Russell walked in the opposite direction, and ducked through the doorway of the first suitable sanctuary, which turned out to be a junk store piled high with old furniture. He didn’t think the cabbie would come looking for him, but those the man reported to probably would. Russell skulked inside the store for at least ten minutes, searching through a tray of second-hand earrings, swapping smiles with the bewildered proprietor, and keeping a watch on the street.
Eventually he ventured out. The tram route was two blocks north, so he hurried in that direction, keeping as much as he could to the shadows. Once aboard a northbound car, he consulted his watch. He had almost three hours to kill before his treff with Janica, and he didn’t want to spend them out in the open. A bar seemed a good bet, and after changing trams and re-crossing the river he found one in the Old Town backstreets, about a ten-minute walk from Masaryk Station. With only an incomprehensible Czech newspaper to read, he worked his way through two beers and a compensatory cup of strong black coffee, before finally setting out on the final lap. The first thing he did on reaching the station was find the public toilets, and relieve the pressure on his bladder.
Back on the concourse, he sought out an ill-lit corner and began his vigil. It somehow seemed fitting that his future should hang on a meeting here, in a station whose name reeked of failure. Both father and son had sought the humanist middle ground between rampant capitalism and communism, and both had failed. They had not been alone—the entire European left, himself included, had sought in vain for a socialism that worked—but Jan Masaryk’s tragic end, thrown from a window by communist thugs, seemed like the final straw.
Masaryk Station, the end of the line.
It was getting busier by the minute, as people who worked in the centre of town took their trains home to the suburbs. Which was perhaps why Janica had chosen that time of day. If so, it was a smart move.
The clock above the platform barrier was showing two minutes past, but so far he hadn’t seen the face in the photograph. But it was then that he noticed her, sitting on a bench on the other side of the concourse. As he did so, she threw him an irritated glance and nodded slightly. She’d probably been there for a while.
He ambled over and sat down beside her. ‘Janica, how good to see you,’ he said softly in German. Merzhanov had claimed she spoke it quite well, or at least much better than he did. ‘Have you been visiting your mother?’ Russell asked, completing the password which the Russian had given him.
‘No, she moved to Brno,’ Janica answered, which according to Merzhanov was actually true. She was a slightly plump, full-breasted woman, with dark shoulder-length hair, an attractive mouth, and surprisingly steely eyes. Her ensemble of white blouse, black skirt, and two-inch heels nicely avoided the twin pitfalls of too conspicuous and too anonymous. Another smart move.
And she looked younger than her photograph, which was a definite bonus, now that that they wouldn’t be making her up.
‘Let’s walk,’ Russell suggested, getting to his feet.
She followed suit, taking his arm, and only asked where they were going as they emerged on to the street.
Russell steered them across before answering. ‘To Wilson Station to buy you a ticket,’ he said. ‘In my pocket there are papers with your picture in the name of Ruza Zdeněc,’ he told her, remembering how Effi had considered it a good omen that Grelling had chosen the Czech equivalent of Rosa. ‘Do you have the film with you?’
‘It’s in my bag. And it stays there until we cross the border.’
‘That won’t be possible,’ Russell said. ‘My wife will be taking the film to Berlin, and I shall be taking you to Salzburg, and Merzhanov. It will be safer for us all that way. My wife is less likely to be searched at the German border than you are, and if they stop you at the Austrian border you’ll be better off without the film. A lot better off. You’d only get five years for trying to leave the country without permission, but if you’re caught with this film the Russians will shoot you.’ Though exaggerating for the Czech woman’s sake, he still felt a shiver of apprehension for Effi.
Janica was silent for a while, mulling over what he had said. Eventually she asked the inevitable question—‘why should I trust you?’
‘I can’t answer that.’ He had thought about confiding Effi’s plan to hide the film among others, but the StB might get that information out of her before Effi reached the border. ‘Except to say this,’ he went on, ‘why would we get you false papers and buy you a railway ticket if we meant to betray you?’
‘I haven’t seen these papers yet.’
The street they were on was empty. ‘Take them now,’ he said, extracting the envelope from his pocket. ‘Put it in your bag,’ he advised her. ‘The papers are there, and the money you’ll need for the ticket to Vienna. You can see for yourself in the station toilet.’
They walked across the park that fronted Wilson Station and in through the main entrance. Russell waited while she went off to examine the contents of the envelope, and on her return he led the way to the station buffet. There was an empty table in one corner.
‘I will trust you,’ she told him, when he came back with two coffees. ‘I have no other choice. Do you want the film now?’
‘Not yet,’ he decided, looking around. ‘You must get your ticket now. Tomorrow morning, the ten A.M. train to Vienna. You will probably need to show the papers, and if anyone asks you why you’re going, say you have a Russian boyfriend there. If you leave your bag with me, I’ll take the film first chance I get.’
She nodded, left it open on the floor between them, and strode calmly out of the buffet. Glancing down after a decent interval, he could see the reel of film. It wasn’t in a box, and would fit nicely in his jacket side pocket. A minute or so later, when no one seemed to be looking, he reached down a hand and worked the transfer.
Looking up again, he half-expected to see a posse of StB thugs lunging towards him, but there was only the same bunch of customers, enjoying their coffee and cakes.
She was back in ten minutes, bearing a ticket with a seat in Coach 4.
‘I’m in Three,’ he told her, showing his own. ‘But it’ll be safer for you if we don’t make contact again until the train reaches Vienna. As a foreigner, I’ll be watched.’
‘I understand,’ she said, closing up her bag.
‘Where are you going now?’ he asked.
‘Home,’ she said, without volunteering a location.
‘Very well then, I’ll say goodbye.’
She smiled slightly, the first time she’d done so, kissed him lightly on the cheek and walked off towards the exit.
A cool one, he thought. It was only then that he realised she’d never even mentioned Merzhanov.
But that was the Russian’s problem. Russell’s was the film now burning a hole in his jacket pocket. As he headed south towards Wenceslas Square he wondered what the StB would do with the reel if they ever got hold of it. Meekly hand it over to the Soviets or melt it away in a furnace? No one was safe with a secret like this.
He crossed Wenceslas Square and began cutting through the back streets in the general direction of the river. This seemed safer than taking the major thoroughfares, until the two Czech cops spotted him emerging from a New Town alley. As they strode towards him, he barely resisted the urge to turn and run.
One of the cops asked him something in Czech.
‘Nechápu’, he said. I don’t understand.
One cop reached out a friendly arm, clearly intent on taking him in charge.
‘Hotel Slovan,’ Russell said desperately. ‘Smichov.’
‘Ah,’ the first cop said. He put a hand on Russell’s soldier, pointed down him the street, and indicated that he should turn right at the end.
‘Děkuji,’ Russell almost gushed, as a rivulet of sweat ran down his back.
Both cops insisted on shaking his hand, and he could feel their eyes on his back as he hurried off in the suggested direction. He was getting too old for this sort
of thing.
At that moment he was passing a post office, and the thought of putting the film in the post—and sparing Effi this sort of grief—caused him to slacken his pace. But it was no good. Given the current levels of official paranoia, there seemed an excellent chance that the Czech authorities were checking any remotely suspicious package bound for foreign parts. The film’s interception would certainly end all their hopes, and would most likely prove the start of a nightmare, since the StB and their MGB allies would have the address they needed to track down the intended recipient. No, the only safe way to dispose of the damn thing was to write Stalin’s name on the parcel.
Or just drop it in the river, he thought, as he walked across the Legii Bridge. But he knew he wouldn’t do it. He told himself to stop imagining the worst, and concentrate instead on averting it.
The immediate problem was Klíma, who by now would know he’d gone AWOL. What was his explanation?
‘I changed my mind,’ he told her a few minutes later, when they met in the Slovan lobby. ‘I guessed you would walk across the Charles Bridge, so I walked up this side of the river and waited, but you never appeared.’
‘You waited all this time?’
He laughed. ‘Oh no, after an hour or so and I went and found a bar. Your beer is excellent.’
She looked torn between incredulity and the knowledge that he was a foreign guest she shouldn’t offend without being sure.
Seeking to tip the balance, Russell reached into his pocket and brought out the pair of earrings he’d bought at the antique shop. ‘These are for you. A token of our appreciation for all your help.’
She looked at them. ‘Thank you, but …’
‘I’m hungry,’ Russell interrupted her. ‘Are we eating here again?’
During dinner, Russell set out to allay any remaining suspicions Klíma might have, and only realised he was overdoing it when Effi gave him a kick under the table. Back in their bathroom with the taps full on, Effi couldn’t decide which of the audition films she should sacrifice for a reel.
‘The film that made the smallest splash,’ Russell suggested. ‘In case the guards feel like a showing.’
‘Surely they won’t have a projector at the border post,’ Effi objected.
‘They will at their local cinema. It’s just a matter of improving the odds,’ he explained. ‘If by some chance, they choose to check one out, they’re more likely to pick one they’ve heard of.’
‘I suppose that makes sense,’ Effi agreed.
If there was a hidden camera in their bedroom they couldn’t spot it. Which didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Russell left the film in his jacket pocket until all their lights were out, and they lay there in the dark waiting for a decent interval to elapse. He wondered if Beria had checked for a camera, or merely assumed it wasn’t running. How could he have made such a stupid mistake? Overweening arrogance, most likely. People with that much power often ended up thinking that nothing touch them.
After ten minutes had passed, Russell removed the film from his jacket, and they both crept into the bathroom, where the thinnest of lights was seeping in through the transom window. Effi had already removed the film from one of her reels, and now took on the job of replacing it. The lack of light made things difficult, and it took her an age to fix the end of the strip.
Once Merzhanov’s film was finally wound and boxed she sat on the toilet seat for a minute or more, regaining her composure and wondering what to do with the roll she’d taken off.
‘Put in back on Janica’s reel,’ Russell whispered, after turning on the tap. ‘I’ll take it with me.’
‘Okay,’ she agreed.
The thought crossed his mind that at least he’d have a souvenir of her, a thought that kept him staring at the ceiling long after she’d slipped into sleep. She had once told him that when she first started working for the resistance worry and fear had often kept her awake, but after one very real scare everything had suddenly changed, and sleep had come easily again. Somehow her mind had learned to shut itself down.
Next morning, though, she did seem tense.
‘What do I say if they do find it?’ she asked him in the bathroom.
‘You’re an actor,’ he told her. ‘A very good one. Be shocked. You know nothing about this film; you have no idea how it came to be on that reel. Someone must have taken yours off, and put this one on, with an eye to stealing it back in Berlin. You’re outraged. So much so, that you’ll help the police find out who it was. They can follow you home and catch the man who comes for it.’
‘They won’t believe me,’ Effi said.
‘Maybe not, but it’s a worth a shot. And believe me, most men are distracted by gorgeous women.’
‘I do believe you, but you’re forgetting that I’m forty-two.’
‘And still gorgeous.’
‘I’m glad you think so. And I suppose I should be grateful it won’t be the Gestapo.’
‘Yes.’ He decided to let her keep whatever illusions she might have about the greater kindliness of the MGB.
‘And what about you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll be safe as houses. I might be on the same train as Janica, but if she’s stopped at the border I’ll just keep walking.’
‘She might denounce you.’
‘I doubt it. She seems pretty level-headed, and there’s no way she could involve me without telling the whole story, and that would make things worse for her. No, she’ll hope that Merzhanov refuses to budge without her, and that we’ll be forced into another attempt at getting her out.’
‘Would we?’
‘I doubt it,’ Russell admitted. ‘How could we?’
On the way to the station Russell noticed that Klíma was wearing her new earrings. She seemed less on edge than usual, probably relieved at the prospect of seeing them off. Their driver was surly as ever though, snarling at any tram or bus that dared to block the Skoda’s path.
After Effi’s train had steamed out, Klíma insisted on waiting with him, even though her successor was already on the job, hiding behind a newspaper some five metres down the platform. This man followed Russell on to the train and took a seat in the same coach, around ten rows farther back. Which was all to the good, Russell supposed—for once in his clandestine life he had nothing to hide, and the more they watched him, the less likely they would notice Janica.
He had watched her arrive on the platform with some relief. She had seen him, too, but there’d been no batted eyelids or faltering steps. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said that she was the professional.
Which was a disturbing thought. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering if the whole business was a gigantic set-up, with a purpose that eluded him. For all they actually knew, the film was blank. Or a record of Stalin, thumbs in ears, derisively waggling his fingers at the camera.
But he couldn’t really believe it. Merzhanov had convinced him from the start, and Janica had said nothing to make him suspicious.
Beyond the window, mist draped the meadows and shrouded the trees. The sun would probably soon break through, but it was already hot in the carriage, and even with the toplights open, the air was oppressively close. Russell took off his jacket, and tried not to worry about Effi.
Assuming she didn’t run into trouble, and he successfully shipped the other two off, what did they need to do next? Did they have to send Beria a copy of the film, or would merely describing its contents be enough? How else could they have known about the events in question? From the other woman, of course, assuming she survived. But hearsay wouldn’t be enough. They had to provide proof of the film’s existence—a presentation copy was the only way. And now he came to think of it, several copies might make all the difference—if they hid them in different countries, Beria would have a hell of a job tracking them down. And even if he did, he could never be certain he had them all.
But they couldn’t make copies themselves, and whoever did so would need to be in on the secret. Effi might k
now someone from her work whom she could trust with something like this. A political innocent would be best; someone who’d never heard of Beria, and who wouldn’t recognise him.
Outside the train, the sun was busy dispersing the mist, and conjuring pinpoints of light from the dew-sodden fields. Russell decided he would visit the buffet car, partly for the exercise and partly for a drink, but mostly because he wanted to check on Janica. With his StB shadow a few steps behind him, all he could see on the way forward was the back of her head, but when he returned half an hour later they swapped innocent glances. She looked like she hadn’t a care in the world, but then she wasn’t married to Effi.
Effi’s train was about ten minutes away from the German border when the man reappeared. He was about fifty, she guessed; he was smartly dressed and looked more like a Czech than a German. Early in the journey he had walked slowly past the compartment, given her a lingering look, and moved on out of sight. Now he repeated the process, this time with the faintest of smiles.
It all brought back the war. All those hours, days, weeks she’d spent permanently on edge, waiting for the knock on the door, the tap on the shoulder, the car pulling up in the street outside. She’d thought that life was over, but here it was again. How did John stand it, year after year?
They had to leave, get as far away as they could. Russell had always believed the Soviets would punish a desertion, that either they’d tell the Americans how he’d bought his family’s freedom with atomic secrets, and so bring a treason charge down on his head, or they’d simply kill him, along with heaven knew how many other members of the family. He could be right—he usually was when it came to expecting the worst—but just this once he might be wrong. Maybe it was time to call their bluff. From a great distance, if that proved possible. Effi knew Stalin had sent someone all the way to Mexico to kill Trotsky, but Russell, much as she loved him, was much smaller fry. And if they were going to live in fear, they might as well do it in Hollywood.
Masaryk Station Page 24