Silesian Station (2008)

by David Downing

  Back on Grosse Lastadie he stood at the tram stop, checking his watch and feeling somewhat exposed. It was only half-past eight on a Friday evening, and not even fully dark, but there were few people on the street and hardly any traffic. Lastadie seemed devoid of taxis, and the infrequent trams were all headed in the wrong direction. Half an hour into waiting, it was clear that walking would have been the wiser choice.

  When an inbound tram finally arrived it was full of boisterous young sailors from the naval base. Russell fought his way off on the far side of the Hansa Bridge, checked his watch one last time, and gave up on the idea of catching the last train. He would have to get a hotel room. But first... He walked out onto the bridge, intent on dropping Neumaier's notebook into the Oder, and stared down at the shining black waters for what must have been more than a minute. He couldn't do it. She was right - her lover had sacrificed his life for this. Not directly perhaps, but in some essential way. Russell stood at the parapet, notebook in hand, knowing he owed the man more than this. Knowing he owed himself more than this. And cursing the knowledge.

  He put it back in his pocket and started walking. His last and only other night in Stettin had been spent at the luxurious Preussenhof Hotel, and he felt in need of further cosseting. When he reached that establishment ten minutes later the bar was doing a roaring trade, and he allowed himself a couple of confidence-boosting schnapps before heading up to his room. Unfortunately, the sight of two probable Gestapo men in the lobby - both of whom watched him all the way to the lift - undid all the alcohol's good work. Russell let himself into his third floor room, double-locked the door, and frantically wondered how he could conceal the notebook from unwelcome visitors.

  There was nowhere to hide it, but the ensuite toilet - a Preussenhof luxury extra - offered the option of instant disposal. Russell sat down on his and took out the notebook. After numbering all the pages Neumaier had used, he carefully tore them out, and placed the loose pile on the side of the adjacent wash-basin. If the Gestapo came to call he would flush the incriminating evidence away.

  He dropped a few blank pages into the bowl to test the efficacy of the flush. The pages disappeared. And didn't come back.

  He left the toilet light on, stripped off his clothes and got into bed. Having nothing to read, he turned off the bedside lamp, closed his eyes, and tried to lull himself to sleep with happy memories. It seemed to take forever, but he was finally drifting off when a sudden noise in the corridor outside jerked him wide awake again. What was it? He could hear people whispering, and someone was trying to turn the door knob, trying to get in.

  He leapt naked from the bed, rushed into the toilet, and took up position beside the open bowl, notebook pages in one hand, flush in the other. In the corridor outside a sudden bout of giggling was followed by a loud squeal of pleasure.

  Russell caught a glimpse of himself in the wash basin mirror, and wished that he hadn't.

  There were no more sudden alarms, but sleep worthy of the name proved elusive, and by five-thirty he was fully awake. Waiting for the early shifts to populate the street below, he debated the pros and cons of posting the pages to himself at a convenient Poste Restante. He couldn't send them to the main office in Berlin, because that was where he had used McKinley's name to pick up the envelope in February; but there were other offices, and this time there would be nothing false about his documentation. Using his own name, on the other hand, would carry its own perils. Who knew how closely Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth was watching him? Did alarm bells go off at the Haupt-Post when an item of mail arrived bearing his name?

  He wouldn't use the mail. A two-hour train journey, a ten-minute drive to the Unter den Linden, a short and easily explainable visit to the Soviet Em-bassy. Nothing to it.

  But where to put the loose pages? His jacket-pocket was the obvious place, but that was where he carried his identity papers and journalistic accreditation, and he had a nightmare vision of himself at an unexpected checkpoint, spilling everything out together. In his shoes, he decided. He divided the pages into two piles, folded each in half, and stuffed them in. Once the shoes were on his feet, he could hardly feel the difference. He only hoped the sweat of another hot day wouldn't render the pages illegible.

  He left the room just before seven, and took a tram to the station. There was a fast train to Berlin in twenty-five minutes, a semi-fast in forty. The former took an hour less, but the latter gave him the option of getting off at Gesundbrunnen in north Berlin, which seemed a safer bet than Stettin Station, where checks on travellers were much more likely. He sat over a coffee wondering which class of ticket offered the greatest security - the perceived respectability of first, the anonymity of third, or the no man's land of second. He opted for a first class ticket on the semi-fast and sat with another coffee, this time scanning the concourse and platform gates for men in leather coats. There were none.

  His train pulled out on time, and despite the coffees he soon found his eyelids drooping with fatigue. One moment he was listening to the wheels rattling beneath him, and then someone was shouting outside his window. 'Alles aussteigen!' 'Everyone off !'

  The train was standing at a small country station - Kasekow, according to the board. Away to his left, he could see two cars and a lorry drawn up in the goods yard. A group of Brownshirts with semi-automatic weapons were walking down the neighboring tracks.

  Russell's stomach went into free-fall.

  'Alles aussteigen!' the voice shouted again.

  Russell stepped down onto the platform. There were about sixty people on the four-coach train, and almost all of them were men of working age. Most seemed exasperated by the likely prospect of a long delay, but some seemed buoyed by the diversion, casting delighted glances hither and thither, like visitors to a movie set. At the head of the train the elderly locomotive was audibly sighing at the interruption to its progress.

  A table had been planted under the platform canopy, and two men in civilian clothes were sat behind it. Gestapo, no doubt. Another man - probably their superior - was standing with his back to the building, calmly smoking a cigarette.

  'All passengers line up!' someone else shouted. 'Have your identity papers ready!'

  A line formed, stretching down the platform from the table to the rear of the train. There were only four people behind Russell, an elderly couple and two cheerful young men in Wehrmacht uniforms.

  Looking round, Russell realized that the whole station area was surrounded by a loose cordon of storm troopers. Several more Brownshirts were noisily working their way through the train, presumably in search of possible stowaways.

  The line moved slowly forward. Edging sideways for a view of the table, Russell saw that the seated officers were doing more than simply checking papers. Pockets were being emptied, bags searched. And, as Russell watched, the man being questioned knelt down to undo his shoelaces and remove his shoes.

  A cold wash of panic coursed through Russell's brain. What could he do? He cast around for hope, but there were no obvious gaps in the ring of storm troopers, and the nearest trees were two hundred metres away.

  What explanation could he give? He might have been able to pass off Neumaier's pages as his own journalistic notes, but how could he explain hiding them in his shoes?

  What had he been thinking?

  Could he get them out? One soldier was staring straight at him, and the man in charge also seemed to be gazing down the platform in his general direction. There was no way he could take off a pair of shoes, remove their illicit contents, and put them back on again without making it bloody obvious. He was fucked, well and truly fucked.

  What would happen to Effi? How would Paul cope?

  Stop it, he told himself. Don't give in to panic. Keep thinking.

  Were they asking everybody to take their shoes off ?

  He edged out again. A man was handing his papers, getting a smile in return from the Gestapo officers. His papers were returned with a nod of thanks, and the man turned away. He hadn't b
een asked to remove his shoes. Was there hope after all, or was that glint on the man's lapel a Party badge?

  Two middle-aged businessmen came next. One was ordered to take off his shoes, the other was not. Was it just a matter of chance? Was there something - some magic words - Russell could say to save himself?

  He never found out. There were a dozen people left in the line when a young man three or four places ahead of him calmly stepped down off the low platform, ducked under the couplings between two of the stationary carriages, and disappeared from sight.

  There was a moment's shocked silence, then a cacophony of shouted orders and storm troopers running in all directions. Russell was daring to hope that incompetence would have the last word when a short burst of firing sounded beyond the train. He willed there to be more, but one fusillade had apparently been enough.

  A few moments later a storm trooper appeared with what had to be the young man's papers. The man in charge ran his blue eyes over them, and gave the men at the table an affirmative nod. 'Get everyone back on the train,' one of these told an underling, who repeated the order at five times the volume. Russell walked slowly back to his compartment, struggling to hide his legs' apparent reluctance to support his body.

  As the train pulled away, he saw two storm troopers heave a bloodied corpse into the back of their lorry. While one wiped his hands in the roadside grass, his companion lit cigarettes for the both of them.

  The train reached Gesundbrunnen over an hour late, and Russell decided on travelling all the way in to the terminus. He had to deliver Neumaier's pages before he picked up Paul, and there seemed little chance of a second check on the same train. But he did take the precaution of transferring the pages from his shoes to his jacket pocket.

  There were no leather coats hovering by the barrier at Stettin Station. Russell collected the Hanomag, drove straight to the Soviet Embassy, and told Sasha that the crumpled, sweat-stained pages should be passed on to Gorodnikov. Back on the pavement, he looked round for the probable watcher. None was evident, but it didn't matter either way. If the Germans queried his visit he would tell them that the Soviets had asked him to collect a sealed envelope from a stranger in Stettin as proof of his loyalty.

  Having secured Neumaier's legacy, he drove round Pariser Platz and into the Tiergarten. As he pulled the car to a halt in one of the less frequented byways, Russell had a sudden and sickening realization. There had never been any reason to hide Neumaier's notebook. If the Gestapo had caught him with it, he could simply have said that he was bringing it back for Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth. The nonsense with the hotel toilet, his near-panic on the Kasekow platform - it had all been avoidable.

  He had almost killed himself with his own stupidity.

  Russell sat staring at the summer trees, gripping the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking.

  He arrived outside his son's Grunewald home at the appointed time, feeling less than ready to play the role of the confident father. But if he found his performance less than convincing, Paul didn't seem to notice. The boy also seemed out of sorts, but refused to admit as much. The two of them went to the Zoo, and everything seemed a bit flat, the combination of high summer heat and animal dung leaving a distressing aftertaste. Paul's favourite animal - the notorious spitting gorilla - was reputedly out of sorts, and refused to shower his visitors.

  On their way home in the car Paul asked him whether America would join in a European war. Russell said he didn't know, but that most Americans seemed inclined to let Europe sort out its own problems. Paul thought for a moment and then asked another question: were the Americans afraid, or did they just not care who won?

  'They're not afraid,' Russell said. 'Most politicians have no idea what a modern war's like. And in any case they won't be the ones to fight and die.'

  'So they don't care who wins.'

  'I think most would support England against Germany. There's a long tie between them. I mean, they both speak English.'

  'Is that the only reason?'

  'No. Americans believe in democracy, most of them, and the Fuhrer's Germany, for all its achievements, is not a democracy.'

  'But every plebiscite we've had, the Fuhrer has won a huge majority.'

  'True.' Russell had no desire for an argument over what constituted a real democracy.

  'And if the Americans do care who wins, then why won't they fight?' Paul pressed on relentlessly. 'My troop leader calls them decadent. He says they have no sense of honour.'

  'Let's hope there's no need to find out,' Russell said evasively, as he turned the car into Paul's street. 'Almost there,' he added unnecessarily.

  Paul looked at him. 'Sorry, Dad,' he said.

  'Nothing to be sorry for,' Russell said. 'This is a difficult time for Germany. Let's just hope we get through it in one piece.'

  Paul smiled at that. 'Let's.'

  Back at Effi's flat Russell found what looked, on first impression, like a pair of sixtyish women chatting in the living room. It was Effi and her make-up friend Lili. 'We did each other,' Effi explained after introducing Lili. 'What do you think?'

  Russell was impressed, and said so. Lili's work on Effi was better than vice versa, but that was only to be expected. And from more than a metre away both looked pretty damn convincing.

  'I've booked a table for four at Raminski's,' Effi told him, looking at her watch. 'Are you all right?' she added, giving him a closer look.

  'Fine,' he said. 'A bit tired.' He could tell her later about Kasekow. If he told her at all.

  She decided to take him at his word. 'Lili's husband should be here soon, so can you let him in while we get this stuff off ?'

  'Of course,' Russell said, repressing a slight surge of irritation at not having Effi to himself. Eike Rohde arrived a few minutes later, a tall man, probably just into his thirties, with cropped blond hair, pugnacious face and nervous smile. He also worked at the film studio, as a prop carpenter and scenery painter. His family was from Chemnitz, his father and brothers all miners. His wife, when she finally emerged from the bathroom, had shoulder-length blonde hair, a trim figure, and one of those faces which grew much more attractive with animation. She greeted her husband with obvious affection.

  The four of them walked down to the Ku'damm. The pavements and pavement cafes were crowded, the restaurants and late-opening shops doing a thriving trade. There was a large queue for Effi's film outside the Universum, but no one recognized her as she walked past. At Raminski's they ate canapes and shared a bottle of Mosel before ordering their main courses. The discussion, as Russell expected, was mostly cinematic shop, but once the wine had worked its magic he happily listened to the familiar litany - the buffoon of a director, the cheapskates who ran the studio, the sound technicians who thought they were working in radio. Eike Rohde had news of an interesting dispute over a set, which had been referred to the Propaganda Ministry for adjudication. The director had decided that a 1920s room should have 1920s books, and what better way of demonstrating this than including books banned by the Nazis ten years later? Goebbels' boys had disagreed.

  As they ate, Russell became aware of the conversation at an adjoining table. Three women and one man, all in their thirties, were discussing the international situation, and their opinions seemed more than a little at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy. They seemed oblivious to this, however, and indifferent as to who might hear them. Looking round, Russell could see one man at another table pursing his lips with obvious annoyance, a couple at another sharing worried looks. He was still wondering whether he ought to do something when Effi got up, took the necessary two steps to the table concerned, and leant over to whisper something.

  'What did you say?' Russell asked her later.

  'I said: "It's completely up to you, but you're going to get yourselves arrested if you're not careful." They all looked at me like rabbits trapped in headlights. They had no idea anyone was listening.'

  Sunday was the sort of day that Russell loved. He and Effi had a long l
ie-in, then walked to the Tiergarten for coffee, rolls, and a leisurely read of the papers. The weather was perfect, bright and sunny without the humidity of previous days. The terrors of the Kasekow platform seemed strangely remote.

  Thomas and his wife Hanna had invited them to a late picnic lunch in their Dahlem garden, and despite Effi's best efforts they only arrived half an hour beyond the appointed time. After Russell had pulled the Hanomag up behind Matthias Gehrts' Horch in the driveway they walked round the house to the back. Matthias's and Ilse's two young girls were playing skittles with Thomas's fifteen-year-old daughter Lotte, while the males - Matthias, Thomas' son Joachim and Paul were involved in less energetic pursuits. Matthias was lounging in a deck chair, beer in hand, the two boys hunched over a book of warplanes at the long trestle table.

  Paul leapt up to greet Effi . Are you really all right? his look seemed to say. I really am, her smile reassured him.

  Russell shook hands with his ex-wife's husband, just as Ilse and Hanna emerged with platters of bread, cold meats and kartoffelsalat. Thomas followed with a steaming vat of frankfurters, which he placed on the table. Beers were fetched for the new arrivals, and everyone sat down to eat.

  The next couple of hours were more than pleasant - the way life ought to be and rarely was, Russell thought. Paul looked particularly happy in his ex-tended family - at one point Russell observed his son watching Ilse and Effi in conversation with a wonderful smile on his face. Considering their histories and all the possible resentments that might have arisen, considering how different they all were from each other, the six adults got on remarkably well.

  Thomas asked if there was any news from Uwe Kuzorra, but Russell hadn't been home since Friday morning, and had no idea how the detective had fared at Silesian Station that evening. 'There should be a message waiting for me,' he told his friend. 'I'll let you know.'

  Since he was leaving for Prague the following evening, Russell stayed the night at Effi's, sleepily kissing her goodbye when the studio car arrived soon after dawn. 'You are just going for the paper?' she asked before she left, as if the idea had just occurred to her.