Masaryk Station

by David Downing

  ‘That was before the funeral. I went back to see him last Wednesday, and he more or less fobbed me off. He said he’d looked into it, and that there was nothing to suggest foul play. Which might have satisfied me, if he’d seemed like the same man I’d seen earlier. But he wasn’t. He was more aggressive and more defensive, if you know what I mean, as if dealing with me was something he resented having to do.’

  ‘As if it made him feel guilty?’

  ‘Perhaps. But maybe I was just imagining it. I mean, he was right the first time—I hadn’t given him anything, not really. And I had more or less decided to let it go, when this other man came to see me.’

  ‘A German, right?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t Russian. And he wasn’t nasty or anything. But after he’d gone, I felt—I don’t know—I felt as if I’d been threatened, even though I hadn’t.’

  Effi remembered having the same feeling after meeting the man from the Propaganda Department. And though Eva mightn’t actually know anything, someone might fear that Sonja had confided in her. But what about? And what could it matter if Sonja had killed herself? Volker Heldt had no doubts about that, and it stretched credulity to imagine him as a creature of the Russians. And even if there was something behind all this—which still seemed far from certain—there seemed no point in pursuing the matter. They couldn’t bring Sonja back, and in the unlikely event that they uncovered evidence of a crime, the likeliest sufferers would be themselves.

  But how could she convince Eva of that?

  ‘I asked a friend—someone with access to the Russians—to see what he could find out,’ Effi said. ‘Discreetly, of course. And maybe he’ll hear something. But for the moment I really think you should let this go. Think about it, Eva. If you’re wrong, and the call you overheard had nothing to do with Sonja’s death, then making a fuss is going to hurt and anger others who loved her. And maybe that’s all the unknown man was trying to tell you. If you’re right, and there is something terrible we don’t know about, then someone might decide to really shut you up. Either way, you’ll be the loser.’

  ‘I know,’ Eva said, looking utterly miserable.

  ‘So you’ll let it alone.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I will. Thank you for talking to me.’

  ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘I’m usually better than this. But Effi, you will let me know if your friend finds anything out.’

  ‘Of course,’ Effi agreed, with more conviction than she felt. ‘But I’m not really expecting him to.’

  They exchanged industry small talk for a few minutes, and then went their separate ways.

  Walking back to her flat, Effi felt depressed by the conversation. She wasn’t convinced that there was anything suspicious about Sonja Strehl’s death, but the elements of Eva’s story—the threats on the phone, the resentful policeman, the nameless visitor who might or might be who he said he was—all seemed depressingly characteristic of the current situation.

  Earlier that morning Effi had attended a farewell gathering at Charlottenburg Station. Another actor she had had known since pre-War days had been offered a part in a Hollywood movie, and had decided to take it. Two years earlier, Effi had heard the same woman scorning those who abandoned Berlin, ‘the city where real films are made’. But she, like so many others, had been worn down by the occupiers and their endless machinations against each other. It was a world in which Berliners, high and low, could only function as extras.

  Watching the train steam out towards the West, Effi had felt more envious than she expected. In 1945 Russell had persuaded the Soviets to get his whole family out the city, but even then, with the streets on fire and the Russians raping anything female that moved, she had felt a strange reluctance to leave. She wasn’t sure she felt that now.

  Effi wasn’t looking forward to the conversation, but after supper that evening seemed as good a time as any. ‘Before you go to bed,’ she told Rosa, once the wireless programme was over, ‘we need to have a talk.’

  Rosa looked pleased. She had seemed a bit withdrawn since Effi picked her up from Zarah’s, and it wasn’t the response that Effi expected.

  ‘The other morning, when you were at school, I had a look through your drawing book. There were some I hadn’t seen before. Of your friends.’

  ‘What did you think?’ Rosa asked, clearly oblivious to the possibility that something might be wrong.

  Which was encouraging. ‘I think they’re wonderful,’ Effi said, opening the book. ‘But I wanted to ask you about one of them.’ She found the drawing in question. ‘This one. What are these two doing?’

  ‘You know,’ Rosa said with a slight giggle.

  ‘I think I do, but you tell me.’

  ‘They’re special friends. Like you and Daddy. They touch each other a lot. Sometimes with their clothes off.’

  ‘And did they ask you to draw them touching each other like that?’

  ‘Oh no. They didn’t even know I was there. I found them like that, but they didn’t see me.’

  ‘I see. But why did you want to draw them?’

  Rosa sighed. ‘I don’t know. They were excited. And happy. I like drawing happy people.’

  Effi felt a growing sense of relief. ‘What they were doing,’ she said. ‘What Daddy and I do sometimes. It’s called sex. Or making love. There are lots of words for it.’

  ‘Fucking,’ Rosa suggested.

  ‘That’s one of them. But the important thing—one of the important things,’ Effi corrected herself, ‘is that most people like to be alone with each other when they’re doing it. It’s a private thing, just for the two of them. And they would be angry if someone drew them, or took a photograph. Do you understand?’

  Rosa gave her a look. ‘I shouldn’t draw people fucking without asking them first.’

  It seemed a reasonable summation, if not quite the one that Effi had hoped for.

  Darkness had fallen when Ströhm emerged from the Wedding U-Bahn station and crossed an eerily empty Muller Strasse. Road transport was still sparse in Berlin, particularly at this time of the day, when most transport was either public or military. At least the U-Bahn and S-Bahn were now running until late in the evening, and one of the latter’s trains pulled out of the station above him as he walked eastward along the badly damaged Lindower Strasse.

  Harald Gebauer’s political office was in the old bankruptcy court building on Nettelbeck Platz, which bore the marks of both Allied bombing and Red Army shellfire, but unlike its neighbours still stood. ‘On the second floor,’ his old friend had told him on the telephone, somewhat unnecessarily—the ground floor was dark and empty, the sound of several voices coming from above. Ströhm climbed the stairs to find a landing lined with chairs, three of them occupied by people waiting to see Gebauer.

  When he put his head around the door to let Harald know he’d arrived, his friend raised ten fingers once, twice and—smiling and shrugging—a third time for luck. Ströhm gave him a grin in return and went back out to a chair. He had known Gebauer as long as he had known anyone—they had gone on KPD youth marches together in the years before the Nazis seized power, and been members of the underground cells centred on the Stettin Station railway yards before and during the war. Since 1945, they had both held relatively important positions—Ströhm in the central railway administration, Gebauer in the yards and on the Wedding District Council.

  ‘You look miserable,’ was Harald’s greeting forty minutes later, when the last local supplicant had disappeared down the stairs.

  ‘You don’t,’ Ströhm told him. ‘Working every hour God sends must be good for you.’

  Gebauer laughed. ‘No time to think,’ he agreed, ‘but let’s go and have a drink. I’m afraid I can only spare an hour—I’ve got paperwork here that has to be finished.’ He reached for the coat that was hanging on the back of his door, and fought his way into it. The elbows were in dire need of patching, Ströhm noticed.

  Downstairs at the door, they discovered it had star
ted to rain.

  ‘Shit,’ Harald said with feeling. ‘My shoes leak,’ he added in explanation. ‘But what the hell.’ He led the way across the square and under the railway.

  ‘Are you still living on Liesen?’ Ströhm asked.

  ‘I moved into the office. There’s an old army camp bed I can use. And it cuts down the journey to work,’ he added wryly.

  ‘What happened to your apartment?’

  ‘I let it go. There were so many families living in one room, and there I was living in three—I couldn’t justify it. And there were too many memories.’

  Gebauer had lost his wife and children in an American bombing raid.

  ‘And, as you so rightly said,’ he continued, ‘I’m working every hour History sends. What do I need an apartment for?’

  Rest, Ströhm thought, but he didn’t say it. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked instead.

  ‘The Northener.’

  ‘It’s still open? I thought it had been flattened.’

  ‘It was. But look,’ Harald said as they turned a corner, pointing out a yellow light further down the street. ‘The wonders of reconstruction.’

  It was a different building in all but name, boasting some of the old decorations. But not, Ströhm noticed, the double-faced portrait which had hung on one wall, with Lenin on one side and Hitler on the other. That had presumably been taken by the Gestapo, after the raid that finally closed the bar down. Ströhm had often imagined the moment when they realised that the picture was reversible, and confronted the problem of how to burn one side without harming the other.

  In the old days, when most of the clientele were railwaymen, comrades, or both, finding a spot to stand had often been difficult, but tonight’s population was no more than twenty. It still made Ströhm feel nostalgic though, and as Gebauer bought their beers, he found himself sifting through mostly fond memories. Life had been simpler in opposition.

  Once they were seated he said as much to Gebauer, but his friend didn’t want to talk about the past. ‘Back then all we did was hide and hope; now the world is at our feet. This is a hard time, I know it is, but it’s a wonderful time as well.’ He saw the doubt in Ströhm’s eyes. ‘Yes, yes, but look how well we are doing.’

  ‘We are?’ Ströhm asked with a smile.

  ‘I believe so. How many are we—a few hundred, a thousand perhaps? Committed comrades, I mean. And few of us with a proper education—the Depression and the Nazis saw to that. And you remember how it was in 1945—all of us worried that we couldn’t do the job, that without the training we’d mess it all up. But we haven’t. We improvised, we learnt as we went along, and we’ve made it work. We had everything against us—even our Allies stealing half our industry—but we’ve made it work. And this is only the beginning. Anything’s possible.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘A German socialism.’

  ‘Eventually, yes. Oh it won’t happen overnight, but in time—why not?’

  His conviction was catching. ‘Your job brings you closer to the people,’ Ströhm admitted. ‘Mine … well, it’s the worst kind of politics, more about power than people.’ He shrugged. ‘And then there’s the Russians.’

  ‘The Russians are a pain the arse, but if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be here. We’d all be dead, most likely.

  ‘True.’ Ströhm laughed. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘And you.’

  They parted half an hour later, Gebauer shuffling wearily back towards his office, Ströhm heading west for the U-Bahn. He didn’t have long to wait for a train, and as it thundered through the tunnels he sat in the almost empty carriage reflecting on the evening. He had known quite a few comrades like Harald, who thought personal life was a luxury, who wore leaky shoes and patched-up clothes, and never used an official car when walking was an option. Who were happy to live in material poverty while pursuing a richer life for all.

  People like that had always been the heart and soul of the Party, and Ströhm longed to believe that enough of them remained.

  In Trieste it had been raining on and off for days, but the supply of defectors had dried up. The general tightening of borders was probably responsible for the shortage of genuine asylum seekers, and as for the fakes, well maybe the Soviets were waiting to see how Kuznakov fared before rolling a successor off the assembly line. Russell’s employers didn’t seem overly concerned—Dempsey and Farquhar had both taken the opportunity to visit Venice, and the local CIA contingent were busy celebrating their successful purchase of the Italian election. All of which left Russell free to pursue his story.

  The business with Palychko had gone some way to confirming his major suspicions. There was always the chance that he was a one-off, but Russell doubted it—there were too many east Europeans with innocent blood on their hands who could help the Americans understand the Soviets. Other questions remained, though. Who was choosing whom to save—the intelligence people in Europe, or the government back home? And did the fact that Draganović had an office in the Vatican mean the Pope himself had sanctioned the Rat Line? Given that the Catholic Church was still apologising for its shoddy performance in the war, a Nazi passport with a Papal signature would certainly win Russell a headline or too.

  Such evidence was easier imagined than found. His employers mightn’t need him at the moment, but he doubted they’d sanction a week in Rome.

  That morning a message from Artucci had been pushed under Russell’s door—‘same place, same time, FA’. He remembered the place but not the time, which seemed to sum up his sojourn in Trieste. ‘Could try harder,’ as one schoolmaster had written on his term report several aeons ago.

  Eight o’clock rang a vague bell, so Russell allowed ten minutes for the walk, and duly ventured out into the rain. This had grown noticeably heavier since his last outing, beating a heavy tattoo on his umbrella as he splashed his way up the streaming cobbles. Artucci was waiting for him in the small deli-restaurant, alone as before, and apparently wearing the same set of clothes. This time there were no bones on his plate, just a pool of tomato sauce which he was sponging up with a wedge of ciabatta.

  He raised the bread in greeting, and summoned the same young woman to pour Russell a drink.

  ‘So what do you have for me?’ Russell asked when she was gone. ‘Has Signor Kozniku been selling any more documents?’

  ‘He away,’ Artucci said. ‘Go to family in Verona. For holiday, he says, but Luciana say he runs out the door. Very angry with Americans, but she not know why.’

  Russell could guess. Given Kozniku’s part in Palychko’s intended emigration, certain Ukrainians would be wanting their piece of flesh.

  The memory brought a pang to Russell’s groin. ‘So what do you have?’ he asked Artucci, shaking his head at the offer of a cigarette.

  The Italian lit his own. ‘The two Križari I tell you about, the Croats from Osijek. They multiply.’ He smiled. ‘Is that right word?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you mean?’

  ‘There are four now, and they all move to a house above the city. A house with no one home. An Englishman arranges it all. A man named Seddon. And soon they go to Yugoslavia.’

  Russell had met Seddon, and strongly suspected he was employed by MI6. In fact, an MI5 acquaintance had more or less told him so. ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked Artucci.

  ‘You care?’

  ‘Yes, actually.’

  Artucci gave him a resentful glance, as if Russell was deliberately making it difficult for him to play a Man of Mystery. ‘There is a man—another Croat—who makes papers for Kozniku. He also make paper for English and Americans, and this week the English ask him to make new paper for Yugoslavia.’

  It sounded convincing. ‘Do you know when they’re crossing the border?’ Russell asked. He couldn’t see any way to use the information, but you never knew.

  ‘No,’ Artucci admitted. ‘But why wait when glory calls?’

  ‘Or G
oli Otok,’ Russell said dryly. Goli Otok, or Naked Island, about a hundred miles south of Trieste, was where Tito had established a prison camp for his growing number of opponents.

  Artucci laughed, displaying gold molars which Russell hadn’t known were there.

  ‘Can you get me all the names on the new papers?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so. How much you pay?’ After they’d settled on a price, the Italian pulled the list from his pocket.

  At least it had stopped raining when Russell left. He walked back down the narrow streets, between lines of dripping eaves, wondering what benefits the British and Americans thought helping people like that would bring them. Whisking war criminals out of Tito’s reach would further stain the West’s reputation, and sending their descendants into Yugoslavia was just a waste of lives—the Communist regime there might be vulnerable to Soviet pressure, but not to anything the West and its sordid allies could do. Intelligence services had once seen their job as collecting intelligence, but these days they seemed to be paraphrasing Marx: ‘Spooks have hitherto interpreted the world, the point however is to change it.’

  And by arming Europe’s disaffected and letting them loose on their enemies, they were only changing it for the worst. Russell was sick of the lot of them.

  Outside his hostel two of Marko’s daughters were playing what looked like a Serbian version of hopscotch on the slippery paving stones. The older of the two, whose name he knew was Sasa, treated him to a big-eyed smile.

  Which was something to take from the day.

  It was a pleasant spring Sunday in Berlin, and after admiring Hanna’s vegetable garden the adults all sat out in the sunshine, sipping the French wine which Bill Carnforth had liberated from the PX stores. Rosa and Lothar were busy exploring the rest of the garden, and Effi found herself remembering Thomas’s children at that age, in the last couple of summers before the war. Joachim had died in Russia, but Lotte was only a few feet away, looking now very grown up.