The Man with the Poison Gun by Serhii Plokhy

Author:Serhii Plokhy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465096602
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2016-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

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It was only on the morning of August 12 that Lieutenant Colonel Yurii Aleksandrov implied that their KGB “protection” would be removed while they planned the funeral for their son. He drove them to Dallgow and left them there to make arrangements for the next day. They would be picked up at the Pohl family home at 10:00 p.m. and taken back to Karlshorst, said Aleksandrov. Stashinsky and Inge spent the morning of August 12 at her family’s home. In the afternoon they decided to go to her rented room just down the street to pick up some items. It was a difficult walk—Inge had spent the previous four months there with her newborn, and now the room brought back painful memories. Stashinsky experienced a different kind of pain. On the way to the apartment, he noticed that despite what Aleksandrov had said, the KGB “protection squad” was still there.

On the street, Stashinsky noticed the same parked Volkswagen that he had earlier seen at the railway station. It was part of the KGB fleet that had followed Stashinsky and Inge the previous day. The KGB was doing a poor job of hiding their tracks: cars with foreign-looking men stood out in a neighborhood with little if any traffic. When Inge’s fifteen-year-old brother, Fritz, asked Stashinsky who the people in the cars were, he had sarcastically responded that they were there to protect him. But they were clearly still under surveillance, meaning that they would probably have no freedom of movement after the funeral on Sunday. Until 10:00 p.m. that night, however, they would be watched, but not fully controlled. If they wanted to go to the West, they had to act immediately, he realized. Tomorrow, after the funeral, it would be too late.

Stashinsky shared his thoughts with Inge. “I was very much afraid she would not be able to bring herself to do this,” he remembered later. “But she realized that it was vital to do so and that we could be of no further use to our son even if we did attend the funeral.” Inge steeled herself to follow his advice. It was hard to keep their plans secret from Inge’s family: Fritz realized that something was wrong when Inge told him that he would have to take her and “Joschi’s” wreaths to the funeral. He did not object when she told him that the three of them were now going for a walk. If anything, he was excited.

Before they left the house, Stashinsky asked Fritz, who had just come in with the funeral wreaths, what he had seen on the street. Fritz replied that an East German Wartburg sedan, which he had seen previously in the neighborhood, had just passed in the direction of the railway bridge. Stashinsky concluded that the car had not yet returned. He, Inge, and Fritz left the house, turned right, and walked along the fence toward the building where Inge had rented her room. They did not look back. After a few minutes, Stashinsky sent Fritz ahead to check for cars.

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