“Anything I can do to help?”
“The less you know, the better off you are. Give me some time in private.”
“You need anything?”
“A flat surface, your brightest lamp and a magnifying glass, if you have one.”
“I’ve got one with my stamp collection. I’d offer you my desk, but I haven’t seen the surface in recent memory. Kitchen table okay? I’ll see what else I can find.”
Jürgen delivered a desk lamp and a scratched magnifying glass, then excused himself. She ripped into the package. It had seemed excessive when she assembled it, but now as she sat in East Berlin without her passport, it seemed minimaclass="underline" a dog-eared French paperback, a plastic bag from Galeries Lafayette, an oversized European wallet, three train tickets, a blank East German transit visa and a cardboard box. She opened the wallet and counted the banknotes-five hundred dollars, fifteen hundred marks and three thousand francs. She hoped it would be enough.
She removed her new passport, République Française. Hakan had done a flawless job replacing Marie-Pièrre Charbonnier’s picture with hers. Madame Charbonnier was a few years older, but, given her recent experiences, she was certain she could pass.
The Berlin border guards would be on alert for her and several knew her by sight. It seemed ridiculous to take a roundabout route to get to the other side of town, but this was Berlin and the two parts of the city were worlds apart. She fanned out the Reichsbahn tickets purchased in the West: Hamburg, Praha and Warszawa. The frontier to West Germany was almost as tight as to West Berlin, and they would expect her to head West, so the Hanseatic city was out.
Security between Eastern Bloc countries was high, but not as severe as between East and West. She had considered Prague, then making her way to West Germany, but the Czechs were more Prussian than the East Germans and might cause trouble for her on their side.
On the Polish-German frontier, the focus was on political and economic smuggling, the emphasis shifting with the direction of the border traffic. Guards scrutinized arrivals from the East for any Solidarity or glasnost contaminants. Eastbound travelers to Poland were searched for East German consumer goods; chronic shortages of basic necessities in Poland ensured a thriving black market between the two countries. No one would expect her to head farther east to flee to the West. She selected the one-way ticket to Warsaw and shoved the rest aside for disposal.
The ticket, passport and money were useless without the appropriate East German visa and corresponding entry stamp. Hakan had already taken care of the Polish document-a business visa valid for the next three months. Faith wished he could have done the same with the East German one, but GDR transit visas were only issued on the day they were valid and they were only good for the expected length of the journey. The East Germans had high standards.
Hakan had assembled everything she needed to issue herself a visa into a cigar box. She prayed that the years of watching his meticulous work were enough. If only she had paid more attention to his tedious instructions.
She calculated her fictitious time of entry. The evening train would leave Bahnhof Zoo in West Berlin at 9:45 and in about ten minutes it would enter a secured area of the Friedrichstrasse station, where border guards processed the transit visas for travelers to Poland and beyond. Her entry time into the GDR would be twenty-two hundred hours-two hours away. She picked up the rubber stamp and studied it, admiring Hakan’s carving skill. The state seal of the GDR was in the upper left corner, an electric-train icon in the other. Faith needed to insert the date and hour into the middle of the rectangular stamp. She opened the box, unfolded a tissue paper packet marked TIME, and squinted to make out the rubber numbers he had sculpted for her.
The rubber-cement vial had glued itself shut. On the way to the sink she managed to twist it open. She scraped a toothpick against the brush to collect a small drop and dabbed it into the middle of the stamp. She turned the toothpick around and removed the excess. Pain zinged through her rib cage and she jumped. Holding her breath, she picked up the tiny number, flipped it backwards, and teased it into place. As she had seen Hakan do countless times, she held the stamp at eye level and checked the alignment. She shook each bottle of ink and twisted off the caps. She dipped a toothpick into the blue ink, smeared it on the lower third of the stamp and then repeated the process with red on the upper portion. She checked her fingers for splatters and stamped the passport, then the visa form.
With a flick of the razor blade, she scraped away the face of the rubber stamp, then dumped the shavings and the extra numbers into an ashtray. The flame of Jürgen’s lighter melted the evidence. Faith rolled it between her palms into a ball. She wished she could show it to Hakan, even though she knew her handiwork wouldn’t pass the master’s inspection. Fortunately he wasn’t a border guard working at a lonely outpost on the graveyard shift. She’d done a damn good job, under the circumstances.
The train rumbled into the East Berlin Hauptbahnhof just as Faith dashed up the concrete stairs as fast as she could, given her shooting pain. The wide green Soviet cars rolled by her, each displaying the state seal of the USSR. Destination signs hung on each one: PARIS, BERLIN, WARSZAWA, MOSKVA. Next came the Polish cars, but she waited for the more comfortable and cleaner Reichsbahn wagons. She held a second-class ticket, but would bribe her way into a first-class sleeper once in Poland. She climbed onto the train, favoring her right side, and searched for a seat.
The conductor blew his whistle and the train lurched forward. She steadied herself with the rail as she walked along. She passed by a cabin filled with Arab students. The odds were good they would be closely scrutinized and she didn’t want to risk any guilt by association. Two Polish women sat in the next cabin along with a young man reading a French travel guide to Krakow. A conversation in her weathered French was something to be avoided, so she went on until she found what she was looking for. In the next compartment a couple sat together on the side facing the direction of travel. From their clothes, hairstyles and demeanor, she knew she’d found what she was waiting for: a staid East German couple probably off to visit relatives who got stuck in Poland when the German border was shoved west after the war. She went inside and settled into the window seat, facing west as the train carried her deeper into the East.
A little before midnight, the train rolled into Frankfurt an der Oder-the other Frankfurt. Faith placed the French paperback on her lap. She took her passport from the plastic bag and crumpled the bag on the seat next to her with the French logo visible. She was Marie-Pièrre Charbonnier, a French national, on her way to see Warsaw. Nurturing her anger at the fictitious thieves who stole her purse and luggage in West Berlin, she sank further into character.
“Passport control.” A guard slid the door open. A metal case hung around his neck by a wide leather strap. A small shelf folded down from it like the display case of a 1950s cigarette girl.
“Passports, please.”
Faith handed him her documents.
He glanced at her picture and flipped through the pages until he found her handiwork. The officer pulled out his stamp, aligned it with the edge and pressed it against the passport. He unfolded the visa, stamped it and filed it in his case.
“Please.” He held the passport out to Faith.
“Merci.” She smiled but didn’t exhale. She wasn’t in Poland yet.
A second official entered the cabin. “Customs control. Your customs declaration, please.”
Merde.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EMBASSY OF THE USSR, DEMOCRATIC BERLIN