Zoo Stationee

by David Downing

  “It probably is,” Russell agreed.

  Silence descended again. Albert seemed calm enough, Russell thought. Calmer, in fact, than he felt himself. At least the car was behaving, its engine purring smoothly as they cruised along the mostly deserted road at 65 kph. Everyone else had chosen the autobahn.

  The sky to the south seemed clearer, which suggested a cold, clear night. Did that augur well or badly for an illicit border crossing? Visibility would be better for everyone—pursuers and pursued. He tried to remember what phase the moon was in, and couldn’t.

  Albert had rescued the Beobachter from the floor between them. “Why do you read this rubbish?” he asked, scanning the front page.

  “To know what they’re doing,” Russell said.

  Albert grunted disapproval.

  “Which reminds me,” Russell went on. “There’s a piece in there about the crisis in Ruthenia. . . .”

  “Ruthenia? Where’s that?”

  “It’s part of Czechoslovakia. Look, you need to know this stuff. Czechoslovakia is more than Czechs and Slovaks. There’s Moravians and Hungarians and God knows who else. And Ruthenians. The Germans are encouraging all these groups to rebel against the Czechoslovak government, in the hope that they’ll provoke a major crackdown. Once that happens, they’ll march in themselves, saying that they’re the only ones who can restore order and protect these poor victimized minorities.”

  “All right.”

  “And the Czech government has started taking action against the Ruthenians. Read the piece. See how pleased the Germans are. ‘This is not the sort of behavior that any government could tolerate in a neighboring state, etc.’—you can practically see them rubbing their hands with glee. They’re preparing the ground. So keep an eye on the news. Don’t hang around in Prague any longer than you have to, or you’ll find Hitler’s caught up with you.”

  “I have the names of people in Prague,” Albert insisted. “They will tell me.”

  “Good. But remember Kristallnacht—and what a surprise that was, even after five years of persecution. If I were you, I’d head for Hungary as soon as I could. Once you’re there you can work out the best way to England.”

  “I don’t think I will be going to England. My plan is to go to Pales-tine.”

  “Oh,” Russell said, taken by surprise. “Does your mother know?”

  “Of course. I am a man now. I must do what is best for the whole family. When I get work and somewhere to live, I can send for them.”

  “Immigration is restricted.”

  “I know that. But we will find a way.”

  “If there’s a war, they’ll stop it altogether.”

  “Then we will wait.”

  They were entering Kottbus now, and Russell concentrated on not drawing attention to his driving. But the market town seemed caught in its afternoon nap, and they were soon back in open country. A few kilometers more, and they passed under the Silesian autobahn. Their road grew suddenly busier, and a sign announced that they were 93 kilometers from Görlitz.

  It was not yet three o’clock. At this rate they would arrive far too early. They needed one of those stopping places with a view which the Germans loved so much.

  The Germans, Russell repeated to himself. After fifteen years of living there, of feeling a little more German each year, the process seemed to have slipped into reverse. Lately, he seemed to be feeling a little less German each day. But not more English. So what did that make him?

  “Why are you doing this?” Albert asked him.

  Russell just shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “The reason I ask—a year ago, before Kristallnacht, I used to wonder how people could be so cruel, but I never questioned why someone was kind. Now it’s the opposite. I can see all sorts of reasons why people are cruel, but kindness is becoming a mystery.”

  He was six years older than Paul, Russell thought. Just six years. He tried to think of an adequate answer to Albert’s question.

  “Whatever the reason, I thank you anyway,” Albert said. “My family thanks you.”

  “I think there are many reasons,” Russell said. “Some good, some not so good. Some I don’t understand myself. I like your family. Maybe it’s as simple as that.” And maybe, he thought, any half-decent family in the Wiesners’ situation would have been enough to push him off his fence.

  The phrase “I used to be a good journalist” passed through his mind, leaving him wondering where it had come from. This had nothing to do with journalism. He thought about McKinley’s papers, uselessly hidden in the poste restante, and came, with a sudden lift of the heart, to a realization so obvious that he couldn’t believe he had missed it. If he was going to risk his life and liberty for a few military secrets, then why not take out McKinley’s papers as well? He had only one head to cut off.

  The road was climbing now, the sky almost cloudless. Around ten kilometers from Görlitz Russell found the stopping place he had been looking for, a wide graveled ledge overlooking a pretty river. Eager to stretch, they both got out, and Russell ran through the arranged script for the Görlitz buffet. “Once you are in Prague, the first thing you must do—the first thing—is to telephone me. Your mother won’t leave Germany until she knows you’re safe.”

  “You haven’t given me the number,” Albert said sensibly.

  Russell made him repeat it several times, wondering as he did so—and hating himself for it—how long the boy would resist a Gestapo interrogation.

  Albert seemed to know what he was thinking. “I won’t give you up,” he said simply.

  “None of us know what we’ll do in a situation like that.”

  “I won’t get into a situation like that,” Albert said, pulling a grubby-looking Luger from his coat pocket.

  Oh shit, Russell thought, glancing left and right in search of approaching traffic and barking “Put it away!” The road was blissfully empty. “That’s. . . .” he started to say, and stopped himself. What right did he have to give the boy advice? Albert had been in Sachsenhausen once, and his father had died there. It wasn’t hard to see why going out in a blaze of gunfire seemed preferable to going back.

  He breathed out slowly. “You have to leave the coat with me,” he said. “Won’t the gun be obvious in your jacket pocket?”

  “I’ll put it in my belt,” Albert said, and did so. He then took the coat off and offered Russell a 360-degree turn, like a model at a fashion show. The gun didn’t show.

  Back in the car, Albert pulled a workingmen’s cap from a pocket of the discarded coat, and Russell reached into the KaDeWe bag for the blue scarf. “The recognition signal,” he explained, and Albert wrapped it around his neck, reminding Russell of Paul on a skating trip.

  They drove on, the sky a deepening blue as dusk approached, the mountains slowly creeping above the southern horizon. As they reached the outskirts of Görlitz it occurred to Russell that anyone with a brain would have studied a plan of the town—the last thing he wanted to do was ask directions to the station. Go to the town center and look for signs, he told himself. The Germans were good at signs.

  He picked up some tram tracks and followed them in what seemed the obvious direction. After passing several large industrial concerns, the road narrowed through a handsome arch and arrived at a wide street full of old buildings. There were theaters, statues, a large water fountain—in any other circumstances, Görlitz would be worth an afternoon stroll.

  “There!” Albert said, indicating a sign to the station.

  They drove down a long straight street, toward what looked like a station. It was. The station building was about a hundred meters long, the entrance to the booking hall right in the center. There were lighted windows to the left of this entrance, and steam billowing out of two large vents.

  Russell pulled the car to a halt behind a Reichsbahn parcels truck. “The buffet,” he said, pointing it out. “There’ll be an entrance from the booking hall.”

  It was ten to five.

  Albert just sat there for a few seconds, then turned to shake Russell’s hand.

  The boy looked nervous now, Russell thought. “Saf
e journey,” he said.

  Albert climbed out and, without a backward look, headed toward the entrance. There was nothing furtive about his stride—if anything it was too upright. He leapt up the two steps and in through the doorway.

  Start driving, Russell told himself, but he didn’t. He sat there watching as the minutes passed. Two men in SA uniform emerged, laughing at something. A man ran in, presumably late for a train. Only seconds later a spasm of chuffs settled into the accelerating rhythm of a departing engine.

  He imagined Albert sitting there, and wondered whether he’d tried to buy a coffee. If he had, he might have been refused; if he hadn’t, some power-mad waiter might have tried to move him on. He imagined a challenge, the gun pulled out, the sound of shots and a frantic Albert flying out through the doorway. Russell wondered what he would do. Pick him up? Race out of Görlitz with the police in hot pursuit? What else could he do? His mouth was suddenly dry.

  And then Albert did come out. There was another man with him, a shortish man in his forties with graying hair and a very red nose, who shifted his head from side to side like an animal sniffing for danger. The two of them walked across to the small open truck with a timber load which Russell had already noticed, and swung themselves up into their respective cab seats. The engine burst into life and the truck set off down the street, leaving a bright tail of exhaust hanging in the cold evening air.

  Left Luggage

  AFTER LEAVING GÖRLITZ, Russell took the next available chance to telephone Effi. A brass band was practicing in the first bar he tried, but with receiver and hand clamped tight against his ears he could just about hear the relief in her voice. “I’ll be waiting,” she said.

  He chose the autobahn north from Kottbus, hoping to speed the journey, but an overturned vehicle in a military convoy had the opposite effect. By the time he reached Friedrichshain it was almost nine o’clock. Frau Wiesner could hardly have opened the door any faster if she’d been waiting with her hand on the knob.

  “He was collected,” Russell said, and her lips formed a defiant little smile.

  “Sit down, sit down,” she said, eyes shining. “I must just tell the girls.”

  Russell did as he was told, noticing the bags of clothing piled against one wall. To be given away, he supposed—there was no way they would be allowed to take that much with them. He wondered if the Wiesners had any more valuables to take out, or whether the bulk of the family assets had been concealed behind the stickers in Achievements of the Third Reich. It occurred to him that Germany’s Jews had several years’ experience in the art of slipping things across the German border.

  “And my visa has arrived,” Frau Wiesner said, coming back into the room. “By special courier from the British Embassy this afternoon. You must have some influential friends.”

  “I think you do,” Russell told her. “I’m sure Doug Conway had a hand in it,” he explained, somewhat untruthfully. There seemed no reason for her to know about his deals with Irina Borskaya and Trelawney-Smythe. “But there is something you might be able to do for me,” he added, and told her what he wanted. She said she would ask around.

  He left her with a promise to drive over the moment Albert phoned, and a plea not to worry if the wait lasted more than a day. If they still hadn’t heard anything by Thursday he knew she’d be reluctant to leave, even though they both knew that in this context no news was almost certain to be bad news.

  On the other side of the city, Effi welcomed him with an intense embrace, and insisted on hearing every detail. Later, as they were going to bed, Russell noticed a new film script on the dressing table and asked her about it. It was a comedy, she told him. “Twenty-three lines, four come-on smiles, and no jokes. The men got those.” But at least it was pointless, a quality which Mother had taught her to admire.

  The next morning, Russell left her propped up in bed happily declaiming her lines to an empty room, and drove home to Neuenburgerstrasse. There was no sign of Frau Heidegger, and no messages on the board, from either Albert or the Gestapo. He went up to his room and read the newspaper, his door propped open in case the phone rang. Jews had been forbidden from using either sleeping or restaurant cars on the Reichsbahn, on the grounds, no doubt, that they would appreciate their hunger more if they were kept awake.

  He heard Frau Heidegger come in, the clink of the bottles as she set them beside her door. It was Tuesday, Russell realized—skat night. With Effi not working, and his own weekends given over to espionage, he was beginning to lose track of the days. He went down to warn her about his expected call, and paid the price in coffee.

  Back upstairs, the hours ticked by with agonizing slowness, and the only calls were for Dagmar, the plump little waitress from Pomerania who had taken McKinley’s room. She, not unusually, was out. According to Frau Heidegger she sometimes came in at 3:00 in the morning with beer on her breath.

  Russell nipped out to buy some eggs while Frau Heidegger kept guard, and cooked himself an omelette for dinner. Most of the other tenants returned home from work, and the concierges arrived, one by one, bottles in hand, to play skat. The waves of merriment reached higher up the stairs as the evening went on, but the telephone refused to ring, and Russell felt his anxiety grow. Where was Albert? Sitting in some border lockup waiting to be picked by the Gestapo? Or lying dead in some frozen mountain meadow? If so, he hoped the boy had managed to take some of the bastards with him.

  The skat party broke up soon after 10:30, and once the other concierges had passed noisily into the street Frau Heidegger took the phone off the hook. Russell went to bed and started reading the John Kling novel which Paul had loaned him. The next thing he knew, it was morning. He walked briskly down to Hallesches Tor for a paper, skipping through it on the way back for news of spies or criminals apprehended on the border. As he replaced the phone a red-eyed Frau Heidegger emerged with an invitation to coffee, and they both listened to the morning news on her people’s radio. The Führer had recovered from the slight illness which had caused the cancellation of several school visits on the previous day, but no young Jews named Albert had been picked up trying to cross into Czechoslovakia.

  The morning passed at a snail’s pace, bringing two more calls for Dagmar and one from Effi, wanting to know what was happening. Russell had no sooner put the phone down after her call than it rang again. “Forgot something?” he asked, but it was Albert’s voice, indistinct but unmistakably triumphant, which came over the line.

  “I’m in Prague,” it said, as if the Czech capital was as close to heaven as its owner had ever been.

  “Thank God,” Russell shouted back. “What took you so long?”

  “We only came across last night. You’ll tell my mother?”

  “I’m on my way. And they’ll be on the train tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. And good luck.”

  Russell hung up the phone and stood beside it, blissfully conscious of the relief spreading out through his limbs. One down, three to go. He called Effi back with the good news and then set off for the Wiesners.

  Frau Wiesner looked as if she hadn’t slept since he had left her on Monday, and when Russell told her Albert was in Prague she burst into tears. The two girls rushed to embrace her and started crying too.

  After a minute or so she wiped her eyes and embraced Russell. “A last coffee in Berlin,” she said, and sent the two girls out to buy cakes at a small shop on a nearby street which still sold to Jews. Once they were out of the door, she told Russell she had one last favor to ask. Disappearing into the other room, she reemerged with a large framed photograph of her husband and a small suitcase. “Would you keep this for me?” she asked, handing him the photograph. “It is the best one I have, and I’m afraid they will take it away from me at the border. Next time you come to England. . . .”

  “Of course. Where is he, your husband? Did they bury him at Sachsenhausen?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I did not tell you this, but on Monday, after the visa came, I gathered my courage, and I went to th
e Gestapo building on Prinz Albrechtstrasse. I asked if his body could be returned to me, or if they could just tell me where he is buried. A man was called for, and he came down to see me. He said that my son could claim my husband’s body, but I could not. He said that was the legal position, but I knew he was lying. They were using my husband’s body as bait to catch my son.”

  Sometimes the Nazis could still take your breath away.

  “And this,” she continued, picking up the suitcase, “is what you asked for on Monday.” She put it on the table, clicked it open, and clicked again, revealing the false bottom. “The man who made this was a famous leather craftsman in Wilmersdorf before the Nazis, and he has made over a hundred of these since coming to Friedrichshain.”

  “And none have been detected?”

  “He doesn’t know. Once Jews have left they don’t come back. A few have written to say that everything went well, but if it hadn’t. . . .”