Berlin Encounter by T. Davis Bunn

very bone. Yet he knew from his own experience how desperate was the plight of the German people. How were they to survive the coming winter, much less begin rebuilding, if even more were taken from them?
    His musings and his fatigue kept him from spotting the checkpoint until they were almost upon it.
    “Into the compartment,” Jake hissed. “Quick!”
    As he heard the compartment lid click shut, he braked to a halt, trapped on one side by an armored half-track and on the other by a bomb crater so deep the bottom was lost in shadows. Ahead the road curved around the diminishing hill and joined with two other roads—the autobahn, and a second lane packed with refugees.
    The sight of refugees struggling along on foot was a familiar sight, but one which he could never grow accustomed to witnessing. Here too was an element of unsettling surprise. He had thought that the flood of refugees had been almost stopped. The camps were established and well run, papers were being organized, food was relatively plentiful. At least, that was the situation as he knew it in the west. Jake stared through the windshield, drawn to the tragedy in front of him despite his own danger, and found himself transported back to the first bleak months following the war’s end.
    The refugees’ faces were drawn taut with exhaustion and hunger. Men, women, and children walked on worn-out shoes, pushing cycles or barrows piled with their earthly belongings, or carrying everything on their backs. Their eyes were nightmarish caverns, blank and empty of hope. They walked, on and on and on, pushed by forces so far beyond their control that their pleas were silenced.
    Jake watched a group of Russian soldiers pawing through a family’s belongings, fighting over a shawl and laughing uproariously as the old mother clawed at them and begged for its return.
    Jake forced his attention back to matters at hand as two men approached his side of the truck. One was dressed in the scratchy brown wool of a Soviet noncom. The other wore a new uniform of Prussian blue, another of the so-called People’s Police. This organization, he knew, was in truth becoming a catchall for the ranks of political officers and assistants to their Soviet masters.
    Jake nodded a greeting and handed over his greasy papers without waiting to be asked. As nonchalantly as he could, he motioned toward the refugees and inquired, “Where is this lot coming from?”
    “Who knows,” the political officer sniffed. “All over. Most recently from the station south of Berlin. There’s been another outbreak of cholera.”
    Jake swallowed his bile and with it the retort that if there was cholera, the last thing they needed to be doing was walking.
    “What about you, gypsy?” the officer demanded, his voice a permanent sniff. “Where are you coming from?”
    “All over as well,” Jake replied, his voice as bored as he could make it. The political officer was not a problem. But the Soviet sergeant was another matter entirely. He was dark, with the leathery skin and high cheekbones of a Mongol. He eyes showed a merciless battle-hardened squint, and he watched Jake like a hawk watched its prey. Jake shifted his gaze back to the refugees and intoned, “My life is that of a traveler.”
    The officer stood on his toes and eyed Jake’s assistant, who sat with eyes straight ahead. He compared the picture on the second set of papers with that of the blond man. “You took an unemployed engineer as your assistant?”
    “Is that what he was?” Jake tried for mild humor. “I wondered how he learned the fancy words.”
    “Was he a Nazi?”
    “I don’t care about the man’s politics,” Jake replied laconically. “Just whether he can work.”
    A wail arose from another group of refugees whose paltry belongings were being tossed to the four winds. The officer looked over, snorted his disgust, then handed back Jake’s papers. “Let me see what you have.”
    Jake stepped from the truck, knowing his