‘And the railway.’
‘But you won’t let them cut us off,’ Zarah insisted, as if he was the one who would take the decision.
‘I wish I was certain of that,’ he said, placing another peeled potato in the saucepan. ‘Me and General Clay would give them a fight, but it won’t be our call. The politicians will have to decide.’
‘They’ll stand up to the Russians eventually,’ Zarah said confidently. ‘But it still doesn’t seem like a very good time to go waltzing off to Prague,’ she told Effi. ‘Couldn’t you wait a few weeks?’
‘It’s all arranged,’ Effi told her. A year ago she would have filled Zarah in on what was actually happening, but since Carnforth had appeared on the scene she and Russell had opted not to burden her sister with a possible conflict of loyalties. ‘And I do want to see Cisar,’ she added. ‘You liked that film of his you saw.’
‘Did I? What was it?’
‘Beloved Morning.’
‘Oh yes, that was good. So you’re back on Wednesday or Thursday?’
‘I think so,’ Effi told her
‘Can we meet you at the station?’ Rosa asked.
‘No, sweetheart. We don’t know which train we’ll be on, and it might be very late.’
The girl looked crestfallen. ‘Will you wake me when you get back?’
‘Of course we will.’
That afternoon they all went to see a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical at a recently re-opened local cinema, and half-danced their way back to Zarah’s flat. There was an undamaged double staircase fronting one of the bombsites on Kant Strasse, and this provided Effi and Russell with the opportunity to recreate one particular scene. Their attempt seemed more than creditable to Russell, and he failed to see why their audience found it so amusing.
Back at Carmer Strasse that evening, Rosa did a drawing of the two of them whirling each other around in the street. Examining it over her shoulder, Russell felt close to tears.
Janica
It was chaos at Anhalter Station on Tuesday morning. Overnight the Soviets had decreed that any Berliners wanting a ticket to the Western Zones could only buy it at Friedrichstrasse Station, and every available railway employee at Anhalter was surrounded by people haplessly protesting the inconvenience. But it was much more than that, Russell realised. As Friedrichstrasse Station was in the Soviet zone, the Russians had effectively awarded themselves a veto over who might leave the city.
It didn’t affect him and Effi for now. They weren’t leaving Stalin’s new empire, and they already had their train tickets. Their route was the usual one via Dresden, which Russell had taken in March 1939 with the German naval plans concealed in a false-bottomed suitcase. He still sometimes wondered how he’d managed not to soil himself during that particular border inspection. On that occasion he’d had a publicity shot of Effi to divert the guards; now he had the real thing.
It was a bright summer morning, and soon they were rolling through a healthy-looking countryside, the fields of flourishing crops only blighted by the occasional hulk of a burnt-out tank. These were all German, and Russell guessed that they had been left beside the line deliberately, as a visible reminder of who had won the war.
Their train made reasonable time by post-war standards, but it still took three hours to reach Dresden, which had the dubious distinction of looking even worse than Berlin. Russell shared the opinion, widely-held among Germans, that the air attack on Dresden in February 1945 had been a war crime, and he saw no reason to stop there-as far as he was concerned all those responsible for the Allied bombing of civilian targets should have ended up in the Nuremberg dock.
He had once said as much to an RAF wing-commander.
‘Those were brave men!’ the man had barked out in response.
‘I’m sure a lot of them were,’ Russell had replied. ‘And so were a lot of the Germans who committed war crimes in Russia.’
The RAF man had looked as if he wanted to hit him, but had just about managed to restrain himself.
Why were people so stupid? Did they really thinking bravery always went hand in hand with virtue?
As their train sat in Dresden platform, Russell told Effi about the exchange.
She smiled at him. ‘After two thousand years of this,’ she said, waving a hand at the partly-cleared ruins beyond the tracks, ‘you’d think men would step aside and give women a chance. But I don’t see it happening.’
‘Touche,’ Russell observed.
Forty minutes later they reached the border, and climbed out to take their walk through the inspection shed. The two of them were almost waved through, as Russell had assumed they would be-people entering Czechoslovakia at the state’s invitation were unlikely to be searched. Most of the people travelling in the opposite direction, however, weren’t so lucky. The Czechoslovak natives presumably all had permission to leave, but it looked as if each and every one of them was being subjected to a rigorous search. By contrast, the only obvious foreigners-two Germans and a Russian-were barely inspected at all.
As they walked forward to their waiting train, Effi drew what seemed the logical conclusion. ‘I think I should come back alone.’
‘I don’t think …’
‘I’ll be fine. They were only searching Czechs, and as long as I don’t have you standing behind me, making me nervous … and we did talk about you and Janica going on to Vienna.’
‘And you pointed out that the train toilet was the logical place to put on the makeup. If she goes with me there won’t be an opportunity, unless we find some way of sneaking her into our hotel.’
‘That would be crazy,’ Effi said. ‘She’ll have to do without the makeup. She’s only twenty-nine, for heaven’s sake-I looked the same at twenty-nine as I did at twenty-one. And there’s another thing. After what we saw this morning it looks like Berlin will get harder to leave. If we take Janica back there, we may not be able to get her out again.’
It was a good point, but hardly relevant to Russell’s main concern. ‘I don’t want you bearing all the risk,’ he said.
‘Well, you’re going to have to get used to it. Don’t you see? It makes so much more sense not to put all our eggs in one basket. If you and Janica go on Vienna, and for some dreadful reason she’s stopped at the border, then at least we’ll still have the film.’
‘And a very disappointed Merzhanov,’ Russell pointed out. But he would face that problem if and when it arose. He hated the thought of Effi carrying the film out alone, but he could see she was right. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But I’m not happy about it.’
‘You will be when it works.’
The Czechoslovak railways seemed in worst shape than the German, and it was early evening before their train entered the outskirts of the capital. As they rumbled into Wilson Station, Russell remembered Karel hustling him into the bathroom. ‘When we get to our hotel room, be careful what you say,’ he advised Effi. ‘It’ll probably be bugged.’
‘Will there be hidden cameras to film our love-making?’
‘God only knows.’
They barely had their feet on the platform before a familiar face turned up. ‘This is Petra Klima,’ Russell said, introducing her to Effi. ‘Ministry of Culture,’ he added.
‘I loved your film,’ Klima told Effi, as if she’d only made the one.
There was a car waiting outside, along with a young male chauffeur. He quickly stamped out his cigarette when they saw them approaching, then opened a door with studied insolence, as if regretting the show of deference. Once Effi and Russell were in the back, Klima joined him in the front.
Their hotel was supposedly close to Cisar’s apartment, and the drive to Smichov took about twenty minutes. En route they passed the sites of several lacunae in Russell’s espionage career, but given Klima’s probable fluency in German he forbore from pointing them out to Effi. It looked as though their time in Prague would be highly supervised, which might be a problem when it came to meeting Janica.
The hotel was on Zborovska, one block w
est of the Charles River. It didn’t look much from the outside, but their suite was large and well-furnished. Once Klima had left them to get settled in, they left the tap running noisily in the wash-basin and sat either end of a brimming hot bath, discussing their plan for the next two days. They were still there when Klima started banging on the outer door, intent on escorting them down to dinner.
While Effi was dressing, Russell told the Czech woman that their travel plans had changed, that while he still planned on travelling on to Vienna, Effi would be going straight back to Berlin. Could Klima check the Vienna trains on Wednesday, and arrange the appropriate permit?
She didn’t foresee any problem.
There were no other guests in the dining room, which seemed a trifle strange, and Klima’s explanation-that people ate late in Prague-bore no relation to Russell’s experience. She didn’t sit with them, claiming she’d already eaten, but sat alone at a table near the door, as if on sentry duty. Her German, they’d discovered, was as good as her English.
The food and wine were both excellent, but the thought of microphones close by inhibited conversation. After coffee, when Russell announced that they were going to take a romantic stroll by the river, the Czech woman said she would join them.
‘How are we going to get rid of her?’ Effi asked Russell, once back in their bathroom with the tap full on.
Russell had already come up with an answer. ‘After lunch tomorrow, you’ll say how you’ve never been here before …’
‘I haven’t.’
‘… And ask to see some sights. I’ll say I’m coming, too, and then I’ll drop out at the last moment. I’ll say I’m tired, and am coming back here for a snooze.’
‘You are fifty next year.’
‘Thanks for reminding me. I still have some youthful vigour, you know.’
‘Remember the cameras!’
‘They’ll be in the bedroom.’
The appointment with Jaromir Cisar was at ten the next morning. He was clearly overjoyed to meet Effi, kissing her several times on both cheeks and cupping her face in his hands to study it more thoroughly. Russell would have slapped him, but she took it all in her stride. Bloody thespians, he thought, echoing a character in a movie whose name he couldn’t remember.
‘What a lucky man!’ was all Cisar said to him, but even that was four words more than Klima received. She just hovered in the background, smiling an uncertain smile.
One of the apartment’s two bedrooms had been converted into a projection room, with four seats facing a plain white wall. Cisar had already seen two of the sampled films, so they watched the rushes from Effi’s performances in the other two. The director sat with a rapt look on his face, expressing his appreciation of a particular look, gesture, or spoken line by patting Effi’s hand with his own.
‘I already have a project in mind for us,’ he told Effi when they emerged. ‘An adaption of a book by one of our best young writers, which our Culture Minister has publicly praised, so there should be no problems from that direction.’ He shot Klima a glance, and received an angry one back.
‘What’s it about?’ Effi asked.
‘It’s about who we are. Czechoslovaks, that is, but also human beings. The central character, which you would play, is a Sudeten German mother. People assume that all Sudeten Germans were eager to join the Reich in 1938, but they weren’t. This woman’s family opposes the Nazis, and she loses a son as a result. And seven years later, she loses another one, when the Czechs take out their frustrations on all the Germans they can lay their hands on. And through it all, she refuses to grow bitter-she’s convinced that people are people, no matter which group they think they belong to. When she finds out that her daughter is having a love affair with the son of one of the Czech vigilantes-a nod to Romeo and Juliet, of course-she moves heaven and Earth to save the girl from the wrath of her own third son. That’s a very crude summary, but you get the idea. When I’ve finished the adaption’-he nodded towards the desk, where a pile of pages and an overfull ashtray flanked his typewriter-‘I shall send you a copy.’
Their leave-taking was extended by another long examination of Effi’s face from various angles, but eventually Cisar let them go. The Skoda was waiting outside, the driver smoking another cigarette, which he took his time stubbing out. ‘Hollywood suddenly seems less appealing,’ Effi remarked once they were seated.
‘I don’t suppose Mickey Mouse has heard of the Sudetenland,’ Russell added flippantly.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes, of course. But they do make good movies in Hollywood. Just not the sort that he makes.’
The car was on the move.
‘Where are we going?’ Russell asked.
‘To lunch,’ Klima told him.
The restaurant was only a few minutes away, and a table had been reserved in the garden, which overlooked the Charles and offered a panoramic view of Mala Strana and its looming castle. This time Klima did eat with them, and Russell set out to disarm the young woman with questions about her family. It half-worked, but no matter how many times he offered the bottle of wine, she refused to take a refill. She was, he decided, depressingly single-minded.
He asked if she’d remembered his train ticket. ‘Yes,’ she said, digging in her handbag, ‘I forgot to give it to you.’ The hand emerged with an envelope. ‘Here it is. The Vienna express leaves Wilson Station at 10 A.M.-that’s half an hour after Fraulein Koenen’s train to Berlin.’
Russell pocketed the envelope and thanked her, glad that his train was departing after Effi’s. After his recent experiences in Prague he hadn’t fancied leaving her on the platform.
‘So what shall we do this afternoon?’ Klima asked, like a mother inviting suggestions from the children. ‘Now that your business is done, some sightseeing perhaps. Prague is a very beautiful city.’
‘I’ve been here many times,’ Russell told her, ‘and I think I’d rather have a lie-down at the hotel. But I’m sure Effi would like to see some sights.’
‘I’d love to,’ Effi agreed enthusiastically.
Klima looked flustered for a moment. ‘But how would you find your hotel?’ she asked, adding with more than a hint of suspicion that she hadn’t thought he spoke the language.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Russell replied cheerfully. ‘But you can hail me a cab and tell the driver where to take me.’
She looked relieved at that. ‘Yes, why not?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But first I must, how do you say it in English? Powder my nose.’
It took her a long time, long enough to ensure that someone would be waiting when he got back to the Slovan.
When she returned they all walked out to the pavement, and a cab was duly waved down. Klima gave the driver his instructions, which included an awful lot more than the name of their hotel, if the cabbie’s face was any guide. Russell gave Effi a parting kiss, wished both women an enjoyable afternoon, and climbed into the front seat.
‘And you have a good rest,’ Effi said sympathetically.
As Russell had hoped, his driver headed for the Legii Bridge. There were traffic lights at the far end, and his 50–50 chance came good-they were red. He slid the $10 note into the other man’s pocket with one hand, opened the nearside door with the other, and deftly stepped on to the road. ‘Cigaretten,’ Russell said, miming a smoke and raising a hand in farewell. The cabbie sat there stupidly for a few seconds, until the rising chorus of horns behind forced him to let in the clutch.
Russell walked in the opposite direction, and ducked through the doorway of the first suitable sanctuary, which turned out to be a junk store piled high with old furniture. He didn’t think the cabbie would come looking for him, but those the man reported to probably would. Russell skulked inside the store for at least ten minutes, searching through a tray of second-hand earrings, swapping smiles with the bewildered proprietor, and keeping a watch on the street.
Eventually he ventured out. The tram route was two blocks north, so he hurried in that directio
n, keeping as much as he could to the shadows. Once aboard a northbound car, he consulted his watch. He had almost three hours to kill before his treff with Janica, and he didn’t want to spend them out in the open. A bar seemed a good bet, and after changing trams and re-crossing the river he found one in the Old Town backstreets, about a ten-minute walk from Masaryk Station. With only an incomprehensible Czech newspaper to read, he worked his way through two beers and a compensatory cup of strong black coffee, before finally setting out on the final lap. The first thing he did on reaching the station was find the public toilets, and relieve the pressure on his bladder.
Back on the concourse, he sought out an ill-lit corner and began his vigil. It somehow seemed fitting that his future should hang on a meeting here, in a station whose name reeked of failure. Both father and son had sought the humanist middle ground between rampant capitalism and communism, and both had failed. They had not been alone-the entire European left, himself included, had sought in vain for a socialism that worked-but Jan Masaryk’s tragic end, thrown from a window by communist thugs, seemed like the final straw.
Masaryk Station, the end of the line.
It was getting busier by the minute, as people who worked in the centre of town took their trains home to the suburbs. Which was perhaps why Janica had chosen that time of day. If so, it was a smart move.
The clock above the platform barrier was showing two minutes past, but so far he hadn’t seen the face in the photograph. But it was then that he noticed her, sitting on a bench on the other side of the concourse. As he did so, she threw him an irritated glance and nodded slightly. She’d probably been there for a while.
He ambled over and sat down beside her. ‘Janica, how good to see you,’ he said softly in German. Merzhanov had claimed she spoke it quite well, or at least much better than he did. ‘Have you been visiting your mother?’ Russell asked, completing the password which the Russian had given him.
‘No, she moved to Brno,’ Janica answered, which according to Merzhanov was actually true. She was a slightly plump, full-breasted woman, with dark shoulder-length hair, an attractive mouth, and surprisingly steely eyes. Her ensemble of white blouse, black skirt, and two-inch heels nicely avoided the twin pitfalls of too conspicuous and too anonymous. Another smart move.
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