“Don’t make it a habit to save my life,” she said in the most scathing tone possible.
“Please, Marlene, can we talk for a moment?” he begged her.
She couldn’t resist the trustful expression in his eyes. As much as she wanted to despise him, there was no way she could pull through with her plan. She nodded and followed him into a nearby bakery, where he ordered coffee for both of them.
“Forgive me, but it was the only way to…” he stopped midsentence, and gave her a vague smile. “Understand my situation, I was so overwhelmed by my emotions that I panicked. I’ve been a bachelor for such a long time, I got scared. But I never meant to hurt you…” She sensed he was lying, was making up an excuse to protect her. She needed to know the truth.
“Did you know about the raid that night?” she asked.
Werner flinched. “This kind of action isn’t divulged to people outside the police department, and I’m not even involved with the university anymore.
Her blood boiled at the half-hearted attempted to deny his knowledge and before she could stop herself, she hissed, “You are a despicable coward, a beast. Man up and at least admit your involvement. And stop defending the communist terror.”
“All I ever wanted was to protect you, Marlene,” he persisted.
“Why me? Why not all the others? Do you think they deserved to be roughed up by the people’s police?” Marlene could barely keep herself from shouting out loud.
His face fell. “I tried to warn them. You can’t imagine how often I urged Georg to stop antagonizing the administration.”
“The Soviet puppets, you mean?” She emptied the coffee cup, her hands trembling with barely suppressed fury.
“Let’s not get into semantics. You know full well that I’m on your side, but there are greater powers that neither I nor anyone else can influence. The student board didn’t heed my warnings.” Werner rubbed his hands, seemingly unsure how to continue. “When people violate the rules, they have to bear the consequences for their actions. This is an omnipresent principle of any state structure.”
“How can you still defend the communists? They’re worse than the Nazis.” She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but his slick, two-faced behavior irked her to no end.
“If you believe that then I’m afraid you have a lot to learn,” Werner shrugged. “At least thank the Soviet army for ridding Germany of the Nazis and bringing peace and stability to this country.”
“I’ll thank these communist thugs, rapists and murderers for nothing and I’ll be the first one to cheer when they leave Berlin for good,” she said in disgust. “And you know what? You’re enabling the Soviet death grip on my city and therefore I hate you!”
For a moment he looked truly sad, but then he schooled his features again and answered, “I guess you should. I’m not worth your attention.”
Chapter 30
Werner left the bakery in a very sour mood. Marlene had called him a despicable beast and a coward, but that wasn’t the worst. What really got to him was that she was right. In a dozen years in the Soviet Union he’d learned to always toe the party line, never utter an independent or – God forbid – critical thought.
He’d looked away when his parents had fallen victim to the purge, had defended Stalin’s regime when some of his best friends ended up in Gulags for minor transgressions, had empathized with veterans of the Spanish Civil War and Lenin’s comrades in arms who’d fallen in disgrace with Stalin.
He sighed. It wasn’t something he was especially proud of, but sometimes the greater good required sacrifices. Individual hardships were inevitable during the transitional period until a truly socialist community was formed. The student board leaders were such individual fates that couldn’t be avoided, because their agitation might otherwise threaten the entire reform process of the German population.
The next morning, he got up in a much better mood and looked out of the window. The day looked promising with the sun shining resolutely through the cloudy sky. He hoped it wouldn’t rain, since he hated the rain that made everything damp and filled the roads with puddles that were deceptive to drive through.
He arrived at his office in the Haus der Einheit, and sat down to work. Around noon, a knock on the door tore him from his concentration. “Come in!”
A uniformed Russian entered the room. “Comrade Böhm?”
“Yes, how can I help you?”
“General Sokolov expects you in Karlshorst. I’m here to drive you there,” the man said briskly.
Werner sat in stunned silence for a moment, until the gravity of the order finally registered. A summons from the general was quite unexpected. It also augured unpleasantness, and with a sense of foreboding, Werner wondered what was in store for him.
“Certainly,” he said and got up to grab his hat and coat before he followed the Russian to the black car waiting outside. Just when they left the building, the rain came pouring down. The wipers frantically waved backwards and forwards and still couldn’t keep the windscreen clear.
Werner peered through the clouded glass, happy it wasn’t him at the steering wheel trying to stay on the road which was flooded by the sudden deluge. Inching along, and hitting every pothole, Werner finally arrived at the headquarters to meet his fate.
Throughout the journey he resisted the urge to try and ask the Russian about the reason for his summons. He wouldn’t know anyway. At last the car stopped in front of the impressive SMAD headquarters. Long used to not being told what was going on, his mind still was in turmoil and his heart pounded.
It seemed the delegation had been waiting exclusively for him, because the moment the car stopped, the doors opened and Paul Markgraf and an NKVD officer squeezed into the backseat.
“Comrade Böhm,” the police chief greeted him.
The tiniest sigh escaped Werner’s throat. As long as they still called him comrade, things couldn’t be that bad. Despite knowing better, he asked, “Where are we going Comrade Markgraf?”
“You’ll see when we get there.” Paul Markgraf guffawed and began complaining about the awful rain. Since weather was an innocuous topic, Werner joined the rant, although he carefully interspersed hidden praise about how much better he liked the weather in Moscow than in Berlin. The NKVD officer never said a single word, but Werner was sure, he understood German quite well.
After about an hour’s drive, the car stopped. As Werner got out, he noticed that a column of four cars, including theirs had arrived. From one of them stepped General Sokolov himself, accompanied by his deputy and Norbert.
Werner respectfully signaled a greeting in their direction, but nobody acknowledged him. The grey bunker-like building turned out to be a former Gestapo prison, appropriated by the NKVD that now used it for the same sinister acts as the previous owner, simply changing the underlying ideology.
He’d never been inside such an installation, but had heard the gleefully reported details about the atrocities Hitler’s cronies had committed, along with whispered rumors about similar things happening to those unfortunate souls in NKVD custody. His legs suddenly felt like jelly as he stepped into the concrete monolith.
They walked through a labyrinth of passages until they came to a large brightly lit chamber filled with all manner of implements designed to elicit a confession from a suspect. Werner noticed a man with his hands cuffed behind his back and hooked to a chain that suspended him from the ceiling. When the man’s head swung around, he recognized it was Georg.
Werner gasped in shock. He had never in his life seen a more repulsive sight. The bile rose in his throat and he fought it down. Why did they bring me here ? He wished to flee from the room and scream his horror to the world. But he could do no such thing. Marlene’s face appeared in front of his inner eye and her verdict about him echoed through his mind. Coward! Beast! Monster! Intuitively he ducked, awaiting her slap his face.