line taking a south-west course towards Bad Freienwalde. From there the route would be the same sweeping half circle around the north of Berlin that had been taken by a fast advancing battalion of Soviet armour during the final assault in 'ffl. Ulf and Rolli had been taken prisoner at the time.

Through marshland and pine forests, past ancient forts, under gates in medieval walls, skirting the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, around military camps still full of Russians, the Eagles would eventually come to the city's western approaches. In the late afternoon the fastest riders would be streaking down Heerstrasse, heading towards the stadium. By then Müller, according to his plan, would be in the lead.

The line broke up into packs. A spry sixty-five year old, Horst Baumann, was out front. Müller's strategy was simple. Stay in the first five, resist the temptation to go into a sprint – until Heerstrasse – then pedal like a demon. But that arrogant Baumann was setting a fast pace. The sky was angry and a head wind gusted from the west.

The rhythm of legs pumping creates an hypnotic state. The mind turns from the competition and starts a conversation with itself. For many riders, speeding through a landscape that was forbidden to them after the war, scenes of its final days came back. Actually, bits and pieces of the war were always coming back – every day. Rushing like the Soviets when they powered their way into Berlin, most of the Eagles couldn't help thinking about where they were, and how it was, when the war was ending.

Ulf and Rolli were hustled off to Russia. So were Ludwig, Gottfried and some others. Many more Eagles had been on the western front which had a higher prisoner survival rate. Four hadn't been POWs at all. Their politics had been wrong, so the Soviets threw them into concentration camps recycled from the Nazis.

On straight stretches, the mind turning inward, the Eagles raced against more than each other and the weather. They entered into combat with demons from the past. Müller, doggedly four back from Horst, had his trance too. Born in nineteen-o-nine he had nearly the whole damn twentieth century to remember. Too much for one brain, he often thought. The end of the first war, the abdication of the Kaiser, the socialists seizing power, the conservative backlash, the Weimar Republic launched with fanfare, though it had no staying power. There were the mad days of hyper-inflation during the twenties. The thirties brought the brownshirts and the second war. Then the transition to the Cold War. Four decades of Cold War, the final two providing the best years of the century. In the seventies and eighties, life in West Berlin had been a fairy tale.

A mountain of distracting memories. And, Albert thought, damned unhelpful too. He forced his concentration back on the race. Horst was setting a fast pace and pressing from behind was Gottfried. Who does Gottfried think he is? Does he think he deserves to be near the front
because he's only seventy? Work for it Gottfried. No one said it would be easy. Not this race.

Hanbury did as Müller had asked. On Friday, he rummaged through unpacked boxes and found a camera. On Saturday, he armed it with film. He also bought champagne, which was cooled all night. On Sunday in the afternoon he started out for the Olympic Stadium wearing his technicolour hiking shoes, which were already showing signs of heavy use.