Page 494 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"I didn't, I guessed."

"Please don't tell anyone! George knows, but no one else does."

"I can keep secrets." Jacky smiled. "Greg didn't know he was a father until George was six."

"Thank you. If it ever gets out I'll be all over those trashy supermarket newspapers. Goo

dness knows how much damage that would do to my career."

"Don't worry. But listen. George will be home soon. You two are practically living together now. You're so well matched." She lowered her voice. "I like you much better than Verena."

Maria laughed. "And my folks would have preferred George to President Kennedy, if they had known, you can bet on that."

"Do you think you and George might get married?"

"The problem is that I couldn't do my job if I were married to a congressman. I have to be bipartisan, or at least appear so."

"You'll retire one day."

"Another seven years and I'll be sixty."

"Will you marry him then?"

"If he asks me--yes."

*

Rebecca was at Checkpoint Charlie, on the western side, with Walli, plus Alice and Helmut. Rebecca was being careful to avoid Jasper Murray and his television cameras. She felt that joining a street mob was not the right thing for a Bundestag deputy, let alone a government minister. But she was not going to miss this. It was the greatest ever demonstration against the Wall--the Wall that had crippled the man she loved and blighted her life. The East German government could not possibly survive it--could they?

The air was cold, but she was warmed by the crowd. There were several thousand people in the stretch of Friedrich Strasse leading to the checkpoint. Rebecca and the others were near the front. Just past the Allied hut, a white line was painted across the road where Friedrich Strasse intersected Koch Strasse. The line showed where West Berlin ended and East Berlin began. On the corner, the Cafe Adler was doing a roaring trade.

The Wall ran along the cross street, Koch Strasse. There were in fact two walls, both made of tall concrete panels, separated by a strip of cleared land. On the Western side, the concrete was covered with colorful graffiti. Opposite where Rebecca stood was a gap beyond which were several armed guards standing in front of three red-and-white gates, two for vehicles and one for pedestrians. Behind the gates were three watchtowers. Rebecca could see soldiers behind the glass windows, scanning the crowd malevolently through binoculars.

Some of the people near Rebecca were talking to the guards, imploring them to let the people through from the East. The guards did not respond. An officer came up to the crowd and tried to explain that there were as yet no new regulations about travel from the East. No one believed him: they had seen it on TV!

The press of the crowd was irresistible, and gradually Rebecca was forced forward until she crossed the white line and found herself technically in East Berlin. The guards looked on helplessly.

After a while the guards retreated behind the gates. Rebecca was astounded. East German soldiers did not normally withdraw from a crowd: they controlled it, using whatever brutality was necessary.

Now the crossroads was clear of guards, and the crowd continued to edge forward. Either side of them, the double wall dead-ended in a short cross-wall linking inner and outer barriers and blocking access to the cleared strip. To Rebecca's amazement, two bold protesters climbed the wall and sat on the rounded upper edges of the concrete panels.

Guards approached them and said: "Please come down."

The climbers politely refused.

Rebecca's heart was thudding. The climbers were in East Berlin--as was she--and so could be shot by the guards for transgressing the Wall, as so many others had been in the last twenty-eight years.

But there was no shooting. Instead, several other people climbed the Wall in different places and sat on top, dangling their legs either side, defying the guards to do something about it.

The guards returned to their positions behind the gates.

This was amazing. By Communist standards it was lawlessness, anarchy. But no one was doing anything to stop it.

Rebecca remembered that Sunday in August 1961, when she was thirty, and she had left home to walk to West Berlin and found all the crossing points blocked by barbed wire. The barrier had now been there for half her lifetime. Could that era be coming to an end at last? She longed for it with all her heart.

The crowd was now in open defiance of the Wall, the guards, and the East German regime. And the mood of the guards was changing, Rebecca saw. Some talked to the protesters, which was forbidden. One protester reached out and snatched a guard's cap, putting it on his own head. The guard said: "Please may I have it back? I need it or I'll be in trouble." The protester good-naturedly handed it back.

Rebecca looked at her wristwatch. It was almost midnight.

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