Another Man's Freedom Fighter Read online

  Germany had effectively stopped turning coal into energy. The last pit in Germany’s Ruhr region had been closed just about a year earlier. The radio had recited statistics on the unusually heavy reliance of Poland on coal as an energy source and the politics involved. Burning coal satisfied over eighty percent of the Polish demand for heating and electricity. Over one hundred thousand jobs in the Upper Silesia region were directly in coal mining, indirectly the whole region depended on this outdated industry.

  “Ugh, I remember the smell when the wind came from Bytom,” Ofelia started a tale from her childhood in Silesia.

  Mark loved hearing those stories. While they were only three years apart in age, her childhood behind the Iron Curtain was in some ways similar and in other ways very different from Mark’s. Her parents had ventured in growing fresh vegetables while keeping their day jobs in a communist factory. Judging from her stories, her father had been spending an awful lot of time getting permits from local civil servants. But it seemed like he was good at it and only needed to drop a box of chocolates here and a bouquet of flowers there to get what he needed. The additional income had made them relatively comfortable, and yet they had decided to flee westward when the opportunity presented itself in 1989.

  Mark refilled his wife’s glass with wine and poured himself some sparkling water.

  ✽✽✽

  “Panowie!” President Berka addressed his senior cabinet members and military advisors, “we need to enter more decisive action with regard to the coal scandal. Today, in Katowice alone, nearly one hundred thousand protested our inability to protect their livelihoods. The protests can be expected to continue and maybe even expand beyond the coal belt.”

  “We had a short discussion on the matter in the cabinet today. I will let the ministers sum up actions and interpretations,” the rather pale Prime Minister Marcin Lipka said.

  Karol Miller, the minister for foreign affairs, continued after the prime minister’s introduction. “My staff are currently drafting a UN resolution against the proven use of slave labor in the illegal mines. We are working with our opposite numbers in Ukraine to make a joint submission to the Security Council early tomorrow.”

  The defense minister made a sullen face. “We can be sure, the Russians will veto it. We are well aware that this is a weak move, but it seems to be the only move we can make right now. Import restrictions on Russian products are already in place, and some of our EU partners are rallying for lifting sanctions instead of tightening them further.”

  Prime Minister Lipka shrugged apologetically. It seemed, the hastily called cabinet session did not lead to much.

  “That will not be enough. The past years have proven that sanctions and even asset freezes don’t impress the Russian leaders much. I have called you here to discuss much more decisive action.” The President turned to his generals. “Are we able to cooperate with the Ukrainian armed forces and take control of the rogue provinces in the East?”

  The two soldiers looked at each other uneasily. The senior general straightened his uniform and explained, “Panie Prezydencie, in the past years, since Russia’s new expansionism became apparent, we have made great progress in modernizing our military. Forming the Territorial Defense Force as a fully trained reserve has increased our total personnel to over 130,000. The Ukrainians have almost 180,000 under arms plus reserves. We have gained some experience working together in joint exercises, and some of our equipment is compatible. We can be reasonably sure to take an area the size of the Donbas region and defeat the estimated 45,000 troops with their limited heavy forces.”

  The general let the group digest the information briefly before he continued. “It is possible, but only if the Russian armed forces don’t join the action and supply routes out of Russia can be closed effectively.”

  “At which our Ukrainian allies have failed in the past,” General Bilinski added in support of his superior. “The Russians have over 500,000 troops in their Western and Southern Military Districts including the Black Sea Fleet and the Baltic Fleet discounting the units bound in the Caucasus,” the military intelligence officer cited the current NATO assessment of Russian capabilities. “We would expect the forces close to the border in the southern district to be first in the theater. There are two combined aviation divisions out of Krasnodar Oblast and Crimea as well as the recently reinstated 8th Guards Army in the Rostov Oblast. We believe the largest part of the 49th Army to be bound in the Caucasus. It is likely that Belarus will allow troops to transit from the Western District which brings the 1st Guards Tank Army based in Saint Petersburg and the 6th Army from Moscow into play. Let’s not forget that we have their 11th Army Corps directly in our own backyard at Kaliningrad only 300 kilometers north of our capital.”

  “And let’s not forget, we cannot be sure that the Russians aren’t going to use their nuclear arsenal in a conflict. I personally don’t wish to find out, especially not over a few hundred convicts working in a coal mine in another country,” a visibly worried General Pułaski ended the listing of facts and started his argument against a military solution of this crisis.

  He made it very clear that any Russian involvement would lead to a shooting war on Polish soil within days of the conflict’s beginning. Troops in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea would be able to cross into Poland at three different points on land and close shipping routes into Gdynia and Gdańsk harbors. He tried very hard to convince the civilians in the room that a combined Polish-Ukrainian force would not be able to win a war against Russia. Even a NATO force with German, British, and American land, sea, and air divisions would have to fight a prolonged conflict that would turn a large part of Poland into rubble. He hoped that his final argument of having to restart the economy at a nineteen-fifties level after such a war would make the president forget about his idea.

  The president did not forget about it.

  Five

  Ofelia put her fork down, emptied her glass, leaned back in the white leather chair, and let out a delighted moan. “Oh, baby, that was so good.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it. Did it earn me a dessert?” Mark smirked.

  Ofelia giggled. “You sure did earn it. But I’m exhausted,” his wife replied apologetically. “Today was totally crazy at the office. Plus, I went to get us a new set of phones after work. They’re in the corridor. And before you ask, yes, I did get them at a Turkish store I have never used before, and the numbers are non-consecutive.”

  “Great.” A short silence followed. “Honey, I know, you know the drill,” Mark said.

  “And I know how important it is. I’m just running out of stores pretty soon,” Ofelia sighed.

  Mark took the plates and cutlery to the kitchen. He returned to the table and put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, bent down slightly and kissed her on the head. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she whispered back with her eyes closed and holding his hands.

  Mark was happy to play Hausmann while business was slow. His wife surely appreciated the luxury of doing less of the chores around the house and being able to focus on her demanding job.

  Both knew that eventually, business would pick up again. Then they would split chores evenly, and Alexander would spend most days in a daycare center. Mark had already found one where members of parliament and foreign diplomats had their kids taken care of. It had prolonged opening hours, excellent facilities, and security guards on each of the two points of entry. It was a bit far from their home and more expensive than any other in the area, but it was the only daycare in all of Berlin that met Mark’s minimum requirements.

  ✽✽✽

  The president slouched in his chair again. He took a deep breath. “It’s a great risk, you’re absolutely right. On the other hand, letting the Russians have their way without seriously getting their hands slapped will encourage them further. We will end up in a Russian domineered hemisphere again. The last time did not go so well. Pułaski, you are old enough to remember wh
at it was like.”

  “Oh, I remember. I remember the Soviet tanks in the Czech capital. I was seven, and I was frightened to death by the evening news on Radio Free Europe. And yet, our parents took to the streets in 1968 and in 1970. In 1980, I was about to finish school and denied the possibility to study medicine for political reasons. That same year, I went up to Gdańsk to support the movement alongside my father. The difference is, back then we fought first and foremost for our freedom. We fought peacefully, and we were united as one people against the few remaining communists. It was clear we would win eventually, and still, the struggle lasted nine more years. In the end we won with surprisingly few casualties.” The general was sure to have made his point.

  The other men in the room were silent for a moment.

  The president rose from his chair and wandered to the center of the room. He addressed his small war cabinet with a grave voice. “I know, it is different now. But I am quite firm in my belief that we need to stand our ground against the Russian expansionism, and we need to do it now. The longer we let them play their grotesque games, the harder it will become to put an end to this.”

  Minister of Defense Kempski stepped to his president’s side. “We can be sure of NATO support in case the conflict should get out of hand. An attack against our country is an attack against all North Atlantic Treaty countries. Article 5 protects our nation. I know for a fact that the Americans want this East Ukraine business ended, but they cannot do it themselves for obvious reasons.”

  The Minister for Foreign Affairs Miller concurred with his fellow cabinet member. “Yes, that is a fact. The Americans are sympathetic but do not want to get involved on anything happening on the Russian border. The Germans are a totally different story, though. They have become so staunchly pacifistic they might even object the invocation of Article 5 or at least keep their support minimal. Kurwa, Bilinski correct me if I’m wrong, but the half-hearted way they keep up their defense capabilities, we cannot even be sure if they could help us even if they wanted to.”

  The general from military intelligence added facts to the minister’s polemic and described Germany’s capabilities for self-defense in great detail. From his point of view, the Bundeswehr were merely capable of defending their own territory. Even for this they figured in the assistance of the 40,000 American troops permanently stationed in southern Germany. Their participation in the few NATO and UN missions in Afghanistan, Mali, and Kosovo had clearly shown a lack of everything, from materiel to men.

  ✽✽✽

  Germany’s first female defense minister had a somewhat unconventional approach to being Commander in Chief. She criticized the force at every opportunity. Sometimes rightly as in the case of sexual transgressions aboard Bundesmarine ships.

  Sometimes, though, she picked fights with her troops unnecessarily. Many barracks had pictures of the former chancellor and former defense minister Helmut Schmidt in uniform on their walls. Of all politicians, he was the most admired in the German Armed Forces for being an officer and gentleman and always speaking his mind. The admiration went so far that even one of Bundeswehr’s two universities was named after him. Some commentators compared Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg to West Point. Schmidt had been a Social-Democrat and he had opposed the Nazis. But, like many in his generation, he had served as a Leutnant in the Wehrmacht and fought on the western front during World War II.

  The current defense minister had ordered all pictures of her predecessor to be removed. She felt that a picture showing a man in a uniform from Nazi times did not belong in the modern-day Germany.

  The protest of her soldiers kept the media busy for a few weeks afterwards. Ultimately, the pictures came back subject to the local commanders agreeing to hang a short half biographical, half political article next to them to provide the proper context for recruits and any possible visitors.

  Another show of bad judgment was the Heckler & Koch scandal. H&K had produced assault rifles for the Bundeswehr since the 1960s and suddenly claims were made that the current generation G36’s aim became inaccurate after a hundred rounds fired. The minister, without waiting for a second opinion, decided to take 160,000 rifles out of service. H&K ultimately could prove the claims wrong but only after the company got into severe financial trouble.

  Under the pressure of its NATO peers, Germany had agreed to double military spending to two percent of gross domestic product. The defense minister, backed by the female chancellor, announced to use part of the funds for making the force more family friendly. She spoke about opening daycare centers near barracks and enabling female soldiers to return to duty earlier and with more peace of mind.

  Her generals by then had already lost all hope that the really pressing problems would be addressed. There were quality issues with the new military transport planes and attack helicopters, the operational availability of heavy arms and fighter jets was at an all-time low. While other NATO partners and also Russia were putting fifth-generation fighter jets into service, the Germans had not even made an order. The record number of female recruits could hardly gloss over the general lack of fit recruits after Germany had ended its conscription practice.

  ✽✽✽

  His red-and-white striped onesie made Alexander look like Waldo without the glasses. It had even come with a matching hat which Xandi had always wiggled out of the first chance he would get. Over time, the cute hat got lost somewhere and would probably show up during the first renovation of the room in five years or so. Ofelia stroked her son’s forehead lightly and smiled like only a mother can.

  The boy fell asleep quickly. For a ten-month-old he was sleeping a lot. Ofelia wondered if she should have him checked by the pediatrician. She decided to call her mom and probably also her friend Verena who was a doctor and a mother of twins. Mark kept telling her she was worrying too much, and maybe he was right. Whatever Verena said would decide if Mark would use his daily stroll to see Dr. Fiedler instead of drinking beer in the park.

  ✽✽✽

  Bringing Xandi to bed was Ofelia’s nightly ritual since she had started work again eight months earlier. Mark used the time to clear the table, start the dishwasher, and make a few notes of his to-dos for the next day.

  On his way to the bathroom, he turned on the lights in the corridor. That’s when he saw the two pre-paid phones in blister packs lying on the sideboard. Right, Ofelia brought new burners home, he remembered.

  He then realized that his wife had bought these cheap throwaways precisely on time. Every other month they got new ones.

  He took both and checked the numbers printed on the back of the blister. They were non-consecutive like Ofelia had said. The simple cell phones would work as advertised. Mark already had experience with this particular brand. They never failed, and so he left them in their plastic packaging.

  He went to the living room and moved a white, lightweight credenza standing on a small rug from the wall. From under the credenza, he fumbled out a suction cup like glaziers use to move glass panes. He placed the tool on one of the wooden floorboards, pumped the small button on the side of the handle seven times and then lifted the almost two-inch-thick board out of the floor. He then removed another board next to it. Now there was an opening nearly twenty by twenty inches.

  About a year earlier Mark had discovered that his downstairs neighbor had a fireplace and a chimney in his unit that had been rendered obsolete when probably sometime in the wild 1990s the renter or maybe even a squatter in Mark’s unit had ripped out the chimney to make more room.

  ✽✽✽

  At the time nobody really cared much about the dilapidated fin-de-siècle buildings in Prenzlauer Berg. Most of them were nominally owned by the city of Berlin, but the city had more pressing problems than taking care of its property in a time when the city’s population actually was shrinking.

  Plus, the officials knew that the buildings would not stay in their possession for long since the socialist government in East Berlin had illegally expropriated
the previous owners during the 1950s. There was, of course, a lot of activity to reclaim the properties after German reunification. Matters were, however, complicated very much by the fact that quite many of these previous owners had bought the land and the buildings at rock bottom prices from the Nazi regime.

  The Nazis, too, had illegally expropriated Jewish owners. The resulting claims, counterclaims, searches for surviving kin of previous owners, Jewish and German, and the lawsuits against the German government kept private investigators and lawyers from Berlin to New York and from Tel Aviv to Buenos Aires busy for almost twenty years.

  When the neighbors had moved in, the whole circus was over but what was done was done. The building inspector would not allow a reopening of the chimney. The family downstairs would have to live with having a beautiful fireplace they would never be allowed to use. Their loss was Mark’s gain. When they had announced a three week trip to Australia, he had volunteered to water their plants and gone to work. He had carefully removed the floorboards, widened the upper part of the chimney by breaking the inside layer of bricks out and then using these bricks to close the chimney again three feet plus a few inches deeper than before. He had created an almost perfect hidden compartment.

  ✽✽✽

  Mark pulled a rugged black canvas bag out that filled most of the space under his floorboards. It was about three feet long and had a shoulder strap, two handles at the top and another handle sewn to one of the short sides.

  He zipped it open. It contained five changes of socks, underwear, T-shirts, as well as a black sweater and black sneakers for Ofelia and himself. At the bottom of the bag there was a grey LifeSaver Liberty water purifier, additional purification tablets, toothbrushes and toothpaste, protein and granola bars, a miniature first aid kit plus three different kinds of painkillers, a powerful LED flashlight, a Chinese-made night vision monocular, a Walther Black Tac knife, and a pouch holding five thousand euros and five thousand dollars in cash as well as two Krugerrand gold coins worth about thirteen hundred dollars each. A large leather pouch lying on top of the clothes held a second, never used set of passports. They had them issued under the pretext of wanting to travel to Israel. It also contained their and Xandi’s birth certificates as well as copies of other documents like bank account data, insurance policies, and university diplomas. At the side of the bag there were two pre-paid phones in blister packs which Mark pulled out and replaced with the new set. Then Mark took out a Glock 17 with a long, boxy-looking Osprey suppressor. The pistol’s serial number had been carefully removed, apparently with some sort of acid. He pulled the slide back, looked into the barrel and found it clean as a whistle. He quickly checked on the three magazines and the two boxes of 9x19 mm Parabellum rounds, then he put the gun back to the very top of the nearly full bag.