Lehrter Station (35 page)

Russell considered it unlikely that Stalin had bosom friends, but the rules seemed straightforward enough. So all that remained was to bend them. He walked through the pedestrian tunnel to the southern side of the station, and across to the old Reichsbahn building, which the two officers in the Ring had told him housed the Soviet HQ. The huge structure had taken several obvious hits – the six statues above the colonnaded entrance were down to three and a bit – but still seemed in working order. Inside the service was what he’d come to expect from the Soviets – slow verging on comatose.

Asking to see someone from the NKVD provoked the usual look – was the foreigner out of his mind? – but a representative was duly summoned from the lair upstairs. He was young, fair-haired and looked suitably paranoid. Russell led him gently away from the desk, offered up his American passport, and quietly revealed that they were working for the same organisation. Comrade Nemedin in Berlin could vouch for him. Or even Comrade Shchepkin.

The young man examined the passport again. What did Russell actually want?

‘A rail pass. I have to be in Berlin by tomorrow morning. If you contact Comrade Nemedin he will confirm the importance of my work there.’

His companion visibly relaxed – distributing passes was obviously part of his remit. ‘Wait here,’ he said, ‘I will talk to Berlin.’

Russell found himself a seat and prepared for a long wait, but only minutes had passed when the officer reappeared, clattering back down
the staircase. He handed Russell his passport, open at the newly-stamped page. Phoning Berlin had obviously seemed too much of a chore.

He still needed a train, and one finally arrived at six in the evening. It was part-passenger, part-freight: three carriages half-full of Soviet soldiers, theatre directors, actors and Party apparatchiks; several boxcars full of who knew what. Russell sat with the thespians, who had plenty to drink, and were happy to share it with someone from the land of Shakespeare. They were doing
King Lear
in Berlin, which seemed, after several vodkas, astonishingly appropriate.

His new companions, whom he guessed had been drinking for days, passed out at regular intervals. Russell sat by the window of the barely-lit carriage, peering out at the darkened Silesian fields, wondering how many bottles he needed to drown out the taste of post-war Poland.

T
he same young British soldier turned up at Thomas’s house on Saturday morning with another letter from London. Effi insisted on making him tea, partly out of gratitude, partly for the pleasure of a few minutes’ company. He talked about his girlfriend back in Birmingham and, rather more wistfully, about the vintage motorcycle he was restoring. Rommel, she remembered, had enjoyed the same pastime.

Once the soldier had gone she took the letter upstairs to read. There were two pages from Rosa about her schoolfriends and teacher, along with a folded drawing of a couple out walking on Parliament Hill, both wrapped up so warmly that only their eyes were visible. Somehow you could still tell that they were old.

Zarah’s letter ran to several pages. She described two films she’d seen at the nearby cinema, both starring Ingrid Bergman. The one with her idol Bing Crosby was set in a Catholic school, and sounded far too schmaltzy for Effi’s taste; the other, with Gregory Peck and dream sequences by Salvador Dalí, piqued her interest. Surrealism had been frowned upon in the Third Reich, at least where the arts were concerned.

Paul was still seeing a lot of Marisa, Lothar had taken up stamp collecting, and Rosa was again doing well at school. Again? Effi wondered. Her sister had never suggested anything else. And Rosa missed her, Zarah went on, before lamenting the poor selection of vegetables at Camden market.

There was no mention of Jens until the very last paragraph, and then
nothing of Zarah’s own feelings about his survival. ‘I told Lothar his father was alive,’ she wrote. ‘I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but I didn’t expect him to be so angry. He said he’d write to his father, but he hasn’t. I don’t know whether to encourage him or not. What do you think? Anyway, I expect we’ll be back in Berlin before long. I like England more than I thought I would, but it’s not home. Perhaps we can all live together in Berlin. In a bigger house of course!’

Effi put down the letter, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Rosa missed her. And she missed Rosa.

She walked to the window and looked out at the desolate garden. Over the last few years she’d grown happier with her own company, but today she felt the need of someone to talk to. Which was unfortunate. Thomas had left the previous day for his family Christmas in the country, and Annaliese was out in Spandau visiting Gerd’s parents. Even Frau Niebel and her daughter had gone to relations, and the house felt almost deserted.

She wanted John back, but still hadn’t heard a word. She hated not knowing where or how he was. When work had taken him away in the old days, there’d always been the telephone, but the occupying powers were still denying Germans any communications with the outside world. What was the point of that?

Russell’s train terminated at Köpenick, the Berlin suburb where the Soviets had their military HQ, soon after seven that evening. The journey from Breslau had taken twenty-four hours, roughly four times the pre-war average, but he wasn’t complaining. He had lost count of the number of motionless trains they had passed, either standing in stations or stabled in remote refuge sidings. Some had been surrounded by milling people, others just standing there, with all the appearance of being empty. And, in at least one case, only the appearance. Stopping alongside one line of cattle cars, Russell and his fellow passengers had heard frantic hammering and harrowing cries for release. The Russian thespians had looked appalled.

Had Torsten and the children been travelling in one of those trains? He had no way of knowing.

The Köpenick Station buffet was full of Russians, and appropriately stocked. After eating his first decent meal for twenty-four hours, Russell searched in a vain for a working telephone, then boarded the next train into the city.

It was almost ten when he reached Dahlem-Dorf. As he walked north through the mostly empty streets he felt a growing sense of anxiety about Effi. Anything could have happened in the last two weeks, and no one would have been able to reach him. When she opened the door, he let out an almost explosive sigh of relief.

They held each other for a long time.

‘Is Esther here?’ was the first thing he asked.

‘Yes, but I think she’s gone to bed. Why? What have you found out?’

He took her into the kitchen, shut the door behind them, and told her everything he’d discovered in Breslau. ‘I’ll tell her in the morning,’ he decided. ‘There’s no point waking her now.’

‘No,’ Effi agreed. She was wondering, as Russell had, how Esther and Leon would take the news. ‘But how did you end up in Breslau?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were going to Italy.’

‘I did.’ As Effi made them tea he took her through his journey – the meetings with Slaney and Mizrachi in Vienna, and with Otto 3 and Albert Wiesner in Pontebba; welcoming Náchod and unfriendly Breslau. The only thing he omitted was the encounter with Hirth and his son. That could wait.

‘So Torsten and the children are somewhere between Breslau and here?’

‘Probably. And the chances are good they’ll pass through Berlin. I’ll leave messages at all the reception centres tomorrow. But how are you? And where’s Thomas?’

‘He’s gone to spend Christmas with Hanna and Lotte. And I’ve had some adventures of my own.’

‘The flat?’

‘Oh that. Yes, and you’ll never guess who I ran into at the Schmargendorf Housing Office.’ She told him about Jens. ‘But that wasn’t the
adventure. Annaliese asked me for help – she had to collect some medicines from some black marketeers. I took your gun,’ she added, seeing the look on his face.

Should that make him feel better or worse, he wondered. He considered admonishing her for taking such risks, but knew he’d be wasting his breath.

Effi described the meeting in Teltow, her recognising the man in the lorry, and the American invasion of her Babelsberg dressing room. She explained the connections she had made, and their confirmation during her and Thomas’s Saturday night visit to the Honey Trap.

‘Thomas went to the Honey Trap?’

‘Only after I begged. He frowned a lot.’

‘I’ll bet he did.’

‘You know, this has been our month for renewing acquaintances – Jens, Albert, that Gestapo officer. And I renewed another one on your behalf – your photographer friend Zembski.’

‘You’ve seen him?’

‘Yes, I saw him at his office.’

‘By chance?’

‘No, didn’t I say? I thought it would be a good idea to get some pictures of Geruschke and his employees, ones we could show around. So I went to see him, and he recommended this boy – well, he’s about seventeen, I should think.’

Russell knew he shouldn’t be surprised, but he was anyway. ‘Have you had time to do any filming?’ he asked.

‘We’re nearly finished. I have to go in on Monday – they’re having us work on Christmas Eve, would you believe? – but then not again until Thursday. Dufring’s hoping to have it all wrapped up by the New Year, and then – I’ve decided – I’m going to England. To fetch Rosa,’ she added, seeing the look on his face. ‘And I think Zarah and Lothar will be coming back with us.’ She told Russell what her sister had said in the letter.

‘And Paul?’

‘She didn’t say. But what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘About what I’ve been telling you. About Geruschke.’

‘I’ve hardly had time to take it all in. It seems like we’re in with a chance of getting something on the bastard, but only at the risk of enraging the Americans.’

‘Do we care what they think?

‘I’m afraid we have to.’ His and Shchepkin’s future – in fact all of their futures – depended on it.

‘So we just forget about him?’

‘Of course not. We can still nail him, but we have to make damn sure we don’t take the credit.’

Next morning was sunny and cold. Esther was on her way out when Russell caught up with her; he asked her to wait while he grabbed his own coat, and the two of them talked in the garden. She didn’t cry when he told her that her daughter was dead, just lowered her head with the air of someone acknowledging an obvious truth.

‘But there’s good news too,’ he told her.

Her look suggested he’d taken leave of his senses.

He told her about the children, about Torsten Resch, about the happiness Miriam had apparently known. He avoided the matter of the boy’s parentage – he wanted to talk to Torsten before spelling out what he feared. ‘The children’s names are Leon and Esther,’ he added, and that did bring tears to her eyes.

‘Where are they?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. They left Breslau about ten days ago, heading west. Today I’ll start checking the stations. We’ll find them.’

‘Will you come to the hospital and tell all this to Leon? And if Effi could come as well – she always seems to perk him up.’

Russell smiled. ‘Of course.’

An hour later the three of them were gathered around Leon Rosenfeld’s bed. He seemed better than he had a fortnight ago, and took the tidings
of Miriam’s death almost as stoically as his wife had done. By contrast, the news that he had grandchildren almost had him leaping from his bed. If no one had been there to restrain him, he would soon have been scouring eastern Germany and Poland for his namesake.

After a quarter of an hour, Russell and Effi said their goodbyes. On their way out, it occurred to Russell that Erich Luders might still be in the hospital, and a query at reception elicited directions to another ward. They found him sitting up in bed.

‘They’re letting me out tomorrow,’ the young journalist told them. ‘I’ve been lucky. Compared to some, at any rate.’

‘Who do you mean?’ Russell asked.

‘Haven’t you heard? Manfred Haferkamp was killed the other day. A suicide, according to the police in the Russian zone, but there are lots of rumours. Haferkamp hated the Russians and their German supporters – Ulbricht and his gang – and he wasn’t afraid to say so.’

‘Maybe he should have been,’ Russell murmured. He felt sick inside. Had his report caused this? Hadn’t Shchepkin implied that expulsion from the Party was the worst that could happen? Or had that been wishful thinking on his own part? He wanted to talk to the Russian.

‘What’s the matter?’ Effi asked him, once they’d left the young man.

He told her.

She squeezed his arm, but didn’t try to argue him out of feeling responsible. ‘Is there anything you can do?’

‘I can tell Shchepkin…’ he began, but that was far as the thought went. What
could
he tell Shchepkin?

‘Perhaps he was fooled too.’

‘Perhaps,’ Russell said doubtfully.

At the front entrance a public telephone was actually working. He dialled the emergency number that Shchepkin had given him, and left the agreed message. They would meet the next morning.

Effi took his place at the phone, called Lucie at home, and dictated a list of reception points for Russell to write down. All were stations or railway yards, and Russell remembered most of them from 1941, when
they’d been used to ship Jews in the other direction. He supposed he should be pleased that Torsten and the children weren’t headed for a Nazi death camp.

They went their separate ways, he to visit the railway locations, she to the local Housing Office. If the refugees reached Berlin they would need somewhere to live, preferably somewhere big enough to accommodate Esther and Leon as well. With grandparents and grandchildren both qualifying as Victims of Fascism, the man she spoke to seemed sanguine enough, though he noted that Torsten’s status might prove problematic.

Effi felt like pointing out that Torsten was also a ‘victim’, but then so, she supposed, were half the people in Europe.

For Russell, the only difficulty was getting from place to place in anything approaching a reasonable time. It all seemed to take forever, but by the end of the afternoon he had left messages and contact details at all the relevant offices. He finally arrived home to find Effi ensconced in their bedroom with a bespectacled young man. The bed was covered with photographs, grainy blow-ups of faces and figures against the same desolate backdrop. ‘That’s my Gestapo killer,’ Effi said, pointing out one face. ‘And here’s the American colonel we saw with Geruschke that night.’

There were two copies of each photograph. ‘Here’s our first Otto,’ Russell said, noticing the accountant in the background of one picture. ‘And this is the man who was going to shoot me in Kyritz Wood. I can’t see his partner anywhere.’

Effi examined the face of the would-be killer, and shuddered. ‘And we have three addresses,’ she added. ‘Including my Gestapo man’s. Horst is a star.’

‘It was the irregulars who followed them home,’ the photographer admitted, but he still seemed pleased by the compliment. ‘There are eleven faces,’ he said, ‘so that’s fourteen packs.’

Russell pulled the suitcase from under the bed and counted out the cigarette packets. It was time he asked Dallin for more.

Sattler dropped them into a canvass holdall and zipped it up. ‘Let me know if you need any inside shots,’ he said. ‘But please, I’d appreciate you not mentioning my name to anyone.’

‘Geruschke makes a very bad enemy,’ Russell agreed.

‘It’s my business I’m thinking of,’ Sattler countered. ‘I’m doing a lot of work for Americans – that’s why I’m in Dahlem this afternoon – and I don’t want to upset anyone.’

‘What sort of work?’ Russell asked out of curiosity.

‘Nothing like this,’ Sattler told him, gesturing towards the display on the bed. ‘Mostly sex, but the Americans like to call it art. God knows how they won the war.’

Effi saw him downstairs to the door, then came back up. Russell was still scanning the photographs. ‘That boy’ll go far,’ he observed.

‘He will, won’t he?’

‘Germany’s future,’ Russell murmured, still looking at the pictures. ‘Now what do we do with these?’

The Tiergarten black market seemed busier than usual, probably because it was Christmas Eve. Remembering he hadn’t got a present for Effi, Russell took more interest than usual in the items for sale, but nothing leapt out at him. It was hard to take this Christmas seriously, even with a light coating of snow on the ground.