Stattin Station jr-3

by David Downing

  'Let's just say I like to know exactly where I stand.'

  'Very well. You may have thought that we had forgotten about you since 1939. Your file is a long one, Herr Russell, well-researched and very up-to-date. Your girlfriend, your son, your Jew-lover of a brother-in-law and his son - their lives could all get a lot more difficult. You yourself would forfeit any chance of leaving Germany, and, at best, undergo imprisonment as an enemy alien for the duration of the war. I think we can agree, here, just between us, that this will be a long war. The United States will doubtless join in eventually, but the Atlantic is very wide, and they will find it as hard to cross as we shall. A stalemate seems very likely, and many years for you to regret refusing your services in this matter.'

  'No' was not an option, Russell thought. It very rarely was where the Sicherheitsdienst was involved. 'You've convinced me,' he told Giminich. Maybe something would occur to him over the next few hours, some devious means of sabotaging the intended trap that could not be blamed on him, but it didn't seem very likely.

  'Excellent,' Giminich said. 'We have reserved a room for you at the Alcron Hotel. Untersturmfuhrer Schulenburg will take you there now, and then to the Sramota Cafe for your treff with Herr Grashof. Anything you require, please ask. Once your part is over, your time is your own. The hotel room is yours until tomorrow, though I believe your return ticket is for this evening.'

  'It is. And I do need to be back in Berlin tomorrow.' He didn't, but insisting that he still had an agenda of his own made him feel slightly less helpless.

  Schulenburg led him outside to where an ancient-looking black saloon was waiting. Two more men in suits were sitting in the front seats, both of whom looked like Czechs. The Untersturmfuhrer had not opened his mouth in the station office, and his directions to the driver revealed a surprisingly deep voice. He ushered Russell into the back seat and joined him there, absent-mindedly pressing down on his unruly ginger thatch.

  The streets of Prague seemed sombre to Russell, but that might just have been the overcast sky. According to the BBC, Heydrich's executioners had hardly enjoyed a moment's rest since early November, but as Russell knew only too well from Berlin, the sufferings of a small minority could pass almost unnoticed by their fellow citizens.

  They had reached Jindoisska Street, which now bore the name Heinrichsgasse. As in 1939, giant swastikas adorned the upper facade of the Post Office and nearby Deutsches Haus, but traffic was noticeably lighter. There were a couple of trams in the distance, but no cars beyond their own. As they turned onto Wenzelsplatz another black saloon could be seen parked further up the slope, but that was all - this piece of occupied Europe had apparently exhausted its petrol ration.

  Lepanska Street had also been re-christened, but Russell failed to catch the new name. The dark, rectangular and depressingly modern Alcron seemed unchanged from 1939, when he had eschewed it and its predominantly German clientele in favour of the Europa.

  Once inside the impression improved, although sharing the small lift with two violently sneezing SS officers was hardly conducive to good health. His room, it turned out, was actually two - a sitting room, with a child's bed, leading into a large bedroom. Both had large windows overlooking the canyon-like street.

  Russell looked at his watch - it was ten to ten. He had just over four hours to figure some way out of his and Grashof's predicament. Breakfast would be a start.

  'I'd like some coffee,' he told Schulenburg. 'And something to eat. A couple of rolls will do.'

  The Untersturmfuhrer seemed momentarily upset by the audacity of this request, but managed to recover himself. He opened the door, relayed the request to someone outside, and shut it once more.

  'Have you been in Prague long?' Russell asked him cheerily.

  'That's no business of yours,' was the surly reply.

  'Just trying to be friendly,' Russell said lightly.

  'We are not friends.'

  No indeed, Russell thought. Silence it was. He sat down in a convenient armchair, stretched out his legs and waited for breakfast to arrive. Thinking was always hard work without coffee.

  He suddenly realised that they hadn't provided him with the requisite copy of Signal. Had Giminich slipped up? Surely Grashof would notice if he turned up without one, but what would he do?

  The coffee arrived, along with rolls, real butter and real jam. Russell could hardly believe it, but the Untersturmfuhrer, clearly used to such luxuries, left most of his on the plate. The coffee was no better than Berlin's - but then Prague was just as far from Brazil.

  Feast over, Russell asked if he could lie down in the adjoining room. Schulenburg took a long look round, presumably to make sure there were no telephones, semaphore paddles or carrier pigeons available for Russell's use. He then granted permission, contingent on the door remaining open.

  Russell laid himself out on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to think. What was Giminich expecting to happen? Grashof would accept the legitimacy of the fake message without query, and perhaps incriminate himself still further by sending an indiscreet message back to Canaris. All of which would be overheard by the SD - a listening device under the table in all likelihood. Knowing which table the meeting was arranged for, they only had to bug the one.

  But unless the relevant technology had improved out of all recognition there was no way the SD could record the conversation. So why not just make one up? Why go to all this trouble to get real evidence of guilt? Because, he realised, they needed the real evidence to convince Grashof's 'influential supporters' in Berlin. There would be someone with 'neutral' credentials listening in with the SD operatives, Russell guessed. Someone from the Foreign Office or Wehrmacht.

  Once Grashof had incriminated himself, he would be immediately arrested, and the focus would shift back to Berlin. Moving against Canaris would take time - someone of his stature couldn't be arrested without the Fuhrer's agreement, and the latter was notoriously difficult to get hold of, what with his bizarre sleeping hours and penchant for military briefings that lasted longer than the campaigns concerned. And despite Giminich's promise, Russell couldn't see himself being set free until Canaris was beyond warning.

  How could he break this chain of events? He would get no chance of warning anyone ahead of time - Schulenburg would be sticking to him like a ginger limpet.

  Was there any way of presenting the message that would cause Grashof to smell a rat, yet not cast suspicion on Russell himself? By making faces? Kicking the man's leg under the table? It was hard to imagine that Giminich had neglected such possibilities. There would be people watching, probably droves of them, all with high-powered binoculars. There might even be lip-readers in case the microphones failed.

  Could he remain faithful to the script provided, yet undermine the words with inappropriate tones and emphases? It would be risky. An inadequate grasp of the German language would be the only possible excuse, and Giminich knew only too well that he spoke it like a native.

  But what else was there? Could he warn Grashof with his eyes? He tried a warning look at the ceiling, and found his mouth was hanging open. Ridiculous.

  What was left - telepathy?

  There was nothing. Should he have refused? He still could. If he followed Giminich's orders he would, in all likelihood, be condemning a man to death. Against that, Grashof and Canaris were likely to remain firmly fixed in Heydrich's crosshairs with or without his own involvement. Not a noble argument, but a reasonable one. And why should he sacrifice his own future - not to mention those of his extended family - for Grashof and Canaris, who must have known the risks they were taking, and who were apparently betraying a regime they had freely chosen to serve? When it came down to it, he had no real idea whether these two men were enemies of the Reich or just enemies of Heydrich. The evidence for Grashof being a genuine friend of the resistance seemed strong, but Russell still found it hard to imagine Canaris actually working against his own country. The best bet was that Heydrich was using Grashof's real guilt to smear
his real adversary.

  Not that it really mattered, because Russell had no intention of risking his own future for theirs. There was no honourable way out of this particular predicament. If a risk-free chance to help Grashof came up, he would take it. Maybe even a low-risk chance. Very low-risk. But that was all. He would have to play it by ear, hope that something went wrong, and live with himself if it didn't. The Abwehr was not his family.

  He got up off the bed to explore the adjoining bathroom. A turn of the tap produced hot water, and he decided that taking a bath might cheer him up. The suspicious Schulenburg explored the room for secret exits, then left him to it. It felt like a victory, though he knew it was nothing of the sort.

  Drying himself off with a huge soft towel, he felt renewed pangs of hunger. With rolls that good, who knew what Prague had to offer in the way of real meat and vegetables? Like all Berliners in recent months he had, he realised, fallen in thrall to his taste buds. 'What about lunch?' he asked Schulenburg.

  The Untersturmfuhrer was unsympathetic: 'You can eat afterwards.' Russell went back to waiting, and the search for a flaw in Giminich's plan. None occurred to him. His thoughts wandered, taking him back to his last time in Prague, and his clandestine contacts on Washington's behalf with the still-gestating resistance movement. He had no idea whether those contacts had borne lasting fruit, or whether any of those involved were still alive. The resistance would be hard-pressed now, and those still at large would be lying low, waiting for Heydrich's storm to blow over. He remembered the execution he had witnessed, the lifeless corpse collapsing into the sand.

  'Time to go,' Schulenburg said from the doorway.

  Collecting the man in the corridor, they went down to the car, where the fourth member of the original party was half asleep behind the wheel. Jerked awake by Schulenburg's sarcastic greeting, the driver started the engine and roughly released the clutch, causing the car to take off like a frightened horse. Russell found himself wondering whether his guards would be stupid enough to drop him off at the cafe door.

  The answer was no. They drove to the eastern end of the Legii Bridge, which now bore the name of the Czech composer Smetana. At a quarter to two Schulenburg pulled a copy of Signal from his briefcase, handed it to Russell and set him in motion. He would walk the remaining distance - across the bridge and a short way along the opposite bank - on his own. He would also, as Schulenburg made amply clear, be under constant observation.

  The bridge was a long one, crossing two arms of the charcoal-coloured river and the island of bare trees that lay between them. It was on this island that Russell had met his first resistance contact in the summer of 1939, but today the paths were as empty as the trees, and the sun nowhere to be seen. In fact it was beginning to rain, and the dark forbidding castle high to his right was rapidly disappearing behind a curtain of mist.

  Once beyond the island Russell could see the line of establishments on the far bank, their illuminated interiors brightly glowing in the overall gloom. The Sramota Cafe was the last in line, its outside terrace covered by an awning of ironwork and glass. Russell felt a faint stirring of hope - the clatter of rain on such a roof might hide their conversation from Giminich's microphones.

  It was still only ten to two when he reached the steps leading down from the bridge to the quay. He stopped and leaned on the parapet, only too aware that he was getting wetter, but determined not to miss a single trick. The more time he gave the SD for making mistakes, the more likely they were to make one.

  A man appeared in the distance, walking down from the direction of the Charles Bridge. Identification was impossible in the gloom, but the general build was consistent with Grashof's. The man entered the Sramota Cafe.

  With enormous reluctance Russell resumed his journey, descending the slippery stone steps and making his way along the cobbled quayside. The rain was now swirling above the dark river, masking the far bank from view. It had turned into what the English called a 'filthy day' - the SD would need more than high-powered binoculars to see through this lot. Assuming that the watchers were far away. They might be in the back of the cafe, or sitting at a nearby table.

  Russell reached the outer door and swung it open. There were several customers visible in the warmer interior of the cafe, but only one man, wrapped in raincoat and scarf, at the far end of the covered terrace. Johann Grashof.

  Russell walked slowly towards the Abwehr officer. The windows to his left offered those in the cafe proper an excellent view of those on the terrace, and there were several obvious hiding places for microphones - on the bottom of the table, inside the suspiciously early bunches of Christmas holly, among the decorative ironwork which supported the glass roof. The patter of the falling rain was depressingly muted.

  'Good day,' Grashof said politely.

  'Good day,' Russell echoed, sitting down and placing his sodden magazine beside the other man's copy. Grashof's expression invited him to say more.

  There was no way out of it.

  'The Admiral says that you're in danger, and advises you to run.'

  Grashof's lip curled slightly, as if he found the message amusing. 'I don't understand,' he said, though his eyes told a different story. 'In danger from what? Run where? What does he mean?'

  This wasn't in the script, and neither was the Luger which Grashof suddenly brought into view, leaving the hand that held it resting on the metal table.

  'Who are you?' Grashof asked.

  'I am John Russell. The man you came here to meet.'

  'I came here to meet a man of that name. Can you prove that you're John Russell?'

  Russell took out his papers and handed them across the table, wondering what the SD eavesdroppers were making of this unexpected turn.

  'These look like forgeries,' Grashof announced. 'Who are you really?' 'John Russell.'

  'I don't think so. Are you a foreign agent?'

  'Of course not. I...'

  'Then I can only assume that you're an impostor in the pay of the Sicherheitsdienst, and that this is all part of some preposterous scheme to expose me as a traitor.'

  'I know nothing of...'

  'Well, please tell whoever hired you that their scheme has failed. As all their attempts will, for one very simple reason. I am not and never have been a traitor.'

  Grashof was enjoying himself. He had been tipped off, of course, an eventuality which hardly seemed surprising in hindsight. A lot of ordinary Czechs had witnessed Russell's virtual arrest at Masaryk Station, and several members of the Czech resistance whom he'd met in 1939 had worked at the nearby depot. News of the SD's intervention had been passed on to Grashof, and the Abwehr officer had made up his own little speech for the hidden microphones.

  Of course the very fact of a tip-off had treason written all over it, but Grashof had certainly made the best of a bad situation. Russell felt like congratulating him, but decided to wait until after the war. Giminich would be furious.

  Moments later, the man himself emerged from inside the cafe, trailing leather coats and SS uniforms in his wake.

  Grashof's fingers momentarily tightened on the Luger's butt, and for one dreadful second Russell expected to die in the crossfire. Then the fingers relaxed and retreated from the weapon, with Grashof settling for an ironic smile. 'You must be the ringmaster of this particular circus,' he said, addressing Giminich.

  'You are required for questioning,' the latter said, gesturing two of the uniforms forward.

  'By whose authority?'

  'That of the Reichsprotektor.'

  'Then of course I am happy to oblige.' Grashof got to his feet. 'May I take my gun?'

  'No,' Giminich said. 'The Petschek Palace,' he told the uniforms, who escorted Grashof out onto the quay.

  'I tried,' Russell told the Obersturmbannfuhrer.

  'He was forewarned,' Giminich said. 'And we shall find the men who forewarned him.'

  Bully for you, Russell thought. 'So I'm free to go?'

  'Not quite. Admiral Canaris must not
hear of this. Your report to him will be very simple. You came to the rendezvous, but Grashof did not show up. That is all. If the Admiral discovers what really happened I will hold you personally responsible. Is that clear?'

  'Very,' Russell agreed. He seemed to have got off lightly. 'My bag is still at the hotel,' he added.

  Giminich was already on his way. 'Collect it and return to Berlin,' he snapped over his shoulder.

  At least the rain was easing. His appetite returning, Russell walked up to the central square of the Little Quarter and found a small restaurant filling the street with enticing odours. The food was indeed good, but the staff and the other customers seemed unfriendly. He should have ordered in English rather than German, he eventually realised.

  The rain had fully stopped when he emerged, and there was even a hint of blue in the sky above the castle. As he walked across the Charles Bridge he sense that he was being followed, and sure enough, fifty metres or so behind him, there lurked a small bespectacled man in raincoat and hat. He told himself that he was imagining things, that if he turned his head on any street in the world he was likely to find someone bringing up his rear, but the small man still looked suspicious. Reaching the tower at the eastern end of the bridge, Russell stood in a recessed doorway and waited. The small man, now walking a bit faster, seemed surprised to see him, but kept on going, disappearing into one of the streets that led into the heart of the Old Town.

  Russell took a different route, trusting on a combination of memory and instinct to reach Na Prikope, and the foot of Wenceslas Square. From there he had no trouble finding Lepanska Street and the Alcron Hotel, but securing his possessions proved rather more difficult. The Czech receptionist refused to let him upstairs, and it took several phone calls to some unspecified authority and the helpful intervention of a passing SS officer before a busboy could be sent to retrieve his bag.

  This accomplished, Russell still had several hours to waste before his train was due to depart. He considered a long sojourn in the well-stocked bar, but was deterred by the number of black uniforms on display. It also occurred to him that finding Masaryk Station in the blackout would be far from easy. Better to get there while it was still light, and camp out in the station restaurant for the duration.