Masaryk Station (John Russell) (16 page)

‘Did the Fuhrer have a foreskin? But I thought you’d gone back to acting.’

‘I have. An old friend needs some help.’

‘Don’t they always? But I have to tell you, my charity work is over. Forgery is my business now. You know the one thing that Jews going to Palestine have in common?’

Effi was tempted to say ‘no foreskin’, but that was only the men.

‘Nothing, that’s what. I plan to arrive a rich man. The rest can have their
kibbutzim
—I’ll have a palatial villa halfway up the Via Dolorosa, where I can charge the Christian tourists for a drink of water. That’ll teach them to accuse us of murdering Jesus.’

Effi couldn’t help laughing.

‘So what papers does your friend need?’

‘Czechoslovakian documents. Travel permits, exit visas, that sort of thing. We don’t have anything to copy yet. Do you have anything like that?’

‘I could probably lay my hands on them. How urgent is this?’

‘It isn’t, not at the moment. But if you can start nosing around, I’ll happily give you an advance. In dollars,’ she added, taking a small wad out of her bag.

‘I’m tempted,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t take money from you.’ He
thought for a moment, and then reached out a thumb and finger to snag a couple of bills. ‘Okay, maybe a little for expenses.’

It was Monday evening before Russell got home to his hostel in Trieste, only to find he no longer had the same room. Marko, remembering his original request for one at the back, had taken the opportunity of a long-time guest’s departure, and Russell’s coincidental absence, to shift him and his few possessions. The arrival of a well-to-do fellow-Serb—a former professor of philosophy at Belgrade University, Marko informed Russell with pride—had been purely coincidental.

Russell was too tired to argue. The room turned out to be smaller, but it boasted a small balcony overlooking a sloping overgrown garden and the rising hillside beyond. And it was quieter. He stood there for a few minutes, enjoying the warm night air, glad not to be in Belgrade.

Several men had enquired after him during his time away. ‘Suspicious people,’ Marko had added, which didn’t narrow things down that much when it came to Russell’s roster of local acquaintances. They hadn’t been English or American, and the Marko’s rough descriptions didn’t match Shchepkin or Artucci. The Croats from Kozniku’s office came to mind, but Russell was hoping that they were the men he’d shopped to the Yugoslavs. Luciana would presumably know, and he was tempted to go straight to her. But that would piss off Artucci, who for all his amateur theatrics was proving surprisingly useful. So it looked as if another tryst at the deli would be required. It sounded like a New York City romance.

The bed seemed lumpier in his new room, but Russell still managed nine hours’ sleep. After a bath, he gathered his notes together and ambled down to the San Marco, stopping at one point to sniff
the sea and briefly bask in the morning sunshine. Two rolls, two coffees, and he was ready for business.

He had roughed out his newspaper article on the train back from Belgrade, and the report for Youklis would merely be an expanded version of that. It took him an hour or so to write it out, but he felt in no hurry to hand it over, or indeed to see Youklis at all. Instead he ordered another coffee, and carried it outside. On a table nearby two Russian Jews were discussing Friday’s end to the British Mandate in Palestine, and how the battle would go thereafter. Towards a Jewish victory, Russell assumed. He wondered where the British would send the newly idle troops. These days the Empire was like a body erupting in boils, so they were probably spoilt for choice.

A shadow crossed his table, and Buzz Dempsey sank into the chair beside him. ‘So this is the place where all the artists hang out,’ he drawled, shielding his eyes against the glare to look inside the café. ‘They don’t all look like faggots,’ he admitted. ‘How’s the coffee?’

‘They make it weak for the artists,’ Russell told him.

‘Yeah? Well we haven’t got time anyway. Youklis wants to see you.’

‘You’re delivering his messages now?’

Dempsey looked offended. ‘We need you, too. We’ve got another Russian defector.’

This one, as the American explained on their ride up to the villa, had turned himself in to British border guards the previous evening. He was only a lieutenant, but he seemed intelligent.

But first there was Youklis to deal with. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ was the shaven-headed CIA man’s first question.

‘In Belgrade, remember?’

‘You’ve been back almost twenty-four hours.’

‘More like twelve. And I’ve been writing my report,’ he added, passing it across.

Youklis read it through slowly, interspersing grunts of contempt
with exasperated sighs. ‘So Pograjac is out of the game,’ he said, looking up and sounding almost surprised.

‘One way or another,’ Russell agreed. ‘He’s no use to you any more.’

‘Don’t you mean “us”?’

‘I work for the CIC.’

‘We’re all in this together, you know.’

‘So I’m told. Usually when people use that phrase they actually mean the opposite.’

Youklis ignored that. ‘This guy Nedić—why the hell did he give you a list of Yugoslav commies who want to cosy up to the Soviets?’

‘Because he thought I was working for the Soviets,’ Russell explained patiently.

‘And why did he think that?’

‘Because I told him so.’

‘And where’s the list?’

‘The Yugoslavs took it. But they don’t have the code number, so it won’t mean anything to them.’

‘And we don’t have the list, so the code number’s useless.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You could have made a copy.’

‘They would have found it, and that would have made them suspicious. And according to Nedić, it was published in
Red Star
last year, so all you need to do is find the right issue.’

Youklis thought about that for a moment, and decided there wasn’t any point. ‘I can’t see what use we could make of a list like that if we had it. Commies against commies,’ he muttered, a hint of wonder in his voice.

In Youklis’s world it was Us or Them. Stalin doubtless felt the same.

‘You didn’t come back with much, did you?’ the American concluded.

‘On the contrary. You now have a good idea of what’s happening between Belgrade and Moscow, and you’ve found out that you need a replacement for Pograjac.’

‘Like I said,’ Youklis almost snarled. He rose and stomped out past the arriving Farquhar-Smith, who gave a fine impression of a matador, stepping sharply aside to let the bull pass.

‘Idiot,’ Russell muttered after the American.

‘Don’t take it too hard,’ Farquhar-Smith reassured him. ‘He’s just got the hump because his latest bunch of freedom fighters were all arrested the moment they crossed the Yugoslav border. Someone must have leaked the names on their documents.’

For a moment Russell thought he’d been rumbled, but there was only the usual well-bred smugness in the Englishman’s expression.

‘So let’s get going, for Chrissake,’ Dempsey drawled from the doorway.

The rest of the working day was devoted to Lieutenant Pyotr Druzhnykov. He was a Russian Jew, and as far as Russell could tell, a genuine defector. He clearly had little love for the Soviet system, but unlike most fake defectors, made no attempt to ingratiate himself by rubbishing it. He had, he said, left no family behind. He had decided Palestine was where he wanted to be, and was willing to buy his passage with whatever information he had that they might find useful. Only a few weeks earlier, this might have caused problems between Dempsey and Farquhar-Smith, but now that the British Mandate was ending they were back on the same page—blithely offering homes to Jews in what was, at best, a still-disputed country.

The only problem with Druzhnykov was that he worked for the Red Army catering corps. As far as Russell could tell, the best they could hope for was a new borscht recipe, but his superiors were more optimistic. ‘Strip their lives down to a daily routine, and you’ll be surprised what
you learn,’ Dempsey told Russell once they’d packed up for the day. He was probably quoting from some half-arsed training manual.

With more days like this in prospect, Russell raised the matter of his return to Berlin. ‘Youklis promised he’d consider it when I got back from Belgrade.’

‘That’s between you and him. As far as I’m concerned, we need you here.’

‘My wife needs me there.’

Dempsey grunted. ‘My wife hasn’t seen me for almost two years.’

‘How about a week’s leave?’ Russell asked.

‘Not at the moment.’

Russell took a deep breath. ‘Okay. I quit.’

‘What? You can’t.’

As far as Russell could see, the only reason he couldn’t was the certainty of MGB retribution, and Dempsey wasn’t privy to that. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m a volunteer, not a conscript.’

Dempsey looked worried for the first time. ‘Look, I can’t just let you go …’

‘Okay,’ Russell told him, ‘this is my last offer. Get my wife and daughter down here … no, better still, get them to Venice. For a long weekend. That’s not much to ask.’

Dempsey gave him a measured look. ‘No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.’

Russell held his gaze. ‘No promises, but if you get them down here I might agree to stay.’

Later, back at the hostel, he met his old room’s usurper. Signor Skerlić, as the hosteller introduced him, was middle-aged, plump, and rather too full of bonhomie to meet Russell’s expectations of a philosophy professor, but maybe exile and forced retirement had cheered the man up.

It was early afternoon when someone knocked on Effi’s apartment door. Her first thought was that Lisa had news, her second that the old man downstairs had come to complain about the noise—she had been dancing rather energetically to the band music on her radio.

What she didn’t expect was two men in suits, one with an unmistakably Slavic countenance.

His much younger companion looked and spoke German. ‘Fraulein Koenen?’

‘Yes,’ Effi said, rather than confuse them with her married name.

‘You will come with us, please.’

She felt suddenly alarmed. ‘Why?’

‘We need you to answer some questions.’

‘About what?’

‘You will be told all you need to know at the station.’ He reached out a hand for her arm. ‘Now, come.’

She shrugged him off, and took a step back, which had the unfortunate consequence of drawing them over the threshold. ‘Which station?’ she asked. ‘And where’s your authority? I’m not going anywhere without seeing some identification.’

The German pulled something from his pocket and held it in front of her face. It looked like a police card, but then everyone knew the Berlin police did what the Russians told them. This felt the way she imagined a Soviet abduction would feel, but why on earth would they abduct her? Her husband was working for them, for God’s sake.

‘I have to use the bathroom before I go anywhere,’ she said.

‘Go ahead,’ the German said, sharing a look with his Russian friend that suggested there wouldn’t be trouble.

She locked herself in, turned on the tap in the basin, and quietly opened the airing cupboard. The gun Russell had bought her during a spate of armed robberies two years earlier was on the top shelf,
wrapped in an old sweater and hopefully out of Rosa’s reach. As Effi reached up, the German shouted out that they didn’t have all day.

She took the gun in her hand, wondering if she really would fire it. She didn’t know, and there was only one way to find out.

When the German saw the weapon, his jaw almost literally dropped.

She pointed it straight at his chest, and told him she wasn’t going anywhere. ‘I don’t believe you have the authority to arrest me,’ she said. ‘If I’m wrong, I expect you’ll be back.’

The Russian appeared at the German’s shoulder, then almost gently pushed him aside. ‘Fraulein …’ he began, stepping towards her.

She depressed the barrel and pulled the trigger, shocking them all with the noise of the blast, and digging a groove in carpet and floor.

Both men had jumped, and the German looked so scared that she half-expected a spreading stain on his trousers. She took aim at the Russian.
‘Hier raus,’
she said quietly, gesturing towards the door for the Russian’s benefit.

The German looked stunned, but the Russian just shook his head and grinned. He was enjoying her performance.

There were raised voices out in the stairwell now. Any moment now someone would pluck up the courage to put a head around the door.

The Russian gave her a slight bow, and urged his partner out through the doorway, silencing the voices beyond. Once she could hear their feet on the stairs, Effi put her own head outside. ‘An accident,’ she said to the hovering neighbours, before closing the door to ward off further questions.

She was shaking a little, but considering the circumstances, that seemed appropriate. From the window she watched them cross the street, arguing as they went, then climb aboard an unmarked jeep, which the Russian drove off in characteristic fashion, swerving this way and that like a drunken runner.