Midnight Hunter

“Of course.”

All is quiet on the ground floor of the bakery as we go inside. We descend the stairs to the dark cellar. Odd that it’s so dark. I expected there to be at least one lamp giving a little light.

“Hello?” I call softly, wondering if everyone has gone down the tunnel without us. Then I hear a scream, a long way off.

Dad grabs me and pushes me forward. “Someone’s been caught on the street. Quickly, down the tunnel! Gehen! Go!”

But as I scramble for the tunnel I hear running feet—not behind me, but coming toward me. People surge out of the tunnel, knocking me down. I see Ana, her face panicked. She and Ulrich must have overtaken us while we were held up by the soldiers. I run toward her, trying to reach her. There were soldiers down the tunnel, I realize, my heart in my throat. We need to get back onto the street. But there are soldiers all around us now and torches have come on, blinding me. I turn, looking for Ana and Dad but I can’t see them in the chaos.

Someone shouts an order, and the night explodes in a nightmare of screaming and gunfire.

Chapter Three

Volker

Insubordinate little shit. I’ll string him up by his balls until he begs for his mother.

Shots are being fired inside the building and I unholster my Makarov and check that the pistol is fully loaded. Eight rounds. I fantasize about firing one of them right into Hauptmann Heydrich’s face.

A scream echoes from the bowels of the bakery. Then again, I might not need to if the traitors get the captain first.

Grinding my teeth together I yank open the street-level door and look around. Deserted. All the commotion is coming from the cellar and I head for the stairs. East Berlin is my responsibility and I am both possessive and protective of it. That I didn’t know about this operation is unfathomable. Inconceivable.

Humiliating.

A casual remark from a border guard tipped me off. Herr Oberstleutnant, I was surprised to hear that you are not leading the raid on the bakery yourself. How admirable that you put your trust in the captain.

Put my trust in the captain? I’ll put a fucking bullet in the captain.

When I get down into the basement it’s chaos. Guards are running left and right, taking pot-shots at the traitors. There are a half-dozen bodies on the dirt floor, at least two of them my men. How many exits are there? Where is the tunnel? Are the rats slipping away to the West even now?

I’m searching the confusion for Hauptmann Heydrich, either to ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing going behind my back, or to wring his neck—when I see her. The dark-haired girl who was with Frau Schäfer on Jungstrasse, her eyes blazing and defiant as she’d tried to corral the older woman into the apartment building. She knew me, and for one shocking second I had known her, felt the press of bodies, heard the rattle of the train. I questioned Schäfer about her later, though the woman was so hysterical at the sight of me she couldn’t tell me much. Evony Daumler’s a good girl. She should have just left me in the street. Anyone else would have. You won’t hurt her, will you?

Yes, anyone else would have, wouldn’t they? Self-preservation instincts run high among the residents of East Berlin. What, I wonder, has given Fräulein Daumler a death wish?

Hurt her? Oh, I don’t think it will be necessary to hurt her. I hope it won’t be. Now, Frau Schäfer, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.

Once I had dealt with the woman it was getting on for four in the morning but I went back to Stasi Headquarters to look up what we had, if anything, on Evony Daumler. The file was thin. Name and date of birth. Work records. There were a few more sheets on her father; an informant had once heard him make anti-Soviet comments and we’d had him tailed for a while two years ago. When nothing came of it the resources were directed elsewhere.

I put the files back, uncertain. There didn’t seem to be anything for me to do, and yet I had felt I should do something. Arrest her? Question her? The feeling returned to me like a stray dog over the next few days, pestering me, and no matter how often I kicked it away it linge

red, whining for attention.

Paying attention to coincidence has served me well as a Stasi officer. I turn over rocks that other people would ignore and out scuttle traitors who would otherwise have evaded the State. I saw this girl trying to help Frau Schäfer and now she’s here, trying to get out of East Berlin.

This girl is a traitor, clearly, but when I picture her in a cell in Hohenschönhausen waiting for me to interrogate her I don’t feel the usual warm glow of anticipation. I don’t want what she knows, I want what she is. I want to own that look of fear and hatred in her eyes.

I’m so lost in abstraction that I almost don’t see the gun. The barrel is shaking but a gun is a gun, and I raise my arm and shoot first. A scream rings out as my would-be attacker crumples to the ground—a blonde girl, I notice—and Fräulein Daumler is staring at me, white-faced, from across the cellar. It was she who screamed. The door to the street level is behind her and no one is paying her any attention but me. She realizes this at the same moment I do and she turns and runs up the stairs, the plaid of her skirt disappearing into darkness.

Scheisse.

I only have a split second to decide—stay here and mop up Heydrich’s mess, rubbing his nose in every mistake he’s made in front of the men until he’s practically bleeding from the eyes from shame, or go after the girl?

The girl.

Bullets are whizzing across the cellar and it takes me several minutes to manoeuver my way across without getting shot by my own men. Heydrich is screaming orders, adding to the confusion. He looks both relieved and irritated when he spots me crossing the dirt floor, assuming that I’m about to take control of the situation. But I keep going, up the stairs and out into the night.

The night is so cold that the air is like a fist to my chest when I come out onto the street. I look left and right, searching for movement. Nothing. Where is she? Then I see them, a woman’s footprints in the snow, deep as if she was running.