Puzzle People (9781613280126) Read Online Free PDF Page B

government, my government, come to my door asking if I knew anything about my own son’s plot to escape to West Berlin?”
    Elsa didn’t answer. She stared at her hands.
    “Do you?”
    “No, sir.”
    “It is humiliating. I am a loyal citizen. Peter has also been a loyal citizen. He always has been. Only an outside influence could have driven him to do such a thing.”
    Elsa knew what he was getting at. Only she could have driven Peter away.
    She still could not believe that Peter had given her up for the West. She had sensed a hardening in his attitude toward her over the past year, a gray coldness. But she didn’t think he would ever leave her. She had thought about asking if he wanted to put off their wedding, wondering if that might bring back the Peter she had known most of her life. Was he just feeling trapped?
    In her heart, she believed that Peter was fleeing the authoritative rule of his father, but she would not dare voice such an idea. Herr Hermann had pressured his son into engineering because of his own passion for technology and science. Herr Hermann saw the East as dominant in all things technological; the Soviet Sputnik program was proof of that. The socialist workers’ paradise would be efficient, clean, reliable, and modern; and his son would be a part of this brave new world, whether he liked it or not.
    The irony, Elsa thought, was that Herr Hermann worked at the Trabant factory in Zwickau. The Trabant—or Trabi as most called it—was a compact communist-made car that belched smoke; in fact, the car was an even heavier smoker than Herr Hermann. It took twenty-one seconds to go from zero to sixty-two miles per hour, and its top speed was seventy. Some joked that the best way to double the value of a Trabi was to fill up the tank. Was this the GDR’s idea of socialist dominance in technology?
    “Tell me what happened between you and Peter!” Herr Hermann suddenly burst out. “Did you argue?” He wheeled around from the window and stabbed a finger in Elsa’s face. “I want to know what you did to drive Peter to the West! Tell me!”
    Elsa knew this outburst was inevitable, but it shocked her anyway. She flinched at his finger, then dissolved into tears. “I don’t know why he left. He loved me.”
    “He could not have loved you. He had it good here, so why else would he leave unless he wanted to be rid of you!”
    Elsa wouldn’t look Herr Hermann in the face. When she dared look up, she kept her eyes on his large hands, afraid of them, as if they were autonomous and very dangerous creatures. She was well aware of how much he relied on the back of his hand when Peter was growing up. Elsa eyed the door, wondering if she could reach it before Herr Hermann could grab her. He must have noticed the direction of her gaze, because he stepped between her and the door.
    “You’re telling me you never fought? All couples fight. What did you fight about?”
    “I don’t know. We hardly fought at all. He loved me.”
    In truth, she wasn’t sure if he loved her, but she wasn’t about to admit that to his father. Finally fed up, Herr Hermann stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door on the way out and rattling a vase from a shelf. It crashed to pieces on the floor.
    For almost a half hour, Elsa sat on her couch, shaking. She made herself a cup of tea but let it go cold before taking even one sip. She had classes to attend that afternoon, but she spent it in bed with the drapes drawn.
    She didn’t think things could get any worse. But they could, and they did. One night later, the Stasi came for her.

4
    Berlin
March 2003
    Annie was pleased. On her fourth day among the puzzle people, she reconstructed twelve documents—two ahead of the average. She was quickly learning the tricks of the trade. First, she looked for similarities in paper type, grouping the paper by color. Then she looked for similarities in text. Was it handwritten? Typed? Did the type match? Was there numbering? She also