Lehrter Station (36 page)

Shchepkin appeared at his shoulder with all the old magical abruptness, but seemed more agitated than usual. And when Russell started pouring out his indignation over Haferkamp’s death, the Russian just told him to get a grip. ‘We have a real problem,’ he said. ‘Nemedin is still furious with both of us. We have to fix him before he fixes us.’

‘Why?’ Russell asked. ‘I mean, why’s he furious?’

‘The farce with Schreier, his guards getting killed. He had his knuckles rapped by Beria – if it weren’t for his family connections he’d have been recalled. And he blames us. You in particular, but he’s also suspicious of me.’

‘Oh shit,’ Russell murmured.

‘Indeed.’

‘So how do we fix him? Do you have any brilliant ideas?’ Asking the question, he wondered what sort of answer he wanted to hear.

‘I hope so. While you’ve been chasing Jews I’ve been digging up incriminating material. I now have access to Nemedin’s NKVD personnel file, and such files – in case you don’t know – are very comprehensive. Your own runs to forty-five pages, and Nemedin’s is five times as long. He has, shall we say, a controversial history. He was responsible for the purging of several other communist parties during the time of the Pact, and he was involved in the execution of the Polish officer corps – almost ten thousand of them – in 1940.’

‘So the Poles in London are telling the truth.’

‘About that, yes, though not about much else. But can we concentrate on the matter in hand? There’s enough in Nemedin’s file to tell the Western allies who and what he really is, which is the first objective. I also have a photograph of Nemedin with a British agent. It was taken by our people in London, with a view to incriminating the Englishman, but we can use it the other way round, to cast doubt on Nemedin’s loyalty. I want you to deliver the file and the photograph to a British journalist named Tristram Hadleigh – do you know him?’

‘No.’ Though judging by the name he knew the type.

‘He has friends in your Secret Service, and I assume that he’ll either get the story printed or pass it on to them. If the file and the photograph are published, Nemedin’s ability to work outside the Soviet Union will be over. His face will be known, and there’ll be a huge question mark over his loyalty. At worst, he’ll be called back to Moscow; at best, Beria will have him shot for incompetence. Do I shock you? He’d like nothing better than to have me shot. And you too, after what happened with Schreier.’

‘Why do I have to deliver these things? What’s wrong with the post? Or some young German boy?’

‘They’ll be more credible coming from you. It mustn’t look like one of our schemes. You’re a journalist with a good track record here in Berlin,
with ties to the old KPD. And that’s where you say you got hold of the stuff – from a disgruntled German comrade.’

‘Why not give it to the Americans? We can tell
them
the truth.’

‘No, it has to be the British. If the journalist passes it to the British Secret Service, Beria will hear about it from his mole in London.’

‘I’d forgotten about that. So how are you going to get the stuff to me? By post?’

‘No. You’ll have to collect it from a dead letter drop.’

‘Why?’

‘The post can’t be trusted, and the fewer people who know about this the better. I’ll be in Warsaw when you pick it up…’

‘What?’

‘Yes, I have to distance myself from this. Which will help you too – if they don’t suspect me, they won’t suspect you.’

That made a vague sort of sense, but…

‘Look, you must collect the stuff on Friday, just before dark would be best. The drop-off is a shop at Roland Ufer 17. There’s an overhead railway station just up the road. If you arrange to meet Hadleigh at the British Press Club you can take a train and hand the stuff over. As simple as that. And we’ll be rid of Nemedin, which should save both our lives.’

Put like that…

‘You’ll do it?’

‘I suppose so. How did you get hold of his personnel file?’

‘I still have a few friends from the old days, most of them clinging on with their fingertips, just like me. We help each other when we can.’

‘So what can go wrong?’ Russell asked.

Shchepkin shrugged. ‘There’s always a risk, but we really have no choice. Take a good look around before you go in.’

‘That doesn’t really answer my question.’

‘What could go wrong is your getting caught with the material, in which case we’ll both be finished. But there’s no reason why you should be. No one will know the material’s missing until the next day.’

Russell gave him a suspicious look. ‘If you’re away in Warsaw, someone else has to be involved.’

‘Of course, but you wouldn’t expect me to give you a name. You wouldn’t recognise it. And it wouldn’t help you if you did.’

Russell sighed. As usual with Shchepkin, he felt as though he’d been led deep into a maze, and left to wonder where he was. Taking ‘a good look around’ was all very well, but the same thought had probably occurred to the fool who commanded the Light Brigade. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But anything remotely suspicious, and I’m going home empty-handed. All right?’

‘Of course,’ Shchepkin said, sounding ever so slightly relieved. ‘Now I have something for you. The Jew you wanted traced.’

‘Otto Pappenheim.’

‘Yes. He did receive a transit visa, and he did cross the new border between Germany and the Soviet Union.’

‘Ah.’

‘On June 21st, 1941.’

‘The day before the invasion.’

‘Exactly. His train was stopped at Baranovichi – eastward movements were halted so all available lines could be used to reinforce the frontier. And that’s the last official trace of him. There’s certainly no record of him reaching Moscow, or travelling on the Trans-Siberian. Either he was caught up in the early fighting, or he found refuge in one of the local Jewish communities. And you know what happened to them.’

Russell did. ‘Could you find out his age?’

‘Yes, I forgot. He was born in 1914, in Berlin. His documents claimed he was single, but many applicants lied about that. As much to themselves as to us.’

Russell grunted his agreement. If this was Rosa’s father – and the age seemed about right – then a guilty lie was possible. But the chances of tracking him down seemed almost non-existent – if this Otto wasn’t buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in western Russia, he could be more or less anywhere. If the man ever came back in search of his family, then he might well find them, but as things stood they would never
find him. ‘Thanks for that,’ he told Shchepkin. As they got up to leave he remembered his original purpose. ‘So why was Haferkamp killed?’ he asked.

Shchepkin looked at him for a moment, then managed a wry smile. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Rumour says it was an accident – that some young idiot hit him once too often, and his superiors decided that a suicide was less likely to upset the German comrades. Then again, maybe someone thought they needed upsetting, and had him killed for that reason. I don’t know.’

‘So it wasn’t just my report.’

‘No,’ Shchepkin said tiredly, as if he found Russell’s concern to apportion personal responsibility more than a little exasperating. ‘Your report didn’t tell them anything new. Not about Haferkamp anyway. Now I must be off. If all goes well, we’ll meet again in a fortnight.’

He strode off, briefly raising one arm in farewell. ‘If all goes well,’ Russell murmured to himself. He could imagine the riposte on his gravestone: ‘If all had gone well, he wouldn’t be here.’

But Friday was a long way off, and the Soviets far from his only problem. He had to come up with a plan for dealing with Geruschke, look out for Torsten and the children, and get his story off to Solly. He still hadn’t fixed on an angle for the latter, and talking to Isendahl might jolt his thoughts into some sort of order. He could then find a café to write in, prior to joining Effi at Ali’s.

He spent the long walk to Friedrichshain marshalling his thoughts, and was pleased to find Isendahl at home. His German friend was eager to hear how Russell had fared with the Haganah, and they ended up talking for over two hours about the options open to Europe’s Jewish survivors, and the seriously mixed blessings that each seemed to offer. Neither man took to the idea of Israel, but both saw the need, and thought it inevitable. So what mattered was what kind of Israel – a racially exclusive state run by soldiers and rabbis, or an heir to European Jewry’s socialist traditions that might, one day, share the land with the Arabs on more or less equal terms. Isendahl of course favoured the latter, but he wasn’t hopeful.

‘I was thinking about those options you listed,’ he told Russell. ‘And I asked myself: where would I – a German-Jewish socialist – feel most at home? And guess what answer I came up with? Not a Soviet-run Germany, not a Jewish Palestine, not the United States. It’s almost the ultimate paradox – the place I know I’ll feel most at home is a born-again bourgeois Germany. The same one that took such pleasure in murdering both socialists and Jews.’

Russell smiled, and found himself thinking of Albert Wiesner. He claimed to be a socialist, but his socialism didn’t stretch to accommodating Arabs within the new state’s borders. And when forced to choose between socialism and Israel, Russell had no doubt which way Albert would jump. The Nazis had given him his politics, and he would pass them on. There was still a price to pay.

But what was the alternative? Back in 1918 Russell had looked forward to a world in which anti-Semitism and other equally obnoxious prejudices would become increasingly unsustainable, but the Nazis had put paid to that dream, probably for at least another century. The old Jewish life in Germany and eastern Europe was gone for ever, and with it the hopes of a secular assimilation. It was Israel or the States, and Russell was inclined to favour the latter. It seemed better that the Americans profit from Europe’s failings, than that the Arabs pay for them.

Not that it mattered what he thought. And he would not condemn those, like Albert, who thought differently. Or at least not yet.

Russell remembered something that Albert had said about the Nokmim, that he didn’t agree with what they were doing, but would probably applaud their successes. He asked Isendahl whether they or the Ghosts of Treblinka had made the news in his absence.

‘Only indirectly,’ Wilhelm told him. He rummaged round for a newspaper, and pointed out an article. A man had been found dead in Neukölln, soon after a Jew identified him as an Auschwitz guard.

‘Why wasn’t he arrested?’ Russell asked.

‘Who knows? The Soviets may have had a use for him.’

‘You think it was the Ghosts?’

‘They left their mark on him. A Star of David cut into his forearm, where the Nazis used to tattoo their Jewish prisoners.’

‘Wonderful,’ Russell said drily.

‘It is in a way. And dreadful too. Do you know that line by Yeats: “a terrible beauty is born”?’

‘Uh-huh. High drama’s addictive stuff, but right now I’d settle for a few years of peace and contrition.’

‘Wrong place, wrong time.’

‘Probably.’

Isendahl was improving with age, Russell thought, as he walked back down Neue Königstrasse in search of a café. He’d noticed a letter with US Army postal markings on the man’s desk, so maybe Freya was in touch, or even coming back.

He eventually found a bar off Alexanderplatz, and spent a couple of hours sketching out a series of articles on ‘The Jews after Hitler’. He reached the corner of Hufelandstrasse just in time to see Effi step down from the Soviet bus, and stopped her in mid stride with a long whistle. She hurried towards him, eager to hear the news from Shchepkin.

‘It might have been Rosa’s dad,’ Russell told her, ‘but we’ll probably never know.’ He explained the circumstances of Otto 2’s disappearance.

Effi made a face. ‘What more can we do?’

‘Nothing more,’ Russell told her, ‘at least for the moment. I think we have to assume that Rosa’s an orphan, and act accordingly.’

She took his arm as they walked back down to Ali’s building. ‘There’s not much else we can do, is there? But she
so
needs to know, one way or another. She never says so, but I know that she does.’

And so do you, Russell thought.

They walked on up to the apartment, where another delicious-smelling meal was in preparation. Neither Ali nor Fritz had ever celebrated Christmas, but both confessed to a childhood fascination with the Christian festival and its rituals, particularly the one which involved taking a tree indoors and smothering it in trinkets. Fritz had been gifted a bottle of wine by a friend in the US forces, and they all drank a toast to the future.

‘While I remember,’ Effi said, ‘the photographer I told you about has taken some pictures.’ She took the sheaf from her bag and placed it on the table. ‘If you could show these around. The more people get to see them, the more we’ll identify.’

Ali leafed her way through them, Fritz looking over her shoulder. ‘The stuff of nightmares,’ he murmured. ‘If you do get them identified, what then?’

‘I’ll take the names to someone in the US records office.’ Russell replied. Luders had given him one contact, and there were bound to be others. ‘From there – I don’t know.’ He knew he should talk to Dallin before taking the matter any further, but he didn’t really want to.

‘Like mopping up after a battle,’ Fritz murmured.

Or clearing the decks for the next one, Russell thought sourly. He told himself to cheer the hell up. 1946 was bound to be better.

The women had gone into the kitchen, and he could see Effi leaning back against the wall, smiling at something. The world might be going even further to the dogs, but she was as wonderful as ever. How lucky was he?

It was a pre-war sort of evening, with good food and conversation, a wine that wasn’t an insult, an enjoyable game of cards. It was snowing again when they left, large flakes floating out of the darkness and clinging to the riven walls. There weren’t many roofs for Santa to land on, but several hopeful chimneys rose out of the empty shells.