EAST BERLIN, AUTUMN 1951 Bruno Winterhalter swore softly to himself as he squirmed his stocky body deeper into the dripping concrete crawlway, lit only by the underpowered electric torch he pushed ahead with his right hand. Marta did not like him to swear, but she was not here, and he did not like this place. He was alone, deep beneath the Potsdammer Platz, following a maze of old electric cable, his tools in the worn leather holster he had hitched around into the middle of his back. There was a little stale, greasy water in the bottom of the concrete conduit, and his belly and thighs were already soaked from it. He shivered and wrinkled his nose at the musty, oppressive stench of the place. It was an ogre’s lair, he thought, a tomb, a dank place where neither sunshine nor fresh air had ever come. He sighed, and pulled himself forward another three meters. He knew he had to be close to the wall of the bunker. Scheissen! he murmured. Shit, I wonder what evil things are still left in that damned place. Corpses, maybe, munitions, God knows what else. The Russians had never let anyone go in there, not since the city fell in ’45. There were still guards on the bunker; not the Siberian beasts anymore. Nowadays it was KGB troops. Bruno shivered, and reluctantly pulled himself on down the ranks of rubber-covered cables. The break had to be down here someplace. He could not come out until he found it, and decided whether it could be repaired, or a new cable was required. He grinned sourly in the stinking gloom. The city administration would not like to have to put in a brand-new cable. Everything in the people’s paradise had to be made to last. He shook his head. As always, something was wrong with the horn of plenty. All the good things somehow came out in the direction of the party leaders, and the lousy Russians. I should have gone to the West with my brother in ‘45, he thought, and now they will not let me go. He pulled himself around a curve in the conduit, and found the bundle of cables that branched off to his right, and the little steel door through which they led. He knew instantly what the cables had to be. They were heavy-duty, designed to carry a great deal of power. With that capability, in this place, they could have only one purpose. This was the power entry to the Fuehrer bunker. My God, he thought. Dear God, that’s where the Fuehrer died, and all the others. He lay transfixed, staring at the small grey door in the light of the tired flashlight. And then he saw it in the gloom, the steel box, painted grey, lying just inside the crawlway next to the door, as if someone had reached through the access door from inside the bunker and laid the box there. It would have been easy to retrieve from inside if you knew it was there, but it would be entirely hidden from anyone peering through the access door. Bruno laid his wrinkled forehead on his hands and thought hard. Maybe it was nothing, but maybe not. Maybe it was something from the old days, even gold or precious stones. Those things he could sell, no questions asked. Or even documents. And those he perhaps could sell to someone with connections in the West. Or they might be worth a reward from the party, or the Russians. Ja, he thought soberly, and maybe a quiet one-way trip to Siberia, too, or an unmarked grave someplace. In East Germany, certain kinds of knowledge could be a dangerous illness, even a terminal one. He raised his head and stared at the steel box again. But it could not hurt to look; the chances were slim that he would pass this way again. He reached for the box.
