Masaryk Station (John Russell)

by David Downing

  They all shook hands like civilised people, and the Major—whose name, Russell remembered, was Hanningham—poured Russell a generous measure of Scotch.

  ‘Any problems?’ Russell asked, for want of anything better.

  ‘None,’ the Major said cheerfully. ‘I think everyone manning that border is on our payroll.’

  Palychko was looking around the empty bar.

  Russell introduced himself in Russian. ‘Or would you rather use German?’ he added in that language.

  ‘Deutsch,’ the Ukrainian said shortly. He drained his glass. ‘It’s been a long day,’ he added.

  Either Hanningham had no qualms about sharing the bed ‘big enough for three’ with Palychko, or he was too tired to care, and soon Russell was lying in his own. They met again at breakfast in the wood-panelled dining room with its distant view of the mountains, and after half an hour of Hanningham’s overweening arrogance, Russell was beginning to wonder which man was the more objectionable of the two. The mass murderer Palychko just sat admiring the view, offering the occasional friendly smile. Only when the American’s jeep had finally shrunk to a dot on the road heading north, did he offer more than a single syllable. ‘Where did you spend the war?’

  Russell had no desire to tell this man his life story. ‘In the States, and then with the US Army in France and Germany, as a war correspondent.’ All of which was true enough, if hardly the complete picture. ‘How about you?’

  ‘In Poland and Ukraine.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Fighting communists. And losing.’

  ‘Any regrets?’ Russell couldn’t help asking.

  ‘You know who I really am, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He offered up that smile again. ‘That’s more than I do.’

  Oh shit, Russell thought, a psychopath with an identity crisis.

  It must have shown on his face. ‘My father was a priest,’ Palychko said, as if by way of explanation. He looked at Russell. ‘Were you old enough to fight in the First War?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you know what men can do to each other.’

  ‘I still don’t why,’ Russell said, getting drawn in despite himself.

  ‘Neither do I. That’s what I meant—evil is a mystery, even to those who do it. Especially those.’

  ‘That’s why we have courts.’

  Palychko shook his head. ‘Do you really believe after everything you’ve seen and heard that men are capable of judging their brothers?’

  ‘What’s the alternative—universal absolution?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

  Moving to the lounge when two women arrived to clean the dining room, Russell found an English newspaper from several days earlier. A report from the paper’s correspondent in Palestine claimed, with what appeared good authority, that Jewish fighters had massacred nearly all the Arab inhabitants of a village named Deir Yassin. And so it went on, he thought, remembering Shchepkin’s list of villages that his current companion had laid to waste. Now even Jews were doing it.

  ‘Do you play chess?’ Palychko asked him. He had found the set reserved for the use of guests.

  ‘Badly,’ Russell said discouragingly, just as Boris appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I’ve just had a telephone call,’ the hotel proprietor told Russell. ‘I’m to tell you that there’s been a hold-up, and that your friend won’t be here until tomorrow morning. I assume that means you need the rooms for another night?’

  Russell sighed. ‘I suppose we do.’ He explained the delay to Palychko, who seemed neither surprised nor upset.

  ‘So how about a game?’ he asked.

  ‘Why not?’

  It took the Ukrainian about ten minutes to checkmate him, and the subsequent re-match was shorter still. ‘You really do play badly,’ Palychko agreed belatedly.

  After finishing lunch an hour or so later, Russell was wondering what to do with the afternoon when the Ukrainian suggested a walk. ‘I’d like to find a church,’ he said, and Russell was still swallowing an unspoken gibe about the other man’s need to confess when Palychko admitted that this was indeed his intention. ‘I don’t think I’ll be running into any enemies by accident,’ he added, when Russell hesitated.

  They found a church on the road heading into the centre, and the first priest they found was willing to take Palychko’s confession. Russell briefly wondered how they were going to understand each other, settled for being grateful that he wasn’t the listener, and sat in a convenient pew for twenty minutes, wondering whether confessing one’s sins really was good for the soul, or was just another way for the church to keep its flock under some sort of control.

  When Palychko eventually reappeared, they decided on walking on into town. ‘I’d like to try a real Italian coffee,’ the Ukrainian told Russell, as they both surveyed the cafés spread around the central piazza. One chosen, they took a table outside, ordered espressos, and stared at the lovely old buildings around them. ‘I shall hate America,’ Palychko said, almost wistfully.

  ‘Then why are you going?’ Russell asked unnecessarily.

  Palychko took the question seriously. ‘There are too many Europeans who want me dead. Your bosses in Washington actually want me alive, at least until I’ve told them all that I know. But I shall still hate it.’

  Two young boys stopped by their table, hands outstretched, and Russell was still reaching for his pocket when Palychko handed them a small wad of lira. They gave him disbelieving looks, and ran off across the piazza exchanging joyous shrieks.

  ‘How much did you give them?’ Russell asked.

  Palychko shrugged. ‘No idea. After we crossed the border your Major Hanningham said I needed “pocket money”, and handed it over. But what do I need it for? You people won’t let me starve.’

  Back at the hotel, they took to their rooms for naps, then met again for dinner like ordinary travelling acquaintances. Russell kept waiting for the war criminal to emerge from behind the mask, but Palychko seemed set on being friendly, to Russell, the waiters, the world. Only once did he hint at something else, scanning the room and remarking with a hint of surprise: ‘Italians look like Jews, don’t they?’ I suppose that’s why they protected them from the Germans.’ Seeing Russell’s face, he smiled again. ‘I shall have to do better in America, won’t I?

  They said their goodnights around ten, but Russell needed more than an hour’s reading before he dropped off, and his sleep was both fitful and dream-laden. At least the sun was shining when he woke up, and with any luck enough Italian trains were running on Sundays to see him back in Trieste that day.

  The first sign that things had gone awry was the lack of response when he knocked on Palychko’s door. The second was the door not being locked, the third the sight that greeted him when he stepped inside.

  The Ukrainian was laid out naked on his bed, a mass of congealed blood where his genitals had been. These were stuffed in his blood-ringed mouth, where the tongue used to be. This was lying on his stomach.

  Which helped explain why Russell hadn’t heard anything.

  Four Cyrillic letters had been incised in Palychko’s forehead—after death, if the lack of smudging was any guide. The language was Ukrainian, but the characters which ended the word were the same in Russian, D and A in English. He would have to look the others up, but JUDA—the Russian for Judas—seemed a pretty good bet. The Jews and the communists hadn’t caught up with Palychko, but his old buddies had.

  At least the blood was almost dry—the perpetrator or perpetrators would be long gone. They hadn’t only known where to find him, but also how to reach his room without sounding an alarm, which suggested careful surveillance and planning. Someone had spilled the beans—could it have been Shchepkin? It was possible, but the Russian had a purely selfish interest in Russell’s survival, and he couldn’t have known they’d be in separate rooms. Russell could always ask him of course, but he’d never been able to tell when Shchepkin was lying.r />
  The important question was what to do now. An immediate check-out seemed the most appealing prospect, but he knew his American superiors wouldn’t commend him for it. On the contrary. They had been using this hotel for several years, and wouldn’t want it compromised. More importantly, any sort of police involvement would open a very deep can of worms. He had to get the body out of there, and since he couldn’t carry it out into the countryside on his shoulders, he would need help. Boris would have to earn whatever it was the Americans were paying him.

  He gave Palychko one last look. If anyone deserved to die like that, this man probably did, but pity welled up nevertheless. Russell stepped out into the corridor, locked the door behind him, and went in search of the hotel proprietor.

  Boris, when told the unfortunate news, was surprised, annoyed and alarmed in roughly that order, but he didn’t try to walk away from the problem. His face turned white when he saw the body, but a quick retch in the water basin more or less restored him. That would have been his own reaction before the First War, Russell thought. Bodies were supposed to be in one piece.

  ‘Wrap him in his blanket,’ Boris said, once he’d recovered, ‘I’ll get another.’ Russell had rolled up Palychko and the bloody sheets by the time the proprietor returned with a second layer and some twine to tie up the ends. ‘I could call a staff meeting in the lounge,’ Boris suggested. ‘Once they’re all in there, we could carry him down the back stairs and out to the hotel van without being seen.’

  ‘You’re a natural,’ Russell told him.

  And the plan worked. Fifteen long minutes later, the two of them were manhandling their huge Christmas cracker down the back stairs, out through the empty kitchens, and into the back of the van. ‘You wait in the cab,’ Boris said. ‘I’ll tell them the meeting has been cancelled.’

  He was back almost instantly, and soon they were on the road heading north.

  ‘Where should we go?’ Boris wanted to know.

  ‘You must know the area. Just find us a quiet place, off the main road, where we can dump him.’

  ‘All right.’ A few minutes later he turned the van up a narrow side road. ‘Are we going to bury him?’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea.’

  ‘But we don’t have a spade.’

  ‘Then I guess we can’t. Where does this road go?’

  ‘To a farm eventually. There are others off to either side.’

  Looking right, Russell could see smoke rising from a distant chimney. ‘Just find a place to turn around,’ he said. ‘And we’ll dump him in a ditch.’

  Boris did as suggested, but after they’d unwrapped the parcel, rolled the corpse into a stream bed, and covered it with branches torn from a nearby bush, he still seemed unhappy. ‘What will the police think when they find him?’

  ‘If they bother to think at all … Just another victim of the war, I suppose. Aren’t the local partisans still settling scores?’

  ‘He doesn’t look Italian.’

  ‘True, but there’s nothing on the body to identify it, and no one local will know who it is.’

  ‘What about the blankets and sheets?’

  ‘Call another staff meeting and stick them in the hotel boiler.’

  ‘I suppose …’

  ‘Look, if the worst come to the worst, just say you found him in his room and brought him out here to save the hotel some bad publicity. It’s not as if you killed him. All they’ll do is slap your wrist.’

  ‘You don’t know our police.’

  ‘Maybe. If there’s any real trouble, get hold of your American friends. They’ll sort it out if they have to. He was their contraband.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Boris said, as they turned back on to the main road. ‘Bastard Americans.’

  Russell’s second meeting with Bob Crowell was less convivial than the first. Not that Crowell said much—he just sat there looking disappointed. His colleague, a younger man named Tad Youklis with a shaven head and angry blue eyes, did all of the talking, and seemed incapable of mincing his words.

  Russell had arrived at the safe house expecting another day of Kuznakov’s evasions, but the Russian plant had been spirited away over the weekend, and by now was doubtless lapping up all the wine, women and song that the CIA could deliver. And instead of Dempsey and Farquhar-Smith, he had found Crowell and Youklis lying in wait, demanding a thorough accounting of Palychko’s grisly demise.

  Russell saw no reason to leave anything out, or otherwise play with the truth, which might have been a mistake.

  ‘What do you call a babysitter whose baby gets tortured and killed?’ Youklis asked him sarcastically.

  ‘I don’t know—is it a riddle?’

  ‘A fucking moron, that’s what.’

  ‘So fire me.’

  Youklis gave him a contemptuous look. ‘What the hell were you doing sleeping in a separate room?’

  ‘Surviving, as it turned out.’

  ‘Here and now, that doesn’t seem like such a great outcome.’

  Russell just about kept his temper. ‘May I remind you that Bob here told me there was—and I quote—“nothing dangerous” about this job. There was no mention of potential assassins. And while we’re at it—how did they know where to find him? Northern Italy’s not exactly awash with Ukrainian death squads, so my guess is that one of your people let the cat out of the bag. And probably for the best of reasons, that they didn’t enjoy seeing the bastard escape justice.’

  ‘It sounds like you were tempted yourself. And maybe succumbed.’

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ Russell lied.

  ‘But you’re happy enough that he’s dead.’

  ‘I don’t consider him a great loss to humanity, no.’ Unbidden, Russell had a mental picture of Palychko’s fingers, poised above the chess board.

  ‘Well, he’s a real loss to our cause.’

  ‘You might consider what that says about us.’

  Youklis flashed Russell another angry look. ‘It says that we do what we have to.’

  ‘Yeah? Well you don’t do it very well. And I don’t like being blamed for other people’s incompetence. Are we done here?’

  ‘Just about. I’m told that our people in Berlin put a high value on your services, but I’m fucked if I can see why.’

  ‘Then send me back there. What do you need me for here now that Kuznakov’s gone?’

  ‘You have a job to do in Belgrade, I believe. If you manage that better than you’ve managed this, then we’ll think about it. But I’m not making any promises.’

  Russell got to his feet. Another retort came to mind, but why waste any more breath?

  Monday morning in Berlin, and it looked as if spring had been deferred again. A blanket of grey cloud hung just above the rooftops, or, in many cases, the tops still awaiting new roofs. The news was just as depressing: Over the weekend the Soviets had suddenly cut off the Western sectors’ milk supply, claiming a sudden shortfall of petrol and labour. The Western authorities were told they were welcome to pick up the milk themselves, but while they scrambled to find the necessary fleet of trucks, several thousand babies were going hungry.

  Few believed the Soviet excuses; for most, it was just one more twist in a growing campaign of harassment. The only real question was how long this operation would last, and how far Stalin’s cronies were willing to go.

  Quite a way, Effi thought, as she waited for Eva Kempka outside the Ku’damm café. If a government was willing to target babies, then who could think themselves safe?

  As usual on those rare occasions when she arrived earlier than the person she was meeting, Effi remembered all the times she had kept people waiting, and she resolved to do better in future. It never worked, of course.

  She was almost ready to admit defeat when Eva finally arrived, out of breath and full of apologies. With a few drops of rain in the air, they took a table inside, and ordered coffees from a waitress who looked about fourteen. These days nearly everyone in Berlin seemed either too young o
r too old.

  Eva seemed more nervous than she had at the funeral, and kept glancing at the doorway to the street. ‘A man came to see me,’ she said, as if in explanation.

  ‘Who?’ Effi asked. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He never gave me his name, and I was too agitated to ask. He implied he was a friend of the family—Sonja’s family, I mean. But he didn’t actually say so.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That I was upsetting the family.’

  ‘How? What have you been doing?’

  Eva stole another glance at the door. ‘Just talking to people, asking questions.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, colleagues. I mean, I haven’t spoken to the newspapers, or anything like that.’

  Effi digested this for a few moments. ‘What could you tell the newspapers, Eva? What do you know?’

  ‘Well, nothing much. Nothing definite anyway. But I was with her, a few days before she died.’

  ‘Were you in a relationship?’

  Eva smiled sadly. ‘Not then. We were for a short time. Last year. Sonja was … well, she wasn’t really a lesbian. She was fed up with men, and she was willing to give it a try. That’s what she told me—almost word for word. And she did, but it didn’t feel right. Not to her.’

  But it did to you, Effi surmised.

  ‘We stayed friends,’ Eva went on, ‘and we used to see each other every few weeks, usually somewhere like this, but she couldn’t get a babysitter that evening and so she invited me round to her apartment. And that’s when I overhead the telephone call. Someone—I don’t know who—was trying to get her to do something, and she kept trying to refuse. But whoever it was wouldn’t take no for an answer, and eventually she agreed. But I could see she was frightened, and she wouldn’t talk about it, which wasn’t like her.’

  A tear was rolling down Eva’s cheek.

  ‘Have you told all this to anyone else?’

  ‘I went to the police, and spoke to a kriminalinspecktor. And he wasn’t unsympathetic. Women like me usually get very short shrift from men in uniforms—somehow they know—but this one promised to look into it. He warned me not to expect too much, which seemed fair enough. Since I didn’t have a name for the caller, or any idea what the call was about, I hadn’t really given him anywhere to start.