The Girl Behind the Wall Read online

  THE GIRL BEHIND THE WALL

  Mandy Robotham

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Copyright © Mandy Robotham 2021

  Cover design © Stephen Mulcahey/ HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Cover photographs © Ildiko Neer/ Arcangel Images (figure), David Levenson/ Alamy Stock Photo (Brandenburg Gate), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

  Mandy Robotham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008364533

  Ebook Edition © July 2021 ISBN: 9780008364526

  Version: 2021-05-13

  Dedication

  To those that lived with, endured, survived and lost their lives alongside the Berlin Wall.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s note

  Map

  Epigraph

  Prologue: The Unveiling

  Part One

  1: Separation

  2: Captured

  3: Clipping the Wings

  4: Waking up to Reality

  5: Loss

  6: Relapse

  7: The Scar

  8: Surfacing

  9: A New Dawn on the Divide

  10: Recovery

  11: Beads of Hope

  12: Trapped

  13: The Wall Closes In

  14: Hope and Kindness

  15: An American Comes to Town

  16: A New Existence

  17: Happy Birthday to Me

  18: ‘Happy Birthday to You’

  19: In Between

  Part Two

  20: The President Comes to Town

  21: The Noise of Freedom

  22: A Chip in the Concrete

  23: A Glitch

  24: Light at the End of the Tunnel

  25: Looking to the East

  26: Together

  27: Divided Again

  28: Ghosting Back

  29: The Knowing

  30: Admissions

  31: A Welcome Distraction

  32: Twins Entwined

  33: Differences

  34: The Real Thing

  35: The History Man

  36: Another Ghost

  37: Staying Power

  38: Distractions

  39: Into the Cleft

  40: The Swap

  41: Being Karin

  42: Being Jutta

  43: A Close Encounter

  44: Return to Life

  45: Shadows of a Changeling

  46: Champagne and Pleasure

  Part Three

  47: Red-Handed

  48: A Father’s Concern

  49: A One-Way Street

  50: A Journey to Consider

  51: La Dolce Vita

  52: The Boy Vopo

  53: The Messenger

  54: Sacrifice

  55: Needing and Loving

  56: The Blacklist

  57: Life of a Messenger

  58: A Confession

  59: The Right Thing

  60: Happy and Free

  61: Into the East

  62: Much Too Close

  63: The Door Slams Shut

  64: The Last Ghost

  65: Stasiland

  66: Thoughts

  67: Breaking

  Part Four

  68: The Divide in Decline

  69: Scaling the Divide

  70: Together

  Epilogue: After – A United Germany

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  About the Publisher

  Author’s note

  Walls are part and parcel of our history, from the ancient Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s Wall to the newest cordon in Donald Trump’s controversial Mexican barricade. Some are purely protective, though almost all are divisive in some way – and more than just physically. Though it was never the biggest, longest or the most grandiose of these partitions, the Berlin Wall captured the world’s imagination – and the contempt of the West – for what it represented in the chilly war between political ideas. Rough, jagged and ugly, it became a symbol against democracy in the twenty-eight years that it stood.

  I remember distinctly being in a motorway service station on a freezing night in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, watching those television scenes of people clambering to the top and hacking at the graffitied concrete, their joy radiating from every feature. I’d grown up with the Wall as part of Europe’s fabric, with the Olympic Games and the World Cup always having two distinct German teams, and yet when the barriers fell, it seemed the most natural thing in the world; everyone in that service station was silent and smiling as we watched it crumble.

  The dismantling was a result of months of protest and political negotiations, and its end seemed inevitable. Yet the erection of the Wall, once I looked into it, came as a shock to me – the secrecy and duplicity; the deceit of an entire nation, both east and west, and the speed with which it went up overnight. I began to wonder at the impact on families, the potential of having your entire life severed, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time: visiting a friend, for instance, and staying over because you missed the last tram, or being out of town on a weekend and returning to find yourself on the wrong side. It led me then to ponder: what was the wrong side? Who were the real prisoners? And the biggest question: how do you simply slice an entire city in two, physically and emotionally?

  These questions form the basis of The Girl Behind the Wall, and much like my previous works on World War Two, I tried to imagine how those living under such oppressive skies functioned day to day – went to work, fed their children, lived life and found happiness – when such an unjust spectre sought to regulate every aspect of it. The current unprecedented shadow of a pandemic has given us all a taste of restraint, but it is only an inkling in comparison: imagine that control multiplied ten-fold, with troops and guns and the tangible prospect of losing a life should you push at the boundary. Karin and Jutta are fictional examples of those real families forcefully segregated for years, by an edifice that sought not only to divide, but to punish those who opposed its strength. Inert as it was, the Wall killed many.

  Researching this book was an eye-opener, but also a joy, thanks to the concise histories on offer – Frederick Taylor’s The Berlin Wall and Christopher Hilton’s The Wall among them – alongside the excellent documentaries and films of history taking place; I spent many an hour peering at black and white films of the era and gathering clues. A huge credit goes to the city of Berlin for preserving not only parts of that painful history, bu
t the museums detailing every aspect of life under the Wall: the quirky GDR museum and its mock-ups of East German living, the Stasi Museum – in which everything seemingly is brown – and the Hohenschönhausen prison, where I stood in the cells of former prisoners and tried hard to imagine the helplessness of being in the Stasi’s clutches.

  The numbers that are quoted tell a story, too: the Wall spanned more than 43 kilometres through Berlin, and almost 113 kilometres around the city outskirts, using over 68 kilometres of wire mesh as the initial barrier, with almost 114 kilometres of alarmed fencing, 186 watchtowers and 484 guard dogs, as quoted in Hans-Hermann Hertle’s The Berlin Wall Story. It was a huge engineering undertaking.

  The human cost, though, was markedly higher. West German police state there were at least 5,075 successful escapes through the Wall and the death strip, including 574 desertions of East German military and the police. They included 1,709 cases where border guards used firearms, and at least 119 injured escapees. There were 37 bomb attacks, and, the most chilling statistic, 138 people died on the Berlin Wall or as a direct result of trying to escape. The youngest was little over a year and the oldest aged eighty, although most were young people in their twenties. An unknown number died as a result of worry or of the desperate impact on their lives and that of their families. Everyone lost something.

  I hope I have done justice to a city that has survived so much in the twentieth century to become the Berlin of today: a vibrant city of culture and art with an emphasis on freedom. More than anything, a visit to Germany’s capital proves that segregation is pointless, as in any country across the world; people are just people, and they absolutely do not want to be pigeonholed, either metaphorically or with the aid of a dirty great divide.

  The Wall fell and the people triumphed for a reason.

  Map

  Epigraph

  ‘No one has the intention of building a wall.’

  Walter Ulbricht, leader, German Democratic Republic, East Berlin, 15 June 1961

  ‘Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.’

  John F. Kennedy, United States president, West Berlin, 26 June 1963

  PROLOGUE

  The Unveiling

  13th August 1961, West Berlin

  Looking on at the scene of quiet chaos in front of him, his mind goes oddly to the mapmakers – colleagues in his own government offices – who will need to redraw their lines dramatically after this day. For now, they remain blissfully unaware, safely tucked up in their beds. But on waking, Hans Fleisch knows they will be called on to sharpen their darkest pencils and bring out the black, permanent markers to take account of the phenomenon occurring before his very eyes, having been plucked out of his bed at a moment’s notice to be an official ‘observer’ on the West side. He palms at his face, eager to rub fatigue and disbelief away. Hoping, but not expecting, that this nightmare might just disappear.

  Those junior government workers like himself have sensed rumblings for months now, alongside the Allies – the British, French and Americans who control the Western half of Berlin. They’ve seen evidence of troop movements and diplomatic scraps over borders controls, and it was obvious the East German government and their Soviet mentors were up to something. Except nobody knew what – least of all the East German people. Yet, even the best of fortune-tellers could not have predicted this.

  Later, he learns of the East’s furtive preparations: by eight p.m. on Saturday 12th – a cool evening in Berlin by summer standards – a few select officials had been apprised of Europe’s best-kept secret. Sealed orders for ‘Operation Rose’ were opened; only senior officers from the East German police, border patrols and army are given details, with thousands of border guards, police and Factory Fighting Groups made to stand by for an unknown task. They might well have muttered among themselves, standing and smoking in groups: ‘On standby for what?’ Even those on the front line couldn’t envisage the scale of what was about to happen.

  At midnight, the calendar rolled into another day – in mid-August, in a decade that already promises great change – though this particular sunrise is one that historians will later mark in red. Soon after, the order to ‘march’ was given by a senior politician in the East German government. By one a.m., Operation Rose was underway. And now, as Berlin sleeps, Hans Fleisch looks on in horror at his own city, while the world faces a fresh, bleak dawn in the Cold War. And a new life, as all Germans are then forced to live it.

  PART ONE

  1

  Separation

  13th August 1961, West Berlin

  The pushing and pulling invades Jutta’s dream, like a poker into hot fire, as she stirs from under a cloak of sleep.

  ‘Jutta, Jutta!’ A hushed urgency from Hugo as her eyes adjust to the velvet black of her bedroom. His hands nudge at her, but her cousin remains a ghostly outline in the dark.

  ‘What’s wrong? Is it Karin? Is she worse?’ Jutta’s first thoughts go to disaster, and possibly death, such is the anxiety that has been a constant in her shifting nightmare – thoughts of Karin swimming in dreams. Nothing but her.

  ‘No, it’s not Karin – at least there’s no word.’ Hugo’s whispers weave through the air, his desperation rousing her.

  ‘What’s wrong then?’ She sits up, rubbing irritant sleep from her lids.

  ‘There’s something happening in the streets. I’m going to investigate. Come with me?’

  It’s barely a question, or a choice. For whatever reason, Hugo hopes she will come. On one or two occasions previously, Jutta has accompanied him on a story for the Berlin radio station where he’s a junior reporter, one up from a trainee and the teaboy. The last was a skirmish six months before, near the border on Invalidenstrasse, where kids on the West side were lobbing missiles at the East German guards and scurrying for shelter as if racing back to retie their mother’s apron strings. The brief episode was shut down swiftly by police on East and West sides, neither enjoying a full-scale conflict over pieces of rubble, and Jutta hadn’t particularly relished the experience.

  ‘Do I have to?’ she says lazily.

  ‘I think you’ll want to. The station says this is big. They think there’s a wall going up.’

  Despite the heat of past weeks, West Berlin at three a.m. is chilly; Jutta shivers under her light jacket, her arms clinging to Hugo’s waist as his small, two-stroke motorcycle drones through the darkened streets, east towards the tenuous border line that divides their city, her hastily tied hair flying like a black pennant behind them. The closer Hugo weaves towards the main thoroughfares, the more people they see; not hordes but more than would normally be returning home from the club land of Kurfürstendamm on a Saturday night in August, especially as the city has been partially emptied by Berliners headed for their rural summer houses for the weekend. Still, the pair can see no discord, not yet, nor hear any protest. So far, only bodies trickling towards their own destination of the Brandenburg Gate.

  When they arrive, there are people collected at the monument – the vast, stone symbol of Berlin’s hard-fought freedom. Around a hundred or so, Jutta guesses, though it’s eerily quiet. All, without exception, are looking in one direction: towards the Gate. Except it is no longer a gate, because gates generally open and shut. This one is now firmly closed, barricaded by a lengthy coil of barbed wire on the Western side, and by the close-knit line of East German People’s Police – Vopos – on the East. In the eerie blue glare of portable searchlights, Jutta squints at the string of military men, mixed with oddly clad Factory Fighter soldiers in their peaked caps, whose shambolic dress makes it seem as if they’ve been plucked from their beds at only a minute’s notice – though she notes they’ve had time enough to supply each with a short, stubby machine gun.

  Hugo parks the bike and leaves Jutta’s side; he’s on a serious mission now for the radio station, pulling out his recording equipment and hoisting it over his shoulder. Jutta moves as if in
a dream towards the Gate, eyeing the West German police, who are shuffling in their own makeshift line in front of the ugly wire – unsure whether they are meant to prevent people from crossing, or simply keeping the peace that might be broken. Because they’ve had no warning. No one has.

  Some sense of division is no stranger to Jutta and her fellow Berliners; since 1945, Germany’s capital has been split by a border junction between the Eastern Soviet side and the Western Allies. Except it’s been drawn in chalk almost, moving on occasion as the four powers busy themselves fighting over control of this service or that – transport, water, electricity. Meantime, Berliners simply step over the divide – albeit through the eighty or so checkpoints dotted across the city – and get on with their lives, some living in the West and working in the East and vice versa. Berlin as a city floats in the sea that is the new East German Republic – or GDR – but everyone mingles. They are Berliners, first and foremost.

  But this … Jutta has never seen such a tangible barrier through her city: one not designed to move out of the way, that’s metallic and sharp and would surely pluck and score at her skin if she dare breach it, a physical restraint that means she cannot cross – or else.

  As Jutta gapes, it scares her to her core. The idea that this obstacle will stretch the length and breadth of her home city is petrifying, because of what’s on the other side. Not the Soviet troops and tanks that hover in the hinterland of East Germany, ready to help out the newest of their communist allied states; nor even the universally feared East German Secret Police – the Stasi – who pervade every inch of Berlin, East and West, with eyes and ears everywhere. Not them. Karin. Her sister is on the other side, in East Germany, by pure misfortune. Not just a sister: her only sister, her only sibling. Her twin. Her entire other half.

  Panic surges through her: how long will this last? What if they won’t let Jutta in, or Karin out? What then?

  Jutta peers past the Gate and through the bodies, past the guards that are rolling out yet more spirals of wire and the armoured troop carriers flooding the area. Beyond them are people hovering, fellow Berliners now trapped on the other side. Jutta wonders if they look and feel equally bewildered. On her side, people sidle past as she stares, muttering to themselves and anyone within earshot: ‘What’s happening? They said there would be no wall. He said it plainly, didn’t he? No plans for a wall.’