Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  Russell suddenly remembered the shout. He switched off his flashlight, carefully opened the door, and stepped out into the dark corridor. There was nothing moving, and no sign of Gusakovsky or Kazankin, but a thin wash of light filled the lobby area some twenty metres to his left. And there was a dark shape on the floor.

  Two, as it turned out. The old man was nearer, a neat black hole drilled through the left side of his forehead, a few locks of silver hair draped across his right eye. Gusakovsky was just beyond him, unnaturally twisted, the back of his head glistening in the dim light. He had been thrown against the wall by the blast, Russell guessed. The bomb must have landed almost on the doorstep, blowing the doors inwards, a split second after Gusakovsky’s shooting of the caretaker.

  The Russian’s gun was lying close to his splayed hand. Russell bent down to pick it up, and placed it in his belt.

  ‘Wh-where’s Kazankin?’ Varennikov stuttered behind him.

  It was a question that needed answering, but far from the only one. Were there any emergency services still operating in Berlin? If so, were they already fully occupied? If any were spare, how long would it take them to arrive? Sooner or later someone was bound to. They had to get away from the Institute.

  But where to?

  And where was Kazankin?

  Russell worked his way between pieces of furniture to the open doorway, and clambered gingerly out across the ruined portico. The moon was almost down, but flames were rising from a building away to his left, flooding the world in yellow light. The bomb had gouged a sizable crater across the pathway leading to the street gates, and the remains of a body lay heaped on the grass ten metres beyond. From a distance, it looked like a shapeless mass of bloodied flesh; closer up, Russell could identify shreds of the foreign worker uniform. One quarter of the face was strangely untouched, and in it a single staring eye. Kazankin’s.

  He wasn’t supposed to feel sorry for his potential executioner, but he almost did.

  He looked around. One building on Gary Strasse was merrily burning, but the other three bombs had only inflicted blast damage. No more were falling, and the sky sounded empty of planes. Had Kazankin and Gusakovsky fallen prey to a single stray stick, not so much aimed as discarded?

  Varennikov had followed Russell out, and was now standing there, clutching the sheaf of papers, staring down at what was left of Kazankin. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘What now?’ he asked. It sounded more like a plea than a question.

  Russell responded. ‘This way,’ he ordered, leading the Russian out through the gates and across the empty street. As they approached the intersection with Boltzmann Strasse they both heard vehicles approaching from the Thiel Allee direction. Russell broke into a run, Varennikov following. They turned the corner into Boltzmann Strasse and headed for the pool of deep shadow offered by two large trees.

  They had barely reached it when two vehicles drove across the intersection they had just left behind. Fire trucks of some kind, Russell guessed. They would find three bodies, one caretaker and two foreign workers.

  One of whom, he realised, was still carrying his Soviet pistol. Fuck!

  It was too late to do anything about it. With any luck the Nazis would assume that there’d only been two of them. ‘Let’s go,’ he told Varennikov.

  ‘Where are we going?’ the Russian asked as they walked towards the Thielplatz U-Bahn station.

  ‘To my brother-in-law’s house,’ Russell told him.

  ‘Your brother-in-law? But he’s a German!’

  ‘Yes he is. And he’s probably the best chance we have of saving our lives.’ He certainly couldn’t think of any others. But was it fair to land on Thomas’s doorstep with a Soviet physicist, and half the Gestapo in probable pursuit? The thought crossed his mind that he could simplify matters no end by taking out Gusakovsky’s silenced gun and leaving Varennikov in a Dahlem gutter. But he knew he couldn’t do it. The Soviets might find out. And he rather liked the young Russian.

  He asked himself how he would feel if Thomas turned up at his door with a ticking bomb. He would take him in, he knew he would. He and his ex-brother-in-law had fought on opposite sides in the First War, but they’d been on the same side ever since.

  Thomas even had a cellar – Russell could remember him remarking how they’d probably need it after one of Goering’s speeches on the invincibility of the Luftwaffe. They should be able to hide out there until the Red Army reached Berlin. And once they did, then saving Varennikov should earn both him and Thomas some much-needed credit with the Soviets.

  All of which assumed Thomas being there. He could imagine him evacuating Hanna and Lotte to Hanna’s parents in the country, but he found it hard to imagine Thomas leaving his factory or his Jewish workers. As far back as 1941 he’d been all that stood between them and the trains heading east – he had even taken to cultivating a few Nazi acquaintances as insurance. And things was unlikely to have improved. If the bombing had spared him, Thomas would be there.

  ‘How far is it?’ Varennikov asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  ‘About two kilometres,’ Russell told him. He couldn’t remember hearing an all-clear, but the bombers seemed to have gone. With the searchlights dimmed, the moon down, and the blackout still in force, it could hardly have got any darker. Even the whitened kerbs offered little help – six years of weather and footfalls had worn the paint away.

  They took the bridge across the U-Bahn cutting, and headed up the narrow Im Schwarzen Grund. It might be dark, but the main roads carried a heavier risk, and he was fairly confident of finding his way through Dahlem’s suburban maze. Varennikov looked less certain, but plodded dutifully along beside him. If the sheaf of papers under his arm amounted to a bomb for Stalin, then the Americans would eventually have questions for Russell. He decided that Thomas didn’t need to know what this was all about. For everyone’s sake.

  The street was quiet. In the poorer parts of Berlin, people would be hurrying home from the large public shelters, but in richer suburbs like Dahlem most houses and blocks had their own. And for obvious reasons the police presence had always been thinner here than in the old socialist and communist strongholds of working-class Wedding and Neukölln. In some areas of Wedding even the Gestapo had needed military back-up.

  The streets were quiet, but not entirely empty. Twice on Bitter Strasse the two men were forced to skulk in the shadows while people went by, an air-raid warden on an unlit bicycle, a woman in a long coat. Two of the phosphorescent badges that Russell remembered from the early years of the war were pinned to her chest like pale blue headlights.

  There was no sign that Dahlem had been bombed that night – apart, that is, from the four which had fallen around the Institute – but it had clearly suffered during the preceding months. As they crossed the wide and empty Königin Luise Strasse, Russell noticed several gaps in the once imposing line of houses, and the depredations onVogelsang Strasse seemed, if possible, even heavier. Had the Schade residence survived?

  It had. Identifying the familiar silhouette against the starry backdrop gave Russell an intense sense of relief. He had spent many happy hours in this house and the garden that lay behind it. Thomas had bought it in the early 1920s, soon after taking over the family’s paper and printing business from his ailing father. Russell and Ilse had stayed there when they returned, as lovers, from the Soviet Union in 1924. Through the 1930s he and Effi had spent many a Sunday lunch and afternoon as part of the extended family, eating, drinking and lamenting the Nazis.

  Unsurprisingly for four in the morning, the house lay in darkness. But the small front garden did look unusually unkempt, and the thick spider’s web which Russell encountered on the porch implied a distinct lack of human traffic.

  ‘It looks empty,’ Varennikov said. He sounded relieved.

  ‘Come,’ Russell told him, heading for the archway at the side of the house, where another web was waiting. Many years earlier, Thomas had invited him back to the house, only to realise he’d forgo
tten his keys. ‘There’s a spare one round the back,’ his friend had said, and there it had been, gathering moss under a water bucket.

  The bucket was in the same spot, and so was the key. It felt a little rusty, but still opened the back door. Russell ushered Varennikov into the huge kitchen that Hanna loved so much, and told the Russian to stand still while he attended to the blackout curtains. Once these were closed, Russell used his flashlight to reveal the room’s geography.

  Two things immediately caught his eye. The documents on the large kitchen table were Thomas’s Volkssturm call-up papers. They had been issued the previous autumn.

  And on the mantelpiece above the stone fireplace there was one of the black-bordered memorial cards that Russell remembered from 1941. Joachim Schade smiled out of the photograph. Thomas had lost his son.

  We killed them all

  April 20 – 21

  Paul let himself out of the temporary barracks just before seven, and took a deep breath of fresh air – most of the Hitlerjugend still sleeping inside had probably forgotten what soap and water were for. The sound of aircraft lifted his eyes – high in the sky above Erkner the sun glinted on the silver bellies of Allied bombers. All through the night he had listened to the dull thud of distant explosions, and day it seemed would bring no mercy. To the west, Erkner’s Rathaus was silhouetted against a sky laced with the colour of fire. It was, he realised, Hitler’s birthday.

  He walked across to the railway station and down the short street to the town centre, intent on finding someone from his own division, or at least news of its whereabouts. How else was he going to get away from a bunch of deluded children with a collective death-wish?

  But he was out of luck. The traffic clogging the main road west was mostly civilian; the only uniforms in motion were black, and they belonged to embarrassed-looking Waffen-SS soldiers clinging to a farm tractor. At the crossroads an unusually cheerful MP had no idea where the 20th might be, but more than enough information about the Russians, whose advance was apparently gathering speed.

  ‘How far away are they?’ Paul wanted to know.

  The man shrugged. ‘Two days? Maybe only one. But we’ll all be pulled back into the city before they get here.’

  He made Berlin sound like a real barrier, but Paul had seen French prisoners-of-war hard at work on the so-called ‘obstacle belt’ on his last trip to the city. A few trenches and gun emplacements weren’t going to hold up the Red Army for long, even when manned by soldiers too young to know fear.

  Returning to the canteen, he saw Werner across the road, happily chatting to the woman from the day before. ‘Frau Kempka’s husband was in Italy with the same division as my father,’ the boy announced happily, as if that was some consolation for them both being dead.

  ‘Was he really?’ Paul said. ‘Good morning, Frau Kempka,’ he added. She had a coat on, and a suitcase sat by the front door.

  ‘I’m going to try and reach Potsdam,’ she said, noticing his glance. ‘My brother lives there, although I expect he’s serving in the Volkssturm now. It seems safer than staying here, don’t you think?’ She looked at Paul, as if confident he would know the answer.

  I’m only eighteen, Paul felt like saying. ‘You’re probably right,’ was what he said. Potsdam, about twenty-five kilometres south-west of Berlin, seemed as good a place as any.

  ‘We’re moving out,’ Werner told him. ‘They told us fifteen minutes ago – you might have been left behind.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A few kilometres east. There’s a gap between two lakes, and we’re supposed to plug it. Us and a police battalion. And the local Volkssturm.’

  Paul groaned inwardly – police battalions were notoriously prone to disappearing without warning, and the Volkssturm would probably just get in the way.

  Over the next couple of hours, as they waited for the fuel they’d been promised for their lorries, he saw nothing to make him more optimistic. The members of the police battalion were all armed with rifles, but their eyes looked inward and their faces were pale with fear. The older men of the Volkssturm looked more depressed than frightened, but they were woefully short of weapons. They would only have a rifle each when half of them were dead.

  The fuel finally appeared, two barrels on the back of a horse-drawn cart which needed siphoning. It was almost ten when they finally set off, and by then the sky was clouding over. The Hitlerjugend sat clutching their rocket- launchers; apart from a few exceptions like Werner, they seemed eager for battle. Today was the Führer’s birthday, they kept reminding each other, the day on which the wonder weapons would be unleashed. This would be the moment the Soviets were stopped and driven back, and they would be able to tell their children that they had been part of it.

  Staring out through the back of the lorry at the huge pall of smoke hanging over Berlin, Paul wondered how anyone could still believe in victory.

  Their new position was only about three kilometres away, but forcing their way through the oncoming tide of refugees took almost two hours. Paul saw a mix of emotions in the passing faces – faint hope, pity tinged with resentment, even a hint of the old respect – but the commonest look was of incomprehension. It was the one he had seen in Gerhart’s mother’s eyes, the one that couldn’t fathom how anyone might still believe there was anything to fight for.

  At the spot where their road passed under the orbital autobahn a large hoarding carried the increasingly ubiquitous ‘Berlin Remains German!’ slogan, and some joker had added the words ‘for one more week’ in what looked like large slatherings of gun grease.

  No defensive positions had been prepared across the isthmus which divided the lakes, and the next two hours were spent digging themselves in. There were just over a hundred of them, Paul reckoned, enough to hold the position for a few hours, assuming the promised artillery support turned up. If it didn’t.. well, Ivan would just plough right on through them.

  The two Hitlerjugend in the neighbouring foxhole were still talking about the wonder weapons. Both were certain of their existence, but one seemed less than certain of their imminent arrival. Werner, by contrast, was digging in silence. He was strong for a fourteen-year-old, Paul thought. Another way in which he had grown up too fast.

  Russell was woken by the sirens, and for one all-too-brief moment thought himself back in Effi’s flat. It was only nine o’clock, and the bed seemed as damp as it had when he first lay down. Sunshine was pouring in through the window, lighting the Hertha team portrait which Joachim had pinned to his wall. It was the 1938–39 team, Russell realised. The four of them – he, Paul, Thomas and Joachim – had gone to most of the home games that season.

  Was Paul dead too? He felt his chest tighten at the thought of it.

  He swung himself off the bed and went for a piss. Varennikov was still sleeping, one arm stretched out above his head with palm averted, as if he were warding off an attacker. The sheaf of papers from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute peeked out from under the pillow.

  Russell went downstairs in search of food and drink. There was water in the taps and, rather to his surprise, a weak flow of gas from the oven hob. There was a can of ersatz coffee, some sugar, and several tins of Swedish soup – a gift from someone with influence, no doubt. He stared out of the window at the overgrown garden while he waited for the water to boil, then left a saucepan of soup above the derisory flames.

  Taking care to keep clear of the windows, he worked his way through the downstairs rooms. The living-and dining-room furniture was wreathed in sheets, Thomas’s office a dustier version of what he remembered. Standing in the front hall, he idly picked up the telephone, and was astonished to hear a working tone.

  On impulse, he dialled the Gehrts’ number. It rang, but no one answered.

  Next he tried Effi’s old flat. He knew she couldn’t be there, but he loved the idea of hearing the telephone ring in their old living room.

  There was no answer.

  Who else could he call? Zarah, he de
cided. If Effi had spent the last forty months in Berlin, he found it hard to believe that she hadn’t made contact with her sister. But what was the Biesingers’ number. Did it end with a six or an eight?

  He tried the six. He counted ten rings, and was about to hang up when someone picked up. ‘Yes?’ a tired male voice asked.

  It was Jens, Russell realised, Zarah’s Nazi husband. He broke the connection.

  Outside, the sound of bombs exploding seemed to be getting nearer. They should move to the cellar.

  It was early evening when the rumour spread through the basement rooms of the collection camp, leaving something close to terror in its wake. Effi could feel the rising sense of panic before she knew its cause, that Dobberke had finally received the order to kill them all. Like everyone else, she instinctively turned her eyes to the door, for fear that their killers were about to burst through it.

  It was almost dark outside. Would they do it at night or wait for the dawn? Effi had heard of wounded people lying motionless for hours under corpses, waiting for the moment to crawl away. Had they just been lucky, or was there a trick she needed to know?

  ‘What’s happening, Mama?’ Rosa said, jolting her out of the dark reverie. Over the last few days, the girl had voiced none of those questions that she must be asking herself, but the look in her eyes was too often fearful. And this was the first time she had ever called Effi ‘Mama’.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Effi told her. How could you tell a seven year-old that her execution had just been ordered?

  The sirens started wailing, welcome for once. Would their jailers all come down to the basement as if nothing had changed? Would Dobberke stand there smoking his cigarettes, sharing an occasional joke with his prisoners?

  He did, although he looked more uncertain than usual, at least to Effi. She decided she couldn’t bear to wait. She needed to know if the rumours were true.

  The men in the fourth room would know, the ones who’d been locked in the cells until the weekend bombing. ‘You stay with Johanna,’ she told Rosa. ‘I’m going to find out what’s happening. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’