‘If they were, it worked. But no, they were really annoyed when someone told them to bring me back.’
‘Were they wearing masks or anything? Would you know them again?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘The police could watch the nightclub for them.’
Russell shook his head. ‘The police are a broken reed at the moment. Even if they wanted to help, I don’t think there’s anything they could do. I think my best bet is to lay low for a while.’
She gave him a who-are-you-kidding look. ‘Really?’
‘For a while — yes, really. I’m sure Kuzorra wouldn’t want me to throw myself on his pyre.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. And if you change your mind I want to hear about it before you do anything risky, all right?
‘Okay,’ Russell said, taking her into his arms. They held each other so tightly that the phrase ‘like there’s no tomorrow’ popped into his head. ‘So what have you been doing?’ he eventually asked her.
‘Rushing around. We’re actually starting filming tomorrow. At Babelsberg, believe it or not.’
‘That’s great.’
‘Yes, yes it is.’ She heard the lack of conviction in her own voice, and wondered why that was. It was wonderful to be in at the beginning of something so important. She was so lucky. She’d had an extraordinary life, with and without him. But now she wanted something else for the two of them, something that seemed more impossible each day — an ordinary life.
‘But?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘John, what are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Something’ll come up — it always has.’
There was a knock on the door. It was Thomas, come to tell Russell that he had a visitor.
‘Who?’
‘A British soldier.’
‘I’ll come down.’
Frau Niebel was guarding the hall, the visitor still poised on the stoop. He was wearing a Jewish Brigade uniform. ‘You are John Russell?’ he asked in English. ‘Wilhelm Isendahl gave me your name and address, and since I was leaving Berlin this evening, I thought I would take a chance on finding you at home.’
‘I’m glad you did. Please, come in.’
The visitor watched Frau Niebel scuttle away. ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’
‘Use my study,’ Thomas suggested.
Russell ushered the man in and shut the door behind them.
‘My name is Hersch,’ the man began. He was about thirty, Russell guessed, with deeply tanned skin and dark, almost racoon-like eyes. ‘As you can see, I’m an officer in the British Army’ — he allowed himself a wry smile — ‘but I’m here on behalf of the Haganah. I assume you know who we are?’
‘The defence force of the Palestinian Jews.’
‘Yes. And you, I believe, have proved yourself a friend of the Jews.’
It seemed easiest just to nod.
‘We have a proposition for you. You know about the flight route to Palestine?’
‘Isendahl gave me a primer.’
‘Would you like to write about it?’
‘Very much, but why would you want the publicity?’
Hersch smiled for the first time, and looked about ten years younger. ‘To give the survivors hope. To encourage them to join us. To tell the world that the Jews have seized control of their own lives, and that we’re no longer willing to submit.’
‘All good reasons. But won’t you also be making it easier for the authorities to stop you?’
‘We will expect you to keep some secrets, to change the names of people and places.’
‘I can do that.’
‘Then I think we have a deal.’ He reached inside his tunic pocket for a crumpled piece of paper, and handed it across. ‘You must reach Vienna by Monday if you want to be sure of joining the next group. If you arrive any later, then you may have to wait for the one after that. If you contact that person at that address, then everything will be arranged for you.’
It was almost light next morning when he watched Effi walk out to the waiting single-decker. According to her, the Russians had provided the vehicle to carry the film cast and crew to and fro, but Russell recognised the familiar outline of an American school bus. It chugged off down the otherwise silent street, spewing dark clouds of exhaust into the grey dawn.
No one seemed to be watching the house, neither then nor later, when he walked to the Press Club for an American breakfast. He picked up his allowance of cigarettes before leaving, and handed out a few to the ferallooking urchins who loitered outside the gates. The first word of the ‘No Germans Allowed’ sign had been obliterated with a wodge of something brown.
Back in Thomas’s study, he wrote accounts of his conversations with the three KPD men. He couldn’t actually remember whether Shchepkin had asked for written reports, but a material record seemed less prone to distortion than some NKVD version of Chinese Whispers. He gave Kurt Junghaus and Uli Trenkel the clean bills of political health that their loyalty undoubtedly warranted, and felt slightly worried that the NKVD would find such trust suspicious. His report on Strohm was more nuanced, admitting the man’s support for a ‘German path to socialism’ while stressing his belief in party discipline. Strohm, he said, would argue his case with intelligence, but accept those decisions that went against him.
‘Neither yes-man nor no-man,’ Russell murmured to himself. A comrade of the old sort.
He had abandoned the notion of telling Strohm about his vetting job, deciding instead on a more generic warning. He would say that a Soviet acquaintance had been asking questions, and that he had told this fictitious character what he was in fact reporting to Nemedin. This would warn Strohm that he was being watched, yet leave Russell’s own role looking peripheral.
He put the reports to one side, and leafed through his notes on the DP camps and their Jewish inmates. He had enough for a thoroughly depressing feature — the Western Allies seemed lost for a plan where the surviving Jews were concerned, and the Poles were making matters worse by driving their survivors out. The uplifting news would have to come later, if Hersch and his colleagues proved suitably inspirational.
After two hours at the typewriter, he went back to the Press Club for lunch, and sat listening to a bunch of young journalists at the next table discussing the new United Nations. The Senate in Washington had just voted to join the organisation, and most of the journalists seemed less than impressed. ‘United Nations, my arse,’ as one man elegantly phrased it.
Another two hours and he had fifteen hundred words for Solly to sell. It was just like the old days, he thought — him at a typewriter, Effi out on set. He walked to Kronprinzenallee for a third time, and left the finished article for Dallin to forward. With any luck it might reach London before Christmas.
He hadn’t been home long when the Soviet bus dropped Effi off. In the old days they would have walked down to one of their favourite restaurants on the Ku’damm, window-shopping on the way. Now they had to settle for Thomas’s favourite communal canteen, with only ruins to inspect. So many buildings had been hollowed out, their walls left scorched but standing, their blown-out windows like eyeless sockets.
Effi had enjoyed her day’s work, but it was hard to stay cheerful in such surroundings.
Russell asked if she knew how long the filming would take.
‘Four weeks is what they’re saying, but I can’t see it — it takes half the day to pick everyone up.’
‘Oh for the days of the studio limo.’
‘It had its uses. And anyway, four weeks will take us up to Christmas. I was hoping to spend that with Rosa.’
‘Has she ever celebrated Christmas?’
‘I don’t know. Now you mention it, I don’t suppose she has.’
‘So will you go back in January?’ Russell asked.
She gave him a look. ‘For a few days at least. I wish we both could. Do spies get holidays?’
‘Who knows? Sometimes I feel like telling them all to do their worst. They might agree to let me go.’
