Life Behind the Wall Read online

  Other books by Robert Elmer

  The Shadowside Trilogy

  Trion Rising (Book One)

  The Owling (Book Two)

  Beyond Corista (Book Three)

  The Case for Christ for Kids Series

  Off My Case for Kids, with Lee Strobel

  Visit www.robertelmerbooks.com

  ZONDERKIDZ

  Life Behind the Wall

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zonderkidz, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  Physical Edition ISBNs:

  This title: 978 – 0 – 31074265 – 4

  Candy Bombers: 978-0310-70943-5 Copyright © 2006 by Robert Elmer

  Beetle Bunker: 978-0-310-70944-2 Copyright © 2006 by Robert Elmer

  Smuggler’s Treasure: 978-0-310-70945-9 Copyright © 2006 by Robert Elmer

  ePub Edition © March 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-74266-1

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7860 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, www.alivecommunications.com.

  Zonderkidz is a trademark of Zondervan.

  Editors: Kristen Tuinstra and Kim Childress

  Art direction: Cindy Davis

  Cover design: Cindy Davis

  Interior design: Ruth Bandstra

  Printed in the United States of America

  14 15 16 17 18 /DCI/ 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Ronda, my wife and writing partner

  BOOK ONE

  Candy Bomber

  Prologue

  1. Berlin, Germany

  2. Good Excuse

  3. Erich Becker’s Private War

  4. Under the Fence

  5. Cornered

  6. The Deal

  7. The Story

  8. Just an Accident

  9. First Meeting

  10. Head-to-Head

  11. Luther’s Key

  12. Emergency Call

  13. Helmut Weiss, Churchmouse

  14. Border Standoff

  15. The Announcement

  16. Last Good-Bye

  17. Come Alone

  18. Celebration

  How It Really Happened

  Questions for Further Study

  BOOK TWO

  Beetle Bunker

  Prologue

  1. Berlin, Germany

  2. The Bunker

  3. Escaping the Goatee

  4. The Right Thing

  5. Barbed-Wire Sunday

  6. Oma Poldi Becker

  7. The View from Willi’s Place

  8. The Idea

  9. Visit from the Stasi

  10. An Unexpected Friend

  11. Trusting Greta

  12. Tunnel Fellowship

  13. Sighted

  14. Panic Attack

  15. Homecoming

  16. Our Father

  17. Buried Alive

  18. Last Chance

  19. The Calling

  Epilogue

  Questions for Further Study

  BOOK THREE

  Smuggler’s Treasure

  Prologue

  1. East Berlin Checkpoint

  2. The Announcement

  3. Unexpected Guest

  4. For Fred

  5. First Draft

  6. First Clues

  7. For an Extra Cookie

  8. Dear Onkel Erich

  9. Insane

  10. Quark

  11. False Report

  12. Protest

  13. Secret Told

  14. They Know

  15. Feigling

  16. Pity Party

  17. Finding Fred

  18. Long-Distance Call

  19. Detention

  20. Riot

  21. Cellar Secret

  22. Bombig!

  Epilogue

  Questions for Further Study

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I want to write stories that grab a reader and won’t put them down. I like action and adventure. So a few years back, when I was speaking at a school, I thought I’d test-drive an idea.

  “What would you think,” I asked my young students, “if you woke up one morning to find that your city — your neighborhood — was divided right down the middle by an impassible wall?”

  The kids responded! Nobody wanted to be separated from friends and family that way. No one wanted to be kept out, or kept in. And yet it happened in Berlin. This city would be the perfect stage for a series of stories that I hoped would not only grab our attention — but also our hearts.

  Naturally these stories are filled with all the action, adventure, and history I can cram into each chapter. But at the same time, that ugly concrete wall reminds us of deeper truths. How do we move past bitterness to find forgiveness? What do we do, when we just can’t? And how do our mistakes rub off on those around us?

  The characters in these three stories had to wrestle with those questions. And in the end, they had to face the truth of Ephesians 2:14, which tells us that “He is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”

  So I hope you have enjoyed reading this series, as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for coming on the adventure with me. Remember that the wall, in more ways than one, is history.

  – Robert Elmer

  CANDY BOMBERS

  PROLOGUE

  BIGHORN COUNTY AIRPORT,

  GREYBULL, WYOMING

  APRIL 1988

  Nick held Trouble’s collar and scanned the runway on the other side of the chain-link fence, just to be sure. From here the Bighorn County Airport looked tons bigger than any old Wyoming airstrip. Maybe because it had started out as a military air base in the 1940s before it became a home for smoke-jumping and forest-firefighting planes. It stretched way out past Little Dry Creek, like a big city airport, only Greybull was no big city.

  He counted a dozen bright orange planes parked around the oversized hangars. They used those planes during fire season, not April. And not on a Saturday morning, when the mechanics and everybody else were probably sleeping in.

  Then he squinted at the five old cargo planes, their aluminum skins glimmering with the first rays of morning sun. The one on the end was the coolest — a mothballed four-engine C-54 Skymaster transport with a silly flying baby painted on its side. The Berlin Baby. Funny name for a plane. But all the planes still wore their stars proudly, even though the years of blistering seasons in Wyoming had faded the old girls.

  “Come on, Trouble.” He crouched as low as he could and sprinted to the shadow of the C-54’s wings. He waited for a moment to make sure nobody saw them. Okay. In one smooth move Nick pulled himself up the rope ladder and swung inside the open hatch of the big Skymaster.

  Trouble barked as soon as he disappeared, the way she always did. As in, Don’t forget me!

  “Shh!” Nick tried to quiet her down as he added his pack to his book stash. He
took in a whiff of air still smelling of clouds with a hint of airplane fuel. Just right. And that was probably the best part about this place: the smells and the wondering and the dreaming. How many times had she been around the world, and how many miles had slipped under her wings? What kinds of cargoes had filled her huge dark insides, now littered with ripped nets, ropes, and lumpy canvas tarps? And who had flown her during the past forty years, before Nick had secretly taken over command?

  Next came Trouble; Nick reached down to the clothesline still knotted to his belt. He had tied the other end around his little mutt’s body like a harness, and it was no trouble to hoist his cargo into the plane with him. The dog had done this dozens of times. So once inside, Trouble curled up in her usual spot behind the co-pilot’s chair while Nick secured the hatch and settled into the pilot’s seat. He imagined that his view of the distant snowcapped Bighorn Mountains to the east might look almost the same if they were airborne. Let’s take it up to thirty-two thousand. Throttle up. Heading oh-eight-niner. Trouble glanced up and wagged her tail, thunk-thunking the plane’s metal skin. At the same time, a much louder thunk nearly lifted Nick out of his seat.

  “Hey, you in there!” Bam-bam-bam. “Out! Get out!”

  The hair on the back of Trouble’s neck stiffened, and she tilted her head at the noise. But with Nick’s hand on her collar she didn’t bark.

  “Good girl,” he whispered.

  “Do you hear me?” came the foghorn voice again. Bam-bam-bam. “Get out of there, or I’m gonna call the sheriff and have you arrested for trespassing.”

  He would too. Nick had heard the stories about the caretaker. So, like a pilot with a pre-flight checklist, Nick ticked off his options:

  Option One: Surrender and come out. Pray for mercy. Hmm. Maybe not.

  Option Two: Sit right there and say nothing. But the first place the sheriff would look for him was right there. Which left him with—

  Option Three: Hide in the cargo hold. Really hide.

  “Don’t make me wait all day, kid. I know you’re in one of these planes.”

  Aha! One of these planes? If the old guy wasn’t sure which one, Nick knew he still had a chance of not being discovered. So he slipped off his shoes, picked up Trouble, and tiptoed into the shadowy belly of the airplane. The flashlight gave him a wimpy little flicker, but it still had just enough juice to guide him back past the navigator’s table to the cargo hold.

  But where to hide? He crawled to the line of wooden crew seats, wedged himself below one, covered himself up with a piece of canvas, and waited.

  “Come on, kid!” The voice sounded a little softer this time, moving away. Nick lay back in his hiding place with the bottom of a fold-down wooden seat just inches from his face. And he noticed something.

  What’s that? He pointed the light up to check it out. Somebody had carved a name into the bottom of the seat. Well, that was rude. But kids did that to old school desks all the time.

  Was it really a name, though? Maybe, if you could see past the little stain, which looked like old dried blood. First came a capital E, then an R, except it was squiggly and hard to make out.

  Erich something? The rest of the words didn’t look English.

  What kind of weird graffiti was that for an old Air Force cargo plane?

  1

  KAPITEL EINS

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  SUMMER 1948: 40 YEARS EARLIER . . .

  Erich stopped his carving for a minute, listening to everything going on outside the plane. So far his plan was going almost the way he’d hoped.

  Step one, sneak onto the American plane that was unloading supplies at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport. That had been no problem with all the confusion of the airlift — with hundreds of planes coming and going all day and night. In fact, the British and the Americans had been flying in for weeks, ever since the Russians had blocked off Berlin, surrounding it so no supplies could come in or go out by land.

  Step two, find a stash of food. Maybe some dried fruit or flour. A few potatoes. Whatever. The Americans would never miss it. They weren’t doing this because they cared about the people of Berlin, nein. No, Erich was sure of it. It was just part of their war, this cold war they fought, the English and the Americans and the French, against the Russians.

  Step three, slip away without getting captured by the enemy. And if he could pull this off, everyone back in the neighborhood would call him a hero. Erich the Hero. He liked the sound of that. See? The world war might have been over for three years, but thirteen-year-olds could still do risky — and important — things.

  But this plane held no food, nothing. So he decided he’d just leave some kind of record behind. Proof that he’d been here, that he’d been brave enough to do what he’d told everyone he would. Maybe his cousin Katarina and the others would never see it, but he would know, and that would be enough. Keeping one eye on the exit, just in case, he crouched low and used the dull point of his penknife to carve a few words into the bottom of the wooden seat.

  And no, he didn’t feel guilty, or like a vandal, though Katarina would have yelled at him. After all, this airplane belonged to the enemy. Even though the war had ended, the men who flew this plane had rained fire and death on his city.

  And on his family.

  And on his father.

  Yes, Erich Becker was here to try to even the score, any way he could. Even when the knife slipped and jabbed his finger. Ouch! Forget the trickle of blood; he continued for a couple more minutes until he had finished. There. He folded up his knife, crawled to the exit door, and looked around. All clear? He slipped out and landed like a cat on the hard-packed airport runway.

  Safe for now. Erich adjusted his cap down lower and wished for a few more shadows so he could blend into the German work crews — men who swarmed over each incoming plane to pick it clean of cargo. No one seemed to notice when he hurried along with everyone else. A truck screeched by him, full of men on their way to unload an approaching C-54. Its pilot followed close behind a guide jeep bearing a big FOLLOW ME sign. If nothing else, the Americans knew how to run an airport.

  “Let’s go, gentlemen!” A man in uniform wind-milled his right arm at the approaching truck, pointing to a place on the pavement where he wanted the work crew to wait. Another man wearing dark green coveralls and white gloves stood at attention in front of the plane parade, directing the latest arrival with twirling hand motions. The plane taxied into position, its four propellers spun down, and the side hatch popped open — all at once. Erich tried not to stare at the finely tuned ballet, where each dancer knew just when to jump, and how high.

  Instead, he studied the pavement and held on to his hat as a final gust of propeller backwash hit him, hunched his shoulders, and did his best to look ten years older and six inches taller. Only, which plane would have food in it? Which could he try next? Not the one at the end of the lineup, where the crew raced to unload bin after bin of coal. He skirted around that one while still trying to look as if he were going somewhere on purpose. And that might have worked fine, if he hadn’t rounded the next plane . . . and run square into a brown-uniformed soldier.

  “Bitte, bitte.” Erich choked out an apology as he caught his balance. “Excuse me.”

  But that wasn’t enough for the soldier, who grabbed Erich by the shirtsleeve and waved a friend over to join them.

  “Bitte bitte nothing.” The soldier scowled and didn’t loosen his grip. “You can’t be wandering around here. Which crew are you with, anyway?”

  Erich tried to back away, couldn’t, and decided the safest answer would be rapid-fire German. He was going over to the flughafen, headquarters just as ordered, he said. In a terrible hurry. Schnell! But the soldier only held up his free hand, motioning for him to stop.

  “Whoa, whoa. Around here we speak English, fella. Verstehen? Understand?” He looked a little closer, and his eyes widened. “Hey, wait a minute.”

  This time Erich did everything he could to wiggle away, twist out o
f the grip. But the more he tried to flee, the tighter the man squeezed his arm.

  “Hey, Andy!” That must have been his friend, now trotting over to join them. “Look at this. This ain’t no worker. I just caught me a street kid! How do you think he snuck in here?”

  Erich knew he was dead. Take him back to the kirchof, the graveyard next to the airport, and bury him.

  “Beats me,” answered Andy, a dark-skinned man wearing dark green coveralls and a baseball cap with the bill turned up in front. “But you better get him out of here before the captain finds out, or we’re going to have some explaining to do.”

  “Yeah.” The first man frowned again and began to drag Erich toward the main terminal building. “You speak English, kid?”

  Erich wasn’t sure he should answer yes. But he couldn’t help staring at the dark soldier as he stumbled away from the airplanes. He’d seen black men before a couple of times, mostly Africans, but only from a distance. Never this close up. Erich had to focus his ears to understand what this man was saying. The edges of the words sounded as if they’d been rounded off, and Erich liked the smooth warmth of them.

  “What’s the matter, kid?” Andy flashed him a smile. “You look like a deer caught in the headlights.”

  Erich swallowed hard and nodded, not sure how a deer could find itself in such a place, or he in this one.

  “Out this way.” The first guy pointed at a gate in the fence where trucks and jeeps came and went past one of the airport’s main terminal buildings. “And don’t you ever let me catch you trying to sneak in here again, you hear?”

  “I hear.” Erich finally managed a couple of words, which made the man named Andy laugh.

  “You probably understand every word we’ve been saying, huh?”

  “Not every word.” Erich shook his head as he hurried out the gate, rubbing his arm where he’d been squeezed by the first guy. But Andy called after him.

  “Hey, wait a minute.”

  Erich didn’t wait.

  “You like Hershey bars?” asked Andy.

  Erich froze but wasn’t sure if he should turn around. It was a trick. Had to be.

  “Hershey’s?” the man repeated. “You know, chocolate?”