Wednesday morning, he called in at the Embassy on his way to the Wiesners. The moment he saw Unsworth’s face he knew what had happened. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘The official line is that he hanged himself,’ Unsworth said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Russell sat down. A wave of sadness – of utterly useless sadness – seemed to flow through him. ‘When?’ he asked. ‘Has the family been told?’
Unsworth shrugged. ‘We received this note from the Foreign Ministry this morning.’ He passed it over. ‘A reply to our representations on Friday.’
The message comprised one sentence: ‘In response to your enquiries of 1°February, we regret to inform you that the prisoner Wiesner has taken his own life, presumably out of guilt for his crime.’
Wiesner had been dead within two days of his visit, Russell thought. Beaten to death, most probably. A blessed release, perhaps. But not for his family.
‘We assume the family has been informed,’ Unsworth was saying.
‘Why?’ Russell asked, handing back the note. ‘Because it’s the decent thing to do?’
Unsworth nodded, as if taking the point.
‘What about the visa situation?’ Russell wanted to know. ‘There’s nothing to keep them here now. And surely…’
‘I’m told the decisions on the next batch are being taken tomorrow afternoon. If you come back Friday morning I hope I’ll have some good news for you.’
Russell walked down the stairs and out past the line of visa-seekers on Unter den Linden. Once behind the Hanomag’s driving wheel, he just sat there, staring down towards the Brandenburg Gate and the distant trees of the Tiergarten.
Eventually, almost somnambulantly, he put the car into gear and moved off, circling Pariserplatz and heading back up Unter den Linden towards Alexanderplatz and Neue Konigstrasse. What did you say to someone whose husband or father has just been murdered for the sin of being born into a particular race? What could you say? All around him the people of Berlin were going about their usual business, walking and driving and shopping and talking, laughing at jokes and smiling in friendship. If they’d heard of Sachsenhausen, they no doubt imagined neat rows of barracks, and some well-merited hard labour for the criminals and perverts residing there at the state’s pleasure. They hadn’t seen a man they knew and liked twisted and torn out of human shape for the pleasure of others.
He couldn’t even tell the story, not without Jens suffering for it. And even if he could, he had no evidence to back up his suppositions. The Nazis would claim that a crime like Wiesner’s was bound to provoke an angry reaction from his aryan guards, and that the wretched Jew had simply taken the easy way out when he received a few well-deserved bruises. What, they would say, was the problem? Everyone had behaved in a racially appropriate manner, and the world had one less Jew to worry about.
On the Wiesners’ street he sat in the car, putting off the moment of truth. There was another car parked on the other side of the road, its windows open, with two bored-looking men smoking in the front seat. They looked like Kripo, Russell thought, and they were probably on loan to the Gestapo, which was notorious for believing itself above the more mundane aspects of police work.
Well, there was no law against teaching Jewish children English. He got out, walked up the familiar steps, rapped on the familiar door. An unfamiliar face appeared in the opening. A rather attractive woman, with a mass of curly brown hair and suspicious eyes. In her late thirties, Russell guessed.
He introduced himself, and her face changed. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard?’ she added.
‘About Dr Wiesner’s death? Yes. Half an hour ago, at the British Embassy.’
As he spoke, Marthe Wiesner emerged from the other room, closing the door behind her. ‘Herr Russell…’ she began.
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear about your father,’ he said. There were two broken table lamps on the wooden chest, he noticed, and the curtain rail was hanging at an awkward angle.
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly. She seemed calm – almost overly so – but for the moment at least the light in her eyes had gone out. ‘This is Sarah Grostein,’ she said, introducing the other woman. ‘She’s an old friend of the family. Mother is… well, you can imagine. The shock was terrible. For all of us, of course. Mother and Ruth are sleeping at the moment.’
‘Please give her my condolences,’ Russell said, the hollow words tripping off his tongue. He wondered whether to leave the safety deposit box key with Marthe, especially in the presence of a stranger. He decided against. ‘I need to talk to your mother,’ he said. ‘Not now, of course,’ he added quickly. ‘I’ll come at the usual time on Friday.’
Marthe nodded, just as the sound of wailing erupted in the other room. A few seconds later Eva Wiesner called her elder daughter’s name. ‘I must go,’ she said.
‘Of course.’ He waited till the door had closed before asking Sarah Grostein when the family had heard of Felix Wiesner’s death.
‘Saturday evening,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t here of course, but the police behaved abominably. I can understand why Albert lost his head.’
Russell’s heart sank. ‘What did he do?’
‘Oh, don’t you know? He attacked the Gestapo bastard, hit him with one of these table lamps. The man’s in hospital. They said he might die, but Marthe says it didn’t look that bad. I think they were just trying to scare Eva.’
‘Where have they taken Albert?’ he asked. The wailing was quieter, but just as insistent.
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘They haven’t. He got away. Pushed the other bastard over the sofa and ran for it. He got out the back – there’s a maze of alleys out there – and the conscious one knew better than to follow him. He wouldn’t have found Albert, and he knew damn well he might not come out again.’
‘Where’s Albert now?’
‘No one knows,’ she said, leaving Russell with the distinct impression that she was lying. ‘They came back yesterday,’ she went on. ‘Shouted at Eva to tell them where he was, which she couldn’t have told them if she’d wanted to. But they didn’t arrest her. Maybe they realised that there was no one else to look after the girls, that they’d be up to their eyes in paperwork if they tried to send them away somewhere.’
‘Maybe,’ Russell agreed. He thought it more likely that the British expression of interest in Wiesner’s fate had kept the Gestapo in check. ‘Can you pass on a message to Frau Wiesner? Tell her…’ He paused. ‘I was going to say that it looks like the children will get British visas in the next week or so, but it doesn’t seem as though Albert will have any use for his. If he goes to the Germans for an exit visa, they’ll just arrest him. Still, the girls should be able to go. And maybe their mother too.’
‘She won’t leave Albert.’
‘Perhaps he can persuade her.’
‘Perhaps. But the Gestapo are parked outside, which makes arranging meetings rather difficult.’
He looked at her, standing there with arms crossed and anger simmering behind her eyes. ‘Are you trying to get out?’ he asked.
‘Not at present,’ she said, in a tone that didn’t invite questioning.
‘I’ll get going,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back on Friday morning.’
She nodded, opened the door, and closed it behind him. He walked out to the car, ignoring the watching police, and drove it slowly down Neue Konigstrasse towards the city centre. He knew there was nothing more he could do, but that knowledge did nothing to diminish the sense of anger and helplessness that dogged him through the rest of that day and the next. By the time he entered the British Embassy on Friday morning he felt ready to explode, but was equally certain that murdering anyone other than Hitler would only make matters worse.
British entry visas for the three Wiesner children were waiting on Unsworth’s desk, but Unsworth had the decency not to be too pleased with himself. ‘I’ve found out why the mother’s been refused,’ he told Russell. ‘Our intelligence people have quite a
dossier on her. She was a Spartacist – you know what they were? Of course you do. Apparently they grade communists out of ten, and anyone scoring over seven is refused immigration. Eva Wiesner’s an eight.’
Russell was astonished. ‘How recent is this information?’
‘It isn’t. The dossier has nothing later than 1919, so she probably gave up politics when she got married. But that won’t help her. An eight’s an eight – that’s what their man told me…’
‘Trelawney-Smythe?’
‘You’ve met him? No exceptions, he said.’
Russell didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ he said, before explaining about Albert.
Half an hour later he was back in Friedrichshain. This time Frau Wiesner opened the door, and managed a slight smile as she let him in. After brushing aside his condolences, she sat him down and made them both coffee. ‘He was a wonderful man,’ she said. ‘And nothing can take that away from him, or from me.’
He gave her the British entry visas for the three children, and explained why she was being refused.
She smiled sadly at that. ‘I thought that must be the reason,’ she said, ‘but it doesn’t matter now. Take this back,’ she added, handing over Albert’s visa – ‘Someone else can take his place.’
He also gave her the safety deposit box key, and a piece of paper containing two names and addresses. ‘This is the bank where the box is, and this is my agent in London, Solly Bernstein. Get the girls to memorize it all, and then burn it,’ he said. ‘And I think it would probably be safer for you to keep the key yourself. Solly has another one, and they can use that when they get to London.’
She stared at the writing, as if it was in a foreign language.
‘Have you seen Albert?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘But he’s all right.’
After leaving Effi at the studio early the next morning, he took the car back to her street and walked to Zoo Station. With an hour to wait for the Warsaw train, he had breakfast in the buffet before climbing up to the eastbound platforms. It was the first time, he realised, that he’d been up there since McKinley’s death. He had no idea where the American had gone under his train, and a morbid search for tell-tale signs came up empty. If there was one thing the Germans were good at, it was cleaning up after themselves.
He put five pfennigs in a burnt almond machine, and walked down the platform feeding from his cupped hand. It was a misty morning, the trees in the Tiergarten fading by stages into nothing. Some geese flew across the glass dome of the station, squawking noisily, heading God-knew-where considering it was late February. There were few finer sights, Russell thought, as their V-formation curled and furled like a banner in the wind. He remembered the seagulls at the Bismarck launching, and laughed out loud.
The Warsaw train arrived, empty save for the few who had boarded at Charlottenburg. Russell found his seat by the time it reached Friedrichstrasse, and dropped off to sleep as the last of the south-eastern suburbs slid past his window. Dimly aware of the stop at Frankfurt-am-Oder, he was roused by officialdom for the customs stops on either side of the Polish border, and spent the rest of the journey staring out of the restaurant car window. A wintry sun had finally burnt off the mists, and the rye and potato fields of Prussia’s lost province stretched away into the distance, interrupted only by the occasional dirt-track or farm, the odd meandering stream.
The train rolled into Posen – or Poznan, as the plethora of signs proclaimed – a few minutes early. Russell took a taxi from the forecourt to the Bazar Hotel, where he’d booked a room. ‘Just the one night?’ the receptionist asked incredulously, as if the charms of Posen required weeks to appreciate. ‘Just the one,’ Russell agreed, and was shown rather begrudgingly to an adequate first floor room. There were only a few hours of light remaining, so he went straight back out again, pausing only to examine the display in the lobby, which documented the hotel’s pre-war role as a hotbed of Polish nationalism.
The town, though pleasant enough, suffered by comparison to Cracow. Its churches were not quite as beautiful, its streets not quite as charming, its square – the Stary Rynek – not quite as grand. As he wandered somewhat aimlessly around the city centre he noticed several faded German names on streets and buildings, but the German language was still audible on those same streets, along with Polish and Yiddish. It would take another war, Russell thought, before the winners could take it all.
He dined in the hotel restaurant. The veal escalopes – zrazikis – were excellent, the wine surprisingly good, but neither could dispel his deepening depression. It wasn’t just McKinley and Wiesner – he had hardly spent two waking hours with Effi since Rügen Island, and his contact with Paul since returning from England had consisted of two friendly, but brief, telephone conversations. And here he was in the gloom of Posen, waiting for Shchepkin to go through one of his cloak-and-dagger mating rituals.
He went back to his room, hoping against hope for a simple knock on the door. An hour or so later he got one, but it wasn’t Shchepkin. A short woman in a long skirt and blouse brushed past him and into the room before he could say anything.
‘Close the door, Mr Russell,’ she said. The language was definitely German, but not a sort that Russell had ever heard before.
The woman had roughly-parted blonde hair which just failed to reach her shoulders, blue-eyes, thin lips and heavily-accented cheekbones. In another life she might have been attractive, Russell thought, but in this one she wasn’t really trying. She wore no make-up, and her cream-coloured blouse badly needed a wash. He now remembered seeing her on the other side of the dining-room, arguing with one of the waiters.
‘John Russell,’ she said, as much to herself as him. ‘I am your new contact.’
‘Contact with whom?’ he asked. It was hard to imagine her as a Gestapo agent provocateur, but how would he know?
‘My name is Irina Borskaya,’ she said patiently. ‘I am here in place of Comrade Shchepkin,’ she added, glancing round the room and finding a chair.
‘Has something happened to Comrade Shchepkin?’ Russell asked.
‘He has been re-assigned. Now, please sit down Mr Russell. And let us get down to business.’
Russell did as he was told, feeling a pang of sorrow for Shchepkin. He could see him on the Cracow citadel – ‘You really should wear a hat!’ But why assume the worst? Perhaps he really had been re-assigned. Stalin couldn’t kill everyone who’d ever worked for him.
He pulled the latest article out of his briefcase and handed it over. She took a cursory glance at the first page and placed it in her lap. ‘You were asked to talk to armament workers.’
He recounted his visit to the Greiner Works, the conversations he had had with Labour Front officials and ordinary workers. She listened intently but took no notes. ‘Is that all?’ she said when he was finished.
‘For the moment,’ Russell said. ‘Where is your accent from?’ he asked, partly out of curiosity, partly to take her mind off his skimpy research.
‘I was born in Saratov,’ she said. ‘In the Volga region. Now, we have another job for you…’
Here it comes, Russell thought – the point of the whole exercise.
‘We need you to collect some papers from one of our people and bring them out of Germany.’
Not a chance, Russell thought. But refuse nicely, he told himself. ‘What sort of papers?’ he asked.
‘That doesn’t concern you.’
‘It does if you expect me to bring them out.’
‘They are naval plans,’ she said grudgingly.
Russell burst out laughing.
‘What is so amusing?’ she asked angrily.
He told her about Shchepkin’s comment in Danzig – ‘None of those naval plans Sherlock Holmes is always having to recover.’
She wasn’t amused. ‘This is not a Sherlock Holmes story – the comrade in Kiel has risked his life to get a copy of the German fleet dispositions for the Baltic.’
‘Then why not risk it again to bring them out?’ Russell argued.
‘His life is worth something,’ she said tartly, and quickly realized that she had gone too far. ‘He is too valuable to risk,’ she amended, as if he might have mistaken her meaning.
‘Then why not send someone else in to get them?’
‘Because we have you,’ she said. ‘And we have already established that you can come and go without arousing suspicion. Were you searched on your way here, or on your way to Cracow?’
‘No, but I wasn’t carrying anything.’
She put the article on the carpet beside her chair, crossed her legs and smoothed out the skirt on her thigh with her left hand. ‘Mr Russell, are you refusing to help us with this?’
‘I’m a journalist, Comrade Borskaya. Not a secret agent.’
She gave him an exasperated look, delved into her skirt pocket and brought out a rather crumpled black and white photograph. It was of him and Shchepkin, emerging from the Wawel Cathedral.
Russell looked at it and laughed.
‘You are easily amused,’ she said.
‘So they tell me. If you send that to the Gestapo I might get thrown out of Germany. If I get caught with your naval plans it’ll be the axe. Which do you think worries me more?’
‘If we send this to the Gestapo you are certain to be deported, certain to lose your son and your beautiful bourgeois girlfriend. If you do this job for us, the chances of your being caught are almost nonexistent. You will be well-paid, and you will have the satisfaction of supporting world socialism in its struggle against fascism. According to Comrade Shchepkin, that was once important to you.’
‘Once.’ The clumsiness of the approach angered him more than the blackmail itself. He got up off the bed and walked across to the window, telling himself to calm down. As he did so, an idea came to him. An idea that seemed both crazy and compelling.
Zoo Station Page 24
