Chapter 47
September 22nd
September 22nd
The gathering at Kleines Lebenshaus Süd was, by any estimation, an unlikely assortment of individuals. It had been two weeks since the escape. The mother and her son had been joyfully reunited with husband and father in Hanover. Gerta was with her cousin, who was overjoyed to see her. Angela and Franz Peters were settling into their new married life together. Both Franz and Geoff were working for the construction firm of Friedrich Detmold. None of them could be happier, nor could Detmold. Ever since the adventure the contractor had been on the lookout for another opportunity to deploy the services of his company in another similar project. Lola had been placed in an apartment with two other women also employed by the Bureau of Statistics in Berlin until further relocation options were explored, including Hamburg, Frankfurt, or Munich. Lola was tending toward Hamburg. She had visited that great northern city, where she had been successful in locating her aunt and cousin and with whom the renewing of familial ties had proven rich.
Joseph was residing for the moment in Berlin, in a house with several men, three of whom taught at a local university, while the other two were students. Ursula and Joseph saw one another every day, and quickly the deepening relationship found the right channels and began to flow smoothly. They had hardly been a week in one another's presence before both knew beyond any doubt that they loved another. Once the inevitable timidity had given way to easy conversation and comfortable sharing, the talk turned to the matter of their betrothal. The desire in both their hearts was to proceed with the marriage as quickly as possible. They therefore resolved to speak with Ursula's father as the first step towards that end. Plans began to get under way almost immediately for a trip to Israel.
Eloise and her father were, like Lola, those most clearly without a home or roots of any kind in the West. Since Heinrich's escape from prison, they had been on the run now for thirteen months. From the first night in the hotel Ed had convinced Heinrich that the only natural and proper place for them was with himself and Ian in Bavaria. "We have an abundance of room, and I have already made every possible arrangement for your comfort."
"We shall see, Ed," Heinrich said repeatedly. "We mustn't put you out."
"Put us out! Don't be preposterous! We will be grief stricken if you do not come with us."
At first Eloise thought to stay with Ursula until her own wedding arrangements could be finalized, but the thought of a further separation from either her father or Ian was more than she could bear. She would accompany them to the south. The boarding house in the village was mentioned.
"That will be perfect!" exclaimed Heinrich. "Eloise and I will make a home for ourselves there."
"Nonsense," replied Ed, "there is no reason for you not to be at the chalet with us, Heinrich."
"I will be fine at the boarding house by myself, Papa," said Eloise. "Ed is right."
In the end it was Ian who took up temporary nighttime quarters in the village, while Ed, Eloise, and Heinrich shared the chalet. "Besides," Ian concluded. "I will be all the closer to the bakery!"
Now, several days after their return from Berlin, the other members of the fellowship arrived in Obenammersfeld for a weekend together, away from Berlin, to talk and visit in a more peaceful setting, and to pray together concerning their collective and individual futures. Joseph and Ursula had driven down from Berlin, bringing Lola with them. Joseph would occupy a room in the boarding house with Ian. There was abundant room for the others at the house. They had been talking freely for some time as the seven sat around the dinner table, during which time Joseph shared at length about the brothers at Bialystok and the many things Dieder had told him that had set his thoughts moving in new directions.
"Your brief stay with the brotherhood there sounds like it had a similar impact as my first visit to the baron and Eloise at Lebenshaus," said Ian. "Doesn't it, Ed?"
"Exactly," added Ed. "There is no substitute for seeing the life of faith lived out in practical ways by a Christian who, at the same time, is ready to speak challenging words…even bold words at times. For twenty years I have been grateful to you, Heinrich…" he turned his head and nodded in Heinrich's direction… "for having the courage to challenge Ian to think more personally about God than he had. Those challenging words changed his life. It sounds like our brother Palacki did the same for you, Joseph."
"I will always be in his debt, that is for certain. I only hope somehow I will be allowed to see him again one day, shake his hand, and tell him that face-to-face."
"I'm sure that would not be difficult for God to arrange," said Ian, "if he could bring all of us together!"
They all laughed.
"He sounds like the kind of man I would like to meet as well," Ian added.
"Perhaps we shall meet him together one day," said Joseph.
There was a brief silence.
"And so, what does the future bode for you?" asked Heinrich, glancing toward Ursula and Joseph.
"We are going to be married, if that is what you mean," replied Joseph. "We do not exactly know when yet."
"We want to speak to my father," said Ursula. "We are trying to make arrangements for a flight to Jerusalem as soon as possible."
"Have you spoken with them?" asked Eloise.
"Oh yes! I'm afraid I will have a dreadful telephone bill! They are all so excited!"
"Have you told them…about Joseph?" asked Ian. "The new Joseph I mean?"
"Not yet. That is something we want to do in person," answered Joseph.
"What about you?" Ursula asked, turning toward her friend.
"We don't know yet either," replied Eloise. "Perhaps next month."
"That soon?" said Joseph.
"The sooner the better!" said Ian. "We've been waiting for each other for what…let me see…the war started in 1939, that's…we've been waiting twenty-three years! Yes, that soon…I'm going to marry this lady before I lose any more opportunities!"
They all laughed.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful, Eloise," exclaimed Ursula, her face lighting up, "if we could be married on the same day…together?"
"But…your family?" said Eloise. "I can't think of anything more delightful, but…surely you will want to be with them."
"You are right. What am I thinking?"
"The important thing is that we get all four of you married as soon as possible," now put in Ed. "Heinrich and I do not want to wait much longer, and I imagine your father feels the same, Ursula! If my vote counts for anything, I say let us proceed with a double wedding with all possible dispatch!"
"I couldn't agree more!" added Heinrich with gusto.
The conversation moved in other directions by common consent out of respect for the couples' need to decide together.
"What about you, Lola," said Heinrich after a while. "Tell us about your new job."
"It is not the most interesting of work," Lola said, but with a smile. "Even in the wonderful BRD, statistics can be dull and dry. And there is much to learn, of course."
Heinrich laughed, delighted to see humor emerging from her.
"But I am blessed and grateful," Lola went on. "The people in the office are kind to me, as are the women I am living with. Already I am seeing such a multitude of ways in which life is different over here. It will perhaps take me some time to feel comfortable. But I certainly am content and very pleased with where I am for the present."
"And how is the rest of your life?" asked Ed, with the warm tone of a friend. It was obvious the two had already spent a great deal of time together on the subject.
Lola smiled and thought for a moment, the expression on her face a smile of peace. "I am finding," she answered after a moment, "that I have more to accustom myself to, in the way of looking at things differently, even than I do in reorienting myself from the GDR to the BRD. It is just as you have said, Ed. In this too, in thinking of God as a Father who is with me every moment, and who loves me…I find I have so much to learn."
"So do we all," replied Ed, "believe me, so do we all."
There was a long silence.
It was Ed, speaking again, who broke it. "There is one thing I still do not understand," he said. "Why, if the tunnel was there and the plan was apparently going to work, didn't some of the other people you told me about come too…the fellow Brumfeldt and his family, and Angela's brother, or Hermann?"
It remained silent. No one seemed inclined to attempt an answer.
"In Brumfeldt's case," said Eloise after a moment, "his wife, a dear but anxious woman, would never have come. Erich is a contented man. He is one of the rare ones, like Udo Bietmann and Dieder, who will be free wherever he is."
"The other two?"
"I'm not quite sure about Josef," answered Eloise. "I halfway expected him to accompany us. But then they have important work still to do on the other side. God's people need help there just as much as here. That is their home. And yet…" Eloise smiled as she paused to think. "I cannot say it would surprise me," she went on, "to see Josef Dahlmann on this side one day."
"What about Hermann?" said Ian.
Now Eloise's smile broke into laughter. "Dear Hermann! I'm not even going to try to understand what he is thinking!"
As they sat on the balcony that evening, enjoying a warm, peaceful sunset, the conversation turned toward how Joseph had known to flee Moscow. Before long, they began attempting to piece together a history of what had happened to cause the KGB to pursue him for the benefit of Heinrich and Ed.
"Where did these mysterious photographs come from in the first place?" Ed asked.
"I worked as an assistant to a photographer in Moscow," replied Joseph. "He was, like me, a man with a false identity. How he had been chosen for the job in the Kremlin in the first place I never did know. I suspect he learned the trade during the war and followed it as an occupation later. When I became associated with him, he was from time to time given delicate film to process for the military or the government. The darkroom where we worked was in a basement of the Kremlin itself. Can you imagine…two imposters, one of them a Zionist, developing the Kremlin's pictures!"
"Incredible!" exclaimed Heinrich with a hearty laugh.
Joseph went on to explain about his own imprisonment after his affiliations were discovered, what Stoyidovich had done, and that the old man had come to him only a year and a half ago and told him of the photos, asking him if he could get them into the right hands in the west. "He never told me exactly why he made the duplicates. However, after I came back to work for him, after my release, he told me about them, and then, when I said I could help, he developed them and turned them over to me."
"But how did they possibly wind up in my father's hands?" asked Ursula. "He told me about them when he was in Berlin last summer. If only we'd known it was you who had placed them with our underground in the first place."
Joseph smiled, but it was not a smile that contained much humor, for the realization of how close he had been to the rabbi was an irony that still carried a certain amount of pain when he thought of it. "It's nearly impossible to convey to anyone who hasn't been there," replied Joseph after a moment, "how secretive and fragmented everything is in Moscow and how frightened everyone is. The regime has literally exterminated hundreds of thousands…some say millions. Informants and traitors exist everywhere. One false step, one misspoken word, and for a handful of rubles someone will tell what he has heard to the KGB. So, most remain tight-lipped. There are underground organizations, linked but loosely, with caution guarding every movement. I had heard about the people of The Rose and that they were the likely ones to get the photographs out of Russia. So I arranged a meeting with a fellow who was supposed to be able to put them into their hands, met him late one foggy night in the middle of the Kamenny Bridge, and turned them over to him."
"That is when they came into my hands," said Eloise, picking up the tale. "After they reached him in Moscow, Rabbi Wissen and I met in Warsaw. He was disguised, and I knew he was worried. I was to take the photos to Berlin and get them into Ursula's hands. She would then see that they were given to the appropriate authorities, who would know best how to use them."
"But you didn't!" now put in Ursula, laughing. "She became so secretive all of a sudden," she added to the others. "I didn't know what you were up to!"
Eloise laughed with delight. "You see what effect you were having on me, Ian?" she said. "As soon as I saw you again, I didn't know what to do about the photographs. Then before long, everything got crazy with the prison escape and the terrible accident."
"The one thing I want to know is," said Heinrich, "has anyone actually seen these photographs to know why they are so important and why they would have been so incriminating?"
Joseph nodded. "I saw them. I have to admit, though, I do not see why they would undertake a chase across half of Europe to retrieve them."
"I presume, then," added Ed with a questioning tone, "that the photographs were lost or destroyed or left at your old home in Berlin?"
"Oh no," replied Eloise. "I finally gave them to Ian before we went to rescue Papa."
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Ian suddenly. "Here we've been sitting here talking about them, and I am the one who's had them all this time! Eloise did give them to me, and I ought to still have them!"
Like a shot he was off to the basement, where the last few boxes still remained unpacked from the Imperial Hotel in Berlin of a year ago. He did not return for perhaps ten minutes. Gradually the silence around the table created by his abrupt departure gave way again to further dialogue between those remaining.
When he reentered the room from the hallway, Ian's step was slow and uncertain and a thoughtful look was spread over his face. He had clearly found the photographs and document among his possessions and had been looking and reading them moments earlier. He sat down slowly.
"I'd never seen them before," he said. "Eloise just handed me an envelope and told me to put them where they would be safe. I never looked inside it until a moment ago." He now passed them to Eloise's father, who understood nothing of what he saw. He in turn passed them to Ed as they made their way slowly around the table. Confused silence was the inevitable reaction.
The photographs were taken from ground level at what appeared to be a flat and artificially cleared location. About twenty vehicles were visible, some surveying equipment, and what looked like four large liquid truck trailers. A white obelisk about two or three truck length's high was visible protruding out of what looked like a large flower petal consisting of wedge-shaped metal panels. Two other white obelisks were still on truck trailers. There was a large number of men visible in the photographs working with the trucks and the obelisks.
Lola was the first to speak. "Why would photos of American Jupiter missiles be of such importance?"
Ed seemed momentarily surprised. "You are sure those are American missiles?"
"Of course. The all-weather panels, the wedge-shaped parts that look like flower petals, are distinctive," Lola replied as though the answers were obvious.
"It all makes sense now," sighed Ian after a moment.
The rest of the occupants of the deck protested that nothing was as yet clear to anyone else.
"There is another document in the envelope, a 'Completely Secret' KGB report detailing that these photographs were taken near Izmir, Turkey in the early part of 1961. I would bet that this places US nuclear missile capability in range of most of European Russia."
Ursula and Joseph reached for each other unconsciously.
"If the Presidium," Ian continued, "had decided on an action to respond to this threat that involved actions outside of the Soviet Union, they would most likely employ some sort of subterfuge or cover operation to mask their intentions or delay our response until their activities were successful. The appearance of duplicate photos of these rockets would be evidence of a leak of exceptionally sensitive information, and that leak would represent a threat to the success of the main operation."
Lola nodded agreement. "That would be our…I mean, the Staatssicherheit view of such a situation, yes. This might also explain why the satellite security organizations were put on the alert for these photos and why Moscow was so interested in a quick resolution."
"Do you think that there is an operation on right now?" Ed asked.
"I don't know," Ian replied. "I read something in the newspapers Ed kept for me about a speech by a US Senator claiming that Cuban exiles had told him the Soviet Union was 'in all probability' constructing a missile base in Cuba. And just two days ago the US Senate stated that the US is 'determined to prevent in Cuba the creation or use of an externally supported military capability endangering the security of the United States.' If the assertions and fears of the Americans are true, then potentially there is a cover operation ongoing and finding this leak might have been important…" Ian's face returned to a serious contemplative expression.
"What will you do with the photos and report, Ian?" asked Eloise.
"I don't know," he sighed. "I don't see that I have much choice but to turn them over to the Foreign Office or take them to the Foreign Secretary personally. They did come into my hands when I was employed as a representative of the British government, so it seems I have that obligation, as well as a responsibility to Joseph, Stoyidovich, and everyone else who sacrificed so much so that this information would reach the west."
"Should we make immediate plans to travel to London or Bonn, Ian?" Ed asked, a note of worry in his tone.
"No, actually, now that I think of it, it might be best if we take these down to Garmisch first thing in the morning. I think the best course of action is to give these to our contacts in the security forces. If the Soviets are acting based on the threat that these American missiles pose, I would much prefer a solution where both sides agree to directly remove or reduce the respective threats. I think if the information came through the military channels, there would be less distractions from the political aspects of the dispute."
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