Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  ‘We deserve to be,’ Rosa said. ‘That’s what my mother used to say – we deserve to be safe.’

  ‘We certainly do,’ Effi agreed, laughing in spite of herself.

  The sergeant’s face appeared in the hatch, with a look that suggested she’d lost her mind.

  It was two hours before ‘Dobberke’s people’ arrived, two hours in which every policeman on the premises found time to give them the once-over. Only one man looked actually pleased to see them there, whereas several sighed with either sympathy or exasperation. Most gave them mystified stares, as if they found it hard to believe that Jews were still walking their streets. The uniformed Gestapo who came to collect them were obviously more used to dealing with fugitive aliens, and shoved them through the doors of the Black Maria with hardly a second glance.

  There was a small barred window in the back, but Effi already knew where they were going. She had heard of Dobberke: one of the Jews she had sheltered at the Bismarck Strasse flat in 1943 had escaped from the collection camp on Grosse Hamburger Strasse, which Dobberke then ran. All Jews captured in Berlin had been taken and held there, until their numbers were sufficient to justify a transport. A year later another fugitive had told her that the Grosse Hamburger Strasse camp had been closed, and its functions transferred to the old Jewish Hospital out in Wedding. And that Dobberke was now in charge out there. The greifer – those Jews who scoured Berlin’s streets and cafés for U-boats on the Gestapo’s behalf – were also based at the hospital.

  In most situations, Russell had once told her, there were some things beyond an individual’s control and some things that weren’t, and what mattered was realising which was which. He’d been talking about some politician – she couldn’t even remember which one – but the principle held true for all sorts of things, from acting in movies to surviving the Nazis. Or, in this particular case, a Jewish collection camp. So which things in this situation were still in her control?

  Her identity, above all. Who was she claiming to be? They had assumed she was a Jew, and she hadn’t denied it, mostly for fear that she and Rosa would be sent to different fates. But now…

  What did she want? To live, of course, but not at the cost of abandoning the girl.

  Were they still killing Berlin’s Jews? They couldn’t send them east anymore, so were they kil ing them here? Was there a gas chamber out at the Jewish Hospital? It was hard to imagine such a thing in the heart of Berlin. Even the Nazis had shrunk from that – it was why they had bothered to move the Jews east before killing them. But maybe now they had nothing to lose.

  If she wasn’t a Jew, then who was she? Not the film actress Effi Koenen, who was still wanted for treason – a definite death sentence there. And not Erna von Freiwald, who was probably now being hunted in connection with the Lübeck-bound fugitives. Helping the Jews might not see her executed, but helping those involved in the plot to kill Hitler probably would. So Dagmar Fahrian, the woman whose papers she now carried? Dagmar had to be a better bet, particularly if Fürstenwalde soon fell to the Russians. Perhaps Dagmar’s sister had married a Jew before the Nuremberg Laws came into force, and then given birth to a mischling daughter after that became illegal. Perhaps the sister had died, and the Jewish husband had sent the child to Dagmar for safe keeping, before disappearing himself.

  As a story, it had a lot to commend it. She and Rosa would be kept together, and both would have a better chance of survival – Effi as a misguided aryan, Rosa as a mischling. As the van zigzagged its way up the rubble-strewn Müller Strasse she gave Rosa a whispered account of their new mutual history.

  The girl listened intently, only frowning slightly at the end. ‘But we will get our real history back one day?’ she half asked, half insisted.

  ‘We certainly will,’ Effi promised her. She wondered what Rosa would make of the fact that her new protector had once been a film star. Through the rear window she could see the S-Bahn bridge by Wedding Station. They were almost there.

  A few minutes later the van pulled to a halt. The back door was flung open, and one of the uniforms gestured them out. Stepping down onto the street, Effi saw that they had stopped beside a tall iron archway. A plaque announced the address as Schulstrasse 78, and the building behind it as a Pathology Department.

  Beyond the arch there was a two-storey gatekeeper’s lodge, and this, they soon discovered, was used for administration. A woman took their papers, timed their arrival, and told the bloodstained Effi that she would be taken to the hospital for medical treatment. When Effi asked that Rosa be allowed to accompany her, the woman sighed in exasperation, but made no objection. A young orderly escorted them down a long underground corridor and up several flights of stairs to the medical facility, where a nurse with a Jewish star found Effi a trolley to lie on, and then disappeared in search of a doctor. The man who turned up ten minutes later looked like a Der Stürmer stereotype of a Jew, but lacked the star to prove it. He examined Effi’s head wound with none-too-gentle fingers, pronounced it superficial, and marched off, shouting over his shoulder that the nurse should apply a bandage.

  She stuck her tongue out at his retreating figure.

  ‘Are all the staff here Jewish?’ Effi asked.

  ‘Staff, patients and detainees,’ the nurse told her, rolling the bandage around Effi’s head. ‘In varying degrees, of course. Most of the people on the second floor are half-Jews or quarter-Jews who were married to aryans. Or just had influential friends. The Jews scheduled for transport are in the old Pathology building.’

  ‘But the transports have stopped, haven’t they?’

  ‘Weeks ago.’

  ‘So what’s going to happen now?’

  ‘That’s what we all want to know,’ the nurse admitted with a shrug. She examined her handiwork. ‘There, that’ll do.’

  The orderly took them back down the long tunnel, up the stairs and across the courtyard to the Pathology building. There was a guardroom just inside the entrance, and steps leading down to a large, semi-basement room. It was the first of four such spaces, and each seemed home to between twenty and thirty detainees. Most were women over thirty, but there was a smattering of younger women with children, and several men past middle age. As Effi and Rosa wandered through the rooms a few eyes looked up in curiosity, and a couple of the older women even managed a wan smile of greeting, but most of the faces held only fear and mistrust.

  The first room seemed the emptiest. Having picked out a space for themselves, they examined the outside world through one of the high barred windows, Rosa perched precariously on her upturned suitcase. A barbed wire fence ran across their line of sight, bisecting the area of cratered lawns and broken trees that lay between them and the ivy-covered buildings of the main hospital. An almost idyllic setting, Effi thought. Once upon a time.

  She was helping Rosa down when the sirens began to wail, and soon feet started tramping down the steps. The room began to fill up – these basements, Effi realised, were air-raid shelters for prisoners and guards alike. There were several men in Gestapo uniform, and one small bow-legged man in a black civilian suit who seemed to be in charge. Dobberke, she thought, as his black German shepherd cocked a leg against a metal table leg.

  ‘We’re all in the same boat now,’ a satisfied voice said behind Effi, confirming her previous thought. One of the sleeping women had woken up, and was now grinning at the coterie of Gestapo in the far corner. ‘I’m Johanna,’ she said, as the first bombs exploded in the distance. She looked about fifty, but could have been younger – her face was gaunt, her body painfully thin.

  ‘Dagmar and Rosa.’

  ‘Have you just been caught?’

  ‘This morning. And you?’

  ‘A few weeks ago. I flushed the toilet without thinking, and one of the neighbours heard.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Three years of effort down the toilet. Literally.’

  ‘Are there no young people here?’ Effi asked.

  ‘They’re in the cells. Through there,’ she gestured wi
th a hand. ‘Mostly men, but a few young women too – anyone they think might make a run for it.’

  ‘And the greifer, aren’t they here too?’

  Johanna’s face darkened. ‘They’re not usually here during the day, and there are several I haven’t seen for a while. Either Dobberke has given them a head start, or they’ve just taken one for themselves. Whatever happens to us, they have no future.’

  ‘And what will happen to us?’ Effi wondered out loud.

  Johanna shook her head. ‘Only God knows.’

  Plunging into darkness

  April 14 – 18

  Russell had only just finished his breakfast when the usual escorts arrived. Three men were waiting in the interrogation room. The golden-toothed questioner from last time occupied Ramanichev’s place; an NKVD officer with a shiny bald head and sharp-eyed Tatar face sat to his left. The third man was Yevgeny Shchepkin, Russell’s old partner in espionage.

  ‘I am Colonel Nikoladze,’ Gold Teeth admitted, with the air of someone revealing a state secret, ‘and this is Major Kazankin. Comrade Shchepkin I believe you know.’

  Shchepkin’s hair had turned white since Russell last saw him, and his body seemed strangely stiff in the chair, but the eyes were alert as ever.

  ‘We have sad news for you,’ Nikoladze began briskly, conjuring instant images of dead Effis and Pauls. ‘Your president died yesterday.’

  The relief was intense. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Russell heard himself say. He supposed he was. He had never much liked Roosevelt, but he had admired him, particularly in the early years.

  ‘To business, then,’ Nikoladze said, laying both palms on the table. ‘We have a proposition for you,’ he told Russell. ‘As I understand it, you have family in Berlin, and concerns that they might come to harm when our forces reach the city.’

  ‘That is correct,’ Russell told him. Surely they couldn’t have changed their minds?

  ‘I believe you offered assistance. “Whatever your generals need to know”,’ Nikoladze read from the paper in front of him. ‘“Where everything is, the best roads, the best vantage points”.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’ He could hardly believe it.

  ‘So how would you like to arrive in Berlin several days ahead of the Red Army?’ Nikoladze asked, with a singularly unconvincing smile.

  Russell looked up. ‘Ahead of?’

  ‘We are sending a small team into Berlin. Major Kazankin will be in command. A second soldier, a scientist and, we hope, yourself. You will all be dropped at night in the surrounding countryside, and will work your way into the city. You, Mr Russell, will act as the guide. And you will handle any accidental contacts with the local population – Kazankin here speaks a little German, but not enough to pass himself off as a native.’

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ Russell asked, suspecting he already knew the answer. ‘Scientist’ was a bit of a clue.

  ‘You’ve heard of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute?’ Nikoladze asked, confirming his guess.

  ‘Any one in particular? There are several of them.’

  ‘The Institute for Physics,’ Nikoladze said, with some irritation.

  This was not a man, Russell thought, who took life as it came. ‘It’s in Dahlem,’ he said. ‘Or was. It may have been bombed.’

  ‘As of last week, it was still intact. You know exactly where it is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘According to our information, these are the most important atomic research establishments in Berlin. We want to secure all the available documentation from these facilities, and get an accurate assessment of what materials and equipment they contain.’

  ‘Why not go in with the Red Army?’ Russell asked. ‘Are a few days going to make any difference?’ He knew he was arguing against his own interests, but the more he understood of the Soviets’ reasoning the safer he would probably be.

  ‘They might,’ Shchepkin answered him, speaking for the first time. Even his voice seemed weaker than it had. ‘The Germans may well decide to destroy everything, and if they do not, the Americans probably will. Three weeks ago they tried their best to destroy the uranium production facility at Oranienburg from the air, and they may well decide to send in a ground team.’

  ‘I doubt there’s anything they need,’ Russell protested.

  ‘There isn’t,’ Shchepkin agreed. ‘But they don’t want us to get it.’

  That sounded right to Russell. Hitler might still be breathing fire, but his two principal enemies were already getting ready for the next war.

  ‘You will guide the team from the drop zone to the Institute, and then on to Charlottenburg,’ Nikoladze continued. ‘You know the city. And you speak Russian – so you can help our scientist translate from the German.’

  Russell idly wondered what the cost of refusal would be. Siberia, in all likelihood. Which was neither here nor there, because he didn’t intend to refuse. He could see several drawbacks to acceptance – in fact, the more he thought about it the more occurred to him. Berlin was probably going to be the most dangerous place on earth over the next few weeks, and the Americans would be seriously displeased with anyone who helped the Soviets to an atomic bomb. To top it all, the idea of jumping from a plane with only a sheet of silk to combat gravity was truly petrifying.

  But what did all that matter if it gave him the chance to find Effi and Paul? ‘I assume we won’t be wearing uniforms,’ he said.

  ‘You will wear the uniforms the Nazis give their foreign labourers. Many were captured in East Prussia.’

  That made sense. ‘And once I’ve guided the team to these two locations… where do we go then?’

  ‘The team will go to ground and wait for the Red Army.’

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘We are investigating several possibilities.’

  ‘Okay. But once the team is safely in hiding I assume I’ll be free to look for my family?’

  ‘Yes, but only then. I understand your concern for your family, but you can only leave the team when Major Kazankin agrees to your release. This is a military operation, and the usual rules apply. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the penalty for desertion.’

  ‘You don’t,’ Russell agreed. Nor did he doubt their ability to enforce it. The NKVD had a global reach, and peace or no peace, they would eventually hunt him down. And he could see how important this must be to them. If, as some experts claimed, the Soviets had sacrificed an eighth of their population to win this war, they hardly wanted to end it at the mercy of an American atomic monopoly. The stakes could hardly be higher.

  ‘So you accept,’ Nikoladze said, looking slightly more relaxed.

  ‘I do,’ Russell replied, glancing at Shchepkin. He seemed almost grateful.

  ‘Have you ever jumped from a plane?’ Kazankin asked. He had a deep voice, which somehow suited him down to the ground.

  ‘No,’ Russell admitted.

  ‘Your training will begin this afternoon,’ Nikoladze said.

  ‘But first a bath,’ Russell insisted.

  Half an hour later, he was standing under a near-scalding downpour in the warders’ shower-room when a further drawback suggested itself. Regardless of success or failure, by the end of the operation he would know far too much about Soviet atomic progress – or the lack thereof – for them to ever consider letting him loose. The most likely culmination to his involvement was a quick bullet in the head from Kazankin. One more body on the streets of Berlin was unlikely to attract attention.

  For the moment they needed him – Nikoladze had been visibly relieved when he’d agreed to join the team. Even knowing he wanted to reach Berlin, they had feared a refusal. Why? Because they still believed he was working for American intelligence, and a real American agent would hardly agree to help the Soviets gather atomic secrets. And on the off-chance that he was telling the truth, and no longer working for the Americans, they had
brought along the only man whom he might conceivably trust. Yevgeny Shchepkin. Resurrected, dusted off, and asked to help them bring Russell on board.

  They must want the German secrets very badly.

  Dried and dressed in clothes collected from his hotel, he found the major waiting for him. ‘The car’s outside,’ the Russian said.

  A thin young man with dark wavy hair and spectacles was waiting in the back. ‘Ilya Varennikov,’ he introduced himself.

  ‘The scientist,’ Kazankin growled.

  For Effi and Rosa, Saturday was a day spent learning the ropes. The morning meal of wassersuppe and a few potato peelings served notice that yesterday’s dinner had not been a fluke, but, as Johanna wryly remarked, starvation seemed unlikely in the short time remaining. They were allowed exactly forty-five minutes of exercise, circling a small courtyard under a square of smoke-streaked sky, and were then left with nothing to do but wait another twelve hours for another bowl of wassersuppe.

  Once one of the guards had been cajoled into sharpening Rosa’s only pencil, the girl seemed happy to draw, and Effi embarked on the task of learning as much as she could about their place of imprisonment. Johanna knew quite a lot, but residents of longer standing were more aware of how different the place had been only a few months earlier, and how it had changed in the meantime.

  There were, it seemed, about a thousand Jews still resident in the hospital complex. As the nurse had told Effi, those living in the hospital proper – the half-Jews and quarter-Jews, the dreaded greifer – were the privileged ones. The atmosphere on that side of the barbed wire was said to be increasingly febrile, with much drinking, dancing and promiscuous coupling. The non-Jewish authorities, far from forbidding such activities, were avidly joining in. Everyone was fiddling while Berlin burned.

  Still expecting a summons to interrogation, Effi sought information about her likely interrogator. SS Hauptscharführer Dobberke, as everyone seemed to agree, was a thug of the first order, but many of the same people seemed, almost despite themselves, to have a sneaking respect for the man. Yes, he did punish any serious rule-breaking with twenty-five lashes of his favourite whip, and yes, he would stick anyone lacking funds on a transport east with hardly a second thought, but he never exceeded the twenty-five, and once he had taken a bribe he always delivered his side of the bargain.