Puzzle People (9781613280126) Read Free Page B

clearing it by only a few inches. Popping her head right back up, she found that she was veering too far to the left, straight for a concrete wall. She jerked the wheel right, barely missing the wall, and then headed for the concrete conduit leading into West Berlin. Only one problem: The opening had room for only one car, and another car was heading straight for her, about to enter the passageway from the western side.
    Leaning on her horn, Katarina raced through the opening, forcing the other car, which hadn’t yet entered the conduit, to swerve right and spin out of control. Katarina came shooting out of the gap, into the West, and roared into the American sector of Berlin. It was all a blur, but she thought that an American GI at Checkpoint Charlie gave her a thumbs-up.
    Katarina had done it. She had found a small hole in the Wall and had threaded the needle. She was free.

    Gunfire shattered the train’s windows, spraying glass fragments onto Peter’s back as he crouched on the floor, arms covering his head. The Volkspolizei (Vopos), the People’s Police, had fired from the platform when it became obvious that the train was not stopping in Albrechtshof. Since most people in the car had dropped to the floor, the bullets that penetrated the windows failed to find a human target. The baby, cradled in her mother’s arms, continued to wail.
    Then a stunning jolt knocked those still standing onto the floor and sent Peter sprawling forward. It sounded as though the train was being ripped apart, and he realized it was the sound of the locomotive barreling through the barriers placed on the tracks. The train screeched as its steel wheels strained to keep the locomotive on the rails. Flat on the floor, Peter watched glass fragments dance and vibrate at eye level as the train steadily came under control and began to slow down.
    He pushed himself up from the floor and kept his eyes on the crossword-puzzle man, who was also getting back to his feet, his mouth agape and his forehead bleeding. The crossword-puzzle man staggered over to one of the men lying on the floor—the father of the family that had been praying only moments before.
    “How did you know to drop to the floor?” he demanded.
    The father sat up and brushed the glass powder from his jacket. “I could tell the train wasn’t stopping. I knew that meant trouble.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “It’s true. I had no part in this. Anyone could’ve figured out what was going on.”
    Peter got back to his feet and walked to his seat, shoes crunching on fragments of glass. The mother and the father did not look surprised by what had happened, and neither did a handful of others in this car. The train continued to slow down, and by the time the locomotive came squealing to a stop, all the passengers started shuffling toward the door. The mother had finally calmed her baby.
    Peter stood aside to let an older woman pass, and he thought she was trying to suppress a smile, as if she knew this was going to happen. When Peter piled out of the train with all of the others, he felt as if he had disembarked in another world. This was West Berlin, and there was something different in the way people looked and moved: less tension, less vigilance. He had been in West Berlin before the borders closed, but it felt strange being in the West on this day, knowing that crossing the border was now forbidden. Peter was not used to breaking rules.
    He walked along the platform in a daze—like someone staggering away from a wreck. He passed by the conductor, who was shouting in the engineer’s face. “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you stop?”
    The engineer smiled back, wiping his hands with a rag. “There’s nothing wrong, friend,” he said matter-of-factly. “This is the right place. The right place!”
    Up ahead, friends and relatives were hugging passengers, further evidence that this had been planned. The West Berliners had known to show up at the station for this