Masaryk Station (John Russell)

by David Downing

  ‘But I don’t know anything about it!’

  Shchepkin sighed. ‘I will tell them. It has already been made very clear to the Russian officer and his superiors that John Russell is one of our most important assets, and that kidnapping his wife is, as the Americans say, strictly off-limits. Strictly off-limits,’ he repeated, savouring the phrase.

  ‘And the German?’

  ‘Ah. One of our recent recruits, I’m afraid. An apprentice of sorts.’

  ‘God help Germany.’

  ‘God help us all,’ Shchepkin said wryly. ‘Have you heard from Russell lately?’

  ‘I had a letter yesterday. He’s still stuck in Trieste.’

  ‘He was in Belgrade last week,’ Shchepkin said. ‘I saw him a few weeks ago,’ he explained. ‘We need to get him back to Berlin.’

  The ‘we’ was instructive. And on the walk back home Effi couldn’t help wondering what it said about her marriage when the MGB had a more up-to-date location for her husband than she did.

  Shchepkin’s strange blend of strength and fragility hadn’t been what she expected. With all that sadness he appeared to be carrying around, she was amazed he could still muster the energy to pursue his dubious profession.

  She had only been back a few minutes when another jeep pulled up outside the house. This one had American markings, and the man walking up to the door was wearing a US lieutenant’s uniform. Surely they hadn’t come back in disguise?

  Effi held the gun behind her back as she answered the door, but there was no mistaking the nationality of the fresh-faced young man standing in front of her. ‘Madame Russell?’ he asked in a soft drawl, apparently confusing his languages. ‘I have some air tickets for you.’

  Gerhard Ströhm was lunching with Oscar Laue, a fellow-survivor from the Party’s underground organisation in the Stettin yards. Laue was much younger than he was, and had left the railways when the war ended. He was now working at the Party’s Economic Planning Institute.

  ‘You seem happier than last time I saw you,’ Laue remarked, as they waited for their order to arrive. The restaurant, just off Potsdamerplatz, had only opened the week before, but two of Ströhm’s colleagues had already brought back good reports.

  ‘Yes,’ Ströhm agreed, just as the food arrived. Several comrades had remarked on his newfound propensity to smile since hearing Annaliese’s news.

  ‘Things are about to get better, I think,’ Laue continued, mistaking the reason for his companion’s cheerful demeanour.

  ‘In what way?’ Ströhm asked innocently. The food was more than a match for that served in the Party canteen.

  ‘Well, we’re headed for what the Americans call a showdown, aren’t we? A sort of Gunfight at the Berlin Corral.’

  ‘And that will improve matters?’

  ‘It will clarify the situation, and that’s what’s needed. We can’t go on like this. The Soviets’—here Laue glanced briefly over his shoulder, just to check that no one was listening—‘the Soviets like to see themselves as in loco parentis, but they’re really the children. I mean, Marx and Engels, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg—real thinkers. The Russians have had their moments, of course, but when it comes to sophisticated political thought, they’re the children, not us. Children who don’t know their own strength sometimes, and need careful handling.’

  Like the dismantlers out at the repair shops, Ströhm thought.

  ‘You handled that situation in Rummelsburg very well,’ Laue said, reading his mind.

  ‘I wasn’t proud of it,’ Ströhm admitted.

  ‘Why ever not? From what I heard you averted a crisis. If there’s a bear in your house,’ Laue said, blithely switching metaphors, ‘you don’t make him angry. You give him what he wants, and make sure he knows where the door is.’

  ‘And what if he shows no sign of leaving?’

  ‘He will, believe me. We’re all comrades, aren’t we? Once the Western powers are forced out of Berlin, there’ll be no reason for the Russians to stay. That’s why I say the coming crisis will clear things up. The children will all go home, and leave us to fulfil our destiny. We Germans invented socialism, and we’ll have the last word. Don’t you agree?’

  Ströhm couldn’t help laughing. ‘A happy ending, eh?’

  By noon on Tuesday even Dempsey was satisfied that Druzhnykov had coughed up all that he possibly could, and the question arose as to what should be done with him. Dempsey and Farquhar-Smith were agreed in believing the Russian unworthy of a $1,500 exit, and inclined instead to dump him at the train station with a one-way ticket to Venice and a few days’ worth of expenses in his pocket.

  It felt to Russell like they were just throwing the young Russian back in the pool, and he told Dempsey so. He might evade the MGB piranhas, might even find himself a ship to Palestine, but as he spoke only Russian and Yiddish, it seemed a lot more likely that he’d end up in an Italian jail. Wasn’t there still a Haganah agent in Trieste, and weren’t Dempsey’s people in contact with him?

  The American reluctantly agreed that they might be, and drove off in his jeep to find out. He returned two hours later with an address. ‘You can take him,’ he told Russell, ‘and if they say no, you can drop him off at the station.’

  They all drove back down the hill. As Dempsey threaded the jeep through the narrow streets, Druzhnykov’s face seemed to reflect each new sight, alight with curiosity. The American let them out some way from the address, and drove off without even wishing the Russian good luck, but the latter didn’t look bothered. He followed Russell, clutching the carpet bag that someone had found for him, and which now contained a single change of underwear and the photograph of his now-dead family, which he’d carried through the war.

  The Haganah agent wasn’t pleased to see them, although he softened when Russell introduced himself. ‘You wrote about us,’ the man remembered. ‘Many American Jews gave us money after your story. Many farms were bought.’

  The Arabs wouldn’t thank him, Russell thought. He introduced Druzhnykov, and let them agree to things in Yiddish. The Russian, it turned out, would be the last Jew leaving Europe via this escape line—now that the British had stepped aside, future travellers could take a regular boat.

  Russell shook Druzhnykov’s hand and wished him well. As he walked back towards the town centre, he had that rarest of recent feelings—that his day had actually been worthwhile.

  With no new defectors to engage him, Russell spent most of the following day working on his weekend travel plans. Aviano was on a branch line, one that joined the main line from Udine to Venice, but the two men on duty in the Trieste Station booking office weren’t prepared to guarantee any actual trains. One man was sure that the retreating Germans had pulled the bridges down after them, and very much doubted that all had been repaired yet, but his colleague seemed to remember their receiving a letter of notification stating that the line had been re-opened. He couldn’t find it though, despite emptying half a dozen drawers. The two men decided that Russell had little choice but to travel to the appropriate junction, where all would be revealed.

  It sounded a less-than-reliable way to meet a plane, and the thought of a German woman and child alone on an Italian base rang all sorts of alarm bells. He would have to leave at least half a day early.

  Or, it suddenly occurred to him, hire a car. There were such things in Trieste, and surely he could find an owner hungry for dollars. Whatever else he could say about his American employers—whether journalistic or governmental—they paid well.

  Thirty-six hours and more than a dozen garages later, he found his vehicle—a maroon and cream Fiat 508 Balilla which had been abandoned on the waterfront two years earlier and brought in by the police. ‘They won’t let me sell it,’ the garage-owner lamented, ‘and they won’t come and take it away, so I hire it out when I can.’

  After driving it up and down the waterfront, Russell decided it would do. After the usual haggle, he drove it carefully up to his hostel, and laboriously turned it around in the
small piazza. It was a while since he’d driven.

  When he came down from his room an hour or so later, the car’s roof had been taken down, and three of Marko’s daughters were sitting in it, looking for all the world like passengers awaiting their chauffeur. Which they were. ‘Please Mister English, take us for a ride,’ the one called Sasa asked him. ‘Yes, yes,’ her younger siblings chorused.

  Some practice wouldn’t hurt. After going back in for their father’s permission, he drove them all down to the city centre, took the car up one side of the Grand Canal, across the square in front of the cathedral, and back down the other side to the waterfront. The girls were chattering non-stop in Serbo-Croat, and looked like they were enjoying themselves, so he took the coast road to Miramare Castle, turning the car in the space once used by tourist charabancs. It was a beautiful day, the deep-blue sea studded with boats of all types and sizes—warships, liners, freighters, and fishing craft. There were walkers on the beach, which had only just been swept of mines, and several swimmers braving the oily waters and heaven knew what else. Even with the warship, it looked like a world at peace.

  Rosa sat by the window, looking down at the snow-covered Alps. The DC-3 seemed to be almost skimming across the peaks, which Effi found both exhilarating and scary. She wondered how Russell had managed to arrange it all, and hoped he hadn’t paid too high a price. Over the past ten years, as he’d once admitted, too many deals with various devils had looked worse in retrospect than they did at the time.

  She looked at Rosa, still engrossed by the magnificent views. Not for the first time, she wondered if they’d done right by the girl, adopting her as their own. In material terms, Rosa now led a relatively privileged life, and no one else had offered to take her in. But the girl had also become entangled—how could she not?—in the web of political debts and threats that fate had woven around Effi and John.

  One evening not so long ago, Effi had shared her misgivings with Zarah, who had given them no shrift at all. ‘She’s loved. That’s the only thing that matters. Particularly if you’ve been through what she’s been through.’

  Effi hoped her sister was right. As she reached out a hand to stroke the girl’s hair, Rosa turned to face her. ‘Lothar told me the Alps are three kilometres high, but the Himalayas are almost three times that.’

  ‘Lothar likes numbers.’

  ‘He’s a boy,’ Rosa agreed, sounding almost sympathetic. ‘Is there snow on the tops all year round?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Effi admitted.

  ‘Lothar will,’ Rosa prophesised.

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Will Papa be there to meet us?’

  ‘He’d better be,’ Effi said with a smile.

  ‘But what will we do if he isn’t?’

  ‘Whatever we need to. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Rosa agreed, turning back to the view.

  Effi leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. She was looking forward to seeing Russell, and she was also glad to be away from Berlin. As so often in the past, a ‘rest’ between jobs was proving more demanding than work. The flat and its cleanliness had been neglected for weeks, all sorts of other matters were crying out for attention, and friends assumed she was permanently available. In the end, Effi had only just managed to get herself packed for the weekend.

  She had heard from Lisa Sundgren—good news, or so it seemed. One of the illegal groups Lisa had mentioned had found out where her daughter was—in a small town not too far from Prague—and armed with this information, she was preparing another assault on the indifference of the local Czechoslovak diplomats. Effi hadn’t heard from Max Grelling, but maybe his services wouldn’t be required.

  There was still no contract from RIAS, which might prove a blessing in disguise, because the previous day another, rather startling opportunity had presented itself. She’d almost not answered the knock, but curiosity had gotten the better of her, and with gun firmly clasped behind her back had opened the door to a handsome young American. His German was worse than her English, but as far as she could tell he was there representing the American director Gregory Sinfield, who was currently shooting a film in Berlin. And Sinfield wanted Effi for his next movie, which would commence shooting in Hollywood in approximately three months’ time. There was no title as yet, but there was a script for her to read, a script that seemed good, if the first ten pages were anything to go by. She hadn’t brought it with her, because she didn’t want their weekend spoilt by the possible prospect of another long parting.

  Could she cope with that? Could John? Was a Hollywood film, no matter how good, worth the upheaval it would mean for them all?

  Effi didn’t know, but her excitement at the prospect had certainly pushed other things from her mind. The previous day Eva Kempka had left a message asking Effi to call back, but they’d been airborne before she remembered. Effi hoped it was only a social call, and not some new discovery that Eva had made about Sonja Strehl’s unfortunate death.

  Russell left Trieste soon after eight A.M., and drove across the bridge connecting Venice to the mainland not much more than two hours later. Having found a place to park the Balilla over the weekend, he took a water taxi down the Grand Canal in search of a hotel. Given the month, he was expecting crowds, but both waterways and streets were emptier than they had been in 1934 when he was there previously, the city seemingly stuck in post-war torpor. After looking at several hotel rooms, with hoteliers almost falling over themselves to offer a bargain, he settled for a three-room suite overlooking the Grand Canal, just south of the Rialto Bridge.

  After eating lunch at a restaurant by the water, he walked slowly back to the car, and drove back over the bridge. This had just been opened when he and Effi last visited, and he remembered hoardings hung with photos of the Duce doing the honours. Mussolini had only been dead three years, Russell realised. It seemed a lot longer.

  Escaping the city’s mainland suburbs, he drove north along mostly empty roads, the mountains drawing ever closer. The Aviano airbase might belong to the Italians, but as far as Russell could see the only planes they possessed were a couple of old trainers from the 1920s. The modern planes parked by the perimeter had USAF markings, and their presence suggested a somewhat less than wholehearted commitment to leave. Then again, compared to buying a national election, a couple of planes didn’t seem that much of an intrusion.

  Russell watched the DC-3 taxi to a halt some distance from the airbase buildings, then drove towards it across the expanse of tarmac and grass. He got there just as the door was opened to lower the steps, and there was Effi, framed in the doorway like visiting royalty, holding Rosa’s hand. Both faces lit up when they saw him, which almost brought a tear to his eye. He’d been away too long.

  Rosa ran up to hug him with Effi close behind, and they enfolded each other in a three-way embrace.

  No one else had got off.

  ‘Were you the only passengers?’ Russell asked.

  ‘We were,’ Effi told him. ‘Even the pilot was surprised.’

  Either the Americans had forgotten the meaning of economy, or he was more important than he realised, Russell thought. Which was worth remembering.

  Effi was taking in the air. ‘Even the airports smell good down here,’ she said. ‘And it’s so beautifully warm.’

  ‘Is this our car now?’ Rosa wanted to know.

  ‘Only for the next few days.’

  ‘But I thought everyone in Venice went everywhere by boat.’

  ‘They do. Well, they walk, too. The car’s to get us there and back.’ He suggested they all squeeze into the front, but Rosa insisted on sitting in the middle of the back seat, where she had had uninterrupted view of the countryside on either side of the road.

  The roads were still virtually empty, and they reached Venice with an hour of daylight to spare. After leaving their bags at the hotel, they took a water taxi down to San Marco, and found that the restaurant behind the basilica which Russell and Effi had patro
nised on their previous visit was still there. More astonishing, the proprietor recognised them, and insisted on serving them all champagne.

  Sailing back up the Grand Canal with a moon rising over the roofs, Russell silently thanked whatever god had brought them there to see it. Once Rosa was in bed, the two of them sat for a while by the open balcony doorway, watching the moon’s reflection in the windows across the canal, before finally sharing a look that had them walking hand in hand to their enormous bed. After making love the first time, they lay naked in each other’s arms, feeling the warm breeze on their skin, savouring that sense of intimacy that both had sorely missed.

  ‘So tell me your news,’ Russell said, after several minutes had passed.

  ‘Where to begin?’ she asked rhetorically, before taking him through Thomas’s political travails, Ströhm’s and Annaliese’s impending marriage and parenthood, Lisa Sundgren’s arrival in search of her daughter, and the questions Eva Kempka had raised about Sonja Strehl’s suicide. And then were the problems the Soviets were causing, both for her and Berlin.

  ‘You have been through it.’

  ‘And that’s not all. Two of them turned up at the flat, and tried to take me away for questioning. I thought I was being abducted, so I saw them off with the gun you got me.’

  ‘You what?!?’

  ‘I know, but I was right. Your friend Shchepkin came to see me the next day, and apologised for his countrymen. They wanted to ask me some questions about Sonja Strehl, but now they’ve been told to leave me alone—you’re too important to annoy, apparently.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He was shocked, but knew he shouldn’t be—it wasn’t the first time she’d proved she could look after herself. ‘So what did you think of Shchepkin?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. He seemed so wan and sad, but I don’t imagine he takes many prisoners.’

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘But the really big news,’ Effi said, sitting up against the headboard and pulling the sheet across her lower body, ‘is Zarah.’