Silesian Station (2008) jr-2

by David Downing

  She looked surprised at this. 'I didn't realize...' she began.

  He thought about explaining his involvement, and decided against. She didn't need to know.

  'It sounds like a good idea,' she said at last. 'We are people who could have met and become friends in ordinary circumstances.'

  He glanced at her, wondering if that was true. 'You've got my number,' he said. 'And I'll give you my girlfriend's as well. But please, only use hers in an emergency. She's not involved in this.'

  They sat in silence for the rest of the journey. Every so often she flicked the ash from her cigarette out of the window, but seemed too lost in thought to actually smoke. The sun appeared behind them as they drove east on Lothringer Strasse, and by the time they reached the entrance to the Friedrichshain park the sky was rapidly turning blue. Freya and Wilhelm Isendahl were waiting by the sculptures of Hansel and Gretel at the foot of the Marchen-Brunnen waterfalls.

  They looked like the ideal Nazi couple. Freya's shoulder-length blonde hair framed an open face, very blue eyes and a ready smile. Her clothes and shoes were both attractive and practical, and her skin had the freshness of innocence. Wilhelm was equally good-looking, but several years older. His neatly-parted hair was a darker shade of blonde, and his eyes were green. The long nose and full mouth reminded Russell, somewhat unfortunately, of Reinhard Heydrich. Which raised all sorts of interesting questions.

  Both were wearing wedding rings.

  They introduced themselves, Sarah and Wilhelm exchanging nods of recognition. Walking on into the park Russell remembered his last visit with Albert Wiesner. The trees had been bare, the grass flecked with snow, and Albert had been silently daring every passer-by to call him a Jew. The cafe owner had risen to the challenge, and initially refused to serve them.

  Russell suspected that Wilhelm Isendahl was every bit as angry, but that his defiance took a different form. Wilhelm simply assumed his right to equality, as worthy of his human status as any paid-up member of the master-race. The lack of stereotypical Jewish features helped, but the self-belief came from within. When they reached the cafe, which was now sporting a large 'Jews prohibited' sign, Wilhelm shared a joke with the proprietor and helped Russell carry the coffees back to their table.

  Russell told Freya about his meeting with her parents.

  'How are they?' she asked, without much enthusiasm. 'They were so rotten to Wilhelm,' she added, as if in explanation. 'I still find it hard to forgive them.'

  Russell shrugged. 'I'll take your word for it. All they said to me was that he was a bit of a mischief-maker.'

  Wilhelm grunted with apparent amusement, but Freya's eyes blazed. 'You see what I mean! A mischief-maker! What do they expect Jews like Wilhelm to do? Just let the Nazis walk all over them?'

  Russell smiled. 'I understand. I'm just the messenger. They just asked me to make sure you're all right.'

  'Well, you can see that I am,' she said, and Russell had to agree. She looked tired, certainly, but there was a happy sparkle in the eyes. 'Look,' she said, relenting, 'I will write to them, tell them that we are married. Do you have their address?' She looked sheepish for a moment. 'I'm afraid I threw their letters away.'

  Russell wrote it out in his reporter's notebook and tore out the page. 'I'll wire them and say you'll be writing,' he said, passing it across. 'Are you still working at the University?' he asked.

  'No. At Siemens,' she said. 'As a secretary in the offices. Wilhelm works there too.'

  Russell raised an eyebrow.

  'The government lets them hire Jews because they're short of armaments workers,' Wilhelm told him. 'And Siemens are all in favour because they can get away with paying us next to nothing. But both of them may live to regret it. We are getting organized - Jews and non-Jews together.'

  'Frau Grostein said you wanted to meet me in my journalistic capacity.'

  'Yes.' He pulled a much-folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and carefully opened it up. 'Have you seen these?' he asked, passing it over.

  It looked like the leaflet Russell had read on the tram. The message was different - this one concerned the recent death in a concentration camp of a prominent pastor - but the viewpoint and printing style were identical.

  'Our group is responsible for these,' Wilhelm went on. 'It would be good if we could get some coverage in the foreign press. Let people know that some of us are fighting back.'

  'All right, but why the foreign press?'

  'Because we'll never get mentioned in the German press, and word does get back. When people come back from outside the cage they tell their friends what they've read and heard, and that gives other people hope that these pigs won't be lording it over us for a thousand years. Any news of resistance boosts everyone's morale, it really does.'

  Everyone hungers after fame, Russell thought cynically, and mentally scolded himself. Who was he to judge this young man? 'I'll see what I can do,' he said. 'It'll have to be generalised, of course. I can't say I've actually been talking to the people responsible for the leaflets, or they'll want me to name names. I don't think journalistic privilege covers treason these days. But this group of yours - is it just printing leaflets?'

  'It's not my group,' Wilhelm said with some asperity, 'and distribution is the dangerous part.'

  'I appreciate that.'

  'Good.' The young man's irritation passed as swiftly as it had risen. 'Other-wise... well, we hold discussion meetings, and we help organize support for people with no income. And we're thinking about printing a regular news sheet...'

  'Any connection with the Palestine group?'

  Wilhelm looked scornful. 'You don't fight race hatred by creating a state based on race. That's what the Nazis are doing.'

  'Not in the same way,' Sarah Grostein interjected.

  'What's the difference?' Wilhelm wanted to know.

  'I think that's an argument for another time and place,' Russell said, aware that at least one other customer was watching them. An open-air cafe in Hitler's Berlin hardly seemed the ideal setting for an angry argument between communists about the future of Palestine. He turned to Freya. 'If you give me your address,' he said, 'I can give it to your parents when I wire them.'

  She looked at Wilhelm, who nodded.

  Russell wrote it down - one of the run-down streets off Busching Platz, if he remembered correctly. 'And I'll let you know if I can get you some publicity,' he told Wilhelm. They were all on their way back to the park entrance when he had a better idea. 'You could write something yourself,' he told Wilhelm. 'About your campaign, I mean. Your motives, how you distribute the leaflets, how you keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. Say what you want to say but make it sound exciting, even if it isn't.'

  'Who would print it?'

  'Send it to me, along with a covering letter saying who you are and who you represent. Not your real name, of course, but something convincing. I know - you can also send me an advanced copy of your next leaflet, and tell me to look out for other copies in a few days time. On a particular tram route, say. That'll give me all the proof I need that the article and the leaflets have been written by the same people. The creeps at the Propaganda Ministry won't be very happy, but I'll just be behaving like a responsible journalist. I got sent the piece, I checked its source, and I sent it for publication. And no, I have no idea who it came from.'

  Wilhelm smiled, and looked several years younger. 'I will do it.'

  'Send it to me, John Russell, care of the Adlon Hotel.'

  They shook hands. Russell and Sarah Grostein watched the young couple walk off arm in arm, Freya's blonde head resting on Wilhelm's shoulder. The similarities between her past and Freya's present accounted for the wistfulness in Sarah's face, but there was also something harder there, something beyond recall. Just age perhaps, or the knowledge of what could go wrong, and how you dealt with that.

  In the car she lit another cigarette, took a single puff and threw it away. 'He's a brave man,' she said eventually, 'but I don't know whethe
r he's careful enough. What did you think of him?'

  'Impressive. Young. As for careful, it's hard to say. I'm not sure it matters that much. I have a horrible feeling that survival's more a matter of luck than anything else.'

  'Not in the long run.'

  'Because history's on our side? Even if it is, there don't seem to be any individual guarantees.'

  'No,' she agreed. 'My husband would have agreed with you. Not that he ever tried to be careful.'

  As they turned into Lothringer Strasse the evening sun hit Russell squarely between the eyes, temporarily blinding him. A lorry roared past only inches away, horn blasting, before the road swam back into focus. 'There're some sunglasses in there,' he said, gesturing towards the glove compartment.

  'I haven't seen anything like those before,' she said, passing them over.

  'I bought them in New York,' he told her. 'They're called Polaroids, which means they're reflective. They were only invented a couple of years ago.'

  'Richard and I went to New York in 1929. We were on the boat home when we heard about the stock market crash.'

  'Tell me about him.'

  She thought about it for the better part of a minute. 'He was a lovely man,' she said eventually. 'Temperamental, argumentative, a bit too sure of himself, but always kind. A businessmen who wrote romantic poetry. A wonderful lover.'

  'That's some testament.'

  She looked away, and he half-suspected tears, but when she turned back towards him her face was harder. 'I expect you're wondering how I can prostitute myself with the people who killed him.'

  There was no easy answer to that. 'It must be hard,' was all he said.

  'Sometimes. You know the worst thing of all? He's not a bad man. He makes interesting conversation, he makes me laugh. He represents everything I hate, but I can't hate him.' She almost laughed. 'Isn't that ridiculous?'

  'Not at all. I didn't hate any of the Germans on the other side of no man's land, but I was quite prepared to kill them.'

  'Is that the same? I suppose it is in a way. But you weren't sleeping with the enemy.'

  'No.'

  She managed another half-strangled laugh. 'I suppose this is what passes for small talk in a Thousand Year Reich.'

  After dropping Sarah off at her home Russell headed straight for Effi's. As he pulled the Hanomag into the yard beside her building, he noticed two men standing outside the front door. They were in civilian dress, but they didn't look like salesmen.

  Both were wearing long coats and hats despite the warmth of the evening, and the shorter of the two - a slim blonde with a weasel face - sported beads of sweat on his forehead and above his upper lip. As he moved to block Russell's entrance he tried for a winning smile. He failed, but the mere attempt was reassuring.

  'John Russell,' he said. It wasn't a question.

  'That's me.'

  'We need to talk to you. In your car, perhaps?'

  There was no point in refusing. Russell led the way back to the Hanomag and opened the doors. The taller man jammed himself into the back, leaving Russell and weasel-face in the front. 'A message from Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth?' he asked.

  The man looked disappointed that his line had been stolen. 'Instructions,' he corrected. 'You will be receiving a number of documents in the next few days. The Hauptsturmfuhrer assumes you know what to do with them.'

  'Pass them on to the Reds.'

  'That is correct.' He reached for the door handle.

  'Hold on a moment,' Russell said. 'How are you planning on delivering these documents? You can't come here again - the Soviets know I live here most of the time, and they could be watching the place.' He very much doubted that they were, but he wanted to keep Heydrich's goons as far away from Effi as possible. And if they got the impression he was taking his new mission seriously, it might even bolster his credibility.

  Weasel-face stared out at the darkened street. 'They will also know of your other address.'

  'Of course. You'll have to use the post,' Russell explained, trying not to sound like he was talking to a ten-year-old child. 'Send everything to Neuen-burger Strasse,' he added.

  The man nodded. 'It shall be done as you suggest,' he said, and reached for the door handle again.

  Russell sat in the car watching them walk away. He expected more from Heydrich's people, and felt somewhat cheered by the utter banality of the encounter. Don't get too cocky, he told himself. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth was not a fool.

  He was only halfway up the stairs when Effi opened the door with a face full of questions. 'Who were they?' she asked as she almost pulled him inside. 'What did they want?'

  'Nothing that important,' he told her, kissing her on the forehead. 'A couple of Heydrich's boys delivering a message. Did they come up?'

  'Oh yes. They wanted to wait for you inside. I told them I had a reputation to think of, and both of them leered at me. But they went back downstairs.'

  'They were well-behaved then,' he said, taking her into his arms. He could see that she'd been shaken by their appearance. 'Have you eaten?' he asked, thinking that it would be better to get her out of the flat.

  'I'm not hungry. What was the message, John?'

  'I thought we agreed not to tell each other certain things.'

  'Yes, yes, I know we did. All right. But I've been standing by the window waiting for you to come back and wondering what they wanted with you... whether they were going to arrest you or ask you to do something horrible. John, I don't want you doing anything that you know is wrong just to keep me safe.'

  He put his hands on her shoulders. 'If it ever comes to that, I'll tell you. And we'll decide together.'

  'Yes, but what choice will there be?'

  'We can do what they want me to do, or we can leave. Together.'

  'How could we leave? They won't let us.'

  'I'm working on that.'

  She looked up at him with worried eyes.

  'It's going to be all right,' he said, and found, rather to his surprise, that he half-believed it.

  She dropped her head on his chest and hugged him tightly.

  'I haven't eaten,' he said eventually.

  'No, neither have I,' she admitted, looking at her watch. 'So who needs sleep? I'm supposed to look haggard tomorrow - it's the scene where I've been sitting at the SA squad leader's bedside for nights on end. Lili will be amazed by how little make-up I need.'

  They walked to the small French restaurant just off the Ku'damm. Both city and restaurant seemed quiet for a Friday night, another consequence, Russell guessed, of the military manoeuvres. As they waited for their meals in a secluded corner of the rear garden, he brought Effi up to date on the search for Miriam Rosenfeld.

  'You can't blame him,' she said of Kuzorra's resignation, 'but what are you and Thomas going to do now?'

  'I don't know. We've got so little to go on - nothing really, nothing definite. The one witness Kuzorra found couldn't swear it was her. And if it wasn't her, then the man he saw talking to her is irrelevant. He could have been a father meeting a daughter or an uncle meeting a niece - something perfectly innocent.'

  'But the man was seen again.'

  'Probably. We're not totally sure it was the same man.'

  'So why did they lean on your detective?'

  Russell shrugged. 'A private grudge? Someone enraged by the idea that a missing Jew needs finding? We just don't know. We still don't know for certain that she ever reached Berlin.'

  'I think you do,' Effi said. 'All right, none of the things your detective discovered are a hundred per cent. But together - it's just too much. A girl who looks remarkably like Miriam meets a man who makes a habit of hanging round Silesian Station, and the moment your detective starts asking questions about the two of them he gets a visit from his old colleague. If those were the opening scenes of a movie you would know what had happened.'

  Russell sighed. 'I know. I just keep hoping there's another explanation, that she never got here, or that her meeting with our mystery man w
as an innocent one, and she decided for some reason or other to go home. She might have found out about her uncle being beaten up and just panicked, and gone rushing back to her family. She is only seventeen, and I don't think she'd even seen a city before, let alone one this size.'

  'So are you and Thomas going to look for another detective?'

  'We might try, but I doubt we'll find one.'

  'Then what?'

  'I don't know. I'll drop in and see Thomas on my way to Paul's tomorrow. If I can find enough petrol, that is.' He explained the shortage, and the new garage policy of favouring regular customers. 'Which is fine if you have a regular garage. I don't.' He saw the look on her face, and grinned. 'I know. There are always trams. Especially for those of us who don't warrant studio cars.'

  It was gone ten by the time they got home, almost eleven when Effi's breathing took on the pattern of sleep. Russell lay there, enjoying the soft warmth of her body curled into his, thinking back over his day. Two embassy appointments to discuss espionage work, an angry private detective and a rather remarkable woman, a sweet young pair of resisters and a dumb young pair of SD goons. All topped off with the love of his life lying naked beside him. Life was far from empty.

  He had promised Effi that everything was going to be all right. Was it? He felt safe in Berlin, which was more than he'd felt in Prague. But was he missing something crucial? Had he taken one of those oh-so-ordinary life-and-death decisions without realizing it?

  Look at the big picture, he told himself. The Germans could hardly accuse him of spying for the Soviets when it was they who had put him up to it. And vice versa. His spying for the Americans could be justified as part of his double role with the Soviets, and most of it could, at a pinch, be explained away as over-zealous journalism. And if things got out of hand there was always the emergency call to Zembski. What did he have to worry about?

  Effi was long gone when he woke. After a quick breakfast at the Cafe Kranzler he stopped off at the Propaganda and Foreign Ministries to see if any briefings were scheduled for the day - there were none. He found out why from Slaney, who was downing his usual milky coffee in the Adlon breakfast room. 'The bastards have had their bluff called,' the American said jubilantly. 'The Nazis in Danzig issued the Poles with an ultimatum, and the Poles issued one right back. The Nazi leader blustered for a bit, the Poles held firm, and he just threw in the towel. Last thing I heard he was trying to convince the Poles that the original ultimatum was a hoax.'