Silesian Station (2008)

by David Downing

  Russell went through what Thomas had told him, pausing only to accept an extremely good cup of coffee from Kuzorra's wife.

  'Well, let's hope she hasn't run into another George Grossman,' was the detective's initial response.

  'Who?'

  'Before your time, I suppose. You remember the German cannibals of the 20s? There were four of them - Fritz Haarmann, Karl Denke, Peter Kurten and George Grossman.' He almost danced through the names. 'Grossmann was the Berliner. He rented a flat near the Silesian Station, just before the war. He used to meet the trains from the East, seek out innocent-looking country girls - he preferred them plump - and ask if they needed help. He told some of them that he was looking for a housekeeper, but most of the time he just offered the girls cheap lodgings while they found their feet in the big city. Once he got them back to his flat he killed them, cut them up, and ground them into sausages for the local market. He was at it for about eight years before we caught him.'

  'He hasn't been released recently?'

  'He hanged himself in prison.'

  'That's a relief.'

  'I doubt your girl has been eaten. But the first thing to do is find out if she ever reached Berlin. I've got some friends at Silesian Station - I can ask around. What day did she arrive?'

  'The last day of June, whatever that was.'

  'A Friday,' Frau Kuzorra said. 'I had a doctor's appointment that day. But Uwe...'

  'I know, I know. I'm retired. I also get a little bored from time to time. Asking a few questions at Silesian Station is hardly going to kill me, is it? And we could do with a little extra money. That week on the coast you've been talking about.' He took her silence for acquiescence. 'My usual rates are twenty-five Reichsmarks an hour and reasonable expenses,' he told Russell.

  'Fine.' Thomas could certainly afford it.

  'Right then. If I go down on Friday evening there's a good chance the same crew will be working that train. Have you a picture of her?'

  Russell passed it over.

  'Lovely,' Kuzorra said. 'But very Jewish. Let's hope she didn't reach Berlin.' He got to his feet, wincing as he did so. 'They say old war wounds are more painful in wet weather,' he said, 'but mine always seem worst in summer. You fought in the war, didn't you?'

  'In Belgium,' Russell admitted. 'The last eighteen months.'

  'Well, who would have guessed we'd find a leader stupid enough to start another one?' the detective asked.

  'He hasn't started one yet.'

  'He will.'

  Russell drove slowly back into the city along Brunner-Strasse and Rosenthaler Strasse. The area around the latter had once hosted a large Jewish population, and reminders of Kristallnacht were still occasionally evident - shops abandoned and boarded up, a few with crudely daubed Stars of David on their doors. He hadn't told Thomas or Kuzorra, but he already had one missing girl to find in Berlin. In New York his mother had introduced him to the Hahnemann family, rich Berliners from Charlottenburg who had decided they could no longer abide life in Hitler's Germany. They had brought three of the children with them, but their oldest daughter Freya had refused to leave her Jewish boyfriend, a man named Wilhelm Isendahl, and had remained in Berlin. The Hahnemanns hadn't heard from her in months, their own letters had been returned unopened, and they couldn't help worrying that her 'firebrand' of a boyfriend had led her into trouble. Could Russell make sure she was all right, and ask her to send them a postcard? Of course he could.

  Finding her might take time - there was certainly no chance of official help if a Jew was involved - but he had no reason to believe that Freya Hahnemann was in any immediate danger. And he wanted Kuzorra to concentrate on Miriam Rosenfeld, who probably was. Her face in the photograph had an air of almost catastrophic innocence.

  After recrossing the river Russell found himself heading back to the Adlon. He rang Thomas from the lobby to tell him he'd hired Kuzorra, and what the retainer was. Thomas took a note of the detective's address and promised to send off a cheque.

  Slaney was gone from the bar, but several members of the British press corps had filled the gap. Russell bought a round and listened to the latest news from London, most of which seemed singularly uninteresting. One item, however, grabbed his attention. According to Dick Thornton, the British and French governments had both received virtual ultimatums from Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov. If they didn't get serious about a military alliance, then the Soviets would look elsewhere.

  'They won't do a deal with Hitler, will they?' the Chronicle man asked.

  'Why not? It would give them some time. Stalin has just killed half his generals.'

  'I know, but...'

  'Look at it from their point of view,' the Sketch man said. 'The British and French have hardly been enthusiastic about a military alliance.'

  'More to the point,' Russell interjected, 'what's Stalin got to gain now? The Germans can only get at him by going through Poland, and that'll automatically bring in the British and French on his side.'

  'Always assuming they honour the guarantee.'

  'They will.'

  'That's what the Czechs thought.'

  'This is different. There's no wriggle-room this time. And no way the Poles will sign large chunks of their country away.'

  'I know that and you know that, but does Hitler?'

  'Hard to say.'

  The discussion meandered on. Russell was interested, but had too much else on his mind to give it his undivided attention. He ought to be submitting his visa application for Prague and the Protectorate, but it felt wrong to be making travel plans while Effi was still in a Gestapo cell. And there was always the chance that a visa would be granted more quickly once he'd demonstrated his willingness to work for the SD.

  But there were more sensible ways of killing time than drinking it away. When the conversation turned to cricket, he made his excuses and drove over to the French restaurant in Wilmersdorf which he and Effi visited every few weeks. It was usually half-empty these days, probably in consequence of the Nazis' remorseless trashing of everything French, but the food was still wonderful. Russell ate French bread and Normandy butter with a single glass of the most expensive wine he could find, and followed it up with a steak oozing blood, pear tart with chocolate sauce, a slice of Brie and a small black coffee.

  The light was almost gone when he emerged, but it was a lovely evening, warm with a feathery breeze. He drove back up towards the Kaiser Memorial Church and found an empty table at one of the busy pavement cafes on Tau-enzien-Strasse. After ordering schnapps and coffee - in theory the caffeine and alcohol would cancel each other out - he sat and eavesdropped on the conversations around him. One young couple were discussing what colour to paint their bedroom; a middle-aged couple were planning the series of trips they would make when they finally took delivery of their People's Car. Visiting his wife's family in Essen did not seem high on the husband's list of priorities. The only hint that war might be imminent came from the young man to his left, who was trying to convince his girlfriend, without actually saying so, that the time for consummating their relationship might be shorter than she thought. Her replies sounded like distant echoes of those which Russell had received from prim little Mary Wright in the spring of 1917. Some things never changed.

  It was dark now, the spire of the Memorial Church circled by stars. Russell drove home to Neuenburger Strasse and wearily climbed the stairs. Reaching the top, he realized that the bulb on his landing had gone again.

  As he opened the door to his room - one hand turning the key, the other the knob - it seemed for a moment as if the key hadn't needed turning. He was still thinking he must have imagined that when his flick of the switch failed to produce light. A mental alarm bell started ringing, but much too late.

  Two things happened almost simultaneously. A bright beam of light caught him right in the eye, and something very hard delivered a tremendous blow across his stomach. As he doubled over, a second blow in the back sent him crashing to the floor. Once, twice,
feet thudded into his front and back, torch-light dancing above. A kick in the groin hurt like hell, and curled him into a foetus-like ball, arms clasped together to protect his face and head. He tried to shout out, but his lungs could only manage a rasp.

  The blows had stopped, but a heavy foot planted on his stomach was pinning him down. He tried opening his eyes, but the beam of light - a torch, he assumed - was shining right in his face, and the figures above him were only flickering shadows. He felt one draw nearer, and a gloved hand dragged one arm away from his head. Something cold and metallic was rammed into his ear. The barrel of a pistol.

  He could smell beer on the breath of the man who held it.

  'Finish him off,' someone said.

  'My pleasure,' the man holding the gun murmured.

  Russell felt the flow of warm piss inside his pants as the trigger clicked on an empty chamber.

  'Just kidding,' the man said. 'But next time...well, now you know how easy it would be. We can always find you. Here or on Carmerstrasse.'

  The torch shifted away from Russell's face. Blinking through the after-lights he could see it illuminating the framed poster for Effi's first major film. 'She could be on her way to Ravensbruck tomorrow,' the voice said. 'But they'd hold her in Columbiahaus until the next shipment. How many men do we have there?'

  'Around forty,' one of his friends said.

  'They'd be queuing up, wouldn't they? They'd all want to fuck a film star.' The torch was back in Russell's eyes. 'You do understand?' beer-breath said, increasing the pressure of the gun barrel.

  Russell managed a rasping 'yes'.

  'I think he's got the message,' the second voice said.

  'You can smell it,' a third man said.

  Suddenly foot and gun barrel were gone, the torch switched off. Darkness gave way to dim light as his assailants tramped out of the apartment, then fell once more as the door shut behind them.

  Russell lay there, tentatively shifting his body. The pain in his groin was beginning to subside, leaving more space for the one in his kidneys, but nothing seemed to be broken. He lay there in his sodden trousers, remembering the last time he had pissed himself in fear, walking towards the German lines as mates on either side of him literally lost their heads.

  His eyes were adjusting now, making the most of what light there was from the city outside. He painfully worked his way across the floor to the nearest armchair, and levered himself up so his back was against one side. A warning, he thought. His visitors had been told to hurt him but leave no visible marks. To scare the shit out of him.

  They'd succeeded.

  He sat there for a while, then clambered laboriously to his feet. The standard lamp responded to its switch, revealing an apparently untouched room. The two extracted light bulbs had been left on the table.

  Russell swapped his clothes for a dressing-gown and walked down to the bathroom he shared with three other tenants. The red patches on his body would doubtless turn blue over the next few days, but he avoided his own face in the mirror, frightened of what he might find. Back in the flat, he lowered himself onto the bed and turned out the light. Sleep came more easily than he expected, just as it had in the trenches.

  He woke much earlier than he wanted to, and sat at his window for the better part of an hour listening to the city stir. His body ached in the expected places, and movement was still painful, but at least there was no blood in his piss. At around a quarter to seven he ran himself a deep hot bath, and lay soaking until a fellow tenant began banging on the door.

  Back in the apartment, he wondered how he should dress for his eleven o'clock appointment. A suit and tie seemed called for - the Heydrichs of this world liked a smart appearance. He chose the dark blue, took time to polish his shoes, and then spent another five minutes at the sink scraping the polish off his fingers. A look in the wardrobe mirror proved less than reassuring - the outfit was all right, but his hair was slightly over-length by SS standards, and the dark circles underneath his eyes suggested debauchery or worse. 'You don't look a day over fifty,' he mumbled at his reflection. 'Pity you're only forty-two.'

  During his coffee and rolls in the Cafe Kranzler, an altercation broke out on the other side of the intersection: a tram-driver was leaning from his cab window and shouting at a brown-shirted team of flag-hangers, all of whom seemed blissfully unaware that their truck was blocking the rails, or that the occupants of the Cafe Kranzler's pavement seats were watching them with interest. One of the Brownshirts walked across to the tram, shouting as he went, whereupon the driver climbed down onto the road. His wide shoulders and impressive height - around two metres of it - clearly gave the storm trooper pause for thought. The driver, aware of the wider audience, seized his chance to show his flair for mime. These are rails, his arms seemed to say, and this thing here - the tram - could only run on rails. Their truck was slewed right across them. Conclusion - they had to move the damn thing!

  There was a spattering of applause from the Cafe Kranzler clientele. The storm trooper spun round, face twisted in anger, but decided with obvious reluctance against arresting everyone in sight. He turned away from the crowd and ordered his underlings to move the truck. When one of these disconsolately raised an unhung flag, he was treated to a loud burst of abuse. The truck was moved; the tram squealed through the intersection and disappeared. The breakfasters went back to their newspapers.

  Russell sipped at his coffee and wondered what to do about the previous night's visit. Should he bring it up at his meeting with Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth? What would be the point? If the man denied SD involvement Russell had no way of proving otherwise. And if, as seemed more likely, the bastard cheerfully admitted complicity, there was no way Russell could threaten him, not when Effi's life was at stake. Better to say nothing, he told himself. Let them see that he took their warning seriously. Which he did.

  A young man at the next table left a tip and walked off down the street, abandoning his copy of the Volkischer Beobachter. Russell skimmed through the paper in search of significant news, finding none. The leading letter, as so often in the Beobachter, offered a reader's heartfelt agreement with a government announcement of the previous day, which in this case amounted to a statement from some ministry or other that gluttony was a form of treason. A cynic might guess that some form of food rationing was on the way.

  One other story caught his eye. A German Jew and his non-Jewish girlfriend had broken the race laws by getting married, and had evaded prosecution by moving to Carlsbad in what was then Czechoslovakia. After the Munich crisis of September 1938 they had moved on to the capital Prague, intent on emigration. They had, however, still been there when Hitler invaded in March. Arrested a few days later, they had now been sentenced to two and two and a half years respectively, for the crime of 'racial disgrace.' Russell wondered whether Freya Hahnemann had married Wilhelm Isendahl, as her parents feared she had. If everything went well today - and please let it! - then tomorrow he would find the time to check out the address they had given him.

  At ten-forty Russell moved the car down to Leipziger Strasse, sat fretting for another ten minutes, and then walked across to Wilhelmstrasse. Number 102 looked better than it had on his last visit. In January the garden behind the street facade had been streaked with snow, the trees lifeless, the grey building sunk beneath a grey sky. Now the birch leaves rustled in the summer breeze, and roses bloomed around a perfectly coiffured lawn. Heydrich had obviously had the mower out.

  The receptionist was a buxom blonde off the assembly line, the poster bearing this week's official Party slogan - 'Let that which must die sink and rot. What has strength and light will rise and blaze' - took pride of place on the wall behind her. Russell stared at them both for a while, then decided a visit to the men's room was in order. This, needless to say, was spotless. If the SS had restricted their activities to the design and maintenance of toilets, the world would have been a cleaner and better place.

  Get it out of your system, he told himself. When t
he moment comes, don't be a smart alec. Just listen, nod, smile.

  Back in reception, a baby-faced Sturmmann was waiting to escort him to Room 47.

  Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth, as Russell soon discovered, bore more than a passing resemblance to Stalin, at least from the neck up. He had the same cropped hair, thick moustache and cratered cheeks, but clearly spent fewer hours in the gym than some of his SS buddies. All SS men creaked when they moved - the sound of stretching leather belts - but Hirth creaked more than most. Girth would have been a better name.

  He looked up, creaking as he did so, and flicked a hand towards the chair facing his desk. There was, Russell noticed warily, intelligence in the man's eyes.

  'Herr Russell,' Hirth began, 'I have no time to waste, so I'll simply point out what will happen if you refuse to cooperate. One, Fraulein Koenen will spend a very long time in a concentration camp. She may survive, she may not. She will certainly lose her beauty. Her career will be over.' He paused, as if expecting Russell to protest.

  Russell just nodded.

  'Two,' Hirth continued, 'you yourself will be arrested and questioned over events which happened in March of this year.'

  'Which events?' Russell asked. He hadn't expected this.

  'On the night of March 15th, only a few hours before our troops moved in to restore order in what was then Czechoslovakia, you travelled from Prague to Berlin. The Gestapo received an anonymous tip that you were carrying illicit political materials. Your bag was searched.'

  'And nothing was found.'

  'Indeed. But why would anyone go to the trouble of betraying you if there was nothing to betray?'

  'Mischief-making?'

  'Please be serious, Herr Russell. You are a former communist. You had only just written several articles for the Soviet newspaper Pravda. . . .'

  'With the approval of your organization.'

  'Indeed. That is hardly . . .'

  Russell put his hands up. 'Very well. I will tell you what happened. It's very simple. I did those articles for the Soviets, and was well paid. They then asked me to do other work for them - journalistic work perhaps, but the sort that verges on espionage. I refused, and I think they contacted the Gestapo just to inconvenience me. Out of spite. That's all it was.'