Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  ‘I am a journalist.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ramanichev admitted, as if he didn’t much care either way. ‘In 1939 you did other work for us – courier work – in exchange for our help with some fugitives from the Nazi Gestapo. Jews, I believe. You were paid by us, and presumably by the Jews as well.’

  ‘I was not paid by the Jews, and I was forced to use all the money I received from you – money I received for writing articles – to bribe my way out of a trap that one of your people set.’

  ‘The traitor Borskaya.’

  ‘If you say so.’ The glare of the lamp was annoying, but only debilitating if he allowed it to be so.

  ‘And was the traitor Shchepkin your only other contact?’

  ‘Why traitor?’ Russell felt compelled to ask. He had long feared for Shchepkin – the man was too honest with himself.

  ‘He has admitted serving the interests of a foreign power.’

  ‘When did this happen? Is he dead?’

  ‘These matters do not concern you. I repeat: was Shchepkin your only other contact?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Later that year you suggested that a German railway official named Möhlmann might be willing to provide the Soviet Union with information on military movements.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You suggested this to Shchepkin.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And in 1942, after escaping from Germany, you met Shchepkin in Stockholm. Following that meeting, at which Shchepkin was supposed to invite you to the Soviet Union, you chose to visit the United States instead.’

  ‘Shchepkin did invite me to the Soviet Union,’ Russell retorted. He wasn’t sure whether his own supposed guilt was supposed to rub off on Shchepkin, or the other way round, but it was beginning to look as if their fates were intertwined. ‘And he was very upset when I refused.’

  Ramanichev smiled for the first time, albeit fleetingly. ‘So you say. But I’m sure you can see how this looks. In all your dealings with us, over many years, your only contacts have been with proven traitors. Why would such people have dealt with you if your sympathies were really with the Soviet Union?’

  Russell resisted the temptation to ask Ramanichev if he had ever read Alice in Wonderland. ‘That’s absurd,’ he said.

  The Russian lifted an eyebrow. ‘Absurd? And yet the moment you arrive in Moscow, you are knocking at Shchepkin’s door. You know where he lives, you have an animated conversation with his daughter.’

  ‘I only knew that he lived near the Novodevichy Cemetery. I knocked on a lot of doors, as I’m sure you know. And I had no idea he had been arrested,’ Russell explained patiently. ‘I was hoping he could help me.’

  ‘With further plots against the Soviet state?’

  ‘Of course not. I have already explained my reasons for coming to Moscow. On Saturday, to your colleague Leselidze.’

  ‘Explain them to me.’

  Russell went through it all again: his wish to reach Berlin as soon as possible, in case his wife or son needed help; his realisation that the Red Army would reach the city first, and his request to accompany the leading units as a war correspondent.

  Ramanichev was having none of it. ‘You could have arrived with the Americans once the city was secure. But knowing that members of the capitalist press have never been permitted to accompany the Red Army, you spend a full week travelling to Moscow, just on the off chance that we are willing to abandon our policy. And all in the cause of reaching Berlin just a few days earlier.’

  ‘What other reason could I have?’

  ‘As far as I can see this elaborate ploy can only have one purpose. You were sent here to convince us that the Americans and the British have no interest in taking Berlin.’

  All right, Russell told himself, they’re not just crazy, they do have reasons for distrusting the West. But even so. ‘I believe General Eisenhower sent Comrade Stalin a letter saying exactly that,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, he did. And knowing that we might find the general’s message hard to believe, the Americans also sent you, with the same message wrapped up in what I believe they call a “human interest story” – the man who can’t wait to see his wife and son again, who has been told that the Soviets are certain to be first in Berlin. Reinforcing an important lie with a second, less consequential-looking falsehood – it’s a classic tactic.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous…’

  ‘Ridiculous?’ Ramanichev exclaimed, raising his voice for the first time. ‘Ridiculous that you should work for American intelligence? Wasn’t that who you were working for in Prague in 1939?’

  ‘Yes, but..’

  ‘And did you not act as a contact between German military intelligence and the American Embassy in 1940 and 1941?’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘But you expect me to believe that the moment you escaped from Germany – and chose to go to America – you also stopped working for American intelligence?’

  ‘That’s what happened. It’s the truth. Just like Ike’s letter is the truth, and the reasons I gave you for coming here. The Americans have no plans for taking Berlin.’

  Ramanichev shook his head. ‘On the contrary. Over the last two weeks three Allied airborne divisions have been making the necessary preparations.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ was all Russell could say.

  ‘According to our information, the British 1st, US 101st and US 82nd airborne divisions have orders to seize Oranienburg, Gatow and Tempelhof airfields.’

  ‘That’ll be a contingency plan,’ Russell argued. ‘They’ll have dropped it by now.’

  ‘Our information is up-to-date, Mr Russell.’

  ‘Yes, but from whom? I doubt if anyone’s bothered to tell the airborne troops that they’re not going.’

  Ramanichev sighed. ‘Your lies get less and less convincing. I should inform you that under Soviet law any foreigner caught disseminating false information is deemed guilty of espionage. Those convicted are usually executed.’ He carefully closed the file, and looked at his watch. ‘Before we meet again, I would recommend that you consider your position very carefully. In view of your past services to the Soviet Union – no matter how marginal these might have been – that sentence might be commuted. But a full confession will be necessary. We shall want to know exactly what your orders were, who you received them from, and who your contacts are here in Moscow.’

  He reached forward and restored the light to its original position, got to his feet, and strode from the room. Russell was escorted back to his cell by the same pair of guards, along the same labyrinthine route. Slumping onto his bed, the clang of the closing door still echoing around the walls, he was ready to admit it. He felt frightened.

  It had been dark for more than an hour, and Effi was mentally preparing for the sirens and their evening trip down to the shelter, when the now-familiar knock sounded on the apartment door. Ali had gone to Fritz’s that morning, and Rosa was playing one of the patience games her mother had taught her by the light of a precious candle.

  The moment Effi saw Erik Aslund’s face, she knew it was bad news.

  ‘We’ve heard from Lübeck,’ he said without ado. ‘The men you took to the train – they’ve all been caught. They were already on the ship, believing they’d escaped. And then the Gestapo swarmed aboard.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Effi protested. ‘If they knew the men were on the train, then why wait until they were on the boat?’

  ‘We don’t know. Maybe they wanted to put pressure on the Swedish government. Or perhaps they had a tip-off from someone in Lübeck. One of the sailors even – not all my countrymen are against the Nazis. It doesn’t matter now. The point is, they’re in custody, and you told me that one of the Jews had stayed here. Our contact in Lübeck says that they’re being brought to Berlin for questioning, so this place should be safe overnight. But no longer than that. You must leave in the morning. I’ll try and find somewhere, but…’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Effi i
nterrupted. She had spent a good many sleepless nights anticipating this turn of events, and knew exactly what she intended to do. ‘We’ll get a train east, to Fürstenwalde or Müncheberg, somewhere like that, and then return as refugees. There are thousands arriving in Berlin, and half of them have lost their papers. I’ll just make up a sob story, and we’ll have new identities. I used to be an actress,’ she added in response to Aslund’s doubtful look. ‘Quite a good one.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, smiling for the first time.

  ‘How will I get in touch again?’ she asked.

  ‘You won’t,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘It can’t be long now, and I think we must all keep our heads down and hope for the best. And meet again in better times.’

  She gave him a hug, and let him out the door. As she pushed it shut behind him Effi remembered that she was meeting her sister Zarah on Friday. With any luck they would be back by then.

  ‘You won’t leave me?’ a small voice asked from across the room.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Effi said, walking across to embrace her. ‘We’ll go together.’

  ‘On a train?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I used to hear them from our shed, but I’ve never been on one.’

  Russell woke to the sound of a scream, but it was not repeated, leaving him unsure whether or not he had dreamed it. He felt as if he had only slept for a couple of hours, and fitfully at that. Each time he had tried to still his mind with thoughts of something pleasant, Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’ had started up inside his head, until he cried out loud in frustration.

  Breakfast arrived through the lower flap in the door, a meal as enticing as the one before it, and the one before that. But this time he actually felt hungry, and the soup tasted slightly better than it looked. What was in it was hard to tell, but whatever it was, his stomach was unimpressed, and he was soon getting used to the stench of his own waste.

  Several hours went by, and his only visitor was another prisoner, who transferred the contents of his bucket into a larger receptacle. Russell thanked the man, and received a disbelieving look in return. The smell showed no sign of fading.

  He had half expected another session with Colonel Ramanichev, and felt absurdly aggrieved at being ignored. Get a grip, he told himself. This could go on for months, or even years. They had no reason for haste – on the contrary, the longer they left him the weaker he would be. He could lie there for ever, turning soup into shit and letting the same stupid song drive him slowly nuts.

  Staring at the wall, he resisted the temptation to start scratching off days. Some clichés should be avoided.

  He wondered if his sudden disappearance had been noticed. His fellow journalists at the Metropol might be wondering where he had got to, if they hadn’t already been fed some story. Kenyon would eventually realise he was missing, and would certainly question the Soviet authorities. But would the American diplomat be able to push matters any further than that? The politicians in Washington were not going to put their relationship with the Soviets at risk for one difficult journalist, not at this juncture.

  He went through what Ramanichev had said on the previous day. He had to admit it – if you examined his story from the Soviet perspective, it did seem a trifle suspicious. Write to Stalin forgoing Berlin, and then send him a journalist who was desperate to reach Hitler’s capital – as neat a way of confirming the original message as could be imagined. Over the previous seven years Russell had met so-called intelligence people from most of the warring countries – British, American, Soviet, German – and they had all delighted in tricks like that. The fact that he was telling the truth was completely beside the point – Ramanichev couldn’t afford to believe him.

  So what would happen? Would they put him on trial? Only if he confessed – there was no way they would give him a public platform to protest his innocence. But what could he confess to? Foolish but innocent contacts with Soviet traitors? Shchepkin was probably dead, and Russell realised, rather to his own surprise, that even betraying the Russian’s memory was hard to contemplate.

  But the alternatives were worse. If he refused to confess, then the best he could hope for was a long prison sentence, probably in some God-forsaken labour camp within spitting distance of the North Pole. They might do their best to persuade him, which would be seriously unpleasant. Or they might just take him down to the basement and shoot him. His body would turn up in some Moscow alley, another foreign victim of those anti-social elements that Comrade Stalin was always talking about.

  When the all-clear sounded Effi and Rosa returned to the flat. Afraid that Ali might walk into a Gestapo trap, Effi hung the end of a light-coloured scarf across the windowsill – their long-agreed signal for such an eventuality. After one last look around, she and Rosa picked up their already-packed suitcases and set off down Bismarck Strasse. There was still no sign of dawn in the eastern sky, but the street was already quite crowded with people eager to reach work ahead of the next raid. They joined the crush working its way down the steps at Knie U-Bahn station, and shared in the collective sigh of relief when it transpired that the trains were running.

  The one that arrived a few minutes later was almost full, despite having only come two stops. Effi resigned herself to standing, but a young army major with an arm in a cast gallantly gave up his seat. Rosa clung to a handrail, small suitcase wedged between her legs, eyes scanning her fellow-travellers with enormous interest. They were not much to look at, Effi thought; if hope was being kindled by the seemingly imminent end of the war, it had yet to reach these faces. On the contrary, her fellow- Berliners were hollow-eyed, anxious and depressed-looking, as if fully convinced that the worst was yet to come.

  More people got on at Zoo, filling every available space in the carriage. She and Rosa could have taken a main-line train from there, but Effi had reasoned that the longer they stayed underground the better, and the same service could be joined at Alexanderplatz, ten stops further on. The U-Bahn train was smelly and slow – these days every journey seemed to take three times as long – but it felt much safer.

  At the Alexanderplatz booking office she purchased two singles to Fürstenwalde. She had thought long and hard about their destination, and this town an hour or so east of Berlin seemed far enough away to give them credence as refugees, yet close enough to spare them several checks en route. Of course, she might have got it completely wrong, and picked a journey that was short on conviction and long on inspections. She knew her papers would stand up to a cursory look, and was fairly confident that Rosa’s would too, but neither would survive a proper investigation. They were, after all, only tissues of credible lies.

  The first check came sooner than she expected. At the top of the stairs to the elevated platform one officer in plain clothes – Gestapo most likely, though he wasn’t wearing the trademark leather coat – was sharing a checkpoint with two military policemen. As one of the latter examined their papers, Effi stole an anxious glance at Rosa, and was amazed to see her beaming happily at the probable Gestapo officer. Even more surprisingly, he was smiling back at her. Fifteen years as an actress, Effi thought, and she finally had a protégé.

  It was fully light now, or as fully light as Berlin ever got these days. Several fires were burning in the Old Town, and smoke from those already extinguished still hung in the air. A Fürstenwalde train was scheduled to arrive in a few minutes, but after half an hour an announcement on the station loudspeakers admitted that it was only just leaving Zoo. Like many of her fellow would-be travellers Effi kept one eye on the sky, silently praying that their train arrived before the US Air Force.

  It finally appeared in the distance, chugging slowly around the long curve from Börse. Like their U-Bahn train, it was already full, but they fought their way aboard and laid claim to a window spot in one of the vestibules. As they cleared the station the sirens began to wail, and the train seemed to falter in its stride, as if uncertain whether to continue. But in
stead it gathered speed, rumbling through Silesian Station without making its scheduled stop, leaving several shaking fists in its wake.

  Once the city had been left behind the train slowed markedly, as if the driver was allowing his locomotive a rest after the rigours of its pell-mell escape. It was now wending its way through the lakes and forests of the Spreewald, but hardly steaming towards safety. They had, as everyone on board knew only too well, merely exchanged the threat of high-level American bombing for the closer attention of prowling Soviet fighters.

  The latter had already been active that morning, as one official announced during a long stop at Friedrichshagen, and only a few minutes after resuming its journey the train clanked to a halt once more. Everybody was ordered out, and in the resultant panic several people managed to injure themselves making overeager exits. Effi and Rosa helped one old woman down the steps and into the shelter of the woods which lined each side of the tracks. She was visiting her daughter in Fürstenwalde, and had already decided that this would be ‘the last time.’

  They waited for the best part of an hour, but no plane swept down to attack the stationary train, and eventually the driver sounded his whistle to announce the resumption of their journey. Everyone climbed back on board, and the train set off again. A stop at Erkner was mercifully brief, but long enough to allow an inspection team aboard. These men were meticulous, Effi noticed, as they slowly advanced down the corridor, and for a few seconds she entertained the wholly ridiculous idea of jumping from the train. Instead, she gave Rosa a comforting pat on the shoulder and reminded herself that idiots like these had been checking Frau von Freiwald’s papers for years without noticing anything amiss.

  They were finally in front of her, two plump, fortyish men in plain clothes with bile for brains. The taller of the two took the papers from Effi, and began to examine them. ‘And why are you going to Fürstenwalde?’ he asked without looking up. He made it sound the most unlikely of destinations.