Cold War

Christian stared at the door in front of him with a sinking heart and an unpleasant weight in his stomach. Glued to the wood at eye level was a large SED sticker showing two hands clasping each other. Other SED posters were tacked above and below the sticker. “Fatherland! Peace! And Socialism!” one shouted. “Unity for the Working People of the World!” another promised. “Profit to the People, not the Plutocrats!” “Socialism is Peace and Progress.” Christian was especially struck by a dark poster showing a night landscape with four-engine bombers flying through the sky and a large, muscular hand with curled fingers reaching upwards. The text read: “Drag the Terror-Fliers from the sky!”

That was the last straw. “There is no point in knocking!” Christian stopped Sperl as the black marketeer reached out his hand. Because Voigt had been socialist for as long as Christian had known him, he didn’t doubt this was the man he was looking for. Yet anyone who could support the Soviets and buy their propaganda wholesale was not going to want any part in assisting the Airlift. He turned to go back down the stairs and get some fresh air.

“Don’t be so hasty,” Sperl advised catching his arm.

“I used to like and respect Voigt. I don’t want to see him parroting this Russian shit.”

“You don’t know what hides behind the symbols and the slogans,” Sperl warned. “Be honest, you think I’m a Nazi fanatic, don’t you?”

Christian considered Sperl a moment and then replied, “Let’s just say that U-boat captains had a reputation for loyalty to the Nazi regime, and I have reservations about U-boat warfare.”

“Why?”

“Because it targeted unarmed merchantmen and used stealth and deception to attack unseen.”

“The merchantmen may have been unarmed, but the escorts certainly weren’t. Not to mention Coastal Command’s bombers could carry both torpedoes and depth charges. As for tactics, didn’t you prefer to attack out of the sun, unseen, on unsuspecting targets?”

“Touché,” Christian conceded.

“Now, regarding my politics…” Sperl shrugged. “While it’s true I was an enthusiastic Hitler Youth leader at the age of 16, I grew up. I certainly didn’t shoot myself when I heard Hitler had blown his brains out. Ask the others. I would have thrown a party — if we’d had anything left to party with. The Nazis were a bunch of corrupt thugs, and I know it as well as you do. People are disgusting animals, and politicians are the worst of the species. Now, we’ve come all this way, let’s find out if this Voigt is the man you’re looking for or not.” Sperl rapped hard on the door with his knuckles.

A voice from far away called, “Who’s there?”

Sperl just turned to Christian and waited for him to answer.

Christian raised his voice and announced, “Feldburg. Christian Freiherr von Feldburg.”

Something seemed to bang, and then rapid footsteps approached the door. It was yanked open, and an aged young man stood before them. His hair was reddish brown and thinning at the crown. His face was deeply lined, his eyes darkly circled. He was dressed much as they were, in old, workers’ clothes. Frowning, he stared at Christian, shifted his head this way and that as if trying to see him better before he uttered, “Herr Major? Is it really you? Where did you come from? What are you doing here?” His eyes ran over Christian’s clothes, baffled.

“I wanted to — see how you were doing. Herr Meyer here,” Christian indicated Sperl, “said he had met you a couple of years ago.”

Voigt frowned at Meyer as if he didn’t remember him — or maybe didn’t want to remember him. “Go down to the Manifesto, it’s on the right when you come out onto the Schoenhauser. I’ll join you there in fifteen minutes.” Then he slammed the door in their faces.

“Well, that was friendly,” Sperl commented sarcastically.

Christian nodded, confused. It was Axel, but the smirk, the self-assurance, and the cheekiness were all gone. In their place was something grim and embittered. The Nazis had never broken Voigt, but… His eyes scanned the SED posters again. Sperl was right. If Voigt believed all these slogans, he would have felt triumphant and excited by the impending expulsion of the Western Allies.

“Shall we go down to the kneipe?” Sperl asked.

“Why not? We’ve come this far.”

The tavern was already crowded. Customers were standing around the bar and sitting squashed together on small, straight-backed wooden chairs that stood haphazardly around the black-painted tables. The smell of beer, broth, and heavy tobacco smoke dominated the air. The soup smell was not appetising, but then no food in Berlin public houses was tasty these days. The men were smoking roll-your-own cigarettes with terrible quality tobacco. Christian and Sperl found a table in a corner and sat with their backs to the wall, the kneipe spread out before them.

Christian tried to hear what the other customers were talking about. Prices seemed to be the main topic of conversation. In low murmurs, men exchanged black market prices and muttered about an exchange rate of 8 or 9 east-marks to one D-Mark. Someone claimed the D-mark was replacing cigarettes as the preferred method of payment. Someone else complained, “If they aren’t sending anything to the Western Sectors any more, why isn’t there more for us?”

The speaker was hushed up by his companions, who nervously looked over their shoulders. When one of them met Christian’s eyes, he whispered something in his friend’s ear, and abruptly they downed their beers, clunked the glasses on the table, and left.

At last Christian caught sight of Voigt in the door, but as he started to squeeze his way past the men at the bar, he was stopped by a young man with a hawkish face. “You’ll be at the rally, won’t you, comrade?”

“Of course, comrade!” Voigt answered, fingering his hat more submissively than he had ever saluted an officer.

“I’ll be watching for you!” the man replied in a menacing tone. Then with an artificial smile, he clapped Voigt on the back and turned to go. Voigt continued to where Sperl and Christian were sitting and sat with his back to the rest of the room. He opened the conversation with a nervous, “Didn’t you want anything to eat or drink?”

“We wouldn’t mind a beer,” Sperl answered, slapping a couple of east marks on the table to pay for all three of them. Voigt took the money and went over to the bar. Christian eyed Sperl questioningly. “Men talk easier over alcohol,” Sperl explained.

Voigt returned with three murky-brown, watery beers with little foam. He set them on the table and sat down again. Looking earnestly at Christian he professed, “I thought you were dead, Herr Major.”

“Oh. You mean no one at the squadron heard about my survival?” Christian was surprised.

Voigt shook his head. “What happened?”

“Nothing miraculous. I was badly shot up by an American P-47 and took some shrapnel to the back of my head. The next thing I knew I was aboard a hospital ship in mid-Atlantic with two broken legs. The alarm was going off as we zig-zagged frantically to avoid being sunk by a U-boat.” He ended with a reproachful look at Sperl. That was the sanitised version, of course. In fact, after realizing he’d been badly shot up in the dogfight, he’d made the decision to crash-land at an American field. He’d consciously chosen imprisonment over fighting another day for Hitler and his thugs.

Sperl, meanwhile, was laughing. “So that’s why you developed such a strong dislike for our cute little boats. I note, however, the U-boat didn’t sink the hospital ship you were on.”

“No, I told the Americans to turn the damn sirens off because no officer of the Kriegsmarine would sink a ship with large red-crosses on it — only to learn that some U-Boat captain had done exactly that the week before. It was very embarrassing.”

Voigt was looking from one to the other confused.

“Herr Meyer has a past — as do we all,” Christian explained, adding, “But I came to talk to you about the future.”

“Future? What’s that?” Voigt snapped back with withering bitterness.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow — and the day after,” Christian answered.

Voigt leaned so close to Christian that he could not really be heard; his words seemed only to form in Christian’s head from lip reading. “Eating SED shit for breakfast, lunch and dinner so I can get the morphine my mother needs.”

“What happened to your mother?” Christian asked.

“She was caught under a beam when the ceiling collapsed at the armaments factory where she had been conscripted. It broke her back and hips. She’s crippled and in constant pain — unless I can get her morphine. Do you know what morphine costs?”

Christian shook his head slowly. “Not a clue.”

“Well,” Voigt answered in a low, even voice like molten lava, “enough morphine to keep my mother pain-free for a week, costs more than a man like me, working in a Peoples’ Own Factory producing gearboxes, can earn in a month. Which means my mother can have one week of relief and then lie in agony for the next three while I beg for my dinner — or I can earn a little extra by showing up at SED rallies, helping to trash voting booths, beating up students that say the wrong thing, making sure scientists and engineers are dragged from their beds at night to be shipped to the Worker’s Paradise or—” with a glance at Sperl he added “digging around in forgotten mass graves for baubles that appeal to our American friends.”

Both Christian and Sperl responded with silence. The pain, the bitterness and the helplessness burned like acid. Christian drew a deep breath. “In that case, my friends would not be able to pay you enough to meet your needs, either.”

“What friends? What are you talking about?” Voigt demanded angrily.

Christian drew a deep breath, “My cousin Charlotte is working for a British air ambulance company that plans to base an ambulance in Berlin — at Gatow to be precise — and they want to hire German aircraft mechanics as ground crew. I thought you might like that work, but I understand that —”

Voigt grabbed his arm. “Did you say an air ambulance? You mean an aircraft that flies patients to hospitals?”

“Yes.”

“Where does it fly?”

“Wherever the best medical treatment can be provided for the patients on board — Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Munich.”

“To the West?”

“It’s a British company.”

“It must cost a fortune! Who can afford to pay for an aircraft to fly them to a hospital hundreds of miles away?” Voigt spat out furiously. “The Ivans are right about the capitalists only taking care of their own!” He had raised his voice for the first time, and Sperl stirred uneasily, watching the reaction of those around them.

Christian met Voigt’s eyes and shook his head, “Wrong. The Amis are paying for it.”

“What?”

“The American taxpayers will pay for the flights.”

“Why would they do that?” Voigt scoffed.

Christian shrugged, “For the same reason they are flying food, coal, and clothing into Berlin for the Berliners?”

“Are they really?” Voigt scoffed.

“Come with me to Tempelhof and see for yourself.”

It was Voigt’s turn to look over his shoulder nervously. Then he leaned closer to Christian again. “But how do they decide who to fly out? Who gets to go to a hospital in the West? “

“As I understand it, the hospitals decide.”

“Which hospitals? The hospitals in the West?”

“The hospitals in Berlin that request the air ambulance service,” Christian explained.

Voigt jumped to his feet and kicked his chair against the table furiously. “The West. Always the f***ing West. And no doubt you need real money—”

“Shut up!” Sperl jumped to his feet and yanked Voigt back down with one hand while gesturing calmingly to the rest of the occupants of the room with the other.

Voigt sat clutching his fists together as he glared at the table, not speaking. Christian and Sperl exchanged a glance over his head. Sperl jerked his head towards the door and Christian nodded.

“Voigt,” Christian declared in a calm voice, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I believe you have Herr Meyer’s address?”

Voigt nodded without looking at him. He was staring at his clenched fists beside the untouched beers.

“I live one flight up. If you want to discuss this again, just come see me.”

Voigt nodded without looking up.