Anna took a deep breath, collecting herself. “You’ll like him even more now. What I’ve given you is only a sample. Your engineers will salivate over the prototype data. You’re going to be a hero, Hari.”
He assessed her. “You’ve always resisted giving us anything we asked for. But now you seem to be offering technological gold. It doesn’t make sense. In fact, it makes so little sense I’m inclined not to believe you.”
Keeping her tone even, she said, “My mother has Hodgkin’s disease. It’s a form of cancer. We only found out a few days ago, when I finally convinced her to go to a doctor.” She paused, controlling her emotions. “The cancer is advanced. The best treatment is in Minnesota, in the U.S., and it’s expensive. Siemens won’t give me a raise or a loan. So that leaves the Stasi.” She told him the lump sum she needed. “That’s to fly her there and begin treatment. We don’t know how long she’ll stay. It may take more money.”
Saying nothing, Hari stopped at a railing and leaned on it, apparently thinking as he peered down a steep hill into a stand of birches. He clasped his hands in front of him, the book solidly between them.
She stood beside him, anxiously waiting for him to say something.
His gaze was solemn as he glanced at her. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
But then he looked away again. “We operate on a small budget. Most of our assets believe in the better world we’re trying to build. They work for free. We give a small stipend to others. You’re one of the lucky few who gets some money. We want you to enjoy the extra deutschmarks, even become dependent on them. But that’s all there is for you.” His voice grew low, too quiet. “Be realistic, Anna. You’re in a precarious position.” He turned toward her and enunciated each word clearly: “We have standards of pay. We don’t exceed them. There are no exceptions. No one negotiates with the Stasi.”
Anna felt as if she’d been gut-punched. She gripped the rail and saw in her mind’s eye her mother turning on her heel, a butcher knife in her hand. It’d been the first winter after the war, the harshest in living memory, so deadly it became known as Der Elendswinter, The Winter of Misery. Temperatures plummeted to twenty-five below zero Fahrenheit. Their house was a bombed-out hulk, little protection against the biting cold. Anna’s fiancé died. Every day she and her mother went off to join the army of grandmothers, housewives, and girls cleaning up the rubble of the town with their hands and whatever tools they could find. They were called Trümmerfrauen, rubble women. They were paid in food and the equivalent of ten cents an hour. Anna was fifteen years old; her mother forty. They were hungry all the time.
Anna’s mother heard about an old Nazi food depot that others were raiding. Insisting Anna stay home, she left at midnight and returned two hours later with a gunny sack of canned meats and vegetables, enough to get them through the month. Anna was crouched, shoving the canned goods into a hole they’d dug under the house, when she sensed motion and looked up just as her mother whirled around and jammed a long-bladed butcher knife into the belly of a man. “I knew I was being followed,” was her only comment. Her expression hard, she’d dragged him out to the street and left him there. People died in the street all the time then, from the cold, from violence. Anna had tried to talk to her about what happened, but Ines had only smiled and shrugged. Nevertheless, Anna understood: Without her mother, she wouldn’t have survived.
Now it was her turn. She wasn’t going to let her mother die. “Don’t try to play that game with me, Hari. There’s nothing ‘precarious’ about my situation. If you tell anyone about me you’ll get the exact opposite of what you want—I’ll be arrested, probably go to prison, and you’ll lose your source for the turbofan engine and whatever other state-of-the-art technologies Siemens develops.”
For an instant she thought she saw concern, perhaps even fear, in his eyes. Encouraged, she gave her head a firm shake. “Tell your Stasi bosses they need to make an exception for my mother.”
He looked away. “You’ll have our answer shortly, Anna.”
“Good. I think we’re done here.” She turned on her heel and walked away.
The call came at 4 p.m. the next day.
Anna was at her desk at work, double-checking equations with her slide rule, when Fraulein Smits knocked on her door, cracked it open, and peered around it, her eyes wide with fear.
“The polizei are on the phone.” She whispered “police” as if she could hear jackboots on pavement. She had crossed over from East Berlin a year earlier, escaping to her relatives only a week before the Berlin Wall went up.
“Danke.” Anna gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll handle it.”
Fraulein Smits nodded and vanished, closing the door softly.
Puzzled, Anna reached for the telephone.
“Fraulein Doktor Klaas?” The man’s voice was strong.
“Yes, and you are?”
“Police Lieutenant Dominique Harbeck. I’m afraid your mother’s had an accident.”
Anna went rigid. “She’s all right, isn’t she? Did you take her to the hospital?”
“One of your neighbors said she had cancer. Is that right?”
“Yes, but we were getting her treatment. She was worried about how much it would cost, but I was managing it.” Her heart seemed to stop. “You said had—”
“Fraulein Doktor, you should come home. Your mother fell off your balcony. I’m afraid she didn’t survive.”
Tears streaming down her face, Anna ran the eight blocks from work. A police car and ambulance were parked in front of their apartment building. The neighbors stood in clumps, watching as policemen detoured the traffic. Wiping her eyes, Anna gazed up the six stories to the balcony where she had shared so many happy meals with her mother. Before she could stop it, she saw in her mind’s eye her mother plummeting down through the air, helpless, knowing she was going to die. Anna wanted to scream, to shake her fists at the heavens, to hold her mother tight in her arms.
“Fraulein Doktor,” a man called.
She turned.
A handsome man in a sleek black suit was walking toward her. “I’m Lieutenant Harbeck. I’m the one who called you.”
“Where’s my mother?”
“This way.” He led her to the ambulance, opened the doors, and pulled a sheet back from the covered figure lying on a gurney.
“Is this Ines Klaas?” he said. “Sorry, but we have to make it official.”
Her throat thick, Anna forced herself to look. Her mother’s strong-featured face was smooth, waxen, her dark eyes closed. Her long gray hair was matted with blood.
“Yes, it’s her.” Anna reached for her mother’s hand. It was still warm. For an instant, she could almost believe Ines was alive. She burst into tears.
“Come, Fraulein Doktor.” He handed her a large white handkerchief and led her away.
Losing her mother was like losing herself. In her mind she could see her mother laughing, see her stab the man who wanted to steal their food, see her dance in the years afterward as Anna got her degrees and they slowly reached a comfortable standard of living in their pretty apartment overlooking the city.
“The super let us into your apartment,” the lieutenant told her. “Forgive us, but we had to look for a note. We didn’t find one. If you do, please contact us. We’ll need to add what it says to our records.”
She nodded.
“Your mother was well liked,” the lieutenant went on sympathetically. “Had she been talking about killing herself?”
“No. She was cheerful. She was… as much as anyone can be under the circumstances… herself. She never discussed her illness.”