‘I don’t think so,’ the sergeant replies. ‘England’s a whole lot more historic than the US.’
‘I was being ironic.’
He laughs. ‘We simple folk don’t do irony.’ Which seems to James pretty ironic in itself. They pass a further sign warning of the approaching border. Sergeant Falk glances round at his passengers. ‘You wanna see?’
‘What?’
‘The border. The goddam Iron Curtain. ’Cause I’m meant to have picked you up there, so we had better make an alibi, hadn’t we?’
The jeep decelerates and turns off the main road onto a farm track between fields of wheat. They bump over potholes, pass through a collection of farm buildings and come out onto the side of a shallow valley. A tractor is at work, dragging a plough through the heavy loam of the nearest field. As the machine turns at the end of the furrow, the driver catches sight of the stationary jeep and raises his hand in some kind of salute. Falk gives a jaunty wave in return.
‘That’s it, folks. The border between East and West.’
‘Where?’
‘Stream at the bottom of the valley.’ A concrete road runs parallel with the stream on their side of the valley; the far side is forest, implacable ranks of black pines stretching away in both directions.
‘Is that all?’
Sergeant Falk smiles. He’s done this before. Same view, same laconic remarks. ‘Pretty regular we get folks straying across the border. Step over the stream and you’re in the CSSR. Sometimes even our own patrols. But you can’t go far because it ain’t quite that simple.’ He turns the jeep onto the concrete road and drives south to where there is a break in the trees on the far side, a gap about a hundred yards wide where you can see through the forest into the world beyond, into the East.
‘There’s also that.’
Drawn across the far end of the break is the Curtain. More wire than iron, it cuts across the space about five hundred yards away, a barrier of fencing apparently as fragile and translucent as gauze. Beyond the fence is a watchtower, a spider creature supported on slender legs with the sky glinting on its several eyes. It might just have paused in its progress across the countryside in order to examine the jeep and its three passengers.
The engine of the jeep ticks as it cools. The tractor groans in the background, arguing with the heavy loam, while birds sing, as they will whatever the geopolitical circumstances. Far away the helicopter flies higher than most birds. Sergeant Chester reaches below the dashboard of the jeep, takes up a pair of binoculars and hands them to James. ‘Have a look. The Reds usually build the fences about a mile back from the actual border, but just here it comes closer. Something to do with the lie of the land, I guess. So we bring visitors here to have a look-see.’
James puts the binoculars to his eyes. The spider’s body leaps towards him as though he’s examining it under a microscope. The beast is peopled, two figures moving vaguely behind the windows, watching him watching them. He pans down the creature’s stick legs to the ground. In front of it there are two parallel lines of fencing, flattened together by foreshortening. He can pick out barbed wire coiled along the tops of both lines and guess at about fifty yards of cleared soil between the two. Beyond the watchtower is a parallel road to match the one that they are on.
Wordlessly, he hands the binoculars to Ellie.
‘The question is,’ Chester muses, ‘what’s it for? If it’s to keep us out then it sure ain’t gonna work. A Patton tank’d go through that like a tractor through a picket fence. They know that and we know that. So what’s it for?’ He glances round at his audience as though looking for an answer. ‘Easy, really. It’s to keep their people in. If you’ll excuse ma French, lady, you’re looking into the biggest fucking prison camp the world has ever seen.’
There’s a significant pause before Ellie summons an answer. ‘It’s not as simple as that. Look at what’s happening in Czechoslovakia at this very moment. There’s freedom. They’ve abandoned censorship. They’re allowing political meetings. And foreign travel.’
The soldier looks doubtful. ‘When you’re in the military you see the world through military eyes, ma’am. All I see is the Russkis just waitin’ on the borders to pay a fraternal visit to their Czechoslovakian brothers.’ He puts the jeep in gear and they move slowly along the track, away from the implacable gaze of the watchtower. ‘And when that happens, it’s game over.’
They reach the main road. Falk waits for a tourist coach to pass and then pulls out and turns left to follow the coach towards the border. The road dips down towards the bottom of the valley, but just before the stream there’s the German customs post. It has the look of a railway station about it, with most of the trains delayed or cancelled. There are barriers striped like barbers’ poles and German police standing around doing not very much. A concrete building flies the black, red and gold of the Federal Republic, while a signpost holds up a black eagle like a medieval shield on the end of a lance. In an adjacent car park are half a dozen cars and three lorries. Over to the right another building flies the stars and stripes and the union jack as well as the German flag. Beyond the border post the road dips down to the bottom of the valley, crosses a narrow bridge, then climbs up through the trees and disappears into the East.
‘There we are,’ the sergeant says. ‘I don’t go any further than here. Once you’re over the border Czechoslovak border control is about one K further up the road. So they tell me.’
James and Ellie climb out of the jeep. ‘You kids look after yourselves,’ the sergeant says, ‘and give my regards to Mr Dooby Check if you see him.’ He turns the jeep round, waves jauntily to the German border guards and drives off.
James and Ellie contemplate the possibilities. As they watch, a single car appears on the Czechoslovak side and crosses the bridge towards the West German barriers. A border guard examines the driver’s documents while his colleague walks round the car, inspecting it with scant respect.
‘A Škoda,’ James says.
‘What’s a Škoda?’
‘The car is. How can you tell a Škoda from a Jehovah’s Witness?’
‘No idea, but you’re going to tell me.’
‘You can close the door on a Jehovah’s Witness.’
Gratifyingly, she laughs. They watch the border guard complete his inspection and allow the car to clatter its way past them into the West. Then they sling their rucksacks onto their shoulders and walk down the slope to the barrier.
The German border guard is indifferent, taking their passports with barely a glance at the owners, flicking through the documents like a cardsharp before handing them back as though they are tainted. ‘You are to Czechoslovakia going? They will not let you pass – you have no visas.’
They haven’t thought of visas.
‘Don’t they issue them at the border?’
‘Who knows? At the moment anything is possible.’ He points up the hill on the other side. ‘Seven hundred metres, Czechoslovak control. Stay on the road or…’ He makes a gesture, a pistol firing.
‘This is stupid,’ James protests to Ellie. ‘You heard. We need visas. We haven’t got them so we’ll not be able to get in. We should turn round. There’s no point.’
‘Of course there’s a point. We’ll blag our way in. A bit of a smile, a bit of bullshit. It’ll be all right.’
The barrier – a barber’s pole, a jousting lance – rises for them and they walk down the slope towards the bridge, Ellie first, James half a pace behind. Notices are everywhere – warnings, exhortations, threats.