Masaryk Station jr-6

by David Downing

  It was early afternoon when someone knocked on Effi’s apartment door. Her first thought was that Lisa had news, her second that the old man downstairs had come to complain about the noise-she had been dancing rather energetically to the band music on her radio.

  What she didn’t expect was two men in suits, one with an unmistakably Slavic countenance.

  His much younger companion looked and spoke German. ‘Fraulein Koenen?’

  ‘Yes,’ Effi said, rather than confuse them with her married name.

  ‘You will come with us, please.’

  She felt suddenly alarmed. ‘Why?’

  ‘We need you to answer some questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You will be told all you need to know at the station.’ He reached out a hand for her arm. ‘Now, come.’

  She shrugged him off, and took a step back, which had the unfortunate consequence of drawing them over the threshold. ‘Which station?’ she asked. ‘And where’s your authority? I’m not going anywhere without seeing some identification.’

  The German pulled something from his pocket and held it in front of her face. It looked like a police card, but then everyone knew the Berlin police did what the Russians told them. This felt the way she imagined a Soviet abduction would feel, but why on earth would they abduct her? Her husband was working for them, for God’s sake.

  ‘I have to use the bathroom before I go anywhere,’ she said.

  ‘Go ahead,’ the German said, sharing a look with his Russian friend that suggested there wouldn’t be trouble.

  She locked herself in, turned on the tap in the basin, and quietly opened the airing cupboard. The gun Russell had bought her during a spate of armed robberies two years earlier was on the top shelf, wrapped in an old sweater and hopefully out of Rosa’s reach. As Effi reached up, the German shouted out that they didn’t have all day.

  She took the gun in her hand, wondering if she really would fire it. She didn’t know, and there was only one way to find out.

  When the German saw the weapon, his jaw almost literally dropped.

  She pointed it straight at his chest, and told him she wasn’t going anywhere. ‘I don’t believe you have the authority to arrest me,’ she said. ‘If I’m wrong, I expect you’ll be back.’

  The Russian appeared at the German’s shoulder, then almost gently pushed him aside. ‘Fraulein …’ he began, stepping towards her.

  She depressed the barrel and pulled the trigger, shocking them all with the noise of the blast, and digging a groove in carpet and floor.

  Both men had jumped, and the German looked so scared that she half-expected a spreading stain on his trousers. She took aim at the Russian. ‘Hier raus,’ she said quietly, gesturing towards the door for the Russian’s benefit.

  The German looked stunned, but the Russian just shook his head and grinned. He was enjoying her performance.

  There were raised voices out in the stairwell now. Any moment now someone would pluck up the courage to put a head around the door.

  The Russian gave her a slight bow, and urged his partner out through the doorway, silencing the voices beyond. Once she could hear their feet on the stairs, Effi put her own head outside. ‘An accident,’ she said to the hovering neighbours, before closing the door to ward off further questions.

  She was shaking a little, but considering the circumstances, that seemed appropriate. From the window she watched them cross the street, arguing as they went, then climb aboard an unmarked jeep, which the Russian drove off in characteristic fashion, swerving this way and that like a drunken runner.

  Would they be back? What should she do? What would she have done if Rosa had been there?

  She supposed she should tell someone. This was the British sector, after all, and one of their offices was only a couple of streets away. She put the gun in her bag, and started walking, half-expecting the jeep to roar up behind her.

  It didn’t. After listening to her story, the duty-sergeant sternly informed her that Germans weren’t allowed private weapons, and that the gun would have to be handed in.

  ‘It’s my husband’s,’ she told him. ‘And he’s British.’ Which was true of his birth, if not his current passport. It didn’t seem worth mentioning the fact that the gun was in her bag.

  As far as the sergeant was concerned, her marriage to Blighty-what sort of country called itself that? — clearly cast her in a much more sympathetic light. After a long but successful search for the right form, he laboriously took down all the details of ‘the incident’, while loudly lamenting how little he could actually do. ‘But then it sounds like you did what was needed yourself,’ he concluded on a upbeat note.

  ‘But I can’t sit there with a shotgun across my knees until the Russians all go home,’ she objected.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But maybe they’ve learnt their lesson. I don’t think they’re used to people fighting back.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘Do you have a telephone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, ring us on this number,’-he passed across a printed card-‘if they turn up again. We can be there in ten minutes.’

  Which would probably be five too late, she thought, walking on to Rosa’s school. Always assuming her would-be abductors allowed her to make the call.

  They could stay at Zarah’s tonight, and tomorrow she would … well, what?

  She would try and talk to Tulpanov on the telephone. It would be easier to just turn up at his office, but she wasn’t setting foot inside the Soviet sector again until she had some answers. Surely someone had made a mistake. Kidnapping scientists to work in Soviet laboratories made some sort of evil sense, but abducting actors to work on Soviet films? That was ridiculous.

  It turned out that Pyotr Druzhnykov actually did have a lot of interesting information to pass on. Russell had never really appreciated the way in which the Red Army lived off the land, much in the manner of a medieval horde. And apparently this hadn’t changed when advance turned into occupation-these days eastern Europe’s farmers weren’t only feeding their conquerors but also filling the millions of parcels which the latter sent back to their families. In fact the whole occupation had become a giant business opportunity for people denied one at home. An anthropologist would have been fascinated.

  None of this interested Dempsey or Farquhar-Smith, who were still glued to their grail of battle orders, weapon deliveries and military timetables. Somewhat predictably, stripping Druzhnykov’s life down to its daily routine revealed potato supply bottlenecks, not the strength and whereabouts of tank divisions.

  The good news, as Russell learned when Dempsey dropped him off on Thursday evening, was that the American had arranged transport for his family-a first flight leaving Tempelhof for Munich at 9 A.M. on Friday week, and a second that afternoon to the old RAF base at Aviano, some forty miles north of Venice. ‘You’ll have to meet them there,’ he told Russell, after handing him all the details. ‘Don’t say we don’t look after you.’

  Russell walked back to the hostel feeling better than he had for weeks-even the prospect of meeting Artucci brought a smile to his face. Marko was reading a newspaper behind his desk, his children draped across the stairs as usual. There had been no more suspicious visitors since his return from Belgrade, which might or might not be a good sign-either the bad guys had gone away, or now they knew where he was. The layer of dust on his threshold, which he always took care to step over, was happily devoid of footmarks, and nothing inside had been moved.

  He stepped out on to the balcony and savoured the scents from the gardens below, remembering his and Effi’s first time in Venice, back in 1934, when they’d only been lovers for six months. One of the happiest weeks of his life.

  It would be different now, almost fifteen years later, with Rosa there, too. But they were different, too. And maybe it would be just as wonderful. He could hardly wait.

  But tonight, a date with Artucci. He washed, c
hanged, and went out for supper on the Via Nuova before making his way up the hill. The Italian was sitting in his usual seat, the waitress apparently AWOL.

  Artucci needed only the merest prompting to relive the evening in question. The Croats had come to Luciana’s house-he, alas, had been out on business-and taken her at gunpoint-at gunpoint! — to Kozniku’s office. Before disappearing the priest had promised them papers, and the Croats had grown tired of waiting. ‘She just hand them over when they hear someone move in next room-a burglar, she think, though robbing priest is bad, even priest like Kozniku. He back, you know. He tell Luciana in Fiume on business, but she not believe.’

  ‘Does he have any priestly duties?’ Russell wondered out loud.

  ‘The chasing of little boys,’ Artucci suggested with a grin. ‘They all do this.’

  Russell smiled. ‘So what happened next? That night, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, the man run down street with Croat chasing. Just for fun, I think. Why they care if Kozniku robbed?’

  ‘But they got their papers?’

  ‘Oh yes. I expect they’re in Yugoslavia now, finding new women to make frighten.’

  So, Russell thought, either Kozniku hadn’t yet heard of the Croats’ arrest, or he hadn’t shared that news with Luciana. He himself hadn’t been recognised, either by her or the Croats. Which was all to the good-his American employers wouldn’t have been pleased if he’d messed up their relationship with Draganovic.

  After digging around inside one cheek with a toothpick, Artucci brought a straggly string of chicken skin out into the light, and examined it carefully before popping it back in his mouth. ‘So what other service I do you?’

  ‘Nothing new. Anything to do with Kozniku and his clients, like before?’

  ‘Why you want this?’ the Italian asked him earnestly, in the manner of someone keen to solve a riddle.

  ‘I already told you that. For the story I’m writing.’

  ‘Yes, yes. So you say American people have big interest in Nazi and Ustashe who escape to South America. Why they care?’

  ‘Let’s just say they didn’t fight the war so that people like that could get off scot-free.’

  ‘No? I think they fight because government say they must.’

  Russell shrugged. The little bastard had a point.

  After seeing Rosa to school the next morning, Effi reluctantly made for her own apartment. Telling Zarah about her visitors would be more trouble than it was worth, and she needed a private conversation, so home it had to be. Walking the last few yards down Carmer Strasse, one hand gripping the gun in her bag, she felt like a semi-hysterical heroine from a Goebbels melodrama, badly in need of stormtrooper rescue.

  But there was no jeep parked outside, and no enemies lurking in the stairwell. The flat was as she’d left it, complete with bullet-scarred carpet.

  The telephone worked, which was something of a mercy. Lines within the western sectors had become less erratic of late, but the number of mysterious clicks and breaks during calls to the Soviet sector had seemed to increase. Not this morning, though. Effi had no trouble reaching the DEFA office, nor the number which someone there gave her. It took four calls in all, but she finally had Tulpanov’s number.

  The great man’s secretary was reluctant to connect her, particularly where ‘a private matter’ was concerned, but eventually she caved in, moved perhaps by feelings of female solidarity.

  ‘Have you changed your mind?’ the Russian asked without preamble.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I need to talk to you about something else.’

  He didn’t hang up, which was a start. She went over what had happened the previous afternoon, and asked if there was anything he could do. He wasn’t a man to be threatened, so she made no mention of the press-he would think of that himself.

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ he said, after a few moments’ silence. The line went dead.

  Effi hung up the earpiece, and wondered what else she could do. Nothing, she decided-if Tulpanov couldn’t fix things, then she didn’t know who could. Except maybe Russell. If all else failed, she and Rosa would somehow get to Trieste. In John’s last letter, he had asked her to consider a visit when the school term ended.

  She took up position by the window overlooking the street, and sat there for what seemed like hours, until she felt she could draw it from memory. ‘This is silly,’ she eventually murmured to herself. She had to do something. Tearing herself away from the window, she tipped an upright chair under the apartment door handle, and settled down on the sofa with the first few storylines for the ‘The Islanders’ series. They were good, she thought. Not great, but there was definitely scope for something worthwhile.

  It was early afternoon when the telephone rang, and she almost pulled it off the wall in her eagerness to answer. ‘Effi Koenen?’ a male voice asked. It wasn’t Tulpanov, but the inflection was Russian.

  She didn’t know whether to speak or not.

  ‘My name is Shchepkin,’ the man said in German. ‘I expect John Russell-your husband-has told you about me.’

  ‘He has.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you. Perhaps we could meet in Savigny Platz, on one of the benches.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘I’m waiting for another call.’

  ‘From Comrade Tulpanov? That’s what I wish to see you about. You’re in no danger,’ he added.

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  She supposed that would have to do. And she was curious to finally meet the man who’d played such a crucial role in their lives over the past ten years.

  As she walked towards him ten minutes later, he looked older than she’d imagined, with a rather drawn face and an unusually lean body. Or perhaps it was the white, slightly thinning hair-Effi remembered John had told her that he and Shchepkin were roughly the same age.

  He rose with a smile to shake her hand, but the eyes seemed to be in another world. ‘So what do you have to tell me?’ she asked when they were both seated.

  ‘It was a stupid mistake. The two men coming to your flat, I mean. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ she said. And it was, but it begged an obvious question: ‘What did they think they were doing?’

  ‘I’m not altogether sure,’ Shchepkin admitted. ‘We’re being reorganised, and no one knows what anyone’s doing. As far as I can discover, one particular department came across your name in an investigation they’re running-something to do with the Sonja Strehl suicide …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They wanted to question you about it.’

  ‘They didn’t tell me that. I thought I was being abducted.’

  Shchepkin smiled, probably in sympathy, but she didn’t take it that way.

  ‘It wasn’t a wild assumption,’ she went on angrily. ‘Several people I know have disappeared over the past year.’

  ‘Yes of course,’ Shchepkin agreed. ‘If one side doesn’t grab them, the other will. It’s no excuse, of course, just the way it is. The point is, you have no need to worry. They simply wanted to question you about this actress’s death.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything about it!’

  Shchepkin sighed. ‘I will tell them. It has already been made very clear to the Russian officer and his superiors that John Russell is one of our most important assets, and that kidnapping his wife is, as the Americans say, strictly off-limits. Strictly off-limits,’ he repeated, savouring the phrase.

  ‘And the German?’

  ‘Ah. One of our recent recruits, I’m afraid. An apprentice of sorts.’

  ‘God help Germany.’

  ‘God help us all,’ Shchepkin said wryly. ‘Have you heard from Russell lately?’

  ‘I had a letter yesterday. He’s still stuck in Trieste.’

  ‘He was in Belgrade last week,’ Shchepkin said. ‘I saw him a few weeks ago,’ he explained. ‘We need to get him back to Berlin.’

&nbs
p; The ‘we’ was instructive. And on the walk back home Effi couldn’t help wondering what it said about her marriage when the MGB had a more up-to-date location for her husband than she did.

  Shchepkin’s strange blend of strength and fragility hadn’t been what she expected. With all that sadness he appeared to be carrying around, she was amazed he could still muster the energy to pursue his dubious profession.

  She had only been back a few minutes when another jeep pulled up outside the house. This one had American markings, and the man walking up to the door was wearing a US lieutenant’s uniform. Surely they hadn’t come back in disguise?

  Effi held the gun behind her back as she answered the door, but there was no mistaking the nationality of the fresh-faced young man standing in front of her. ‘Madame Russell?’ he asked in a soft drawl, apparently confusing his languages. ‘I have some air tickets for you.’

  Gerhard Strohm was lunching with Oscar Laue, a fellow-survivor from the Party’s underground organisation in the Stettin yards. Laue was much younger than he was, and had left the railways when the war ended. He was now working at the Party’s Economic Planning Institute.

  ‘You seem happier than last time I saw you,’ Laue remarked, as they waited for their order to arrive. The restaurant, just off Potsdamerplatz, had only opened the week before, but two of Strohm’s colleagues had already brought back good reports.

  ‘Yes,’ Strohm agreed, just as the food arrived. Several comrades had remarked on his newfound propensity to smile since hearing Annaliese’s news.

  ‘Things are about to get better, I think,’ Laue continued, mistaking the reason for his companion’s cheerful demeanour.

  ‘In what way?’ Strohm asked innocently. The food was more than a match for that served in the Party canteen.

  ‘Well, we’re headed for what the Americans call a showdown, aren’t we? A sort of Gunfight at the Berlin Corral.’