Midnight Hunter

Chapter One

Evony

East Berlin, January 1963

He’s hunting me, and there’s nowhere to run. Every labored breath feels like I’m drawing shards of ice into my lungs. I stare up and down the dark, unfamiliar street, vapor billowing in front of my face. Around me are apartment blocks, lights burning in living room windows—families sitting up to read or listen to the radio. If I batter on their doors and plead for them to hide me I’ll only be putting them in danger. I hurry past a call box on a corner, the telephone inside lit by a neon bulb, but I don’t go in and lift the handset. I have no one to call who can save me. All my friends are arrested or dead, and the Volkspolizei will not help.

They’ll only turn me over to him.

A sob rises in my throat as I remember the crack-crack of rifle fire and the screams of the panicked and dying; the sight of Ana lifting a shaking arm to aim a pistol at him, and then him raising his own gun, cool and implacable, to shoot her between the eyes. No matter that she was a citizen, not a soldier. No matter that she was outnumbered, losing, scared out of her wits and would have put the gun down if he’d only told her to.

And Dad, what has happened to Dad? Is he dead? Will I ever see him again?

I shake from cold and fear, the glacial chill biting through my thin coat. Turning into the street on my left I skid on the icy concrete and go down, my right knee cracking painfully against the pavement. I do sob now, from agony and futility. He’s going to get me just like he got Ana and everyone else in our group. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere that he won’t find me, and no border that I can cross without being gunned down. But I lever myself up, limping onward, tears tracking icy ribbons down my face. You have no choice but to run when you’re being hunted by der Mitternachtsjäger, the Midnight Hunter, the most feared man in East Berlin.

His name is Oberstleutnant Reinhardt Volker of the Ministry for State Security. If he catches you at night you don’t go to the Stasi prison. He claims you as his special prize and you’re never seen again. There are whispers of shallow graves. Secret dungeons. Furnaces filled with bones. The furnace is especially terrifying. I’ve seen the photograph of der Mitternachtsjäger as a young army captain of twenty-two, standing in front of the swastika flag, an eagle emblazoned on his jacket. He’ll have learned a trick or two about making people disappear during the war.

I’ve glimpsed Volker several times striding through the streets of the city, a heraldic lion of a man, tall and striking in his olive green Stasi uniform and high black boots, a peaked cap covering his dark blond hair. People scurry out of his way when he marches by, usually at the head of a detachment of border guards. From his height of six-feet-five he ignores the populace, his expression aloof, intent elsewhere.

Unless someone makes a mistake and draws his attention.

Unless that cold, calculating mind senses there’s a traitor nearby.

Then his gray eyes sharpen and his nostrils flare, as if he’s scenting treason. As if he knows what’s in your secret heart. That’s why he’s called hunter. That’s why no one escapes Oberstleutnant Volker.

I think I hear footsteps behind me and look over my shoulder as I turn another corner. If I can get out into the countryside maybe I can shelter in a barn for the night. In the morning I might get lucky and find some sympathetic soul who will give me food and maybe some work. They could have contacts who can help me change my identity, even disappear to the West. Our group can’t have been the only one trying to get out. If I can just—

A heavy, black-gloved hand falls onto my wrist and tightens like a manacle. I watch in horror as a tall figure steps out of the shadows, moonlight glinting on the silver epaulettes of his double-breasted coat. A silky, self-satisfied voice murmurs, “Guten Abend, Fräulein Daumler. You are out very late.”

I recognize the aquiline nose and clean-shaven jaw of der Mitternachtsjäger and fear threads me like a needle. He glances at his wristwatch and smiles a cold, cruel smile. “Why, I see it’s nearly midnight.”

Chapter Two

Evony

Three days earlier

“Just think, Evony. In a few days we’ll be in the West.” Ana’s eyes are aglow as we walk through the darkened streets. A light snow is falling and we’re huddled c

lose to each other so we don’t need to speak above a whisper, and for warmth. It’s almost impossible to get proper wool coats and the wind cuts through our synthetic ones. Mine’s too big as well, a bulky navy blue thing that used to belong to Dad.

“Shh, you mustn’t say that out loud,” I whisper, but I’m smiling as I say it. My arm is linked through hers and we practically vibrate with excitement. We’ve just left the final meeting with the group before we all make our escape: me, Dad, Ana and a dozen others who can’t face living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall any longer. We all have different reasons for leaving. Ana wants to go to university and study something artistic. The things she’s interested in aren’t offered in practical, utilitarian East Germany, and only a small fraction of the population are allowed to continue their education beyond sixteen. We’re supposed to turn ourselves into productive citizens, not over-educated bourgeoisie. My dad despises the government and the Soviets and chafes under the intrusive gaze of the Stasi. Anyone could be an informant, he likes to tell me urgently, and often. Anyone, remember that.

And me? I don’t know what I want, I just want something more than this. The unending work, the unending gray. The same people, the same streets, day in and day out. Shouldn’t there be more to life? Unlike Ana I don’t expect the West to be perfect and offer up a dream life. There are bad things in the West that we don’t have here, like unemployment and poverty. It’s just… Shouldn’t we have a choice? If the East is so good, as they like to tell us, why do they stop us from exploring what people’s lives are like there? If it’s really so great here we’ll come home again, but they don’t trust us to make that decision. And now we have the Wall, hemming us in and looming over us.

For weeks in 1961 there were rumors about a barrier being erected to make the border more secure. The East was hemorrhaging citizens to the West, young educated citizens like doctors and engineers, and the government were getting nervous. The papers told us that they weren’t really going to build a wall, but the State runs the media and you can’t always believe what they say. We awoke one morning eighteen months ago to low coils of razor wire splitting the city north to south with armed East German border guards stationed along it. Our own people, locking us in. The papers told us it was to protect us from the West: the Wall encircles West Berlin, not East Berlin. But who in their right mind wants to cross the Wall into the East?

The Wall is permanent now. The razor wire has been replaced by a thick concrete barrier that stands well above a man’s head. It’s not impossible to climb over if you have some equipment and the guards happen to be looking the other way, but the space beyond the Wall is patrolled by more armed guards with dogs. It’s called the Death Strip. It’s mined in places. There are watchtowers at regular intervals and the guards have orders to shoot to kill if anyone tries to escape. People have bled to death from gunshot wounds on the Death Strip, as the Western guards are too afraid of being shot at and are unable to reach them.

But they can’t patrol underground, which is why my father and some of his friends came up with the idea for a tunnel.

My heart pounds with excitement as I think of it. The tunnel begins in the basement of an abandoned bakery right next to the Wall, runs for sixty feet beneath it and comes out in an apartment building in the West. Ana and I did our bit along with the others, spending several late-night hours each week for the last two months digging with spades and pickaxes. It was filthy, dark and dangerous work and we never knew if the tunnel might collapse on us. We reinforced the walls and roof with timber but small fall-ins were common. Once I had to dig Ana’s legs out from beneath two feet of dirt.

“See you at the factory in the morning,” Ana says, giving my arm a squeeze and flashing me a last smile before peeling off to take a side street toward her apartment. We both work in a radio factory where we met when we were sixteen. I solder transistors and she screws the Bakelite casings together. It’s unchallenging, repetitive work. We’d likely keep the same job for the rest of our working lives if we stayed. Seven years later I already feel like we’ve been there a lifetime.

My route home takes me close to the Wall and my eyes can’t help but be drawn to it. It’s early evening, but as it’s January it’s full dark already and the Wall is floodlit. It stands out, a stark white looming presence. I look away quickly as it’s not wise to pay too much attention to it lest a patrolling guard thinks you’re considering escaping.

When the entrance to my building comes into view I notice a woman standing in the street in the snow, staring at the Wall. Her eyes are hollow and bereft. It’s Frau Schäfer, a woman who lives a few floors below me. She lives alone because her husband and young children are in the West. They were visiting family in West Berlin the night the Wall went up and haven’t returned. I know they’ve offered to but Frau Schäfer has forbidden it; she won’t allow her son and daughter to grow up in a country that can split a family so cruelly in two. She’s written many letters to officials, filled out every form, stood in every queue at the government offices, but they won’t let her emigrate to the West or even visit. Your family are East Germans, they tell her. If you want to see them they should come home.

Dad and I have tried to convince Frau Schäfer that she needs to be more careful about who she tells her troubles to and be better about hiding her emotions, but here she is, standing in the street for anyone to see, looking towards the Wall and weeping.

I hurry to her side and take her arm. “You must be cold, Frau Schäfer. What are you doing out here? Let’s go inside and I’ll make coffee for us.”

She pulls away. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to leave. I want to die.”

My eyes dart up and down the street. It’s empty, for now, but I’m conscious that there are dozens of windows overlooking us. “We need to go inside. It’s not safe out here.”

Frau Schäfer begins to cry even harder, speaking of her children and her husband. I listen, torn. She doesn’t know it yet but we’ll be taking her with us the night we leave. Dad has forbidden me to tell her this as he says she’s too emotional to be trusted to keep it secret, or she’ll suddenly be blissfully happy and make an informant suspicious. But shouldn’t I tell her now? There are only three days to go. On the one hand I think he’s being paranoid; on the other he’s not the only one who says there’s an informant in every apartment building in East Berlin. There could be several looking down on us right now.

“It will be all right, I promise. Just hold on a little longer. Just a little longer.” I’m doing my best to comfort her when I hear the sound of marching feet. I go still, straining to listen. “Hush a moment.” She doesn’t heed me, still weeping and wailing, but I hear them, and they’re coming in this direction.

I’m done trying to persuade her. Taking her arm I start to drag her towards the building. “We need to get inside, now.”

“No. I want to die. My babies,” she moans.

You might get your wish in a minute. “Stasi,” I hiss at her, pulling on her harder still. She’s a heavy woman and she won’t budge. “There are Stasi coming.”