Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  He eventually fell asleep, and only awoke when sunlight glinted through the boarded-up window. The canteen provided bread and black tea, and a visit to the nearby toilets turned up a bucket of lukewarm water and a paper-thin sliver of soap. The subsequent wash raised his spirits a little, but climbing back into filthy clothes dropped them right back down. He was on his way upstairs when a young NKVD officer intercepted him. ‘The people on your list are being brought here,’ the young man said. ‘They will wait in your room.’

  ‘All of them?’ Russell asked, as much in hope as expectation.

  ‘Of course,’ the young man answered, as if partial success was an unfamiliar concept. A riotous succession of hurrahs erupted somewhere upstairs, followed by the clinking of glasses. They both looked upwards, and Russell asked if the war was over.

  ‘No, but Hitler is dead. He shot himself yesterday. Like the coward he was.’

  The NKVD man carried on down the stairs, leaving Russell to carry on up. Hitler’s death seemed almost irrelevant, like a debt already paid.

  He let himself into his room and looked around it. An anteroom, he thought. A place between war and peace.

  An hour or so later the door swung open, and a soldier delivered Thomas. After exchanging rueful smiles, they embraced like long-lost brothers. ‘So what’s this all about?’ Thomas asked eventually. ‘What have I done to deserve Stalin’s mercy?’

  Russell told him who else was coming, and where they were all going.

  Thomas’s face lit up. ‘Paul’s all right? And Effi as well?’

  ‘So the Russians tell me.’

  Thomas leaned back against the wall, a smile of wonderment on his face. ‘And how have you managed this miracle?’

  ‘I did a deal with the Russians,’ Russell said simply. ‘A favour for a favour.’

  ‘And what sort of favour are they getting from you? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘A big one, I think,’ Russell told him, ‘but I don’t really know.’ The papers had excited Varennikov but, as the young man himself had pointed out, the scientists who mattered were all back home in their nice warm labs. ‘And better you didn’t,’ he added, in answer to Thomas’s second question. ‘But there is one thing. It’s part of the deal that I follow on later – in a few days, I hope, but you never know. In case I don’t, well, I saw Paul two days ago, and he seems in bad shape. Not physically…’

  ‘You don’t have to ask,’ Thomas interrupted. There were footsteps on the stairs.

  It was the boy in question. He looked tired, but the haunted look had gone. Russell remembered Armistice Day in 1918, and wondered if Paul was feeling something similar. The reaction came later, of course, but the sense of release was wonderful while it lasted.

  Paul was less than happy when he heard the arrangements. He wasn’t sure why, but just driving away didn’t feel right. And when he heard that his father was staying, he insisted on doing the same.

  ‘I need you to look after Effi and Rosa,’ Russell pleaded hopefully.

  ‘Effi’s more than capable of looking after herself,’ his son retorted, something that Russell knew only too well, but which he hadn’t expected from Paul. Three years ago his son would have been flattered by the offer of adult responsibilities, but he was an adult now, and only the truth would do.

  ‘Then do it for me,’ he begged. ‘If I end up sacrificing myself for the family, then at least let it be the whole damn family.’

  ‘What’s left of it,’ Paul said bitterly. ‘But all right. I’ll go.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ Russell said, realising with a shock that her death had never been mentioned. ‘I only found out a couple of days ago. It hasn’t had time to sink in.’

  ‘It seems years ago,’ was all Paul would say.

  ‘And your sisters?’

  ‘With Grandpa and Grandma. I haven’t seen them for a couple of years.’

  ‘That won’t matter,’ his uncle told him, ‘they’re still your sisters.’ There was a sad inflection to Thomas’s tone, and Russell realised he was thinking of his own lost son.

  The others arrived an hour or so later. Effi threw herself into Russell’s arms, and Rosa’s offer of a hand made Thomas smile again. Zarah looked like she’d been through hell, but was trying not to spoil the party. ‘Later,’ Effi told Russell, when he silently asked what was wrong with her sister.

  He told Effi he wouldn’t be coming with them, which was no surprise but still felt like a blow. ‘But you will,’ she insisted.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Or maybe the next day. What’s a few days after more than three years.’

  ‘Several lifetimes,’ she told him. ‘You should know that by now.’

  And then the NKVD troops were at the door, with orders to escort them downstairs. Outside, a line of four jeeps bearing Soviet stars were filling the street with fumes. Nikoladze was there, along with a tall blond Swede whom Effi introduced as Erik Aslund. She had already told Russell about their Jew-smuggling activities, and seeing them together he felt an absurd twinge of jealousy.

  He embraced his family one by one, and watched them climb aboard two of the jeeps. A few brave smiles and away they went, roaring down Immelmann Strasse past the blackened hull of a burnt-out German tank.

  He turned to go back in. Nikoladze was still on the steps, talking to a Red Army general, and the glance he directed in Russell’s direction seemed anything but friendly. The convoy of jeeps headed west, through Friedenau and Steglitz on the old Potsdam road, the sounds of the battle still consuming Berlin slowly fading to silence. They drove through a landscape of ruins, peopled by shuffling ghosts, smelling of death. In a couple of places Red Army soldiers stood sentry while gangs of German civilians cleared away rubble and gathered in corpses. In a bombed-out space beside one house two piles awaited incineration, one composed of humans, the other of furry pets.

  White flags flew from many surviving buildings, red from more than a few. All of the swastikas had vanished, but exhortatory posters still clung to walls, some flapping wildly in the breeze of their passage, as if keen to detach themselves. A dawn had followed the darkest hour, but not the one intended.

  And then they were leaving Berlin, and the smell of death wafted away, and the spring seemed suddenly real. A hot sun was beating down, turning dew into mist across the emerald fields.

  In the third jeep, Paul found himself thinking about the previous spring, when he and Gerhart had joined the regular army. He could see his friend now, jumping down from the train, and staring entranced at the vast Russian plain that stretched away before them. He could see the surprise on Neumaier’s face as the bullets took him, see the love in Werner’s face when he spoke of his mother and sister.

  But it wasn’t painful any more, not for him. It was only painful for the other Paul, the one he had left behind. There was no longer a road leading home for him.

  In the jeep ahead, Zarah was crying on Effi’s shoulder. For three days and nights she had conquered the impulse to resist, and allowed the same quartet of Russian soldiers to rape her again and again. Proud of their amenable German girlfriend, the foursome had kept their other comrades at bay, and probably saved her from serious physical harm. She knew in her heart she had done the right thing, but still she couldn’t stop weeping.

  They had all suffered, Effi thought. Herself least of all, or so it now seemed. She’d been in terrible danger on several occasions, but no one had ever laid a hand on her. Those first weeks back in Berlin, alone in the flat in Wedding, had been by far the worst of her life, but often, in the years that followed, she had felt more useful, more complete, more alive, than she ever had as a movie star. Saving lives certainly put acting in perspective.

  And then there were Rosa, Paul and Thomas. She could only guess at the damage done to the young girl’s heart, and at the damage done to Paul’s. Thomas had been through the horrors of the First War, but even his eyes held something new, a weight of sadness that was not there before.

 
Yet they were the lucky ones, alive, with all their limbs and loved ones to care for.

  There was an undamaged farmhouse across the field to her left, smoke drifting lazily up from its chimney. It had probably looked much the same when she and John had driven this road en route to their pre-war picnics. Not all the world was ruins.

  There was much to mend, but it could be done. One heart at a time. Just as long as he came back to her.

  Russell settled down to wait. It was around 120 kilometres to the Elbe – in ordinary conditions a two-hour drive each way. Add an hour for haggling, then double the lot, and perhaps the Swede would be back by nightfall.

  He wasn’t. Russell had another night of broken sleep, woken by each step on the stairs, each revving engine on the street outside. Had they run into something on the road, been ambushed by Goebbels’ ludicrous Werewolves? Had the Americans refused to take them?

  When he finally awoke something seemed strange, and it took him a while to work out what it was. He couldn’t hear a war. The guns had fallen silent.

  He was still digesting this when a young officer came to collect him.

  Erik Aslund was downstairs in the lobby, Nikoladze waiting by the door. The Swede looked exhausted. ‘They’re across the river,’ he told Russell.

  ‘You’ve only just got back?’

  ‘There were arguments, radio messages to and fro. But we won through in the end. Frau von Freiwald – Fraulein Koenen, I should say, now that I know who she really is – she wouldn’t take no for an answer. And when the Americans found out she was a movie star, they didn’t dare refuse her. There were a lot of journalists at the American army headquarters, all looking for a story.’

  Russell smiled. He wondered what the journalists would say if they knew that the price of the movie star’s freedom was a Russian atomic bomb. He thanked the Swede for all his help.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Aslund said. ‘I hope we meet again, when things are more settled.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ Russell agreed, shaking the offered hand. He could feel Nikoladze’s impatience.

  ‘So where are the papers?’ the Georgian asked, with the Swede barely out of the door.

  ‘In Dahlem. They’re buried in my brother-in-law’s garden.’

  ‘They had better be,’ Nikoladze replied.

  They had, Russell thought, as the two of them walked down the steps. He was beginning to wish he’d indulged Varennikov, and buried them deeper. If they got to Dahlem and found a crater in the vegetable patch, he could see Nikoladze shooting him on the spot.

  Out in the street, two jeeps sandwiched a gleaming Horch 930V. Russell wondered where Nikoladze had found such a car, and then remembered that the Red Army had passed through the Babelsberg a few days earlier. The model had been a favourite with Goebbels’ movie moguls.

  A Russian map of Berlin was spread across the leading jeep’s bonnet. He, Nikoladze and a Red Army lieutenant gathered round it, pinpointed their destination, and worked out the route.

  ‘In the front,’ Nikoladze told Russell, as they walked back towards the Horch.

  Yevgeny Shchepkin was sitting in the back, wearing the usual crumpled suit and an expression to match.

  Russell got in beside the young Red Army driver, who gave him a crooked grin. The lead jeep started off, small Soviet flags fluttering on the two leading corners. It was a beautiful morning, warm and sunny, with a few fluffy clouds gliding like Zeppelins across a blue sky. Two thin columns of smoke were rising to the north, but the city’s silence seemed almost uncanny, the noise of the vehicles unusually loud in the devastated streets.

  They made good progress for twenty minutes, but halfway down Haupt Strasse were halted by a Red Army roadblock. The lieutenant walked back to tell Nikoladze that a sniper was being rounded up, and that they’d only be there for a few minutes. They waited in silence, Nikoladze tapping rhythms on his armrest. After almost half an hour had passed without further news, he got out of the car and strode forward in search of someone to bully.

  The driver climbed out too, and lit a surreptitious cigarette. It was the first time Russell and Shchepkin had been alone together.

  ‘My daughter told me about your conversation,’ the Russian said.

  ‘Natasha? She reminded me of you.’

  Shchepkin grunted. ‘Then God help her.’

  ‘How long were you in prison?’ Russell asked.

  ‘I was arrested in November.’

  ‘For what?’

  Shchepkin shrugged. ‘I’m still not sure. My boss fell out with Comrade Beria, and I think I got caught in the crossfire. An occupational hazard, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Time for a change of occupation’ Russell suggested dryly.

  Shchepkin smiled at that. ‘What do you think I should do? Retire to the country and raise bees like your Sherlock Holmes?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘That’s not the sort of world we live in any more.’

  ‘No.’ Russell agreed. He could see his own potential nemesis in the distance, walking back towards them. ‘This is Nikoladze’s world,’ he murmured, as much to himself as to the Russian.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Shchepkin said reprovingly. ‘He staked his life on delivering something, and you made him wait for it.’

  Russell turned in his seat. ‘Is it really that bad?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Not for the first time, Russell felt sorry for the Russian. And for his country.

  The driver slipped back behind the wheel, smelling of cheap tobacco.

  ‘Do you know what’s fetching the highest prices in Berlin these days?’ Shchepkin asked in English.

  Russell gave it some thought. ‘KPD membership cards,’ he suggested at last.

  ‘Close,’ Shchepkin admitted. ‘Jewish stars.’

  Of course, Russell thought.

  Nikoladze let himself into the back, and soon they were on their way. A couple of hundred metres down the road, Red Army soldiers were standing over the body of a Hitlerjugend, like hunters around a kill. The boy’s dead face was turned towards them. He looked about twelve.

  It took them half an hour to reach Vogelsang Strasse. The Schade house was still standing, and if Russell kept his focus narrow he could see what he’d seen six years earlier, arriving for Sunday lunch with Effi. But let his eyes wander a few degrees, and the past lay around him in ruins.

  Heart pounding, he led the way round to the back.

  Birds were singing in the blossoming trees, and Hanna’s vegetable patch was still a mass of tangled weeds. He realised that he should have used some foliage to camouflage his excavation, which looked like a standing invitation to any passing treasure hunter. Then again, the patch of fresh earth was just the right size for a pet’s grave, and who would go digging for dead cats and dogs?

  ‘There?’ Nikoladze asked, his finger pointed at the obvious.

  Russell nodded.

  As two of the soldiers started to dig, Russell looked around the woebegone garden, remembering happier days. Hitler and the Nazis had been evil beyond imagining, but for him and his family the pre-war years had often been a wonderful time. The children growing up, Effi’s incredible success; even the Nazis had played their part, giving him and Thomas something to struggle against, a moral and political lodestone to guide their work and lives.

  What would there be now? There was something irretrievably wrong with the Soviet Union, but it was so much stronger. And the Americans were reaching for a parallel empire, whether they wanted to or not. It was hard to feel good about a country that still had a segregated army.

  It would be a world of lesser evils and uncertain victories, in infinite shades of grey. And after the Nazis he supposed that wasn’t so bad.

  They all heard the spade strike something hard, and Nikoladze gave him a questioning look.

  ‘It might be Gusakovsky’s gun,’ Russell suggested. ‘I buried it with the papers.’

  The soldier put his spade aside, and started sifting through the
earth with his hands. He handed up the gun, and then the oilskin parcel. Nikoladze took the papers from their wrapping and quickly riffled through them. They looked stained at the edges, but otherwise undamaged, and his face seemed to sag with relief.

  He strode off towards the car without a word.

  Russell turned to Shchepkin, and asked him the obvious question: ‘So will the bastard let me leave?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the Russian assured him. ‘We never waste an asset.’

  Russell smiled. As far as he knew, the gulags were full of them. But it didn’t seem the moment to say so.

  THE EXTRACT THAT FOLLOWS IS FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER OF Zoo Station, THE FIRST ‘JOHN RUSSELL AND EFFI KOENEN’ NOVEL, SET IN BERLIN IN 1939.

  Into the blue

  There were two hours left of 1938. In Danzig it had been snowing on and off all day, and a gang of children were enjoying a snowball fight in front of the grain warehouses which lined the old waterfront. John Russell paused to watch them for a few moments, then walked on up the cobbled street towards the blue and yellow lights.

  The Sweden Bar was far from crowded, and those few faces that turned his way weren’t exactly brimming over with festive spirit. In fact, most of them looked like they’d rather be somewhere else.

  It was an easy thing to want. The Christmas decorations hadn’t been removed, just allowed to drop, and now formed part of the flooring, along with patches of melting slush, floating cigarette ends and the odd broken bottle. The Bar was famous for the savagery of its international brawls, but on this particular night the various groups of Swedes, Finns and Letts seemed devoid of the energy needed to get one started. Usually a table or two of German naval ratings could be relied upon to provide the necessary spark, but the only Germans present were a couple of ageing prostitutes, and they were getting ready to leave.