Midnight Hunter

Volker’s eyes grow dark and hooded. “You are not to think about him anymore. Now, go with Hans.” I notice how his gloved hands flex and a sick feeling spreads through my belly.

“Wait, Herr Oberstleutnant, please.”

He turns back to me, jaw tightening, expecting me to beg for Ulrich’s life. But instead I ask, “Where is my father?” If he’s dead I need to know. He can’t exist in limbo for me any longer. Volker presses his lips together and from the look of regret in his eyes I can tell he’s not going to hide the truth from me.

But it’s not the truth I was expecting.

“I’m sorry, Evony. I don’t know.”

Chapter Eleven

Volker

The route I take to Hohenschönhausen passes Bahnhof Lichtenberg train station and the sight of the steel tracks settles dismal clouds over my already low mood. I had the dream again last night. The dream on the train. The carriages were dark and oppressive and teeming with humanity. I was searching but I couldn’t find her among the tightly-packed bodies. Except this time it wasn’t Johanna I was searching for, it was Evony, and when I finally glimpsed her at the far end of a long carriage she couldn’t hear me shouting. The baby she held was Frau Fischer’s grandson, blond and curly-headed, his face streaked with tears. I pushed through the bodies, stepping over them, stepping on them, but she was always just out of reach. Finally Evony saw me and her eyes filled with cold loathing—and then the train lurched as it went over a set of points, throwing me to the ground. When I regained my footing she was gone. I searched and searched, growing more frantic with each passing second, knowing we were approaching the end of the line and there wasn’t much time. The train squealed to a halt and I awoke drenched in sweat, winded like I’d been running for my life.

The dream always ends this way. I never find her in time.

The dented but functional Mercedes-Benz is held up at a level crossing as an S-bahn train pulls into Bahnhof Lichtenberg, carriage after carriage flashing past in the dusky light. I see Evony as Weber strangled her, her face a ghastly mottled red, eyes bulging and glassy.

The road clears and I drive north-east. The high cinderblock walls and concrete watchtowers of the prison appear and I show my pass to the guards at the gate. The design of Hohenschönhausen echoes the Wall and its fortifications and I feel similarly about them. Unfortunate, but unfortunate necessities.

Ulrich Weber has been put into an interrogation room, a windowless cell empty of everything but a table and two chairs. I don’t sit. The prisoner is breathing hard, psyching himself up to resist whatever I’m about to do to him. I regard him in silence for several minutes. There’s information I could get out of him about the group. Maybe even about Heydrich. The little prick has files elsewhere, I’m certain of it.

But right now I don’t care.

I take out my pistol and point it at his head. No, too close. I don’t want to return to Evony covered in blood spray. Weber’s eyes widen at the sight of the gun. I take one step back, and the bullets fire cleanly, one-two, into his head. He rears back, blue eyes staring. Then he slumps forward, forehead hitting the table. Blood starts to pool and drip.

The guard rushes in as I’m holstering my gun. “Take him to the morgue. Herr Weber was shot attempting to flee from me on Frankfurter Allee. He is one of the traitors who escaped during the bakery raid.”

Chapter Twelve

Evony

Frau Fischer wants to put me to bed but I shake my head and point towards the sofas and she nods understandingly. “Of course. You’ll want to see Herr Oberstleutnant as soon as he comes in. A car accident and being attacked on top of that, you poor girl.”

It’s not seeing Volker that I want, but asking him what he’s done, what he’s doing at this very moment. He wouldn’t torture Ulrich, would he? I hear rumors about what goes on in the Stasi prison. Sleep deprivation, water torture, beatings. I imagine him looking on, smoking impassively while a guard breaks Ulrich’s fingers.

Once I’m tucked onto the sofa under a blanket, Frau Fischer gives me ice cubes wrapped in a tea towel to put over my swollen lip and examines my neck. “I was a nurse in the war,” she explains, putting a first-aid kit on the side table. “Though I don’t remember treating anyone for strangulation. Can you swallow?”

I can, though it’s painful. Remembering what Volker said, I croak, “Could I please have some sweet tea?”

The housekeeper tilts my chin up. “In a minute. You’re going to have some nasty bruises.” She rubs arnica cream on my neck, looks at my lip and informs me I’m going to need stitches. The needle is threaded before she tells me she doesn’t have any anesthetic. With the same persuasive tone she uses to get me to eat more breakfast in the mornings she coaxes me into allowing her to put two stitches in my lip as she did this “all the time during the war”. I want to tell her that there isn’t a war on and there are things such as doctors with anesthetic readily available, but she’s strangely overbearing in nursing mode and I find myself submitting without protest.

I realize after she’s put a mug of weak, sugary black tea in my hands and gone to prepare beef broth that I probably should have insisted she call a doctor because my mouth hurts even more now. These people who lived through the war. Do they all go about shooting people and sticking needles in them as if it’s nothing?

A wretched mood settles over me as I watch the fire crackle. For weeks I’ve imagined crossing paths with someone from my old life and fantasizing that they would help me. The moment I do find someone he jumps to the wrong conclusion and tries to kill me.

I drain my mug of tea, turning over the other unhappy thought in my mind. Neither Ulrich nor Volker knows where my father is. I don’t understand how this can be. Volker not tell me where my father is, because he likes to control and manipulate? Yes. Not know? Impossible. Or at least it should be. I think back to that first night when I asked him what became of Dad. His sly smile, and then, You mean you don’t know? So, he was bluffing. Pretending to be all-knowing to make me feel powerless. Or is he lying now?

I must doze off because I wake some time later to Volker taking the empty mug out of my hands. He’s crouching down next to me, his face close to mine, and his eyes are soft as he looks at the stitches in my lip.

“How are you feeling mein armes Mädchen?” My poor girl. I notice he’s taken off his uniform jacket. Did it get bloodied or is it because he knows I don’t like it?

“Where’s Ulrich?” I croak. I clear my throat and it hurts like tonsillitis.

He tucks the blankets around me. “Not now, Liebling. You’ve had a shock and—”

“No, now. Tell me.” But from the way his mouth compresses into a thin line and his eyes drop away I know that Ulrich’s dead. My face creases and I start to sob, my stitches pulling painfully. “How could you? I asked you not to hurt him.”