‘That’s the way it is.’ Dallin stopped and raised both hands to close the subject. ‘And we have something else to talk about,’ he added, lowering his voice. ‘I have a job for you. There’s a man in the Soviet sector who we need to bring out. Theodor Schreier.’
‘Why can’t he just take a bus?’ was the first question that came to mind.
‘Because he’s being watched by the Russians. And if he tries to come over they’ll probably arrest him, and ship him off to Moscow.’
‘Who is he? What does he do?’
‘He’s a research chemist — something to do with polymers, whatever they are. They’re important apparently, and this man was the best in his field. He worked for I.G. Farben.’
‘So why haven’t they whisked him off already?’
‘We don’t know, which is one good reason for haste. What I need from you — from your man Shchepkin, that is — is whatever he knows about the surveillance operation. We’re going to bring Schreier out, but we’d rather not do it in a hail of bullets.’
‘That’s all you want from me?’
‘We’ll also need you for the actual extraction.’
It sounded like a trip to the dentist’s, and might prove a lot more painful — the ‘hail of bullets’ reference was hardly encouraging. But Dallin was looking steadily at him — this was a test, Russell realised, and one that he had to pass. ‘I’m not seeing Shchepkin until Friday,’ he said, ‘and ‘I’ve no way of contacting him before then.’
‘When on Friday?’
‘In the morning.’
‘That’s okay. We’re looking to bring Schreier out on Saturday evening.’
‘What if Shchepkin doesn’t know anything?’
‘Then you’ll have to wing it.’
Russell smiled. ‘Say I succeed — will you have another go at Crosby for me?’
‘If we succeed,’ Dallin said slowly, ‘then I’ll be able to argue the case for taking on more locals, whatever their crimes in the past.’
‘Sounds fair,’ Russell said. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he was likely to get.
As he reached home, Effi was seeing off a smiling British sergeant. ‘And what have you been doing in my absence?’ he asked her.
‘Entertaining the British Army,’ she told him, leading the way back in. ‘He brought a letter from Rosa and Zarah,’ she said happily over her shoulder, ‘and I had to give him something in return.’
‘A biscuit, I hope.’
‘Twenty cigarettes, actually.’
‘What’s in the letter?’
‘You can read it,’ she said, passing it over.
Zarah’s handwriting was almost florid, Rosa’s small and fastidious. The latter stressed how hard she was working at school, described London’s recent weather in enormous detail, and listed the meals that Zarah had taught her to cook. A long line of kisses was addressed to them both. Zarah reported that Rosa had cried for two nights following their departure, but seemed much better since, and was still doing well at school. A letter from Berlin would help, she added pointedly. Lothar had come down with a cold, but seemed to be on the mend, and Paul had taken Marisa to the theatre. He was, Zarah thought, very much in love. And he was also taking his ‘man of the house’ responsibilities seriously, constantly asking if there was anything he could do to help.
‘She says nothing about herself,’ Russell noted.
‘I know. It reminded me that I’ve done nothing about Jens.’
Russell grunted his agreement. It all seemed so wonderfully ordinary in London. He wondered if Paul would ever come back to Berlin, because he doubted the Soviets would ever let him leave. He sighed and put the letters put back in their envelope. ‘How was your day?’ he asked Effi.
‘It was good,’ she said, picking up the envelope and holding it across her chest. Hearing from London had clearly made her day. ‘We had another rehearsal this morning, and filming starts next week — Dufring has been cleared by the Americans.’
‘Fantastic.’
‘Isn’t it, especially after last week, when everything seemed against us. Oh, and this afternoon I visited the two synagogues Ellen told me were open. No sign of Miriam, and no more Ottos.’
‘Shanghai Otto and Palestine Otto are probably enough to be getting on with.’
‘Oh, we can’t have too many Ottos.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘And the English Tommy turned up just after I got here. He was a nice boy. What about you?’
Russell detailed his failure to advance Kuzorra’s cause, and the task which Dallin had dumped in his lap. He was well on the way to dampening Effi’s high spirits when Thomas arrived home, triumphantly bearing a radio. They spent most of the evening listening to the BBC, enjoying the music and reminding themselves of all those nights they’d broken Hitler’s law, with one ear tuned to London, the other cocked for sounds outside. But these days the Gestapo was just a bad memory, and the men in long leather coats wouldn’t be coming to drag them away.
Next morning, Russell was in Thomas’s study trying to get something written when the telephone rang. Out of service for the last two days, the line had apparently been repaired.
It was Miguel Robier. ‘John, I’ve got some bad news. Your friend Kuzorra is dead. He was killed last night.’
‘What?’ Russell said stupidly. ‘Who by?’
‘By another prisoner, or at least that’s what they’re saying. I got the news from my friend at Mullerstrasse, the one who told us where Kuzorra was being held. I’m going up there now — there’s something wrong here, I can smell it. Do you want to come with me?’
Russell was still in shock. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘How long will it take you to reach Stettin Station?’
‘An hour,’ he said optimistically.
‘I’ll be waiting.’
Russell fumbled the earpiece back onto its hook, and stood staring at the floor. The man he owed his life to was dead. And he was terribly afraid that he himself had been the cause.
For once the buses cooperated. Robier was waiting on the concourse of the half-ruined station, a newspaper under his arm. ‘Ah, bien,’ he said. ‘There’s a train in a few minutes.’
Soon they were rattling out past the yards, where the remnants of shattered wagons and coaches had been raised into piles, looking like anthills on an African plain.
‘I’m glad I’m with you,’ Russell told Robier. ‘If I turned up on my own they’d just tell me to get lost.’
Robier warned him not to be too optimistic. ‘The people at Mullerstrasse are politicians — they like having friends in the press. The Army couldn’t care less.’
In the event, the authorities at Camp Cyclop seemed eager to display a reasonable front. The major seemed inclined to ignore Russell’s existence, but answered Robier’s questions readily enough. Kuzorra had been found dead in his room that morning — someone had cut the detective’s throat while he slept.
It would have been mercifully quick, Russell thought — a few split seconds of consciousness at most.
The perpetrator was not known, and, if the major’s demeanour was any guide, never would be. They were interrogating other inmates, of course, but there were no fingerprints on the razor blade.
When Russell asked to see the body the major seemed set to refuse, but nodded his acquiescence when Robier demanded the same. They were taken to what looked like an empty storeroom. Kuzorra’s body was laid out on a table, still dressed in his underwear, still wearing an apron of congealed blood. His eyes, still open, looked surprisingly at peace.
Russell suspected that much of Kuzorra’s will to live had died along with his wife Katrin, back in the early years of the war. His own death would probably have worried the old detective less than the fear that Geruschke might profit from it.
He won’t, Russell silently promised the corpse. He didn’t suppose he would ever connect the nightclub owner
