Midnight Hunter Read online

  I’m an exceptional Stasi officer and a good East German. I devote my energy and skills to the State and ask nothing in return.

  It’s time I had something in return.

  I set off after her, walking quickly, mapping the streets in my head and attempting to predict where she’ll go. Not toward her apartment building. Not toward the Wall. She’ll attempt to get out into the countryside or she’ll try to hide. I smile as I see the telltale marks of hesitation in the snow, her footprints going first one way and then the other. My quarry is frightened. I quicken my pace, closing in on her.

  Don’t you remember what they call me, Fräulein Daumler? I am der Mitternachtsjäger, and you are my prey.

  I always catch my prey.

  Chapter Four

  Evony

  I can’t stop shaking as Volker leads me along the street, one of his large hands clamped to my shoulder. If this was any other Stasi officer I would presume he was taking me to Hohenschönhausen, the Stasi prison, for questioning. But der Mitternachtsjäger could be taking me anywhere.

  I could die tonight. But that’s just if I’m lucky. The shivers that are wracking my body suddenly double. Volker stops walking and he pulls me to a stop.

  “You are cold, Fräulein.”

  To my amazement he unbuttons his long, double-breasted coat and drapes it around my shoulders, the thick woolen fabric swamping me. His eyes trace the curves of my face as he tucks the heavy coat around me and I don’t like his bright, hungry expression.

  He holds out a gloved hand, inviting me to keep walking with a polite smile. “Bitte.”

  We walk, his hand heavy on my shoulder once more. I’ve never worn a garment like this coat, so beautifully tailored and made from such fine wool. It’s warm from his body heat and smells of male, though not any male I’ve smelled before. The men I know reek of cheap cigarettes, sweat and engine oil. Volker smells like rich, spicy aftershave, soft leather and something faintly smoky and comforting, like open fires or cigars. It’s the scent of hypocrisy. Volker is sworn to protect this so-called classless workers’ paradise but does he live like a worker? No, he’s our tailored and manicured jailer.

  It’s laborious to walk as my knee hurts so badly, making me limp, but Volker doesn’t seem to be in a hurry now that he’s caught his prey. I can’t help but wonder about the others, hoping some of them got free. No matter what he does to me I shan’t tell Volker anything about my friends. They won’t suffer just because I was caught.

  But when I see the gleam of a large black car ahead and the uniformed chauffeur getting out to open the rear door, my resolve crumbles. Volker’s going to take me away somewhere and I’ll never see anyone I love ever again. I can’t bear the thought of pain. I’m terrified of the unknown.

  “Wait,” I cry, the word tearing from my raw throat. I stop short and turn my face up to his. The white light of a streetlamp illuminates the left side of his face, but the right is left in darkness. “I know you have to take me, but please, arrest me, send me to prison. I will do the time, five years, ten. I will plead guilty. Just don’t hurt me.”

  He raises a hand to stroke the back of his gloved fingers against my cheek. His mouth with its full lower lip is softened by an apologetic smile. “Oh, no, Liebling. I’m afraid I can’t take you to prison.”

  Liebling. Darling. He says it tenderly, and even the touch of his fingers is tender. Stupidly I remember how I thought he’d look pleasant when he smiled. He looks more than pleasant. Volker is handsome. Far too handsome for a monster. There’s no cruelty or evil lurking anywhere in his clear, open features. He’s looking at me at me like a lover might.

  What sort of madman is he?

  Volker is clearly insane, and wherever he’s taking me there won’t be the harshness and isolation of prison at the end of the journey, but something far worse. My eyes flick to one side. I could run. Shrug off this coat and bolt. But I remember his cold, impassive face as he shot Ana and I know he won’t hesitate to do the same to me.

  Death would be a gift. Run. Run!

  But I can’t do it. I’m a coward and I can’t.

  The driver is waiting, standing to attention by the open car door. My throat tight with tears I allow Volker to help me into the car. He gets in beside me and the driver closes the door, shutting me inside this polished metal and leather cell.

  We drive in silence through the streets of East Berlin. I’m hyperaware of Volker sitting at my side on the broad leather seat, one long leg casually crossed over the other. I don’t notice where we are going. I huddle in his coat as if it’s able to shield me from him. Light from an occasional streetlamp slides across his face, which is cold and hard once more as he looks out into the night.

  Some time later—five minutes? Thirty?—the car glides to a halt. I keep my eyes down. It doesn’t matter where we are.

  Volker gets out and helps me out of the car, holding tight to my arm. If I run he’ll have to shoot me and I sense he doesn’t want to kill his quarry. He wants to play with his prize first.

  We walk through a low gate and then up some stone steps. Volker opens and closes a door, and then we walk up more steps, broad and carpeted, the pile thick and richly patterned. One flight, two, three. Another door is unlocked and he impels me through it. There are polished boards beneath my feet now. Confusion is starting to worm its way through my terror. What manner of dungeon is this?

  Volker takes his coat from my shoulders and I brace myself, expecting cold air to bite into me, but wherever we are it is warm. I feel his eyes examine me minutely, taking in my black woolen stockings that I dislike for being so itchy; the scuffed navy coat; the snarl that my dark curls have become. I am cold, wet, thin and pale, more like something the cat has chewed on and became bored with than a dangerous enemy of the State.

  “Take off your coat, shoes and stockings and put them over there.” He points toward a side table by the door and I do what he says, but it takes longer than it should as my fingers are clumsy with cold. I drape my coat over the table and place my shoes beneath it, lining them up neatly. I take my time, delaying the inevitable. I have to reach up under my skirt to my garter belt to take off my stockings and I don’t want to do this in front of him. I’ve never taken off any sort of intimate garment in front of a man and I don’t want the first and last to be Oberstleutnant Volker. I glance around to check where he is and I’m relieved to see his broad back on the other side of the room. He’s stoking a fire, one hand braced against the chimneypiece.

  Surprised at the sight, my eyes rove around the room. A fireplace. Bookshelves. A pianoforte. This is an apartment. What’s going on? I stare at the dark wood paneling, the brass ornaments, the printed maps on the walls. There are so many things. I’m not used to things. We only have what is functional, not decorative, besides the little box of my mother’s—

  My hands clench on my skirt. My mother’s family heirlooms were in Dad’s rucksack. Some photographs of Oma and Opa on their wedding day, a locket and my mother’s wedding ring. They’re gone now, wherever Dad is. I picture the Stasi pawing through her things while my father looks on, trembling and alone in Hohenschönhausen.

  Please let him be in Hohenschönhausen. He can’t be dead. I’d know if he was dead, wouldn’t I, by some instinct? I search my memory for the last moment I saw him but there were too many people, too much confusion. And then Volker is lifting his pistol and aiming at Ana.

  I clench my eyes shut. No. Don’t think about that. You have to keep your wits about you if you want to survive this. Think. Watch. Discover where you are.

  Volker puts a log on the fire and red sparks fly up the chimney. This brings me back into myself and I unhook the sodden stockings from my garter belt and peel them off my legs. There’s a swollen purple bruise on my right knee from where I smacked it against the icy pavement.

  Volker turns and surveys me, his hands clasped behind his back. Then he points to a sofa adjacent to the fire. “Sit.”

  I go, my bare feet leaving
damp footprints on the floor. The sofa stands opposite another on a Turkish rug. As I sink into its softness the fire basks me in its warmth.

  Volker starts to speak, his voice slow and precise. “Your name is Evony Adalita Daumler, wireless radio factory worker. Daughter of Adalita Käethe and Heinrich Michel Daumler, born in Kreuzberg, Berlin on March 14, 1940. Your mother died on April 21, 1945 when a Russian shell destroyed your home.”

  Hearing their names makes me feel bleak and alone. Dad’s told me the story of the bombing many times; how he returned home to find the terraced house we lived in blown apart. He and the neighbors searched through the rubble for our bodies and he couldn’t believe it when I was pulled out alive, wailing and covered in plaster dust. His Schätzen. He thinks I must have been asleep in one room, protected by a heavy door, while the room my mother was in received the worst of the blast. The Red Army arrived in Berlin just days later. I’ve always wondered if that’s why he hates the communists so much, because he blames them for my mother’s death.

  Volker knows so much about me. Has he been looking into my background before tonight? The futility of our attempted escape breaks over me. We thought we could get out, but the Stasi were watching us the whole time. But why am I here? Where is here? I should be in prison or dead, not sitting by a warm fire.

  He walks to a small table and pours a measure of what looks like whisky into a tumbler. Then he returns to the sofas and sits down opposite me. He takes his time, sipping the liquor, putting it aside, digging in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. He even offers me one, and after a moment of confusion I shake my head. I don’t smoke. The bitter, tarry smell of cheap East German f6s has never appealed to me. But the packet in his hand isn’t the familiar off-white color with the green band around the top and an orange and brown logo. It’s a crisp white box with gold embossing and the word kent printed in heavy black letters. Western cigarettes.

  My eyes dart back to the whisky bottle. It’s a brand I don’t recognize and I wonder if it’s Western, too. Could I be—is this the West? My heart thumps with excitement, but then slows. No. Don’t be stupid, Evony. Volker is a high-ranking Stasi officer. He’ll have access to West German marks and be allowed to shop in the Intershops that sell Western goods to foreigners. For all they bleat that East German products are superior to those found in the West the Stasi and Party members prefer imports.

  I realize Volker is watching me closely as he smokes and every emotion I experience, every thought I have is flickering across my face for him to see. I look hastily at my hands lest I give away something I’ll regret.

  Suddenly, he asks, “Who was the leader of your group?”

  My insides clench—so he does mean to interrogate me. But what a strange interrogation. I should be in a prison cell, sluiced with icy water, kept awake for days, beaten with electrical cables. Mutely, I defy him. I will not betray my group. If by a miracle someone escaped I will not implicate them.

  Volker doesn’t seem bothered by my silence and is still watching me with speculative gray eyes. Even at rest there’s something predatory in his gaze, like a lion who isn’t hungry just yet but is beginning to think about his next meal. He exhales a cloud of blue smoke out of the corner of his mouth. The Kents smell different to f6s and I realize it’s one of the scents that filled my nostrils as he pulled his coat around me, that and the woodsmoke from the fireplace. We don’t have a fireplace at home, only radiators.

  Home. “Where is my father?”

  He smiles a slow, gloating smile. “You mean you don’t know?”

  Anger churns through me. I wouldn’t ask if I knew. Does he mean Dad’s in Hohenschönhausen, or dead? Volker seems to be enjoying my confusion, and with effort I smooth my features into blandness. Stop giving him so much. You don’t know what he’s able to infer from your words and expressions.

  There’s a clock somewhere in the room and it ticks out the seconds. I lower my eyes to the carpet and fist the pile with my toes. My feet are dry now in the warmth from the fire and no longer white with cold.

  “Whose idea was it that you tunnel beneath the bakery?” Volker brings the tumbler of whisky to his lips and his last words are muffled in the glass. He’s not even looking at me. It’s like he’s not trying to interrogate me properly and I feel oddly disrespected.

  “I’m not going to tell you anything, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  Self-satisfaction gleams in his eyes, as if he’s pleased I’ve said this. As if he’s manipulated me into it. “If you say so. But it hardly matters, as that’s not why I brought you here, Liebling.”

  I feel the blood turn to ice in my veins. How caressingly he says that word, like a lover might. I shudder at the thought of him touching me with his large hands. I can’t face what he intends to do to me, so I ignore it, pretending it’s not occurred to me, not occurred to him, like I’m a pathetic child hiding beneath the blankets from an intruder who can plainly see her.

  “Then—then if you’re not going to question me, let me go.”

  Volker grinds out his cigarette in an ashtray and puts his whisky aside. He stands so suddenly that I flinch away from him. But he doesn’t try to touch me. He puts one hand behind his back and holds the other out. The gesture is so well-mannered, as if we’re at a ball and he’s asking me to dance.

  “Oh, you can leave. Please,” he says, brisk now, making a come here gesture with his outstretched hand.

  I don’t move. It’s clearly a trick and all my nerves are screaming at me not to touch him, not to let him get close. I stare at his hand as if it’s a snake about to strike.

  “You don’t believe me?” Volker grabs my wrist, pulling me to my feet. He takes me over to the front door, unlocks the latch and opens it. Then he lets me go and steps back. “Go.”

  I stand barefoot on the floorboards, hesitating before freedom. This is a trick. It has to be a trick. But the open door beckons and I can’t help myself—I take one step forward.

  “You can leave, but you will die.”

  My heart plummets through my chest. And there it is, the truth finally. I am his captive. It’s not a prison or a dungeon, this apartment, but it’s a cage just the same.

  He slams the door closed so hard that the paintings on the wall rattle and he addresses me with his hands clasped behind his back. “Sensible choice, Fräulein. You live here, now. You do not leave this apartment unless it is with me. If you try to escape, you will be found, and you will be killed. Do you understand?”

  There’s a militaristic ring to his voice. His previous silkiness and amusement were affected. This is the true Volker; ferocious, merciless, in control. Again I see him raising his gun to shoot Ana. I don’t doubt him when he says that if I escape he will hunt me down and kill me.

  “I said, do you understand?”

  Mutely, I nod.

  His body seems to unclench and the furious expression melts into a smile. “Good, Evony, good. I can call you Evony, can’t I?” Without waiting for a reply he holds out his arm, as obsequious as a hotel clerk.

  “Let me show you to your room.”

  Chapter Five

  Evony

  It’s his apartment. I should have known this from the way he helped himself to whisky and sat so comfortably on the sofa, but it’s not until he’s giving me the your bathroom is here, my housekeeper comes at seven speech that the penny drops. I’m silent throughout, watching his mouth move but barely registering the words. Finally, he shuts me in a bedroom and leaves me alone.

  I turn slowly, looking at the bed with its whitework comforter, the large, antique wardrobe, the dressing table with its vanity mirror standing opposite the window. There’s a print of Dresden above the bed that shows how the beautiful old city looked before it was fire-bombed in the war.

  I stare at the picture for a long time, not seeing it, waiting for something to happen. To be shouted at, shot at, marched into another car. But nothing happens. Finally it dawns on me that no one’s coming for me, and I’m meant to sleep in
this room tonight.

  The first thing I do is to check to see if the door has a lock. It doesn’t. There isn’t a chair to put under the door handle, either. Neither of these facts surprise me, that there’s no way to lock Volker out. I should feel alarmed, I suppose, but I’m strangely numb. All the edges of the furniture are too sharp in my vision and the lights are too bright, so I switch them off. Because it’s late I suppose I should go to bed, so I strip down to my vest, laying my clothes over the stool by the vanity, and get between the sheets. Someone is moving about elsewhere in the apartment, but then everything goes silent.

  I lie awake a long time, looking at the pattern the moonlight makes on the ceiling as it shines through the net curtains. Dad captured, or maybe dead. Ana dead. Everyone else captured or dead. What’s going to happen to me in the morning? And, worst of all, what does Volker want from me? He’s as terrifying up close as I always thought he would be, with cold, unreadable eyes and a cruel smile. My eyes fly to the door handle and I strain to hear the sound of a creaking floorboard that might betray his step outside, but all is silent. I dread the dawn and try to stay awake to keep it at bay, but exhaustion overcomes me, and I sleep.

  When I open them again the room is filled with light and there’s a woman standing by the stool, holding up each of my garments in turn and tutting over them. Who is she, and where…?

  The events of the previous night flood back. I’m in Volker’s apartment. I sit up with a whimper and the woman turns and looks at me. She’s in her late fifties, has short, curly brown hair threaded with gray and is wearing a bright yellow apron over her blue dress. A housekeeper?

  “Guten Morgen. I’m Frau Fischer.” And she scoops up all my clothes and heads for the door.

  I fly out of bed after her, taking the sheet with me in an attempt to cover myself. “Nein, wait! I don’t have any other clothes.”

  She turns to me in surprise. “No other clothes? Didn’t you pack anything when you left…when you came from…” She trails off and I realize she has no idea who I am and what has happened to me. I imagine Volker just told her there was a woman in the spare room and left it at that.