The carriages that pulled in to the snow-covered platform were fuller than he expected. Stepping in through the sliding doors, Russell turned right in search of an empty seat, and found one near the end. As the train pulled out he glanced sideways through the window of the connecting doors, and there was Nemedin, shaking the snow from his hat.
Russell quickly looked away, cold sweat prickling on his back.
His first coherent thought was that he and Shchepkin were done for. His second was to search, like a guilty schoolboy, for some plausible excuse. Could he walk up to the NKVD man and hand him the papers? ‘Oh, I was just looking for you; I got a tip-off that someone had stolen your personnel file and left it in a shop, and I knew you’d want it back.’
Ridiculous. And he was willing to bet that the envelope in his pocket was singularly devoid of personnel files. If Nemedin had known everything in advance, he’d had ample time to remove the incriminating material and replace it with scrap paper. Hadleigh was waiting in vain.
The train was pulling into Alexanderplatz Station, and when the doors opened it took all Russell’s strength not to run howling into the snow. Think, he told himself. What could he do? There was no point in running — if Nemedin knew about Shchepkin’s scheme, then he had enough on them both already. So why was the bastard stringing things out by following him? To find out where Russell was taking the package? Perhaps, although a penchant for sadism seemed just as likely.
The train jerked into motion once more. There had been no shared glances, so Nemedin was probably unaware that Russell had seen him. But how did that help? What could? He and Shchepkin were finished. Unless.
It was him or Nemedin, and he did have the gun. Could he kill the Georgian in cold blood?
If he could manage it, he could live with it.
He would have to lure him somewhere. Away from people. Somewhere quiet, but not so secluded that Nemedin would smell a rat.
The train was pulling in to Borse Station. Where should he get off? He hadn’t been near Borse since April, and all he could see from the window was ruins. Friedrichstrasse was next, and that was always crowded. But Lehrter Station… He could lead Nemedin up past the railway yards, along the streets he’d walked the other week to Hunder Zembski’s garage. There had to be somewhere he could mount an ambush.
It sounded like a plan, but so had Schlieffen’s. He resisted the urge to sneak a look at his pursuer, and tried not to convey the anxiety that was fluttering in his stomach. Perhaps Nemedin had got off. Perhaps his presence at Jannowitzbrucke had been the cruellest of coincidences.
No. He could feel the man’s eyes on him.
The train stopped at Friedrichstrasse, where many got out and many got on. As the doors began to close he caught a glimpse of the snow streaming down through the shattered roof.
He was at the right end of the train for the Invalidenstrasse exit at Lehrter. As the Charite Hospital loomed on the right he got to his feet and went to the door, giving Nemedin plenty of warning.
Once on the platform, he strode rapidly towards the exit without looking back. The snow seemed heavier, a diaphanous curtain of small flakes. Even if Nemedin lost visual contact, he had only to follow the footsteps.
Russell consciously slowed his pace. He couldn’t raise doubts — he needed the Georgian to feel safe, until he had him at his mercy. Not that any would be forthcoming.
He reached the Invalidenstrasse exit, and turning right caught a hint of movement behind him.
A couple of street lamps were burning, and the white flakes drifting past them reminded Russell of a snowglobe he’d once been given for Christmas. There were moving lights in the distance, and the sound of laughter closer at hand. A short way up on the other side, the silhouette of the district court building marked the entrance to Heidestrasse.
He angled his way across the wide boulevard and slipped round the corner. There was only darkness ahead, and he knew this had to be the place. Nemedin would be crazy to follow him further. The man I shall kill, he thought. The title of Effi’s film.
He took the gun from his pocket, checked that it was ready, and stood there waiting in the falling snow.
One, two, three… he began to wonder if he’d imagined it all.
Four, five, six… would he soon be laughing at his own paranoia?
Seven…
Nemedin came round the corner. Slowly, cautiously, but without a gun in his hand. The faint smile vanished the moment he saw Russell, or more particularly his gun.
Russell pulled the trigger, aiming for the heart, and the echoing crash seemed, for an instant, to stop the snow from falling.
Nemedin fell backwards, a look of surprise on his face.
Russell stepped forward, steeled himself, and fired again. As he stood looking down, a snowflake landed on a glazed-over eye.
He was wondering what, if anything, he should do with the body when his ears picked up the sound of an approaching vehicle. Two headlights were growing brighter on Invalidenstrasse. It sounded like a jeep. The Red Army.
He began walking back towards the station, hugging the side of the buildings. Would the soldiers notice the body? And if so, would they bother to check who it was? He was about two hundred metres from the Stadtbahn station entrance, and he still had the wide and empty road to cross. The sector border was around here somewhere, but he was damned if he knew exactly where. And who would arrest the Soviets for trespassing?
He heard the jeep behind him start to slow, then suddenly rev up again. There was no time to cross the road. He had to get off it. As he ran towards the railway bridge, a turning appeared on his right, a road running down through the bomb-twisted gates to the distant yard and sheds. The road itself looked depressingly straight, so instead he plunged down the snow-covered embankment. Losing his footing, he rolled the rest of the way, and slammed into a post that was half-concealed by the snow. As he got painfully to his feet, he heard movement on the road above, a squealing of brakes and urgent voices. Somewhere behind him a bullet struck metal.
He was only a few metres from the road bridge, and Jesse Owens would have envied his sprint into the shadows that lay beneath it. A few hundred metres up the tracks several glowing fires were visible — the refugee camp around the main line station. He started running in that direction, and was daring to hope that the Russians had given up on him when another bullet hissed past his head. Glancing back through the veil of snow he could see two figures on the tracks, and two more on the bridge.
The next few shots were less accurate, and a line of empty cattle cars offered the chance to duck out of sight. He ran along behind the train, and as he neared the end, realised he had an audience — there were people living in the last few cars. He tossed his gun under one of them, and slowed to a walk as he passed under the elevated Stadtbahn and approached the main line platforms. Now there were lots of people, sitting or lying under the splintered canopies, or gathered round a line of makeshift braziers. As he walked up the platform he became conscious of a rising sound behind him, a strange blend of fear, surprise and loathing, as news spread among the German refugees that the hated Red Army had somehow caught up with them.
Russell walked on, past the room where he and Effi had found Torsten and the children, and out onto the old concourse, where UNRRA was serving watery soup to whoever wanted it. He took a bowl and sat with it, keeping one eye open for the Russians, waiting for the shock to subside. His heart was still drumming inside his chest, and it was all he could do not to burst into tears. When the thought crossed his mind that he wanted his mother, he almost laughed out loud.
Taking one life shouldn’t feel so huge, not when a war had killed millions. But by God it did.
At least the Russians had thought better of invading the station, and after half an hour’s wait he judged it safe to take his leave. After consigning the envelope to a convenient brazier he walked back up to the Stadtbahn platform which he’d left an hour and a killing before.
A train was pulling in as he reached the top of the steps, and he squeezed himself aboard. As it rattled along above Luneburger Strasse he stood, face pressed against the window, his mind a foggy blank. At Zoo Station he sleepwalked his way down to the familiar buffet, and joined the queue before he realised that coffee was not what he needed. The first bar he came to supplied a ludicrously expensive schnapps which he downed in a single swallow. He felt like repeating the trick with the second, but carried it instead to a table, and sank wearily into a chair.
