Chương 135: Book 4 - Chapter 15 B

I spent the first forty-eight hours in West Berlin visiting the shops and walking the streets with Max on a reinforced leather harness and leash. Security was anxious, but in plain clothes as they created an invisible ward. People stared at the exotic cat but in a city vibrating with political tension we were just another anomaly. I carried a Leica M6 and a Nikon F4 around my neck like talismans. I wasn't just taking photos, I was documenting the last gasps of a divided reality.

The action I most wanted to document came fast, or at night. I'd left the Zenit-E on the plane. Like most of the Soviet Empire, it just couldn't keep up with the west. I stood at Checkpoint Charlie and watched the faces of the Vopos—the East German border guards. They looked exhausted. I could see the tiny fractures in their discipline. They knew the orders were becoming meaningless.

I bought a handful of East German medals and a tattered flag from a frantic teenager near the Brandenburg Gate for a few West German marks. To him it was grocery money. To me it was a souvenir of a wall that I knew would be gravel in forty-eight hours. The Bear behind the gate was sick. I'd given Bush a way for it to transform—to turn the Bear into something else. It would never be a sheep, but it could be something strong and safe for the rest of the world if they followed my advice.

I knew they wouldn't, and I'd have to break the mad beast. Cripple it so no matter how it roared it was no longer a danger to the world. The air was bitingly cold and damp on the 9th as evening fell. I found myself near the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing. The crowd was a living thing—thousands of people pressing forward with a desperate polite hunger for freedom. Max was back safely on the plane. Then it happened. The announcement by Schabowski had been a bumbled accident but the people didn't care.

The gates didn't just open they were pushed aside by the sheer mass of hope. I watched the first Trabants crawl through the gate like prehistoric beetles. People were weeping and hammering on the hoods of the cars. I climbed up onto a concrete plinth to get a better angle for my Nikon. Through the lens I saw a young man from the East embrace a West Berlin cop. The threads of family were pulled tight and thin here. The wall had not cut just the nation, but the people.

I'd grown distant from my own family, spending so much time in San Diego. I needed to fix that. I saw a high-ranking Stasi officer standing in the shadows of a guard shack looking at the surging crowd with a mixture of terror and realization. He had a cigarette dangling from his lip and he wasn't even bothering to hide his sidearm anymore. He looked like a man who had just realized his entire life's work was a lie. I hopped down from the plinth and walked toward him.

Security was close and stayed just behind me as I approached the man who represented the very wall that was currently falling.

"The world changes ever so quickly," I told him. I watched him flinch as my voice cut through the roar of the crowd. He didn't look at me at first. He looked at the heavy polished Nikon around my neck and then at the fit silent men in civilian jackets standing just over my shoulders. He knew exactly what they were. Professional shadows.

"Everything I was told was a lie," he said in German. His voice was a dry rattle like dead leaves on pavement. He didn't even look at the border gate where his world was leaking away in a stream of Trabants and cheering students.

"Forty years of holding the line. For what? To be abandoned by a press release?"

"The line didn't move," I said, watching a bead of sweat roll down his temple despite the November chill.

"The earth just shifted underneath it. You can stay here and wait for the mob to remember your face or you can realize that by morning your uniform will be a costume and your pistol will be a paperweight." He finally looked at me, really looked at me. He saw a boy calm and out of place. I could feel the heat of the crowd behind me and the cold concrete of the shack beside him. The air was thick with the smell of cheap tobacco and the ozone of a thousand flashbulbs.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

"An agent of change," I replied, and he flinched in surprise. I considered him. He was now a broken sprocket in a machine that had lurched to a halt. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small piece of the wall I had picked up earlier. It was jagged and covered in layers of spray paint. I held it out to him.

"Never forget that you stood there as a guard," I told him as he took the chunk of rubble.

"The people will always need guardians. No matter what name they call themselves. No matter what flag they fly. Be true to that, and the rest doesn't matter." He took the jagged piece of concrete with a hand that shook so violently I thought he might drop it. He stared at the fleck of blue spray paint on the gray surface as if it were a holy relic from a religion he had just joined. For a moment the roar of the crowd seemed to fade and it was just a boy and a man standing in the wreckage of a philosophy.

"Guardians," he whispered. He looked at the piece of the wall and then up at the dark sky.

"I don't even know who I am guarding anymore."

"The innocent future," I said.

"Guard the people who are coming through that gate tonight. They are going to be lost in a world they don't understand. They will need someone who won't abandon them." He tucked the stone into his breast pocket right over his heart and straightened his shoulders. The terror didn't vanish but it was replaced by a grim sort of resolve. He reached up and touched the brim of his cap in a sharp reflexive salute. It wasn't a salute to a superior officer—it was a salute to a truth he hadn't expected to hear from a child.

I turned away and walked back toward the line of West Berlin police who were now helping people over the barriers. My security team flowed around me like a tide. We moved through the press of bodies—humanity at its most raw and electric. People were singing and the air was vibrating with the sound of thousands of feet stamping against the pavement to stay warm. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. I stomped myself, to warm my legs. Chaos and humanity.

So much had to happen to save the world. My time here was completely selfish. The moment didn't need me. But I needed this moment. The reminder that these were real people, not just stepping stones. Not just boxes to tick on my shining path. By the time we reached the perimeter where the cars were waiting the adrenaline was beginning to fade into a heavy bone-deep exhaustion. I could feel the stretch of my own growing bones and the scratchy heat of the thermal layers under my clothes. My voice felt tight.

As the car pulled away toward Tegel Airport I looked out the rear window. The spotlights of the border crossing were still cutting through the dark but they didn't look like prison lights anymore. They looked like stage lights. I boarded the 767 and found Max waiting by the bulkhead. He let out a short chirruping sound and rubbed his head against my shin. I picked him up and felt the vibrating purr of a happy predator who didn't care about borders or walls.

I sat in my chair and pulled a yellow legal pad from the side pocket. At the top of the page I wrote: JANUARY 1st - I spent the evening refining my speech. I didn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the Stasi officer's face and the way the light had died in his world just as it was being reborn in Germany. I flew the short leg from Berlin to Paris on Friday November 10th.

The wall had only been open for a few hours but the air in Europe had already shifted and the 767-300ER felt like a silent cathedral as I crossed the border into French airspace. I needed the quiet to transition from the raw chaos of the Bornholmer Strasse to the calculated elegance of the Élysée Palace. My own body was mirroring the turbulence of the continent because my joints ached with a sudden growth spurt and my voice felt like it was resting on a razor blade. Paris was like a different world.

It didn't smell like coal and desperation and instead it smelled of expensive tobacco and rain-slicked limestone and the heavy weight of centuries. I arrived at the Palace carrying a heavy walnut plaque. Mounted on it was a jagged chunk of the wall still caked in gray dust along with a rusted tangle of the original barbed wire that had divided the city for decades. President Mitterrand received me in his private study.

We hadn't seen each other in person for two years, since we stood together to celebrate Euro Motors and secured his political legacy against Chirac. The title of honorary French citizen he had bestowed upon me was a point of pride I didn't take lightly. He greeted me with a warm handshake and threw his arm around my shoulders as he guided me into his office to a couple of comfortable chairs. He wore his age well, having just turned 73. He'd see the change that would come to the world before the cancer took him.

I was so glad I could share this with him. He looked at the plaque and his fingers carefully traced the rusted wire. The transition of power in the East was a tectonic shift and he knew I had just come from the epicenter.

"A piece of history, Jean," he said in his low and cultured rasp.

"You have a knack for being present when the world decides to tilt."

"I prefer to be the one doing the tilting, François," I replied. We sat near a window overlooking the gardens where the afternoon light was weak and casting long shadows across the room.

"Do you remember when we first spoke of the fuel problem?" I asked. He leaned back, his eyes narrowing.

"I remember you speaking of it as if the global energy crisis was merely a math error—two abundant elements, carbon and hydrogen, that we simply needed to harvest from the air." He smiled like a Grandfather proud of his youngest grandchild's boasts.

"Have you figured it out yet?"

"I have," I said to his astonishment and caught the plaque before it could tumble to the floor from the spasm of his surprise.

"I am making the announcement on January 1st."

"How much fuel at what cost?" he said excitedly, as he took the plaque back and set it safely on a side table.

"A new purpose built thorium based ISPBR can produce 20 million gallons of automotive essence per day. I will build the plant and sell it to you. You will only need to pay me a royalty on production which is twenty-five cents a gallon." I watched the math bloom behind his eyes as he processed the numbers.

"That would be roughly thirty-five centimes per liter here," I continued.

"A French plant shows the world that it is not a new American monopoly. I want to announce it at the same time I announce the completed demonstration plant in the US."

"Nuclear plants are very expensive. How much will it cost?" he asked.

"Under $2 billion. If you cannot find the funding I can arrange a thirty year loan. I will not link the royalty to the US dollar like oil does, you can pay the equivalent in any currency you choose."

"That cheap? We cannot build an electric plant that cheap."

"It is the new design. Everything is standardized. Every plant identical and safe. You get 2, 000 megawatts of electricity and 20 million gallons of gasoline. When you are ready, we upgrade it to provide an additional 2, 000 megawatts and 20 million gallons of diesel a day as well."

"It makes electricity too?" he asked in wonder.

"How much to produce the electricity and the fuel," he asked as he searched for the trap.

"Electricity is two to three US cents a kilowatt hour. Fuel is even less. Sell it for what you want. It is not only a revolution in generation but the ingredients are just as I described to you before. We harvest air and water and convert them into an even cleaner fuel."

"What do you need, Jean?"

"Find me 1, 000 acres with access to transport and water. The plant itself only needs a few hundred but the buffer is for your security. For transport, either rail or pipelines for the fuel, it's your choice."

"We have sites like that already picked out for future nuclear plants. I will find the best one. Now why do I feel like you are giving me a deal when it seems so cheap," he said and his eyes crinkled in a smile.

"I am," I acknowledged.

"The friends and family discount. Everyone else will have to watch me auction the plants off to the highest bidder. I may even auction the rights to have the next plant, when I build for government monopolies." He turned to me and placed a hand on my shoulder.

"I do not understand why you are giving us such a magnificent discount. You could bankrupt us and we would still thank you."

"You are a friend, François. France is not afraid of the atom and you have the political will to do this while the rest of the world is still shivering in the dark. I want France to be the proof of the global dream."

"My friend, you have a deal," he said while extending his hand.

"I will make the arrangements personally. Make your announcement in January."

"Please," I added as I shook his hand firmly.

"Not a word to anyone until after the new year. I want the surprise to be absolute because it is too risky personally if it gets out beforehand."

"I understand," he said.

"A necessary surprise for the new decade. A gift from a young man who tilts the world like a playground toy." I headed back to the 767 feeling the weight of the day and the lack of sleep. I was ready to go home. I told the pilots to file a direct flight for Tulsa because I needed to see my family before the January storm broke. I spent the first few hours of the flight just staring out at the moonlight on the clouds.

The world was changing and my body was changing and for the first time in my life I felt like I was finally, truly changing the future.