Lehrter Station

by David Downing

  After talking to him, Russell sat in the building’s canteen with a mug of tea. There was no sign here of different grades, and the overwhelming impression was of energy and enthusiasm, of people enjoying their chance to start again. On the other hand, the two interviews he had conducted that afternoon, with men he assumed were important to the Soviets, hadn’t exactly left him feeling excited about the future.

  He was just getting up to leave when three Soviet officers entered, all wearing the light blue shoulder tabs of the NKVD. One of them was Nemedin.

  The sight of Russell induced a slight hesitation in the Georgian’s stride but no overt sign of recognition. Russell wondered whether Nemedin and his colleagues had noticed the change in atmosphere that accompanied their entrance, a sense of deflation rather than fear, as if the joy had all been sucked away.

  He had to decide about Ströhm, Russell thought, as he stood on the pavement outside. At least he had a week before his next meeting with Shchepkin. Maybe Effi’s solution was best after all – he would simply make something up, give Ströhm enough doubts to make him credible, but not enough to cause him problems.

  On impulse, he walked the final few metres down to the river. Away to his right the Jannowitz Bridge lay broken in the water, and beyond it, to the south and east, a few surviving buildings stuck out like broken teeth against the blue sky. This area between the Old City and Silesian Station had taken a dreadful hammering.

  There was only half an hour before he was due to meet Effi. Rather than trust to public transport, he set off at a brisk pace, heading up Breite Strasse towards the sad wreckage of the Schloss, silently mouthing what lines he could remember of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. He expected more of the same beyond, but the Lustgarten proved a scene of transformation. On one side a tank was being towed away by Russian horses, on the other, beneath the pocked northern facade of the Schloss, Soviet soldiers and German civilians were erecting three carousels. It was the last day of November, Russell realised – Christmas was less than four weeks away.

  The Soviets had obviously sanctioned the Christmas fair, and Russell felt almost sorry for the image that popped into his head – of Soviet Santa Clauses dropping down German chimneys and stealing the presents left under the trees.

  As on the previous occasion, his arrival at Lehrter Station coincided with that of a refugee train. This one had old carriages as well as cattle cars, but the people emerging onto the platform looked every bit as lost. Maybe the wind was blowing in a different direction, because this time he could smell the human waste.

  What was the number he’d read in that English paper? Was it six million dispossessed Germans on the move? Or seven? How many trains would that involve? And how many passengers would be carried off on boards or stretchers, bound for hospital or the waiting graves down the road?

  He aimed for the main terminal building, forcing his way through the anxious crowd. ‘Is this Berlin?’ one man asked him, as if he couldn’t believe it possible. A woman in once-expensive clothes asked directions to the Bristol Hotel, and stood there open-mouthed when he said it no longer existed. When a couple asked him for money, he gave them four cigarettes, knowing that would buy them a meal. But they looked more annoyed than grateful, as if they thought he was trying to cheat them.

  Inside the old booking hall things seemed less frantic. He was early, but Effi was already standing under the clock, which the war had stopped at half-past twelve.

  ‘I’ve already seen Lucie,’ she said. ‘She’s been through what records there are, and there’s no Otto Pappenheim. No Miriam Rosenfeld either.’

  ‘She’s busy, I take it,’ Russell said, as a single woman’s wail rose and fell in the tumult outside.

  ‘They’re saints, these people,’ Effi said. ‘And what am I doing? Acting…’

  ‘Not that they’ll let you,’ Russell ventured in mitigation.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t told you yet. The Americans have apparently decided that I’m safe to let out. Maybe your talk with the colonel did the trick.’

  ‘Good. You said this film needed making.’

  ‘I did. But when I see what’s happening here… well, I can’t see these people queuing up outside a cinema, can you?

  ‘But that…’

  ‘I know,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’m feeling useless, John. Ever since we got here.’

  He opened his mouth to disagree, but thought better of it. He understood where the feeling came from, although ‘useless’ was not the word he would have chosen for himself. Frustrated, perhaps, or uncertain. Lost, even. And the strange thing was, it had almost come as a shock. Who would have thought that peace would prove more difficult than the war? The diminished danger of a violent death was certainly to be welcomed, but what else had peace brought in its train? Chaos, hunger, and corrupted ideals. Ivan the Rapist and GI Joe the Profiteer.

  ‘We need cheering up,’ he decided. ‘How about an evening at the Honey Trap? Irma said she’d get us in.’

  * * *

  When they entered the nightclub that evening, Russell hardly recognised the place. The lighting was dimmer than before, just a few chandeliers with most of the bulbs removed, and the white tablecloths shone like dull spotlights within each circle of patrons. Tuesday’s bare brick walls were now festooned with posters from Berlin’s pre-Nazi past, along with large portraits of Churchill, Truman and Stalin.

  The place was more than full, and they were lucky to be passing a table as a couple stood up to leave. They had barely sat down when a waiter whisked away the empty glasses and demanded to know their order. A bottle of red wine set them back seven cigarettes, the waiter providing change for their pack from a tin case he carried in his inside pocket. The wine proved weak and slightly sour.

  Russell and Effi gave their fellow revellers the once over. The male clientele seemed exclusively foreign, and mostly uniformed. The nightclub was in the British Sector, but that hadn’t deterred the Americans and Russians, who were both present in large numbers. The Americans were mostly officers or NCOs, but the Russians ranged from general to private, all bedecked in medals and wearing several visible wristwatches. For the moment at least, the room seemed almost awash with international goodwill.

  Almost all of the females were German, and most of them were young. There were many low-cut tops and short skirts on display, but the fashions seemed dated to Effi, as if the girls had been raiding their mothers’ wardrobes. How many were ‘real’ prostitutes, how many girls just trying to get by? Or did that distinction no longer apply? She could see three girls happily chattering away as male hands fondled their breasts.

  Up on stage a small orchestra of middle-aged men was offering a lively mixture of jazz and popular music. They’d been playing ‘In the Mood’ when Effi and Russell arrived, but the subsequent tunes had all been around since pre-Nazis days, when these musicians had presumably learnt them. Three couples were dancing on the small floor, two gyrating wildly, the third locked together with almost ferocious insistence.

  ‘It feels like a trip in a time machine,’ Russell said between tunes.

  ‘There were German men in those days,’ Effi replied. ‘This feels…’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Humiliating.’

  ‘Yes,’ Russell agreed. There didn’t seem any point in stating the obvious, that victors had always humiliated losers, and fucking their women was just one of many means to that end. At least these women were getting something back, which was more than could be said for most of the Red Army’s victims.

  ‘Effi!’ a voice cried out behind them. It was Irma, floating on a cloud of expensive-smelling perfume. As the two women hugged, Russell grabbed an empty chair from the next table. For the next few minutes, Effi and Irma swapped tales of Barbarossa-the-musical and brought each other up to date. They were only silenced by the behaviour of a nearby couple, whose tongue-wrestling and under-table groping became impossible to ignore.

  ‘Where do they go?’ Effi asked, half amused and half
disgusted. ‘As least I assume they’re not going to do it here.’

  Irma laughed. ‘Does it shock you?’

  ‘No. Well, yes, a bit. Is it really the only way to survive?’

  ‘They think so. And to answer your question, there’s an alley out back with plenty of darkened doorways. But most girls like to take the soldiers home – if they give them family as well as sex it’s more likely to last. The parents lie there listening in the next room – they might disapprove, but they’re usually willing to share the spoils.’ She looked at her watch, an American Mickey Mouse model. ‘I’m on in half an hour; I have to get changed. How long are you staying?’

  ‘What time do the fights usually start?’ Russell asked.

  ‘Not for a couple of hours yet. The amount of water Geruschke adds, it takes most of the evening to get drunk.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him this evening.’

  ‘He’ll be around somewhere – he always is.’

  They watched her squeeze her way through the packed tables, responding to each boisterous soldier’s greeting with a wave and a smile. The band started playing ‘Sentimental Journey’.

  ‘Do you think we’ll get our seats back if we have a dance?’ Effi asked.

  Russell looked around. ‘Other people seem to,’ he said, noticing several empty tables with half-full glasses and coat-draped chairs.

  They had three dances, and were beginning to enjoy themselves when two British soldiers decided to show off their jitterbugging skills. Effi was nearly laid out by a flailing arm, and decided enough was enough. Their seats were still vacant, but another couple had colonised one side of the table – a Russian corporal and a German girl who looked about fifteen. The former asked in stilted German whether they minded sharing their table, and seemed almost ecstatic when Russell responded in Russian. He spent the next ten minutes complaining how much he missed his wife, children and village by the Volga.

  Russell sought escape with a trip to the toilet. In the corridor outside, two men were doing some kind of deal. They both gave him a quick once-over, decided he posed no threat, and went back to their business at hand. In the toilet, Russell detected marijuana among the less agreeable odours.

  Back at the table, the Russian was ready to resume his life-story. Russell could think of no polite way of stopping him, but the German girl contrived to alleviate her own boredom, and finally shut him up, by the simple expedient of inserting a hand in his trouser pocket.

  He grasped her by the arm, pulled her to her feet, and almost dragged her away towards the rear exit.

  ‘A darkened doorway,’ Effi murmured.

  ‘If they make it that far.’ As he watched them disappear, Russell had the sudden sensation that he was being watched. Turning his head, he found Rudolf Geruschke looking straight at him. The nightclub boss raised a hand by way of hello, and turned away.

  A few minutes later two glasses of bourbon were delivered to their table. Unwatered. Compliments of the boss.

  Why? Russell wondered. The man only knew him as Irma’s friend, and he didn’t seem greatly enamoured of her. And he’d never heard of Effi.

  The thought was drowned by a drum-roll, and the appearance of a nattily-dressed MC. He treated his audience to a few jokes – all either rich in sexual innuendo or dripping with amused contempt for the no longer dangerous Nazis – and introduced Irma to rapturous applause.

  A spotlight revealed her, now wrapped in a metallic-looking sheath of a dress. The voice was slightly huskier than Russell remembered, but she could still hold a note. She sang a couple of songs in English, then switched to German for a version of ‘Symphonie’ which reduced several of the Russians to tears. One more song in English had the Brits and Americans happily singing along, before she closed the set with a song that Effi knew of but hadn’t yet heard – ‘Berlin Will Rise Again’. It was stately, sad, defiant:

  Just as after the dark of night,

  The sun always laughs again,

  So the lindens will bloom along Unter den Linden,

  And Berlin will rise again.

  The lights went out as the applause began to fade. Irma had vanished when they came back on, and Rudolf Geruschke was standing by the side of the stage, deep in conversation with an American colonel.

  Kyritz Wood

  Russell left early for his trip out to Wittenau, but the buses and trains proved worse on a Saturday, and it was early afternoon before he reached the French military base. The duty officer examined his passport and found his name on the shortlist in front of him, but still felt the need to seek confirmation from a senior officer. The major who emerged reeked of Gauloises, and gave Russell a long stare before examining his documentation.

  Russell kept his temper. If they were seeking an excuse to renege on the promised visit, he wasn’t going to offer them one.

  He wondered sourly why the French were even here in Berlin. The Resistance might have covered itself in glory, but the regular army had played no significant part in the Wehrmacht’s defeat. Half the generals had supported Vichy, yet here they were claiming equal shares in the occupation.

  The major returned the passport to his subordinate, and walked back into his room without a word to Russell. A few seconds later a lieutenant appeared, and asked Russell to accompany him. They walked down a long line of wooden barracks still bearing Hitlerjugend exhortations, and into a large two-storey brick building. In an upstairs room two upright seats faced each other across an open table. The only item of wall decoration was an unframed photograph of General de Gaulle.

  After about five minutes the door swung open and a limping Uwe Kuzorra was ushered in by the same lieutenant.

  The detective showed surprise and pleasure when he saw who his visitor was. ‘John Russell,’ he said with a smile, extending his hand.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ the French lieutenant said, and left them to it.

  They sat down. Kuzorra looked in poor health, Russell thought, but then so did most Berliners. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, ‘but if we have only fifteen minutes we’d better save the small talk for later. I’m here to help, so tell me why you’ve been arrested.’

  ‘I was denounced as a former member of the SS.’

  ‘But you were never…’

  ‘Not in the usual way, no, but the reorganisations under Heydrich did confuse matters.’

  ‘But there must be colleagues out there who will testify that you were never a Nazi.’

  ‘There might be. But it wouldn’t help.’

  ‘Why not? Who denounced you?’

  ‘A man named Martin Ossietsky.’

  ‘Why? Has he got a grudge against you?’

  Kuzorra shook his head. ‘He was paid to denounce me, and if his accusations prove insufficient then there’ll be others.’

  ‘Who paid him?’

  ‘A man I was trying to bring down. His name’s Rudolf Geruschke.’

  It was Russell’s turn to be surprised. ‘The owner of the Honey Trap?’

  ‘Among other things. You’ve met him?’

  ‘In passing. I can’t say I liked him.’

  Kuzorra grimaced. ‘He’s one of the Grosschieber, the black market kingpins. And probably the worst of them – some draw the line at certain traffics, but not him.’

  Russell had a mental picture of Geruschke and the American colonel. ‘I’ve got a friend in the French press – according to his sources, it was the Americans who asked for your arrest. Could they be in bed with him?’

  Kuzorra considered. ‘It’s a thought. I’d assumed they were being overzealous, but Geruschke might have friends over there. Some Americans have got very rich here, especially in the last few months.’

  ‘I might have some pull in that direction,’ Russell told him. ‘Maybe not enough, but I can try. What about colleagues? You can’t have been handling the investigation on your own.’

  ‘It sometimes felt like it. And I don’t imagine any of my colleagues have been eager to pursue matters since my arrest –
they know a threat when they see one. I expect the investigation has been abandoned, or put off until “circumstances are more favourable”. And there’s nothing unusual about that – most black market investigations have ended the same way. They’re too damn dangerous. The black marketeers have guns to spare, but the occupation authorities won’t let us carry them.’

  ‘Okay,’ Russell agreed, ‘but it must be worth finding out whether they’ve given up on Geruschke. Are there any of your colleagues who would talk to me?’ Dallin, he knew, would need more than his and Kuzorra’s protestations of the latter’s innocence to take up the case.

  ‘Gregor would probably talk to you,’ the detective decided after some thought. ‘Gregor Jentzsch. He still has the makings of a good policeman, despite four years in the East. He works at the station on Mullerstrasse, and lives a few blocks further down – Gerichtstrasse 44.’

  ‘I’ll find him. Now what have the French told you? Have they given you a date for a hearing?’

  Kuzorra shook his head. ‘They’ve told me nothing.’

  ‘I’ll ask,’ Russell promised.

  ‘Good luck. I’m surprised you found someone to tell you I’d been arrested.’

  ‘One of your neighbours saw them take you away. I came to thank you for what you did in ’41.’

  Kuzorra grunted. ‘I was glad you got away. Every now and then I got the chance to stick a spoke in the bastards’ wheels, and nothing gave me more joy. The one great pleasure I have here is knowing that most of my fellow inmates are Nazis.’ He smiled. ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Effi took in a young Jewish girl near the end of the war, and we’ve come back to look for her father. Or find out how he died. And Miriam Rosenfeld – remember her, the girl who disappeared at Silesian Station?’