Masaryk Station (John Russell)

by David Downing

  Time to leave, he told himself. And quietly as a mouse. He was just about to make his move toward the back door when the connecting door swung open, and someone seemed to exhale only inches from his head. A switch clicked, flooding the office with light, but before he had time to raise a fist it clicked again, restoring the relative darkness. He heard his own sigh of relief, but by then the men were talking again.

  Russell took another deep breath and tiptoed across Kozniku’s carpet to the other door. Thanking fate he hadn’t locked it, he eased the door wide enough to slip through, and was just congratulating himself on making no noise when the key fell out of the lock, and struck the corridor tiles with a loud ringing sound.

  ‘Pažnja!’ one male voice exclaimed, and the connecting door crashed open.

  Russell’s hand was already on the outside door. After almost falling through it, he accelerated down the ginnel, conscious of someone shouting, and reached the entrance just as a silhouette filled it. His momentum threw the man backwards, away from Russell’s flailing fist, and into the street. The man’s gun clattered away across the wet cobbles, and rebounded from the opposite kerb with a sharp crack.

  By this time Russell was ten metres down the street, running for his life. He was just thinking that they wouldn’t risk advertise their presence by opening fire, when the first bullet ricocheted down the narrow street, striking sparks on both walls.

  He swerved right down a partly-stepped passageway, almost slipping on the wet stone treads, and forced himself to slow his pace just a little. The passageway was longer than he remembered, and another bullet went singing past him just as he gained the street beyond. But no lights went on around him—the neighbourhood was taking as little notice of the odd gunshot as he himself had been doing these past two months.

  He heard his pursuer cry out, but didn’t stop to find out why. There was silence for several seconds, which suggested he might have fallen, but the footsteps pursuing him soon resumed, albeit further behind. Russell raced down the long and winding street, grateful to its architect for denying the possibility of a direct shot. Another stepped passageway offered itself, and he flung himself down it, still only one slip away from disaster. It opened into a small piazza, where a group of men were sitting out under a café awning, playing cards. He couldn’t remember feeling so pleased to see other human beings.

  A couple of gaudily made-up women gave him enquiring looks. He smiled, shook his head and hurried on across the piazza, pausing at the top of another street for a quick look back. On the far side of the square a man appeared at the bottom of the steps, one hand held behind his back, and took in the possible audience. One glance in Russell’s direction, and he withdrew back up the stairway, feet finally passing from sight.

  Russell turned and walked on down toward the distant bay, still breathing heavily, and cursing his own stupidity. If the man had been a better shot, or hadn’t slipped on the steps … It was all very well risking your life for something worthwhile, but to take such a chance on a childish whim? To get away with a young man’s prank, in Trieste or anywhere else, he needed a young man’s legs.

  Effi had just kissed Rosa goodnight when there was a knock at the apartment door. It was almost ten, which seemed late for a visit, so she raised her voice to ask who it was as she tried to recall where Russell had put their gun.

  ‘You knew me as Liesel,’ a woman said clearly.

  Effi opened the door, trying to remember someone of that name. Seeing the dark, petite, well-dressed woman in her late thirties who stood on the threshold, her first reaction was almost panicky—had some unknown relation of Rosa come to claim her? But then she recognised the face. Liesel had been one of the Jewish fugitives whom she and Ali had harboured for a night or two while Erik Aslund arranged their escape to Sweden. One of the more self-possessed, Effi remembered, a woman who had known enough to be terrified, but who was damned if she was going to give in to it. Like all the others, she had come and gone without leaving a physical trace, but Effi remembered liking her more than many.

  ‘I’m Lisa now,’ the woman said after Effi had invited her in. ‘Lisa Sundgren. I live in America, in Minneapolis.’

  ‘My geography’s terrible,’ Effi said, reaching for the kettle.

  ‘I had no idea where it was either,’ Lisa admitted. ‘It’s in the middle. They call it the Midwest but it’s closer to the east coast.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to thank you.’

  ‘You didn’t come all this way to do that.’

  ‘Well, no. I’ve come back for my daughter.’

  Effi took out the cups. ‘I didn’t know you had one.’

  ‘I have two now, but Anna is back home with her father, and my mother-in-law. Uschi was the one I left behind five years ago.’ She sighed. ‘This is a strange question, but back then, how much did you know about me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Effi said, filling the teapot. ‘We were only ever given first names—which for all we knew were false—and instructions on where and when to pass people on. It was safer that way.’

  ‘Well, my name then was Liesel Hausmann. I was from the Sudetenland, which was part of Czechoslovakia until 1938, when the Nazis took over. I’m Jewish of course, but my husband Werner was a Christian, and we were well off. He owned a factory in Reichenberg—the Czechs call it Liberec now—and though the Nazis brought their anti-Jewish laws with them, my husband thought Uschi and I would be safe. And we were for several years, until he interceded on behalf of my brother’s family, who had all just been arrested. In case things went badly, he wanted Uschi and me to go off with our maid, whose family lived in a remote mountain village. But I insisted on staying by his side, and Uschi went on her own—she was sixteen by then, and we thought she’d be all right.’

  Lisa took the offered cup of tea, and placed it on the table beside her. ‘And then my husband was arrested. I heard nothing for several days, and then an old friend from the local police called to tell me that he was dead, that I was about to be arrested, and that I should flee if I could. So I packed a bag and walked to the station and somehow reached Berlin, where we still had friends. And they knew someone who knew someone else, and that’s how I ended up staying with you in that house, and finally escaping to Sweden. Which is where I met my second husband. He had a wartime job at the American Embassy in Stockholm, and when he went back I went with him.

  ‘That was four years ago. We got married, and I had another child, but I always intended coming back for Uschi. If my mother-in-law hadn’t been ill for most of last year I’d have come over then, despite my husband’s objections. He didn’t—still doesn’t—like the idea of me being over here alone, but he knew he’d have no peace until he agreed.’

  ‘Have you had any news of Uschi?’

  ‘None. Once the war was over, we called the Czechoslovak Embassy in Washington, and they promised to investigate. When weeks went by and we didn’t hear anything, we tried again, and they made the same promises. The same thing kept happening, and there was no way we could tell whether they were having a hard time finding her or just fobbing us off. I had no real address, you see, only the name of the village, but even so I can’t believe they really tried. And by the time I finally decided that I had to come over myself, the communists had taken over. I’m an American citizen now, and I’ve been told that no visas are being issued to Westerners in the foreseeable future, so there doesn’t seem any way to get in. And as far as I can tell the communists aren’t letting anyone out. It seems my only hope of getting Uschi out is to smuggle her across the border.’ She smiled. ‘And that’s my other reason for looking you up.’

  ‘My smuggling credentials? I’m afraid they were only good for a particular time and place.’

  ‘Oh, I know you don’t do that sort of thing anymore. I read an article about you in an American paper—that’s how I found who you really were—so I’m not expecting practical help. But I did think you might advise me, or know someone
who could. The people I knew here are dead or gone, either to America or Palestine. But with so many families still looking for relatives, there must be people who’ve learnt how to find them.’

  Effi’s heart went out to her. She didn’t know of anyone, but maybe John would.

  She explained that her husband was away, but that she would write and ask him. And maybe Ströhm could help—she would ask him, too.

  Lisa thanked her for that and again for Effi’s help in the past, and they arranged to meet up once Effi had finished filming. After her visitor had gone, she heard Rosa call her name.

  The girl, it seemed, had listened to the whole conversation. ‘My mother never left me,’ she insisted, as if she feared the opposite.

  ‘No, she didn’t,’ Effi confirmed. ‘And neither did your father. As long as they lived, they would never have done that.’

  Stefan Utermann

  It was almost one in the morning when Russell was jerked from a doze by the loud and angry rumble of his train on the Sava bridge outside Belgrade. He had left Trieste at seven that morning, looking forward to the three-hundred-mile journey, but a tortoise-like crawl up from the coast had been followed by lengthy waits at Ljubljana and Zagreb, and the long descent of the Sava valley had felt a whole lot longer when the restaurant car inexplicably closed some six hours short of the capital.

  As he walked out of the terminus, the sight of a dozen hotels settled the battle between hunger and tiredness. He tried three before he found a conscious night clerk, and happily accepted a key without first checking the room. As far as he could see, no fleas were jumping for joy on the yellow sheets, and the sash window sprang open with only a modest application of brute force. Within a few minutes Russell was fast asleep.

  He was woken by the sun streaming in through the curtainless windows, and lay there thanking the stars that nothing had bitten him during the night. He felt like a bath, but one look at the shared facilities down the corridor persuaded him to wait. After getting dressed he made his way down the rickety stairs, paid the exorbitant bill, and ventured out into the city. The sky was mostly blue, the air already warm for that time of the morning. The square in front of the station was busy, and the number of salesmen offering wares seemed high for a communist country. Maybe Tito’s Yugoslavia really was different, the way Ströhm kept hoping it was.

  On his last and only other visit to Belgrade two years earlier Russell had stayed at the Majestic, which had seemed more than adequate. He thought he remembered the way from the station, but the first landmark he recognised was the Royal Palace, which had been rebuilt since his last visit, though presumably not for royalty. A uniformed man loitering outside gave him a suspicious look, but then provided directions amenably enough.

  It looked as if Belgrade was doing better than Berlin when it came to reconstruction—in 1946 every street had seemed full of gaps, but now they were few and far between. And the people seemed younger than they did in Berlin or Trieste, although why that should be he had no idea—among the Allied countries, only the Soviet Union had lost a higher proportion of its population.

  He found the Majestic in its small corner square, and happily spent Uncle Sam’s money on a suite at the front with a bath. His rooms were clean and almost over-furnished, the water wonderfully hot. After consigning his travelling clothes to the laundry service, he went out in search of breakfast, zigzagging north towards the Marketplatz and a particular café he remembered. It was on the second zig that he realised he was being followed. A man in his thirties, in a grey suit, white shirt and black trilby.

  The café was still there, with tables outside for the taking. After sitting there for a minute or so, he casually scanned the square, and found his shadow apparently reading a paper outside another establishment. The coffee, when it came, was surprising good, the ham and eggs quite excellent. And the general atmosphere seemed surprisingly relaxed, less gloomy than Berlin, less surreal than Trieste.

  After paying his check, he walked on towards the Kalemegdan, whose surrounding gardens offered a pleasant spot for reflection, and found the seat he had sat in two years earlier, in the shadow of the stone citadel, high above the confluence of the Sava and Danube. Then all but one bridge had been down, but another two had since been restored, and, like the two rivers, were busy with traffic.

  Then, as now, he had come as a journalist, but this time appearances were more deceptive. These days the Yugoslavs would suspect any visiting pressman of working for an intelligence service, whether full-time or part-time hardly mattered. And since it was the Americans who had persuaded the Yugoslavs to let him in, the latter would assume that Washington employed him in some form or other. Which of course they did.

  The Americans, as Youklis had explained at their last convivial rendezvous, wanted to know how things were going between Tito and Stalin. Were they about to fall out, or had they done so already? If and when they did, Youklis and friends presumably had no intention of supporting one group of communists against another. They would just dump as much oil on troubled waters as they could.

  All of which was straightforward enough for a journalist of Russell’s experience. The American’s other request was likely to be more problematic, because Youklis didn’t seem to know that much about the man he wanted Russell to contact. Zoran Pograjac had fought with Mihajlović’s Četniks and survived—as Mihajlović had not—a post-war charge of collaborating with the Germans. He had apparently kept his head down since, but Russell found it hard to believe that someone with a history like Pograjac’s wasn’t being watched by the communist authorities.

  The Soviets had been more reasonable in their requests. They simply hoped that Russell’s American backing would encourage the more anti-Soviet Yugoslavs to open up in private about their future plans. At their meeting in Trieste—convened in a small square beneath an unlikely statue of Aphrodite—Comrade Serov had presented Russell with a list of those they wanted him to interview. All but one were possible traitors to the working class. The exception—Vukašin Nedić—was a friend of the Soviet Union, but he was being closely watched by the Yugoslav authorities. Russell should insist on interviewing Nedić, and if the Yugoslavs tried to refuse, he should say that he could only write his article if given access to all the different points of view. ‘They will be keen,’ Serov assured him.

  When they eventually met, Russell’s use of the phrase ‘the weather’s been unusual today’ would tell Nedić that he could be trusted. Russell would then be given an up-to-the-minute estimate of the current situation, and the list that Nedić was compiling of those Yugoslav communists who could still be relied upon to see things from an internationalist perspective.

  ‘Don’t you have an Embassy in Belgrade?’ Russell had asked the Russian.

  ‘Of course,’ Serov had replied. ‘But we never interfere in a fraternal party’s internal affairs.’

  Well, Russell would go and see Nedić if the Yugoslavs let him, hear what he had to say, and make damn sure he didn’t get caught with a list of would-be traitors, either by destroying it straight away, or voluntarily handing it in to the authorities. Hearing Shchepkin’s disappointed ‘tsk’ was much less painful than quarrying marble on Naked Island.

  Mihajlović’s man needed treating with even more circumspection. The Soviets expected to be disappointed—the whole bloody world was against them, and they were used to it—but the Americans took it all as a personal affront. If he wanted to see Berlin anytime soon, he would have to make an effort, or at least give a decent impression. But oh so carefully. If Pograjac wasn’t just a CIC fantasy, if he really was a bona fide opponent of the regime, then consorting with him was asking for trouble. Russell could still remember the defendants at the Moscow show trials falling over themselves to admit contacts with foreign agents. ‘Shoot the mad dogs!’ had been Prosecutor Vyshinsky’s catch phrase.

  He glanced across at his shadow, who was gazing out at the river. The man turned his head, as if conscious he was being watched, and when
Russell gave him a big smile, managed a wry one in return. A small triumph for humanity.

  A young couple walked past deep in conversation, reminding him that he didn’t speak the local lingo. A significant handicap in this sort of work. He couldn’t even read the damn newspaper—for all he knew, the two parties had resolved all their differences while he was on his train, and Tito and Stalin were busy composing love letters to each other. He needed to talk to someone—there had to be some foreign journalists in Belgrade who spoke one of his languages. In 1946 the Majestic had been full of them.

  He walked back there, shadow in tow. The desk clerk spoke enough German to understand his question, and told him that two other journalists were staying at the hotel, one from England and one from France. The former was called Ronald Hitchen, and the clerk thought he worked for The Times. Neither the name, nor, later that evening, the face, jogged Russell’s memory.

  He was sitting in the almost empty hotel bar when a young man with tousled brown hair and a pleasant boyish face came up and introduced himself. ‘I’m Hitchen. I hear you’ve been asking for me.’

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m cultivating an addiction to slivovitz.’

  ‘There are worse things.’

  They introduced themselves. Hitchen, it turned out, was also a freelance, but found that people who thought he worked for The Times were generally more helpful than people who knew he didn’t. He had been in Belgrade for a week, and had already talked to quite a few people. ‘I came with a lot of introductions,’ he admitted. ‘My uncle was part of the British mission to Yugoslavia during the war, and made quite a few friends among Tito’s people.’

  Gold, Russell thought, I’ve struck gold. He already had a broad understanding of the differences between Moscow and Belgrade—they arose, like the differences between Moscow and the KPD back home, from a basic unwillingness on Stalin’s part to allow the so-called fraternal parties any responsibility for their own affairs. Like the KPD, the Yugoslav Communist Party knew better than Moscow what local conditions required, but it was much better placed to say so. Unlike the KPD, the YCP had largely liberated its own country, and those Red Army units that had passed through Yugoslavia had long since left. If not universally popular, the YCP could, alone in eastern Europe, count on the support of a clear majority. If the Soviets picked a fight with Tito, they wouldn’t find it easy.