For Those Who Dare
“This story had me on the edge of my seat all the way through! Great read for historical novel fans”
“I highly recommend this book, especially to people that love historical stories that are grounded in fact”
“Having lived in Germany when the wall came down, I was familiar with the border... The author did a great job showing the stark differences between East and West, between tyranny & freedom”
Book excerpt
Chapter 1
East Berlin
August 13, 1961 at 5:08 a.m.
Kirstin Beck lay awake, tossing and turning, her blond hair spilling across the pillow. It was a difficult decision, months in the making, a path that once taken, would alter more lives than her own. Some would thrive, reaching uncharted destinations, while others faced destruction, caught in a spinning spiral that could never again be straightened. As the clock ticked, marring the eerie serenity that lives in the hours before dawn, the time to act arrived.
She eased her slender frame from the mattress, ensuring the springs didn’t squeak. She paused, sitting on the edge of the bed, and listened to the rhythmic breathing of her husband lying beside her. When satisfied she hadn’t disturbed him, she stood, remained still for a moment, and then tiptoed from the bedroom into the hall.
She glanced at him again, ensuring he still slept, before going into the bathroom, removing her nightgown, and quickly dressing in black slacks and a grey top. She opened the door to the linen closet and reached to the back of the bottom shelf, behind a stack of towels, to retrieve a small satchel. It contained her personal papers: birth certificate, identity cards, important phone numbers, addresses, and money – West German Marks and American dollars – that she had painstakingly saved and hid from her husband. Careful not to make any noise, she quietly closed the door, cringing as the hinges faintly creaked. She stepped back into the hall, moving carefully in the darkness, and stopped at the bedroom door.
Her husband still slept, facing away from her. He snored faintly, his breathing rhythmic, before muttering something in his sleep. She watched as he moved his arm, his hand feeling the empty space she created when she climbed from bed. He stirred, lifted his head from the pillow, and sat up.
She stepped away from the door, barely breathing, as seconds quietly passed. The bed springs squeaked as his weight shifted and then it was quiet, the silence punctuated by the moving hands of the clock. She waited a moment more and peeked around the jamb.
He lay on his side, facing the doorway, but she couldn’t see if his eyes were open or closed. She glanced at her watch, knowing she shouldn’t wait much longer, and walked quickly past the door, hoping the aged floor boards made no noise.
It was quiet. He didn’t speak, so she assumed he was sleeping. She hesitated, just to be sure, and then crept down the hall to the stairs. As she descended the steps, she stayed near the wall where the treads had more support, carefully descending one step after another. When she was halfway down she paused and listened but heard no noise from the bedroom. She went down the remaining stairs to the first floor, crossed the foyer and looked into the parlor. She could see the radio in the darkness, the record player beside it. A stack of records sat in a holder, all American – Patsy Cline, the Shirelles, Roy Orbison, the Platters – her most prized possessions. For a brief moment she thought of taking them, but realized they were only belongings, easily replaced, and there was so much more at stake. She entered the dining room and then the kitchen, where she grabbed her pocketbook from the table.
She took a note from the satchel and laid it on the table. Written days before, it explained why she was leaving, why she had no other choice, and how each would be better for it. She knew it was a cowardly way to end their relationship, but she couldn’t risk telling him – he was too strong, too determined, and he would argue and plead and gradually whittle away at her resistance until it no longer existed. It had to be done this way, in the darkness of night. She eased the door open and paused, taking one last, lingering look at the house that had been her home before stepping outside.
It was chilly for an August evening, barely fifty degrees, and she crossed the small yard behind her end-unit rowhouse. It was more garden than grass; she had crammed every flower she could into the limited space, creating a kaleidoscope of color in an otherwise drab landscape. Now she would miss it. But she knew she could plant more flowers, just as she could start a new life.
Her narrow yard ended at a wrought iron fence, old and rusty, that marked the edge of a cemetery. The fence was bordered by overgrown shrubs and a lane that led to tombstones, graves and mausoleums. She walked along the fence and crossed a strip of grass between her residence and the neighboring Church of Reconciliation. Staying in the shadows, close to the overwhelming brick building that was dominated by spires and arched windows, she edged toward the rear. There was little light, only a quarter moon, and she realized the nearby street was dark. She hesitated, wondering why the streetlights weren’t lit, especially when her clocks ticked and her refrigerator hummed as she exited the kitchen door.
She sensed something wasn’t right but didn’t know what it was. She left the shadows cast by the church and crept quietly into the cemetery that stretched behind it. The graves were surrounded by neglected shrubs and trees, reminders of a once beautiful location that had since fallen into disrepair, just like the rest of East Berlin. Many of the graves were old, the tombstones worn, separated by dirt walking paths spaced evenly between them. Kirstin stepped cautiously, moving from one tombstone to the next, and was halfway across the cemetery before she saw them, silhouettes at first, and then more distinct as she got closer.
Several East German soldiers, spaced four or five yards apart, stood at the edge of the cemetery. Others were huddled in pairs, whispering, and she saw the faint flicker of a cigarette held in a soldier’s hand before he moved it to his mouth. Their grey uniforms were barely visible, blending with the darkness. She studied the string of soldiers, stretching like a ribbon in both directions, and knew something was drastically wrong.
In the distance, thirty feet from where the soldiers stood, was a simple stone wall, barely three feet high, that marked the edge of the graveyard. The old wall, and twenty or thirty feet of graves adjacent to it, was located in West Berlin. She only had to get to it, scale it and she was free, fading into the West like thousands of others had done before her. But tonight, it was different. Tonight, a line of soldiers stood on the border, waiting in the darkness. But waiting for what?
Germany had been divided since the end of the Second World War – communist East Germany and free West Germany. The city of Berlin was also divided, the communist East, administered by the Russians, and the free West, governed by the French, British and Americans. Kirstin lived in East Berlin, in the Russian half, but her grandmother lived in West Berlin, in the French section. Residents had always moved freely between the sectors, even though many went to the West and never returned. It never seemed to matter before, but she realized with a sinking feeling, that maybe it mattered now.
She heard the hum of machinery, distant at first but growing louder. She peeked from behind a mausoleum, wondering what was happening. The noise came closer, an engine, a truck or some sort of vehicle. She paused, eyeing the short stone wall only sixty feet away, but guarded by soldiers standing before it. Should she risk escaping, running through the cemetery, past the soldiers, and leaping over the wall, hoping they couldn’t catch her?
Before she could act, the noise came closer and the border was bathed in light. A searchlight sat in the rear of a truck parked along the edge of the graveyard. It cast a bright light along the wall, directly in Kirstin’s path. She crouched, hidden, as men in worker’s clothes and more soldiers exited the vehicle. Disillusioned and frightened, she retreated, hiding behind shrubs and tombstones, slipping through the shadows on her way back home.
Chapter 2
Steiner Beck woke when he heard vehicles in front of his townhouse. He rolled over, thinking a neighbor arrived home late and that the noise would stop. When it didn’t, he sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and reached to his nightstand to turn on a lamp. He felt the empty space in the bed beside him, finding the sheets cold.
“Kirstin,” he said softly, thinking she might be in the bathroom.
He could see his reflection in the mirror above the bureau, his hair mussed, his gray eyes dull. His face was marked with creases from the pillow, just above his neatly trimmed beard. Barely fifty, he was twenty years older than his wife, an age difference he was acutely aware of as he got older. A handsome man who women found attractive, he noticed his hair was starting to thin, more gray than black, and his face showed wrinkles dug deeper than the marks made by his pillow.
He yawned and listened for his wife downstairs. “Kirstin,” he called again, just a bit louder, wondering if she had fallen asleep on the couch.
There was no reply. He waited a moment more and went to look at the street from his bedroom window. He saw military vehicles parked near the church, two trucks and a jeep, with another truck farther down the road. He crossed the hall and went into the second bedroom, a shared office for him and his wife, and glanced out the window at the cemetery. There was a troop truck by the back lane of the graveyard, near the wall. A searchlight in the back streamed a path of pale light along the border, growing dimmer the farther it travelled, showing a string of soldiers fanned across the border.
“Kirstin!” he yelled, now worried.
He hurried to his bedroom and grabbed a pair of trousers from a straight-backed chair beside the bureau and put them on. He went to the closet, took a shirt off a hanger, and found his shoes and a pair of socks. Once dressed, he went out in the hall and down the steps.
“Kirstin,” he called again.
He opened the front door and looked out. The trucks were still parked along the curb, their engines running, a driver seated in each. A row of nineteenth-century townhouses lined the opposite side of the street, some still showing damage from the war, even though it had ended sixteen years before. Neighbors parted drapes and peeked from windows, while others stepped out of half-closed doorways in pajamas and robes, curious but careful, as if knowing they witnessed something tragic, but didn’t know what it was. With the West Berlin border so close, some may have suspected what little freedom they had could be slipping away, vanishing like a morning mist melted by the rising sun.
He closed the front door and went into the kitchen. “Kirstin,” he said loudly, but still got no response. He opened the kitchen door but paused, noticing a note on the table.
Kirstin then walked through the opened door. “Steiner, I think they’re closing the border,” she hissed.
She seemed winded, but he didn’t know why. “Darling, what are you doing?” he asked. “I’ve been calling you.”
“I woke with all the noise,” she explained. “I went outside to see what was happening.”
He studied her closely, wondering what she was doing, but then his eyes strayed to the paper laying on the table. He started to reach for it.
“Steiner, come look,” she said, tugging his arm. “There are troops in the cemetery.”
He hesitated. “I saw them from the window,” he told her. “What are they doing?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, edging closer. “There are workman there, too.”
He studied her for a moment, pensive, but didn’t reply. The edge of the cemetery marked the border with West Berlin. Perhaps she was right. Maybe they were closing the border. For a moment he wondered why he hadn’t been notified. But then he realized he couldn’t be; few probably were. It had to be kept secret. Or all of East Berlin would have crossed to the West.
“What am I going to do with my grandmother?” Kirstin asked anxiously.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “We’ll have to see what happens.” He wondered what prompted the border closure. Was there an international incident? Or some sort of friction between East and West? He again looked at the paper and reached across the table for it.
She moved in front of him and snatched the note away. “My list of shortages,” she said hastily. “Coffee, potatoes, cosmetics, toothpaste, bananas… can you think of anything else?”
A loud noise attracted his attention, like a truck tailgate dropped in the down position. “What is going on out there?” he asked, losing interest in her shopping list.
“It’s probably the soldiers,” she said. “They extend as far as I could see, past the clothing company next to the church and all the way to Strelitzer Strasse.”
He was confused. “But why close the border now?” he asked. “Could we be at war?”
She hesitated, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “I don’t know,” she said. “Wouldn’t we know if we were?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “But they wouldn’t close the border in the middle of the night unless they had a valid reason.”
“Maybe they don’t want us to leave,” she said simply.
“They’ve closed the border before,” he said, deciding it was nothing serious or he would have known about it. “And it was only temporary. Just as this is.”
“But what if it isn’t?” she asked.
He wrapped his arm around her. “Then we’ll accept it,” he told her. “With everyone else in East Berlin.”
Book Details
AUTHOR NAME: John Anthony Miller
BOOK TITLE: For Those Who Dare
GENRE: Literary Fiction
PAGE COUNT: 362
IN THE BLOG: Books Set In Berlin
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