Masaryk Station

by David Downing

  Eva’s flat was on the second floor. There was no response to Effi’s first knock, nor to a louder second. The view through the keyhole was limited, and offered no clues to the tenant’s whereabouts. After finding that everyone else was out on that floor, she went down to the basement in search of the portierfrau.

  The woman in question was around fifty, unusually fat for post-war Berlin, and disinclined to be helpful, particularly when she found out who Effi was looking for. ‘Frau Kempka has been arrested,’ she stated, almost triumphantly.

  ‘What for?’ Effi asked.

  ‘I don’t exactly know, but I’m sure we could both make a good guess. Your kind can hardly …’

  ‘My kind?’

  ‘You know what I mean. It’s still illegal, you know, despite everything that’s happened.’

  If the woman hadn’t been so fat, Effi thought, she’d be one of those people painting 88 on high walls and bridges—88 for HH or Heil Hitler. ‘I am not a lesbian,’ she told the portierfrau, adding a note of indignation for effect.

  ‘Oh. Well I’m sure I’ve seen you before.’

  On the silver screen or a wanted poster, Effi wondered. ‘Not here,’ she said.

  ‘So what did you want with Frau Kempka?’

  ‘I’m a work colleague,’ Effi improvised. ‘She hasn’t turned up, and her boss wants to know why.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘So when was she arrested?’

  ‘They came on Sunday afternoon. About four, I think.’

  ‘Were they German or Russian?’

  ‘They weren’t in uniform. The one who spoke was German, but the other one could have been Russian. He had that flat face they have.’

  ‘Did Eva, er, Frau Kempka resist?

  ‘Oh, she kicked up a right fuss, screaming her head off as they put her in the car.’

  ‘But no one tried to help her?’

  ‘Well, it was the police, and anyway, no one around here likes her kind.’

  ‘I understand. Look, if she comes back could you ask her to telephone Effi?’

  ‘Oh, I doubt she’ll be back. Like I said, it is still illegal.’

  ‘But if she does?’

  The woman was staring at her. ‘You’re Effi Koenen, aren’t you? I remember you in Mother. And what was that other one? More Than Brothers. Wonderful films. They knew how to make them before the war. Not like the moody nonsense they put out today. Would you give me your autograph?’

  Without waiting for an answer she ducked back inside for something to sign.

  Effi stood there, thinking that now the woman would call her if Eva did return. Fame did have its compensations.

  There was a long wait while their first-class carriages were shunted aboard the ferry for the short ride to Rugen Island. As he watched others travellers stream past his window on foot, Gerhard Ströhm couldn’t help noticing the resentful looks aimed his way, and the reason offered for his and his comrades’ special treatment—that they would be able to work on the journey—suddenly seemed a lot less convincing.

  He had never been to Rugen Island, and neither, he imagined, had most of the others. In pre-Nazi days only the bourgeoisie had been able to afford weekends or weeks away in the expensive hotels, and after 1933 eager groups of Hitlerjugend and Bund Deutscher Mädel had pretty much monopolised the island’s woods and beaches. The only people working there had been those shipped in to service others.

  It was as beautiful as Effi had said it was, Ströhm thought, as a conference-centre car carried him and three other delegates the last few kilometres to the converted hotel. The local Party had suggested a new holiday camp for city workers and their families, but had been overruled by Berlin. Too many echoes of ‘Strength Through Joy’, one official had told him; the Party needed a conference centre away from the capital, where its leading officials could escape the stresses of their daily work, and plan for the people’s future.

  It didn’t look as if any expense had been spared. Ströhm’s room was probably the nicest he’d ever had, with its own tiny bathroom, large soft bed, neat modern desk and leather-backed chairs. The terrace below his window was a few steps up from the beach, the grey-blue Baltic beyond, stretching to a sharp horizon.

  The main conference hall, as he soon discovered, was even more impressive, a slight stage overlooking rows of comfortable chairs beneath gabled wooden rafters. It all felt so new, so modern, so clean.

  The first session that afternoon was devoted to administrative procedures, and the importance of standardisation in a socialist economy. Ströhm found nothing to argue with in either the initial presentation or the various remarks from the floor. Of course they had to be efficient. Who would argue otherwise? Afterwards, as they all trooped off to the dining room, he found himself hoping that future sessions would offer rather more in the way of controversy.

  The food, when it arrived, was something of a shock. For one thing there was so much of it, for another everything tasted so incredibly good. Scanning the room, Ströhm could see that others were just as surprised. Some agreeably so, as if they could hardly believe their luck, although others had dubious looks on their faces. Ströhm could imagine the chain of thought: the initial uneasiness turning into self-doubt, and then to a sort of wry resignation—‘i won’t help anyone else by leaving it on the plate.’

  Or in the bottle. Ströhm knew very little about wine, but had no doubt that this was the best he had tasted. It was so smooth, so velvety. So rich.

  After dinner, he joined one of the groups in the lounge. The conversation quickly settled on their pasts, and after a few minutes Ströhm realised why—that was where they had to go to find their justification. They had all worked hard, often for many years, with precious little reward. Many had suffered, losing friends and family, spending years in Nazi prisons or camps. Even those in exile had hardly slept on beds of roses. After all those years of sacrifice surely a little pampering wasn’t so inappropriate.

  With his head full of wine, Ströhm was inclined to give them all the benefit of the doubt, and eventually a drunken chorusing of the ‘Internationale’ sent them all off to their beds with a glow in their hearts.

  The journey to Vienna was as long and irksome as Russell expected it to be. It took him over three hours to reach Udine, where a further two-hour wait was promised. He resisted the temptation to drop in on Boris the hotelier for a chat about dismembered corpses and their disposal, settling instead for a second breakfast at the surprisingly well-stocked station buffet. The train for the Austrian border eventually arrived, and chugged slowly up into the mountains, eventually passing Pontebba, where he’d run into Albert Wiesner almost three years earlier, while researching the Jewish escape line to Palestine. Albert was probably commanding a brigade by now.

  The border formalities took less time than Russell expected, as did the wait for his connection in Villach. He’d taken this train in the opposite direction at the end of 1945, and been uplifted by nature’s handiwork after too many months of living with man’s. The sunlit mountains looked much the same today, but he felt like a different person, and the views were only that.

  At Semmering, where the British Zone ended and the Russian Zone began, the walk from train to train was the same, and the Austrian capital, at first sight, looked little repaired from 1945. Taking a taxi from the Südbahnhof to the address in the American sector which Youklis had given him, the only real signs that thirty months had passed were the overgrown buddleias running riot in the ruins.

  The address was in Josefstadt, an innocent-looking four-storey house on Florianigasse. His contact Sam Winterman had a top-floor office at the back of the building, with windows looking out on a plain brick wall. Winterman himself was tall and muscular, with a face that first looked handsome, but soon seemed merely wooden. He spoke with the sort of faint Southern accent that Russell associated, probably wrongly, with Virginia. His eyes were brown, and as dead as Youklis’s blue. ‘John Russell,’ Winterman muttered, for no apparent reason
.

  So far, so familiar, Russell thought, but a shock was in store.

  ‘Ah, good,’ Winterman said as the door behind Russell opened. ‘I think you two have met.’

  They had indeed. It was Giminich—formerly Obersturmbannführer Giminich of the SS Security Police, the Sicherheitsdienst—whom Russell had last seen in Prague, towards the end of 1941. And Giminich wasn’t in handcuffs, chains, or some other appropriate form of restraint. In fact, he looked as pleased with this new world as he had with that previous one. He was older, of course, and the blond hair was no longer swept back in imitation of the great god Heydrich, but the smile was still every bit as smug.

  ‘Herr Russell,’ Giminich said, offering his hand.

  ‘You’ve got be joking.’

  Giminich was unperturbed. ‘I understand,’ he said, in such a way that he seemed to be apologising for Russell’s lack of manners.

  ‘Let’s not beat about the bush,’ Winterman said. ‘We all know that you two were enemies once, but that war is over now. And Volker here is a key player in our Czechoslovak game plan.’

  Volker? Russell thought. During their last encounter in Prague, ‘Volker’ had casually ordered the shooting of ten hostages. The reason for their both being in the Czech capital had been Giminich’s command of an elaborate SD sting operation against Admiral Canaris’s Abwehr, for which Russell had then been working.

  ‘What do you know about Masaryk’s death?’ Winterman was asking.

  ‘Father or son?’ Russell asked, just to be difficult.

  ‘Jan Masaryk, the son,’ Winterman patiently explained. ‘He was Czech Foreign Minister until someone threw him out the window of his official residence. He was the only non-communist with a popular following in the government, so they got rid of him, and told the world he’d committed suicide.’

  ‘Maybe he did,’ Russell suggested, although he didn’t believe it for a minute. ‘There wasn’t much of a future for him in a communist Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘He was killed,’ Winterman insisted, ‘and some of Volker’s people in Prague have been gathering the evidence. Three affidavits signed by men who were in the building at the time, or saw the crime scene straight afterwards. We need you to bring them out.’

  More déjà vu, Russell thought. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to forge them?’ he asked.

  Giminich smiled at that, but Winterman seemed faintly outraged. ‘These men have risked their lives for these documents,’ he said sternly.

  ‘You mean you’ve risked their lives.’

  Winterman wouldn’t rise to the bait. ‘We’re not holding a gun to anyone’s head. These men are Czech patriots—they want the Russians and their commie stooges out.’

  Russell felt like pointing out that the Czech communists had won post-war elections fair and square, but debating democratic values with men who had just bought an election in Italy seemed a waste of energy.

  ‘You’re writing a story on Czech popular culture for our magazine,’ Winterman went on.

  ‘Your magazine?’

  ‘We’ve just started one. It’s called The Lampadary—do you what that means?’

  ‘A bearer of light?’

  ‘That’s what we are. We’ve arranged for you to interview a filmmaker, a poet, and a conductor. All have leftist views, and the commie authorities are only too happy to have you talk to them—it’ll be great propaganda for them.’

  ‘And at some point during your stay,’ Giminich interjected, ‘you’ll be contacted by one of our people, and given the arrangements for collecting the affidavits.’

  Russell nodded. In each of his last three trips to Prague, his life had hung by a thread, and this visit seemed set to continue the pattern. ‘And if at any point I smell a rat, then I just walk away?’

  ‘There’s no reason to think that any of my people in Prague have been turned,’ Giminich said.

  ‘But if it looks as if they have?’ Russell asked Winterman.

  ‘Well it obviously won’t help us to have the documents seized and you arrested, ‘Winterman conceded.

  ‘That’s all I wanted to hear.’

  ‘I’m not done. We won’t get anywhere being over-cautious. This is important stuff, worth a few risks.’

  ‘Why?’ Russell wasn’t to know. ‘I mean, why is so important? How will these affidavits help? I wasn’t joking when I said you might as well forge them, because the Soviets will certainly claim that you’ve done so, whether you have or not.’

  Winterman smiled for the first time. ‘I can see where your reputation comes from,’ he told Russell.

  ‘For being perceptive?’

  ‘For being a pain in the arse. Now you have your instructions—Volker will fill you in on the details. We’ve found you a bed at the American Press Club—you know where that is?’

  Russell nodded.

  ‘You’re travelling tomorrow, staying the weekend, coming back on Monday. With the affidavits. Right?’

  ‘I’ll do my humble best.’

  Winterman wished him gone with a gesture, and went back to the file on his desk. Giminich ushered Russell down the corridor to a smaller office with the same brick view. The framed photograph of Patton on the wall was probably reversible, Russell thought. But who was on the back—Heydrich or Hitler?

  ‘Ironic, us meeting again like this,’ Giminich observed.

  ‘Ironic?’

  ‘Once we were enemies, and now we are on the same side,’ Giminich explained.

  ‘That’s tragedy, not irony,’ Russell told him. ‘Now give me the boring details—who, where, when. The usual preposterous password.’

  The German’s eyes narrowed for a second, but the smile was soon back in place. The man had learned to control his temper on his journey from Nazi to American buddy. He had probably needed to.

  Walking back towards the Press Club half an hour later, Russell found himself passing one of Vienna’s more famous hotels, and went in to ask whether, by some miraculous chance, the old telephone connection between Vienna and Berlin was operational again.

  ‘If you pick the right place,’ the desk clerk told him mysteriously. The lines were still officially out of use, but private calls could be arranged for a price.

  Half an hour later Russell was ensconced in a what felt like a large cupboard somewhere deep in the bowels of the Central Exchange, twenty dollars lighter, and standing on a carpet of cigarette stubs. Someone was doing good business.

  The telephone looked as if it had only just been screwed to the wall, but dialling their Berlin number elicited a ringing tone.

  Rosa answered.

  ‘Rosa, it’s me, Papa.’ Russell still felt strange using that name, but she had settled on it, and Effi had told him not to discourage her.

  ‘Are you in Trieste? I didn’t know you could phone from there.’

  ‘I’m in Vienna. I should be home in a few days. Maybe Wednesday.’

  ‘Oh good. Do you want to tell Mama?’

  ‘Yes, sweetheart.’

  He could hear them talking, then Effi came on. ‘In a few days?’

  ‘Yes, thank God.’

  ‘What changed their minds?’

  ‘Oh, this and that.’ He didn’t want to tell her about the bombing over the phone. ‘I’m off to Prague tomorrow, and I wanted you know that. I don’t really think there’s anything to worry about, but just in case. If by any chance I do disappear, then Shchepkin will eventually come looking. Tell him where I went, and he’ll ride to my rescue. Okay?’

  ‘Not really, but I’m used to it by now. I don’t suppose you’ll have time to look up Lisa’s daughter?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you have an address?’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  He could hear them talking again, hear something drop. His home, he thought. He would soon be back there.

  ‘I just found it in the rubbish,’ Effi said. ‘She’s in Kolin.’

  ‘I remembered that.’

  ‘Seventeen Karlova Street.’

&nbs
p; Russell wrote it down. ‘If I get the chance,’ he promised. ‘Is everything okay with you two?’

  ‘We’re fine. The sun was even shining today.’

  ‘I’ll see you next week. I love you.’

  ‘And I love you, too. I can’t wait.’

  Which had to be worth more than twenty dollars, he thought. Twenty million perhaps.

  His good mood lasted most of the evening, and it wasn’t until he was lying in bed at the press club that an unfortunate thought occurred to him. He was assuming that the Americans had forgiven Giminich his crimes in exchange for his anti-communist contacts in Prague, but what if the Austrian had kept his new allies in ignorance of some misdeeds? He might be worried that Russell would betray him. Giminich might even be worried enough to sabotage his own mission, and get Russell himself locked away.

  His first stop in Prague, Russell decided, would be the Soviet Embassy; he needed one of those ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards that he’d mentioned to Shchepkin. When it came to the Czechoslovak police, he would just have to trust that these days they were playing by Soviet rules.

  At the Rugen Island conference centre, the morning’s topic was ‘Material Incentives: For and Against.’ It was, Ströhm thought, in many ways the crucial issue. Workers were accustomed to working for money, and deciding how hard or enthusiastically they would work according to how much they were paid, so the Party couldn’t hope to do away with material incentives in the short run. But if socialism was the goal, then a start had to be made in weaning the workers away from this way of thinking—seeds had to be sown. The question was how.

  No satisfactory answers emerged, but the discussion itself was fruitful, perhaps even hopeful. Which was more than could be said for the afternoon session on ‘Central Planning and the Political Process’. This seminar made Ströhm profoundly uneasy; the subheading could have been ‘Managing the People’. All in their own interest, of course. The Party always knew best, after all. It had the information, the statistics—it knew what was actually possible and what was reckless utopianism. The latter was an enduring curse—offering what couldn’t be delivered would, in the long run, lead to mass unhappiness and unrest.