‘I get Saturday afternoon and Sunday off. I usually go out to see Gerd’s parents on Saturday, but if the weather’s nice on Sunday we could go for a walk in the Grunewald.’
They agreed to rendezvous at Thomas’s house.
‘And think about that story,’ Annaliese told Russell. ‘Anyone here will talk to you.’
‘I will,’ Russell told her.
Effi said nothing until they were back outside. ‘You didn’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘I’m not. It’s terrible, of course it is. But it won’t be news to anyone in Berlin, or anywhere in Germany.’
‘What about England and America?’
‘No editor would buy it. He’ll know his readers, and they won’t care about Germans killing Germans.’
‘How long do you think we’ve been back?’ Russell asked as he shaved the next morning.
Effi was still cocooned in their blankets. ‘Oh I don’t know. It feels like weeks.’
‘This time last week we were on our way to Victoria,’ he told her.
‘I don’t believe it!’ She sat up against the headboard. ‘Your friend Shchepkin — do you think he’d check out the Shanghai Otto for us?’
‘He might, if I ask him nicely.’
‘The Soviets must keep records of people who travel across their country. And we’d know for certain that he went.’
‘True. I’ll ask him when I see him, but that won’t be till next Friday.’
‘Oh… So what about Shanghai? If he did go, how can we find out if he’s still there?’
Russell rinsed his face in the bowl. ‘I’ll ask Dallin. The Americans must have a consulate there.’
‘Your spymaster friends are coming in handy.’
Russell shook his head. ‘Don’t joke about it.’
‘All right. So where are you off to this morning?’
‘The Soviet sector. I’ll try and see a couple of the men on Shchepkin’s list.’
‘What do you say to them? I’m running a survey for Stalin?’ Russell laughed. ‘Something like that.’
‘No, seriously.’
‘I’ll tell them I’m writing an article on reconstruction, and talking to those most responsible. Off the record, of course — no names or direct quotes. If they say yes — and most people do love talking about themselves and what they’re doing — then I’ll ask how they’re getting on, what problems they’re having, that sort of thing.’
‘Problems like the Russians taking half their zone back to Russia?’
‘A failure to mention that could be construed as loyalty. And vice versa, of course. You get the idea. I make up the details as I go along.’ He checked his jacket pockets for pen, paper and cigarette currency. ‘Are you going out?’
‘Yes, Kuhnert left a message — there’s a rehearsal at eleven. And this afternoon I thought I’d go over to Lehrter Station, and see if I can find Lucie. She was going to look out the arrival lists.’
‘I could meet you there,’ Russell said. The arrival he’d witnessed at the station was still fresh in his mind.
‘Where?’ Effi asked. ‘It’s probably a sea of rubble.’
‘No, it’s mostly cleared. The clock’s still there — we can meet under that. Say four o’clock?’
A couple of broken-down trams and another unexploded bomb in the tunnels stretched Russell’s journey to almost four times its pre-war duration, but both intended interviewees proved willing to see him without a prior appointment. Kurt Junghaus, a harassed-looking man with prematurely grey hair and a chubby face that ill-suited his skinny figure, worked for the recently-established Propaganda and Censorship Department at the KPD’s new Wallstrasse headquarters. The job itself suggested a high degree of trust, and Russell found no reason to doubt him, at least in the short term. If disillusion ever came it would be complete, but this was a man who wanted to believe, and Russell had no qualms about stressing his loyalty.
Uli Trenkel worked in a new Soviet-sponsored planning office further down the street, a long stone’s throw from the Spree. The glasses perched halfway down his sharp nose gave him the air of an intellectual, but the rough-skinned hands told a different story — this man had probably worked in one of Berlin’s war industries. He seemed much more relaxed when it came to technical issues than he did with politics, and where the latter was concerned Russell guessed he would follow the path of least resistance. He wouldn’t be any trouble to the Soviets or their KPD friends.
After talking to him, Russell sat in the building’s canteen with a mug of tea. There was no sign here of different grades, and the overwhelming impression was of energy and enthusiasm, of people enjoying their chance to start again. On the other hand, the two interviews he had conducted that afternoon, with men he assumed were important to the Soviets, hadn’t exactly left him feeling excited about the future.
He was just getting up to leave when three Soviet officers entered, all wearing the light blue shoulder tabs of the NKVD. One of them was Nemedin.
The sight of Russell induced a slight hesitation in the Georgian’s stride but no overt sign of recognition. Russell wondered whether Nemedin and his colleagues had noticed the change in atmosphere that accompanied their entrance, a sense of deflation rather than fear, as if the joy had all been sucked away.
He had to decide about Strohm, Russell thought, as he stood on the pavement outside. At least he had a week before his next meeting with Shchepkin. Maybe Effi’s solution was best after all — he would simply make something up, give Strohm enough doubts to make him credible, but not enough to cause him problems.
On impulse, he walked the final few metres down to the river. Away to his right the Jannowitz Bridge lay broken in the water, and beyond it, to the south and east, a few surviving buildings stuck out like broken teeth against the blue sky. This area between the Old City and Silesian Station had taken a dreadful hammering.
There was only half an hour before he was due to meet Effi. Rather than trust to public transport, he set off at a brisk pace, heading up Breite Strasse towards the sad wreckage of the Schloss, silently mouthing what lines he could remember of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. He expected more of the same beyond, but the Lustgarten proved a scene of transformation. On one side a tank was being towed away by Russian horses, on the other, beneath the pocked northern facade of the Schloss, Soviet soldiers and German civilians were erecting three carousels. It was the last day of November, Russell realised — Christmas was less than four weeks away.
The Soviets had obviously sanctioned the Christmas fair, and Russell felt almost sorry for the image that popped into his head — of Soviet Santa Clauses dropping down German chimneys and stealing the presents left under the trees.
As on the previous occasion, his arrival at Lehrter Station coincided with that of a refugee train. This one had old carriages as well as cattle cars, but the people emerging onto the platform looked every bit as lost. Maybe the wind was blowing in a different direction, because this time he could smell the human waste.
What was the number he’d read in that English paper? Was it six million dispossessed Germans on the move? Or seven? How many trains would that involve? And how many passengers would be carried off on boards or stretchers, bound for hospital or the waiting graves down the road?
He aimed for the main terminal building, forcing his way through the anxious crowd. ‘Is this Berlin?’ one man asked him, as if he couldn’t believe it possible. A woman in once-expensive clothes asked directions to the Bristol Hotel, and stood there open-mouthed when he said it no longer existed. When a couple asked him for money, he gave them four cigarettes, knowing that would buy them a meal. But they looked more annoyed than grateful, as if they thought he was trying to cheat them.
Inside the old booking hall things seemed less frantic. He was early, but Effi was already standing under the clock, which the war had stopped at half-past twelve.
‘I’ve already seen Lucie,’ she said. ‘She’s been through what records there are, and there’s no Otto Pappenheim. No Miriam Rosenfeld either.’
‘She’s busy, I take it,’ Russell said, as a single woman’s wail rose and fell in the tumult outside.
‘They’re saints, these people,’ Effi said. ‘And what am I doing? Acting…’
‘Not that they’ll let you,’ Russell ventured in mitigation.
‘Oh, I haven’t told you yet. The Americans have apparently decided that I’m safe to let out. Maybe your talk with the colonel did the trick.’
‘Good. You said this film needed making.’
