Stattin Station jr-3

by David Downing

  It crossed Russell's mind that many football stadiums were smaller.

  On the platform opposite an embracing couple were silhouetted against the southern horizon.

  'But it's not ready,' Strohm went on. 'The Jews were taken off at Kovno in Lithuania, and taken to one of the old Czarist forts on the outskirts.

  That was on Saturday. On Sunday a second trainload of Jews arrived from Frankfurt, on Monday a third from Munich. On Tuesday all three thousand were taken out and shot.'

  Russell closed his eyes. 'Why?' he asked. 'On whose orders?' One mental picture of Leonore Blumenthal's Aunt Trudi, in front of a mirror, smiling as she adjusted her hat, gave way to another, of the same woman standing beside a freshly-dug pit, with trembling lips and untidy grey hair.

  'We're not certain,' Strohm replied, 'but the decision was probably taken locally. We think that the authorities in Kovno were just told to look after their unexpected guests in whatever way they deemed appropriate.'

  A steam locomotive was approaching on the fast line, the sound of its passage rapidly increasing in volume. It hurried through the station, pulling a long line of efficiently darkened carriages, an orange glow seeping from the roughly blacked-out cab.

  'So they just killed them,' Russell said, once the noise had sufficiently abated.

  'That's what they've been doing in Russia,' Strohm said. 'The fact that these were German Jews doesn't seem to have made any difference.'

  'But it doesn't seem as if there was a pre-arranged plan to murder them,' Russell said, as much to himself as Strohm. 'And that does make a difference. If the Riga camp's ready when the next trains are sent, then presumably the Jews will end up there. Why would they be building it otherwise?'

  'Perhaps,' Strohm agreed.

  He didn't sound convinced, and Russell could hardly blame him. He asked if the leaders of Berlin's Jewish community had been told.

  'They will be, if they haven't been already. But they often refuse to believe such news. Some of them at least. They thank us kindly for the information, but you can see it in their eyes. It doesn't surprise me. Knowing that something bad is about to happen is only useful when there's something you can do to avert it.'

  'Are any more trains scheduled?'

  'Not at the moment. There are none available.' Strohm smiled for the first time. 'The train that took the Jews to Kovno was commandeered in Warsaw by the Quartermasters.'

  'Well I suppose that's good news.'

  'That and the damage the Soviet partisans are doing to our trains in Russia. There's one thing I have for you: a driver who's willing to talk about what he's seen in the East. He was badly injured several weeks ago in a partisan attack, and now he's convalescing at home. Are you interested?' 'Of course.'

  'His name is Walter Meltza. His address is Flat 6, Spanheimstrasse 7. It's near the Plumpe, the Hertha ground. You know where that is?'

  'Does the Fuhrer like vegetables?'

  Strohm smiled again. 'One day we must have a talk about football, and which is the best Berlin team to support. Have you memorised the address?'

  'Yes.'

  'Please be careful, for everyone's sake. Only visit after dark. I'll make sure he knows you are coming.'

  'At the end of next week,' Russell suggested. He had Sullivan and the Admiral's message to deal with over the next few days.

  A local train could be heard approaching from the west. 'I'll tell him.'

  They shook hands, and Strohm faded into the darkness as the thin blue headlight glided into the station. This train was almost empty, not to mention strewn with copies of the same leaflet. 'War with America?' was the bold headline, but reading the small print beneath was impossible in the negligible light, and he stuffed the leaflet in his pocket. The war might be European, he thought, but all eyes were now on America. It occurred to him that his own day had revolved around four Americans - Kenyon, Sullivan, Dallin and Strohm. And four more different Americans were hard to imagine: a cosmopolitan diplomat, an ex-actor turned Nazi, a would-be spymaster from California and an essentially German communist. Not to mention himself, the American who had only ever spent six weeks in his supposed homeland. Yet here they all were in Berlin, waiting with their eighty million German hosts for their government in Washington to take the plunge, with or without a Japanese push.

  The train pulled in to Savignyplatz station. There were a few signs of movement in the square, but it had an empty sound, as if the residents had already tucked themselves away for the night. Walking up Carmerstrasse, he found himself thinking about the Blumenthals. If they didn't already know, should he tell them? How would it help them to know?

  He would ask Effi, he decided, as he climbed the stairs to her apartment. She was lying on the sofa, a script laid flat across her stomach, stretching her arms in the air. 'I heard the outside door,' she said. 'Where've you been?'

  'Meeting my railwayman. He had...'

  The swelling of sirens interrupted him.

  'Oh, not again,' Effi lamented. 'I need some sleep!'

  She was still sleeping when Russell left the next morning. Either the raid had been protracted, or those in charge of the all-clear had inadvertently dropped off, because it hadn't sounded until a quarter past four. Two possible chains of circumstance that any local Sherlock Holmes could have deduced from the bleary eyes of his fellow passengers on the Route 30 tram.

  Russell remembered how quickly Paul had fallen in love with Holmes and Watson. How old had he been? Nine? Ten? One day at the Funkturm they had invented German equivalents - Siegfried Helmer and Doctor Weindling. They lived at Kurfurstendamm 221, over an actual tobacco shop.

  How would Paul react if he told him what had happened in Kovno? He had told Effi on their way back home from the shelter, and she had not wanted to believe it. She had, but only after desperately searching through the facts for a more acceptable interpretation. Paul would simply deny it. His father's source must be mistaken, or simply inspired by hatred of the Reich.

  And Russell was almost glad that Paul would think that way, because denial was infinitely preferable to acceptance.

  His tram ground to a halt in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate. The sky was mostly clear, but was expected to cloud over in the afternoon and thereby offer Berliners some respite from the attentions of the RAF. That was the good news. The bad was that Effi had accepted an invitation for dinner at her sister's house for them both. The food might be good, but only until Zarah cooked it; and sharing several hours with her punctilious Nazi husband was hardly Russell's idea of an enjoyable Friday evening, even in war-time Berlin. In fact, now that he thought about it, the turn in the weather was somewhat unfortunate. An air raid might have shortened the torment.

  Neither newspaper nor coffee improved his mood. The latter seemed worse than ever, a cold brown soup that bore no relation to the real thing, and the former was full of self-congratulatory coverage of the recently-concluded, so-called conference. Volkischer Beobachter readers were invited to imagine a world in which England rather than Germany had enjoyed two years of victories: 'Instead of being able to face the world united, having as its centre a Reich immeasurably greater in power and potentialities, Europe would now be split into fragments consisting of nothing more than a small heap of non-organic separated parts...'

  'Let's hear it for small heaps,' Russell murmured to himself. A long article in the same paper revealed the 'secret last testament' of Tsar Peter the Great, a template for expansionism which the Bolsheviks had taken for their own. The journalists concerned seemed unaware that the testament in question had been revealed as a forgery more than thirty years before.

  After attending two press conferences and writing one uninspired article, he met Effi at the Zoo Station buffet. Zarah and Jens Biesinger lived on the border of Grunewald and Schmargendorf, a kilometre or so east of his son Paul's home. It was an important kilometre in social terms, and the Biesinger house, though ample in size for a family of three, was considerably less spacious than the small m
ansion which Matthias Gehrts had inherited from his industrialist father. There were also, as Russell had noticed on previous visits to collect Effi, many more swastikas waving in the less leafy street.

  The promised cloud cover had arrived, deepening the blackout, and they stepped down from their tram into a river of dancing blue lights, as phosphorescent-badged Berliners crowded the pavements on their way home from work. Effi remembered one of her soldiers in the Elisabeth Hospital describing Russian skies awash with coloured flares. She tightened her grip on Russell's arm. 'John, be nice this evening.'

  'I'm always nice.'

  'Who are you talking to? I'm serious. Zarah's not doing well at the moment, and from everything she says I don't think Jens can be either.' 'I thought he'd been promoted.'

  'He has. But I don't think... This is the street, isn't it?'

  'It's Karlsbaderstrasse,' a passing voice in the dark said helpfully.

  'Thank you.'

  'You were saying?' Russell said, once they'd found the white kerb.

  'Zarah says he's drinking more than he used to.'

  'That wouldn't be difficult. The last time I came to dinner here the wine was in thimbles.'

  'That was years ago. And I thought you promised to be nice.'

  'I am. I will be. But what problems do they have? A Party favourite with a prestige job and a wife who doesn't have to work. Is Lothar okay?'

  'It's not that simple,' Effi retorted. Sometimes she wondered how someone so intelligent could also be so obtuse.

  'Is Lothar okay?' Russell asked again 'He's fine,' Effi replied. 'A bit strange perhaps, but fine.'

  'Strange how?' Two years ago Zarah and Jens had been worried that their child was mentally sub-normal, not something they wanted to publicise given the Party's attitude to handicapped people of any age or type. Russell had escorted Zarah and the boy to London for a clandestine assessment. Lothar, it turned out, was just a little disconnected from the rest of humanity. There was nothing to worry about.

  'Oh, I don't know,' Effi said. 'Just little things. One of Jens's sisters bought him a stunning set of toy soldiers for his birthday, and he just refused to play with them. Wouldn't say why, just put them back in their box and left them there.'

  'Sounds very sensible to me.'

  'You wouldn't say that if it was Paul. Remember how overjoyed he was when Thomas bought him that set of dead soldiers. He went on and on about how realistic they were.'

  'True,' Russell conceded. He didn't want to talk about Paul.

  'Lothar says the strangest things sometimes,' Effi went on. 'He asked me the other day whether pretending to be other people at work made me confused when I wasn't. It's not an unreasonable question, but from a six year-old?'

  'I see what you mean.'

  They were almost there. Effi pulled them to a halt at the gate, and put her hands on his shoulders. 'It hurts me that Zarah and I aren't as close as we used to be. This war will end one day, and I want to still have a sister when it does.' She stared him in the eye, making sure he understood her. 'We may not like how they think or what Jens does, but they're part of our family.'

  'I get it,' Russell said. He did.

  It was Lothar who answered the door, smiling happily at Effi and earnestly shaking hands with Russell. Zarah appeared, looking much the same as ever, a full-figured woman with wavy chestnut hair which now hung past her shoulder. She gave him a bigger smile than he expected, and kissed him warmly on the cheek. Jens emerged last. He looked at least five years older than he had in 1939, although much-thinned hair perhaps exaggerated the effect. He was out of uniform for once, unless the enamel swastika in his lapel could be counted as such.

  A surprisingly wonderful smell was coming from the kitchen. Perhaps the quality of the ingredients had transcended the quality of the cook, Russell thought unkindly.

  Jens seemed eager to get them drinking, and appeared slightly disappointed when Lothar commandeered both guests for a look at his latest acquisition - an atlas of world animals. He had the book open at a map of the Soviet Union, a double-page spread full of wolves, black bears and Siberian tigers. The Red Army and Wehrmacht were nowhere to be seen.

  With Zarah announcing that dinner was fifteen minutes away, Effi took Lothar upstairs for a bedtime story and Russell was able to oblige Jens's desire to share his excellent wine. The two of them swapped opinions on the military news from Africa - a safe option in that neither had any real idea what was happening - and Russell offered a vaguely optimistic view of events in the East, which he assumed would please his host. All he got was a frown. 'We must hope for the best,' was all Jens would say.

  This was a surprise, and made Russell want to dig deeper. What did Jens know that Dr Schmidt and Dr Goebbels did not?

  Effi's reappearance prevented it. 'Lothar is ready for his goodnight kiss,' she told her brother-in-law. 'How's it going?' she asked Russell once Jens had disappeared up the stairs.

  'Splendidly,' he told her.

  She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving him to stare at the framed Fuhrer above the mantelpiece. 'How's your war going?' Russell muttered at him. 'As well as you hoped, or are the cracks beginning to show?'

  'Second sign of madness,' Effi said at his shoulder.

  'What's the first?'

  'Talking to portraits of Goering. It's time to sit down.'

  They went through into the dining room. Zarah had lit candles, but resisted Effi's suggestion that they turn off the lights - 'There's too much darkness these days.' Jens returned and topped up their glasses - his, Russell noticed, was already empty. He and Effi shared knowing glances.

  The food - a sausage casserole with unmistakably real sausage - was excellent, and Russell said so.

  'You needn't sound so surprised,' Zarah told him with a nervous smile.

  'I'm not,' Russell protested, but he did wonder whether their hosts knew how few people in Berlin would be enjoying a dinner as good as this. He knew better than to ask, though.

  'These days any good meal is a surprise,' Effi interjected diplomatically.

  As they ate, the conversation meandered through the current Berlin topics - the sudden shortage of shoes, the irritating air raids, the recent avalanche of leaflets criticising the government, the errant behaviour of youth. 'Two boys were caught throwing stones at the trains last week,' Zarah said. 'Near Halensee Station, I think it was. They were on their way home from a Hitlerjugend meeting.'

  Jens said little, and even then only when his wife appealed to him directly. He seemed distracted, Russell thought. He was drinking steadily, and had sunk well over a bottle of wine before they turned to the brandy.

  'How's work?' Russell asked, more out of politeness than from any hope of learning anything useful.

  'Hard,' Jens said, and smiled rather bleakly. 'Hard,' he echoed himself. 'Just between us,' he said, waving a hand to embrace them all, 'the job is becoming impossible.'

  Russell couldn't resist asking: 'Which job?'

  'Feeding everyone,' Jens said simply. 'In peacetime it was a challenge, but one we could meet. In wartime - well, you can imagine. There are fewer men available for farm work, so production has suffered...'

  'Aren't there enough Land Girls?' his wife asked.

  'A lot of them are getting married just to avoid farm work,' Effi offered.

  'We can feed our cities and countryside,' Jens went on, as if no one else had spoken. 'But the Wehrmacht is more of a problem. We now have almost four million soldiers and half a million horses to feed, and most of them are more than eight hundred kilometres from the old borders of the Reich.'

  'And there aren't enough trains,' Russell murmured. He was, he realised, about to learn something.

  'Exactly. So they must live off the Russian countryside. They will consume the agricultural surplus that used to feed the Russian towns.' 'And the Russian towns?' Effi asked.

  'As I said, it is hard. We must be hard.'

  He looked anything but, Russell thought. In fact, he might be imaginin
g it, but there seemed to be a glint of tears in Jens's eyes.

  There was a sudden silence around the table.

  Russell thought through the implications. Most of the Russian peasantry would survive - they'd been hiding food from invaders and governments since time began. The towns would indeed suffer, but not as badly as the millions of Soviet prisoners. What would they be fed with? And then there were the Jews, trainload after trainload travelling east, into this man-made famine. What would they eat? They wouldn't.

  'You can only do your best,' Zarah was telling her husband.

  He looked furious, but only for an instant. 'Of course. The men at the front are the ones who really suffer. I just work in an office.' He got up. 'Excuse me for a moment. I thought I heard Lothar.'

  'He worries about the boy,' Zarah said.

  He should worry about himself, Effi thought. He was as close to a breakdown as any of her soldiers in their hospital beds. 'He's a good father,' was all she said.

  'That's something, isn't it?' Zarah replied. 'I was thinking the other day - so many boys are going to be without their fathers when all this is over.'

  There was no air raid that night, but Russell was woken by the sound of Effi crying. He found her wrapped in her old fur coat, curled up on the sofa with her knees up under her chin. 'I'm sorry,' she sobbed. 'I didn't want to wake you.'

  He took her in his arms, and asked what the matter was.

  'It just gets worse and worse,' she said.

  He knew what she meant.

  A valued friend of the Reich

  They woke later than usual, and Effi cooked the eggs that Zarah had insisted on giving them. 'What time are you meeting Paul?' she asked.

  'I'm not,' Russell said, realising he hadn't told her about the Hitlerjugend shooting tournament.

  'Don't they allow fathers?'

  'If they do, Paul forgot to tell me.'

  'Oh well, you can come shopping with me. I need some new boots.'

  'You'll be lucky.'