They held each other for a long time.
‘Is Esther here?’ was the first thing he asked.
‘Yes, but I think she’s gone to bed. Why? What have you found out?’
He took her into the kitchen, shut the door behind them, and told her everything he’d discovered in Breslau. ‘I’ll tell her in the morning,’ he decided. ‘There’s no point waking her now.’
‘No,’ Effi agreed. She was wondering, as Russell had, how Esther and Leon would take the news. ‘But how did you end up in Breslau?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were going to Italy.’
‘I did.’ As Effi made them tea he took her through his journey — the meetings with Slaney and Mizrachi in Vienna, and with Otto 3 and Albert Wiesner in Pontebba; welcoming Nachod and unfriendly Breslau. The only thing he omitted was the encounter with Hirth and his son. That could wait.
‘So Torsten and the children are somewhere between Breslau and here?’
‘Probably. And the chances are good they’ll pass through Berlin. I’ll leave messages at all the reception centres tomorrow. But how are you? And where’s Thomas?’
‘He’s gone to spend Christmas with Hanna and Lotte. And I’ve had some adventures of my own.’
‘The flat?’
‘Oh that. Yes, and you’ll never guess who I ran into at the Schmargendorf Housing Office.’ She told him about Jens. ‘But that wasn’t the adventure. Annaliese asked me for help — she had to collect some medicines from some black marketeers. I took your gun,’ she added, seeing the look on his face.
Should that make him feel better or worse, he wondered. He considered admonishing her for taking such risks, but knew he’d be wasting his breath.
Effi described the meeting in Teltow, her recognising the man in the lorry, and the American invasion of her Babelsberg dressing room. She explained the connections she had made, and their confirmation during her and Thomas’s Saturday night visit to the Honey Trap.
‘Thomas went to the Honey Trap?’
‘Only after I begged. He frowned a lot.’
‘I’ll bet he did.’
‘You know, this has been our month for renewing acquaintances — Jens, Albert, that Gestapo officer. And I renewed another one on your behalf — your photographer friend Zembski.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘Yes, I saw him at his office.’
‘By chance?’
‘No, didn’t I say? I thought it would be a good idea to get some pictures of Geruschke and his employees, ones we could show around. So I went to see him, and he recommended this boy — well, he’s about seventeen, I should think.’
Russell knew he shouldn’t be surprised, but he was anyway. ‘Have you had time to do any filming?’ he asked.
‘We’re nearly finished. I have to go in on Monday — they’re having us work on Christmas Eve, would you believe? — but then not again until Thursday. Dufring’s hoping to have it all wrapped up by the New Year, and then — I’ve decided — I’m going to England. To fetch Rosa,’ she added, seeing the look on his face. ‘And I think Zarah and Lothar will be coming back with us.’ She told Russell what her sister had said in the letter.
‘And Paul?’
‘She didn’t say. But what do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘About what I’ve been telling you. About Geruschke.’
‘I’ve hardly had time to take it all in. It seems like we’re in with a chance of getting something on the bastard, but only at the risk of enraging the Americans.’
‘Do we care what they think?
‘I’m afraid we have to.’ His and Shchepkin’s future — in fact all of their futures — depended on it.
‘So we just forget about him?’
‘Of course not. We can still nail him, but we have to make damn sure we don’t take the credit.’
Next morning was sunny and cold. Esther was on her way out when Russell caught up with her; he asked her to wait while he grabbed his own coat, and the two of them talked in the garden. She didn’t cry when he told her that her daughter was dead, just lowered her head with the air of someone acknowledging an obvious truth.
‘But there’s good news too,’ he told her.
Her look suggested he’d taken leave of his senses.
He told her about the children, about Torsten Resch, about the happiness Miriam had apparently known. He avoided the matter of the boy’s parentage — he wanted to talk to Torsten before spelling out what he feared. ‘The children’s names are Leon and Esther,’ he added, and that did bring tears to her eyes.
‘Where are they?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. They left Breslau about ten days ago, heading west. Today I’ll start checking the stations. We’ll find them.’
‘Will you come to the hospital and tell all this to Leon? And if Effi could come as well — she always seems to perk him up.’
Russell smiled. ‘Of course.’
An hour later the three of them were gathered around Leon Rosenfeld’s bed. He seemed better than he had a fortnight ago, and took the tidings of Miriam’s death almost as stoically as his wife had done. By contrast, the news that he had grandchildren almost had him leaping from his bed. If no one had been there to restrain him, he would soon have been scouring eastern Germany and Poland for his namesake.
After a quarter of an hour, Russell and Effi said their goodbyes. On their way out, it occurred to Russell that Erich Luders might still be in the hospital, and a query at reception elicited directions to another ward. They found him sitting up in bed.
‘They’re letting me out tomorrow,’ the young journalist told them. ‘I’ve been lucky. Compared to some, at any rate.’
‘Who do you mean?’ Russell asked.
‘Haven’t you heard? Manfred Haferkamp was killed the other day. A suicide, according to the police in the Russian zone, but there are lots of rumours. Haferkamp hated the Russians and their German supporters — Ulbricht and his gang — and he wasn’t afraid to say so.’
‘Maybe he should have been,’ Russell murmured. He felt sick inside. Had his report caused this? Hadn’t Shchepkin implied that expulsion from the Party was the worst that could happen? Or had that been wishful thinking on his own part? He wanted to talk to the Russian.
‘What’s the matter?’ Effi asked him, once they’d left the young man.
He told her.
She squeezed his arm, but didn’t try to argue him out of feeling responsible. ‘Is there anything you can do?’
‘I can tell Shchepkin…’ he began, but that was far as the thought went. What could he tell Shchepkin?
‘Perhaps he was fooled too.’
‘Perhaps,’ Russell said doubtfully.
At the front entrance a public telephone was actually working. He dialled the emergency number that Shchepkin had given him, and left the agreed message. They would meet the next morning.
Effi took his place at the phone, called Lucie at home, and dictated a list of reception points for Russell to write down. All were stations or railway yards, and Russell remembered most of them from 1941, when they’d been used to ship Jews in the other direction. He supposed he should be pleased that Torsten and the children weren’t headed for a Nazi death camp.
They went their separate ways, he to visit the railway locations, she to the local Housing Office. If the refugees reached Berlin they would need somewhere to live, preferably somewhere big enough to accommodate Esther and Leon as well. With grandparents and grandchildren both qualifying as Victims of Fascism, the man she spoke to seemed sanguine enough, though he noted that Torsten’s status might prove problematic.
Effi felt like pointing out that Torsten was also a ‘victim’, but then so, she supposed, were half the people in Europe.
For Russell, the only difficulty was getting from place to place in anything approaching a reasonable time. It all seemed to take forever, but by the end of the afternoon he had left messages and contact details at all the relevant offices. He fin
ally arrived home to find Effi ensconced in their bedroom with a bespectacled young man. The bed was covered with photographs, grainy blow-ups of faces and figures against the same desolate backdrop. ‘That’s my Gestapo killer,’ Effi said, pointing out one face. ‘And here’s the American colonel we saw with Geruschke that night.’
There were two copies of each photograph. ‘Here’s our first Otto,’ Russell said, noticing the accountant in the background of one picture. ‘And this is the man who was going to shoot me in Kyritz Wood. I can’t see his partner anywhere.’
Effi examined the face of the would-be killer, and shuddered. ‘And we have three addresses,’ she added. ‘Including my Gestapo man’s. Horst is a star.’
‘It was the irregulars who followed them home,’ the photographer admitted, but he still seemed pleased by the compliment. ‘There are eleven faces,’ he said, ‘so that’s fourteen packs.’
Russell pulled the suitcase from under the bed and counted out the cigarette packets. It was time he asked Dallin for more.
Sattler dropped them into a canvass holdall and zipped it up. ‘Let me know if you need any inside shots,’ he said. ‘But please, I’d appreciate you not mentioning my name to anyone.’
‘Geruschke makes a very bad enemy,’ Russell agreed.
‘It’s my business I’m thinking of,’ Sattler countered. ‘I’m doing a lot of work for Americans — that’s why I’m in Dahlem this afternoon — and I don’t want to upset anyone.’
‘What sort of work?’ Russell asked out of curiosity.
‘Nothing like this,’ Sattler told him, gesturing towards the display on the bed. ‘Mostly sex, but the Americans like to call it art. God knows how they won the war.’
Effi saw him downstairs to the door, then came back up. Russell was still scanning the photographs. ‘That boy’ll go far,’ he observed.
‘He will, won’t he?’
‘Germany’s future,’ Russell murmured, still looking at the pictures. ‘Now what do we do with these?’
The Tiergarten black market seemed busier than usual, probably because it was Christmas Eve. Remembering he hadn’t got a present for Effi, Russell took more interest than usual in the items for sale, but nothing leapt out at him. It was hard to take this Christmas seriously, even with a light coating of snow on the ground.
Shchepkin appeared at his shoulder with all the old magical abruptness, but seemed more agitated than usual. And when Russell started pouring out his indignation over Haferkamp’s death, the Russian just told him to get a grip. ‘We have a real problem,’ he said. ‘Nemedin is still furious with both of us. We have to fix him before he fixes us.’
‘Why?’ Russell asked. ‘I mean, why’s he furious?’
‘The farce with Schreier, his guards getting killed. He had his knuckles rapped by Beria — if it weren’t for his family connections he’d have been recalled. And he blames us. You in particular, but he’s also suspicious of me.’
‘Oh shit,’ Russell murmured.
‘Indeed.’
‘So how do we fix him? Do you have any brilliant ideas?’ Asking the question, he wondered what sort of answer he wanted to hear.
‘I hope so. While you’ve been chasing Jews I’ve been digging up incriminating material. I now have access to Nemedin’s NKVD personnel file, and such files — in case you don’t know — are very comprehensive. Your own runs to forty-five pages, and Nemedin’s is five times as long. He has, shall we say, a controversial history. He was responsible for the purging of several other communist parties during the time of the Pact, and he was involved in the execution of the Polish officer corps — almost ten thousand of them — in 1940.’
‘So the Poles in London are telling the truth.’
‘About that, yes, though not about much else. But can we concentrate on the matter in hand? There’s enough in Nemedin’s file to tell the Western allies who and what he really is, which is the first objective. I also have a photograph of Nemedin with a British agent. It was taken by our people in London, with a view to incriminating the Englishman, but we can use it the other way round, to cast doubt on Nemedin’s loyalty. I want you to deliver the file and the photograph to a British journalist named Tristram Hadleigh — do you know him?’
‘No.’ Though judging by the name he knew the type.
‘He has friends in your Secret Service, and I assume that he’ll either get the story printed or pass it on to them. If the file and the photograph are published, Nemedin’s ability to work outside the Soviet Union will be over. His face will be known, and there’ll be a huge question mark over his loyalty. At worst, he’ll be called back to Moscow; at best, Beria will have him shot for incompetence. Do I shock you? He’d like nothing better than to have me shot. And you too, after what happened with Schreier.’
‘Why do I have to deliver these things? What’s wrong with the post? Or some young German boy?’
‘They’ll be more credible coming from you. It mustn’t look like one of our schemes. You’re a journalist with a good track record here in Berlin, with ties to the old KPD. And that’s where you say you got hold of the stuff — from a disgruntled German comrade.’
‘Why not give it to the Americans? We can tell them the truth.’
‘No, it has to be the British. If the journalist passes it to the British Secret Service, Beria will hear about it from his mole in London.’
‘I’d forgotten about that. So how are you going to get the stuff to me? By post?’
‘No. You’ll have to collect it from a dead letter drop.’
‘Why?’
‘The post can’t be trusted, and the fewer people who know about this the better. I’ll be in Warsaw when you pick it up…’
‘What?’
‘Yes, I have to distance myself from this. Which will help you too — if they don’t suspect me, they won’t suspect you.’
That made a vague sort of sense, but…
‘Look, you must collect the stuff on Friday, just before dark would be best. The drop-off is a shop at Roland Ufer 17. There’s an overhead railway station just up the road. If you arrange to meet Hadleigh at the British Press Club you can take a train and hand the stuff over. As simple as that. And we’ll be rid of Nemedin, which should save both our lives.’
Put like that…
‘You’ll do it?’
‘I suppose so. How did you get hold of his personnel file?’
‘I still have a few friends from the old days, most of them clinging on with their fingertips, just like me. We help each other when we can.’
‘So what can go wrong?’ Russell asked.
Shchepkin shrugged. ‘There’s always a risk, but we really have no choice. Take a good look around before you go in.’
‘That doesn’t really answer my question.’
‘What could go wrong is your getting caught with the material, in which case we’ll both be finished. But there’s no reason why you should be. No one will know the material’s missing until the next day.’
Russell gave him a suspicious look. ‘If you’re away in Warsaw, someone else has to be involved.’
‘Of course, but you wouldn’t expect me to give you a name. You wouldn’t recognise it. And it wouldn’t help you if you did.’
Russell sighed. As usual with Shchepkin, he felt as though he’d been led deep into a maze, and left to wonder where he was. Taking ‘a good look around’ was all very well, but the same thought had probably occurred to the fool who commanded the Light Brigade. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But anything remotely suspicious, and I’m going home empty-handed. All right?’
‘Of course,’ Shchepkin said, sounding ever so slightly relieved. ‘Now I have something for you. The Jew you wanted traced.’
‘Otto Pappenheim.’
‘Yes. He did receive a transit visa, and he did cross the new border between Germany and the Soviet Union.’
‘Ah.’
‘On June 21st, 1941.’
‘The day before the invasion.’
Russell did. ‘Could you find out his age?’
‘Yes, I forgot. He was born in 1914, in Berlin. His documents claimed he was single, but many applicants lied about that. As much to themselves as to us.’
Russell grunted his agreement. If this was Rosa’s father — and the age seemed about right — then a guilty lie was possible. But the chances of tracking him down seemed almost non-existent — if this Otto wasn’t buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in western Russia, he could be more or less anywhere. If the man ever came back in search of his family, then he might well find them, but as things stood they would never find him. ‘Thanks for that,’ he told Shchepkin. As they got up to leave he remembered his original purpose. ‘So why was Haferkamp killed?’ he asked.
Shchepkin looked at him for a moment, then managed a wry smile. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Rumour says it was an accident — that some young idiot hit him once too often, and his superiors decided that a suicide was less likely to upset the German comrades. Then again, maybe someone thought they needed upsetting, and had him killed for that reason. I don’t know.’
‘So it wasn’t just my report.’
‘No,’ Shchepkin said tiredly, as if he found Russell’s concern to apportion personal responsibility more than a little exasperating. ‘Your report didn’t tell them anything new. Not about Haferkamp anyway. Now I must be off. If all goes well, we’ll meet again in a fortnight.’
He strode off, briefly raising one arm in farewell. ‘If all goes well,’ Russell murmured to himself. He could imagine the riposte on his gravestone: ‘If all had gone well, he wouldn’t be here.’
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