Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  ‘I was. I needed a change.’

  ‘Well, if you needed a rest, you’ve come to the right place. Nothing’s happened here for months, and nothing will until the victory parade. Lenin’s birthday or May Day, depending on how quickly Zhukov and Co. can wrap things up. If you like watching tanks roll by for hours on end you’ll be in seventh heaven.’

  ‘Sounds riveting. I’m John Russell,’ he told the other two. ‘San Francisco Chronicle.’

  ‘Martin Innes, Daily Sketch,’ the thinner of the two Englishmen said. He had slicked-back brown hair and rather obvious ears book-ending a pleasant, well-meaning face.

  ‘Quentin Bradley, News Chronicle,’ the other chipped in. He had wavy blonde hair, a chubby face, and the sort of public school accent which made Russell’s teeth stand on edge.

  ‘Is this the usual breakfast?’ he asked.

  ‘Never changes,’ Manson confirmed. ‘One day I took the meat away with me, just to make sure they weren’t bringing the same pieces back each morning.’

  Russell reached for the bread and jam. The former was dark and stale, the latter surprisingly good. Cherries from the Caucasus, most likely.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Innes asked.

  Russell went through his itinerary, raising a few eyebrows in the process.

  ‘You must have been really keen,’ Manson commented when he’d finished. ‘Any particular reason?’

  Russell told them he was hoping for a ringside seat when the Red Army entered Berlin.

  Not a chance, was the unanimous response.

  ‘Why not?’ Russell asked. ‘Don’t they want witnesses to their triumph? Are they treating German civilians that badly?’ He hadn’t wanted to believe the reports coming out of East Prussia – of German women raped and nailed to barn doors.

  ‘They probably are,’ Manson said, ‘but that’s not the whole story. I think the main reason they won’t allow any foreign reporters near the Red Army is what it might tell them about the Soviet Union. They don’t want the world knowing how utterly reckless they are with their own soldiers’ lives, or how backward most of their army is. The front-line units are good, no doubt about it, but the rest – no uniforms, not enough weapons, just a huge rabble following on behind, stealing wristwatches by the dozen and wondering what flush toilets are for. It’s hardly an advert for thirty years of communism.’

  Russell shrugged. ‘I have to try.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Manson said with a sympathetic smile.

  He was probably right, Russell thought, as he made his way across Sverdlov Square and down Okhotnyy Ryad in the direction of the American Embassy, trying to ignore the man in the suit walking some twenty metres behind him. It was his first glimpse of the city by day, and Moscow seemed a much sorrier place than it had in 1939. There was a lot of visible bomb damage, given that years had elapsed since the last real German attacks. The shop windows were empty, and people were queuing in considerable numbers for whatever was hidden inside.

  He supposed things were slowly getting back to normal. Trams trundled along the wide boulevards, and hordes of plainly dressed pedestrians hurried along the pavements. In what had once been shady parks, a few surviving trees were budding into spring. It was certainly hard to believe that only three years had passed since the Wehrmacht came hammering at the city’s door.

  As Russell approached the embassy building he noticed two of the new Gaz-11s parked on the other side of the road. There were at least two men in each, and they were presumably waiting for someone to follow. The regime’s paranoia was scaling new heights.

  Once inside, Russell was asked to sign the usual book, and told to wait.

  ‘I have another appointment in twenty minutes,’ he objected.

  ‘This won’t take long,’ the duty officer told him

  Half a minute later, a dark-haired, bespectacled man in his early thirties came down the stairs. Russell hadn’t seen Joseph Kenyon since late 1941, when the diplomat was stationed in Berlin. He’d first met him in Prague two years earlier, during his own brief stint working for American intelligence.

  After they’d shaken hands, Kenyon ushered him through the building and out into a large and barely tended courtyard garden. ‘The rooms are all bugged,’ the diplomat told him, as he reached for an American cigarette. ‘Or at least some of them are. We find them and destroy them, but they’re surprisingly efficient at installing new ones.’

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ Russell said, ‘but I only came to register my presence. I’ve got a meeting at Press Liaison in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Just tell me who you’re here for,’ Kenyon said. ‘We’ve received no word.’

  The penny dropped. ‘I’m here for the Chronicle, no one else. I gave up working for governments in 1941.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kenyon said, clearly surprised. ‘Right. So why Moscow? Nothing’s happening here.’

  Russell gave him a quick précis.

  ‘Not a chance,’ Kenyon told him, echoing the journalists at the Metropol.

  After scheduling a drink for that evening, Russell hurried back up Okhotnyy Ryad, his NKVD shadow keeping pace. The sky, like his mood, was darkening, and large drops of rain were beginning to fall as he reached the Press Liaison office on Tverskaya Street. A minute late, he was kept waiting for a further twenty, quite possibly as a punishment. There was a picture album of Soviet achievements on the anteroom table, all dams, steelworks and happy kolkhoz workers driving their brand new tractors into the sunset. He laughed out loud at one photograph of Stalin surrounded by nervously smiling women in overalls, and received a withering glare from the young receptionist.

  Someone arrived to collect him, a thin, balding man in his thirties with a worried look who introduced himself as Sergey Platonov. Upstairs, Russell discovered the reason for Platonov’s anxious expression – another man of roughly the same age with bushier hair, harder eyes and an NKVD major’s uniform. His name was Leselidze.

  Russell was reminded of another interview he had endured, in Berlin several years earlier. Then too, the monkey had asked the questions while the organ grinder just sat there, making everyone nervous.

  The room was like a small lecture hall, with several short rows of seats facing a slightly raised dais. They all sat down, Platonov and Leselidze behind the lecturer’s desk, Russell in the audience front row. It felt like more like a tribunal than an interview.

  Platonov asked, in almost faultless English, whether Russell was aware of the wartime restrictions on movement applicable to all non-Soviet citizens.

  ‘Yes,’ Russell replied in the same language. A moving crane caught his eye in the window, proof that some rebuilding was underway.

  ‘And the general rules governing conversations between foreigners and Soviet citizens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Did he understand the specific rules governing foreign reporters in the Soviet Union, particularly those regarding the transmission of any information deemed detrimental to the Soviet state?

  ‘I do,’ Russell affirmed. He had no knowledge of the current details, but the gist was unlikely to have changed – foreign journalists would be allowed to prop up the main hotel bars, sit quietly at official press confer-ences, and have spontaneous conversations with specially selected model workers at tractor assembly plants. Anything else would be forbidden.

  ‘Do you have anything you would like to see?’ Platonov asked. ‘A collective farm, perhaps.’ He sounded every inch the caring host, but his companion’s face told a different story.

  ‘I would like to see Berlin with the Red Army,’ Russell said, tiring of the game and switching to Russian. ‘The rest of the world should know who really defeated the Germans.’

  Flattery made no impression. ‘There is no possibility of that,’ Platonov replied calmly in English. ‘We have strict rules – only Soviet journalists are allowed with Soviet forces. We cannot be responsible for the safety of foreign journalists in a war zone. That is quite impossible.’

  ‘I…
’ Russell began.

  ‘What makes you so certain that the Red Army will reach Berlin ahead of the Americans?’ Leselidze asked him in Russian. Platonov slumped back in his chair, as if relieved that his part was over.

  Russell answered in the same language. ‘About ten days ago General Eisenhower wrote a personal letter to Comrade Stalin. He told the Generalissimo that the Allied armies would not be advancing on Berlin, that their next moves would be towards Hamburg in the north, Leipzig in the centre and Munich in the south.’

  Leselidze smiled. ‘I was unaware that the details of this letter had been made public in the West. But that is not important. What matters is whether General Eisenhower was speaking the truth. We know that Churchill wants Berlin, and that all the generals do too, both British and American. Why should Eisenhower be any different? He’s a general; he must want the glory which goes with the biggest prize. So why does he tell us he doesn’t?’ The Russian leaned forward in his seat, as if eager to hear Russell’s answer.

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ Russell told him. ‘You don’t understand how things work in the West. The war is effectively won, but a lot more soldiers are going to die before it ends, and the US government would rather they were Russians than Americans. The occupation zones have already been agreed, so they don’t see any point in sacrificing lives for territory that they’ll have to hand back. And on top of all that, they’ve got this ridiculous bee in their bonnets about diehard Nazis heading south to the Alps, where they’ve supposedly built a fortress to end all fortresses.’

  Leselidze shook his head. ‘You are clever enough to see through this, but your leaders are not?’

  ‘I know the Nazis better than they do. If Hitler and his disciples knew how to plan ahead they might have won the damn war. And one last thing. Eisenhower loathes Montgomery, who would have to be given a leading role in any advance on Berlin. Believe me, Ike would rather let Zhukov take the prize than give Monty that sort of glory.’

  Leselidze sat back in his seat, still looking less than convinced. ‘Very interesting. Thank you, Mr Russell. But, as Comrade Platonov has explained to you, the policy forbidding journalists from travelling with Soviet forces is an extremely strict one. So…’

  ‘I’m sure it’s a very good policy. But it would be in your interests to make an exception in my case.’

  Leselidze looked blank. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Comrade Leselidze, I have personal reasons for wanting to enter Berlin with the Red Army. My wife and child are probably in the city. My wife, who helped me escape from Germany in 1941, has been a fugitive from the Gestapo for more than three years. And now the Red Army is coming. The soldiers have all read Comrade Simonov’s articles calling for punishment of the German people…’

  ‘Yes, yes. But Comrade Stalin has now issued an order calling for the troops to only punish Nazis…’

  ‘I know. And a very wise order it is. But after what the Germans did to your country and your people, an army of saints would be out for revenge. And while I can appreciate that, I still want to protect my family. Can you understand that?

  Leselidze shrugged. ‘We all wish to protect our families,’ he said blandly. ‘But I fail to see how helping you protect yours will benefit the Soviet Union.’

  ‘Because I have something to offer in exchange,’ Russell told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My knowledge of Berlin. Whatever your generals need to know, I can tell them. Where everything is, the best roads, the vantage points. I can save Russian lives in exchange for my family’s.’

  Even to Russell himself, it sounded dreadfully thin.

  ‘I would be very surprised if we did not already possess this information,’ Leselidze told him. ‘I will of course pass your offer to the relevant authorities, but I am certain that the answer will be no.’

  Alighting from the tram at her Bismarck Strasse stop, Effi checked that her building was still standing. Reassured, she scanned the rest of the wide street for fresh bomb damage. None was apparent. The smoke still rising away to the north-west suggested that the latest British attacks had fallen on that area of the city, where many of the larger war industries were situated. Which made for a pleasant change.

  She walked up to their second-floor apartment, feeling the tiredness in her legs. She also felt emotionally numb. Had she grown accustomed to living with fear, or more adept at suppressing her feelings? Was there a difference? She was too tired to care.

  Ali wasn’t home, but a note on the kitchen table promised she’d be back by four. There was no mention of where she was, which caused Effi a pang of probably unnecessary anxiety. For all her youth, Ali was never careless of her own safety, and only the previous day had lectured Effi on the importance of not growing over-confident. It would be so terrible to fall at the very last hurdle, after all they’d been through.

  Ali had left her some soup in a saucepan, but there was no gas, and Effi didn’t feel hungry enough to eat it cold. She nibbled on a piece of bread instead, and walked through to her bedroom, thinking she’d lie down for however long it took the Americans to arrive overhead. It would probably make more sense to go straight downstairs, but the idea of spending any unnecessary time in the basement shelter was less than appealing.

  She lay down on the bed, closed her eyes, and wondered what Ali would do after the war. Marrying Fritz would be a good start, and no less than she deserved. The girl had lost so much – her parents deported and presumably killed, her first boyfriend the same – but she’d grown into such a resourceful young woman. She had certainly saved Effi’s own life. When the two fugitives had run into each other in the Uhlandeck Café in June 1942, it had been Ali who had put Effi in touch with the forger Schönhaus, and he who had documented the fake identity that had served her ever since.

  Where was he, she wondered. In 1943, he’d been recognised and almost caught by one of the Jewish greifer – ‘catchers’ – that the Gestapo employed, and had taken off for Switzerland. No one had ever heard from him again, which was probably good news – if the Gestapo had caught him, they would have gloated. His story would make a good film, she thought. A final pan-out filling the screen with Alps…

  She was woken by the air-raid sirens. Was she imagining it, or were they sounding increasingly the worse for wear? How many air raids did the average siren last?

  She walked quickly downstairs, out across the rear courtyard and down the narrow stairway to the large basement shelter which served her own building and four others. There had sometimes been as many as a hundred and fifty people camped out down there, but lately there seemed about half that. The Volkssturm call-up and evacuation programme had taken most of the remaining men and children, and several women had fallen prey to the bombing. Many of the latter had recently lost a husband or son, and had, in their grief, stopped taking any precautions for their own safety.

  Strangely, but somehow predictably, the occupants of the different houses stuck together in their shared shelter, arranging their camp beds and chairs in a laager-like circle, regardless of how little contact they had with each other above ground. And each group, Effi guessed, would have the same cross-section of stereotypes. There was the cynic who disbelieved everything the authorities said, and the old Nazi who still clung to his faith in ultimate victory. There was the woman who talked of nothing but her missing son, and the old man who had fought in the First War, when things were done so much more efficiently. There was the couple who held each other’s hands and always seemed to be praying. Sometimes Effi sat there casting the movie, assigning actors and actresses of past acquaintance to the various parts.

  Frau Pflipsen was the one she would like to play, in the hopefully distant future. The woman claimed to be ninety, and quite possibly was, having lost two grandsons at Verdun in 1916. A diminutive physical presence, all of 1.45 metres tall and weighing in at not much more than 40 kilos, she was more than happy to share her feelings about the authorities in general, and the Nazi leaders in particular
. She had a reluctant soft spot for Goebbels – ‘you have to admit it, the little shit is clever’ – but thought the rest should be lined up against a wall and shot. A few months earlier, Effi and Ali had amused themselves by scripting a meeting between Frau Pflipsen and the Führer. The latter had hardly got a word in.

  That morning, Frau Pflipsen was reading aloud from the single sheet that passed for a daily paper. The Red Army’s assault on ‘Fortress Königsberg’ was in full swing, and Promi – the Propaganda Ministry – was obviously determined that other German cities should be fully aware of their possible fate. Why, Effi wondered, as Frau Pflipsen cantered through lurid accounts of Soviet atrocities, and the faces around her grew more alarmed. What good did scaring people do? If Goebbels really believed that German defeats were down to a lack of backbone, then he wasn’t such a clever little shit after all.

  Once Frau Pflipsen had finished her recitation, Frau Esser raised an arm in hopeful pursuit of silence. Her husband had been block-warden until mid-March, when an unheralded raid had killed him and his infant cabbages on a nearby allotment, and she had inherited the post by default no one else wanted the job, and no one else could read his handwritten lists of the local residents. Frau Esser was less than keen herself, a fact that aroused occasional feelings of guilt in her own breast, but bothered no one else. During these final weeks, less than keen seemed a highly appropriate response.

  ‘I have a short announcement,’ she said. ‘Any woman who wishes can register for a half day’s firearms training at the barracks down by the Li-etzensee. The instructors will be from the SS. If you’re interested come and see me.’

  A couple of women did, and Effi thought about joining them. Were they handing out guns with the training? If so, it might be worth risking a few hours in the company of the SS. She smiled inwardly at the memory of the last such occasion, when she and Ali had accepted a poster invitation to an SS Christmas party on Potsdamer Platz. The food and drink had been wonderful, and their only problem had been shaking off Ali’s newly acquired SS suitor. He had insisted on escorting her back to the apartment, and only relented when Ali explained that her husband – a Wehrmacht major – was expected home on leave that day, and would be outraged if his wife returned with another man.