Masaryk Station (John Russell) (21 page)

‘Let’s not beat about the bush,’ Winterman said. ‘We all know that you two were enemies once, but that war is over now. And Volker here is a key player in our Czechoslovak game plan.’

Volker? Russell thought. During their last encounter in Prague, ‘Volker’ had casually ordered the shooting of ten hostages. The reason for their both being in the Czech capital had been Giminich’s command of an elaborate SD sting operation against Admiral Canaris’s Abwehr, for which Russell had then been working.

‘What do you know about Masaryk’s death?’ Winterman was asking.

‘Father or son?’ Russell asked, just to be difficult.

‘Jan Masaryk, the son,’ Winterman patiently explained. ‘He was Czech Foreign Minister until someone threw him out the window of his official residence. He was the only non-communist with a popular following in the government, so they got rid of him, and told the world he’d committed suicide.’

‘Maybe he did,’ Russell suggested, although he didn’t believe it for
a minute. ‘There wasn’t much of a future for him in a communist Czechoslovakia.’

‘He was killed,’ Winterman insisted, ‘and some of Volker’s people in Prague have been gathering the evidence. Three affidavits signed by men who were in the building at the time, or saw the crime scene straight afterwards. We need you to bring them out.’

More
déjà vu
, Russell thought. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to forge them?’ he asked.

Giminich smiled at that, but Winterman seemed faintly outraged. ‘These men have risked their lives for these documents,’ he said sternly.

‘You mean you’ve risked their lives.’

Winterman wouldn’t rise to the bait. ‘We’re not holding a gun to anyone’s head. These men are Czech patriots—they want the Russians and their commie stooges out.’

Russell felt like pointing out that the Czech communists had won post-war elections fair and square, but debating democratic values with men who had just bought an election in Italy seemed a waste of energy.

‘You’re writing a story on Czech popular culture for our magazine,’ Winterman went on.

‘Your magazine?’

‘We’ve just started one. It’s called
The Lampadary
—do you what that means?’

‘A bearer of light?’

‘That’s what we are. We’ve arranged for you to interview a filmmaker, a poet, and a conductor. All have leftist views, and the commie authorities are only too happy to have you talk to them—it’ll be great propaganda for them.’

‘And at some point during your stay,’ Giminich interjected, ‘you’ll be contacted by one of our people, and given the arrangements for collecting the affidavits.’

Russell nodded. In each of his last three trips to Prague, his life had hung by a thread, and this visit seemed set to continue the pattern. ‘And if at any point I smell a rat, then I just walk away?’

‘There’s no reason to think that any of my people in Prague have been turned,’ Giminich said.

‘But if it looks as if they have?’ Russell asked Winterman.

‘Well it obviously won’t help us to have the documents seized and you arrested, ‘Winterman conceded.

‘That’s all I wanted to hear.’

‘I’m not done. We won’t get anywhere being over-cautious. This is important stuff, worth a few risks.’

‘Why?’ Russell wasn’t to know. ‘I mean, why is so important? How will these affidavits help? I wasn’t joking when I said you might as well forge them, because the Soviets will certainly claim that you’ve done so, whether you have or not.’

Winterman smiled for the first time. ‘I can see where your reputation comes from,’ he told Russell.

‘For being perceptive?’

‘For being a pain in the arse. Now you have your instructions—Volker will fill you in on the details. We’ve found you a bed at the American Press Club—you know where that is?’

Russell nodded.

‘You’re travelling tomorrow, staying the weekend, coming back on Monday. With the affidavits. Right?’

‘I’ll do my humble best.’

Winterman wished him gone with a gesture, and went back to the file on his desk. Giminich ushered Russell down the corridor to a smaller office with the same brick view. The framed photograph of Patton on the wall was probably reversible, Russell thought. But who was on the back—Heydrich or Hitler?

‘Ironic, us meeting again like this,’ Giminich observed.

‘Ironic?’

‘Once we were enemies, and now we are on the same side,’ Giminich explained.

‘That’s tragedy, not irony,’ Russell told him. ‘Now give me the boring details—who, where, when. The usual preposterous password.’

The German’s eyes narrowed for a second, but the smile was soon back in place. The man had learned to control his temper on his journey from Nazi to American buddy. He had probably needed to.

Walking back towards the Press Club half an hour later, Russell found himself passing one of Vienna’s more famous hotels, and went in to ask whether, by some miraculous chance, the old telephone connection between Vienna and Berlin was operational again.

‘If you pick the right place,’ the desk clerk told him mysteriously. The lines were still officially out of use, but private calls could be arranged for a price.

Half an hour later Russell was ensconced in a what felt like a large cupboard somewhere deep in the bowels of the Central Exchange, twenty dollars lighter, and standing on a carpet of cigarette stubs. Someone was doing good business.

The telephone looked as if it had only just been screwed to the wall, but dialling their Berlin number elicited a ringing tone.

Rosa answered.

‘Rosa, it’s me, Papa.’ Russell still felt strange using that name, but she had settled on it, and Effi had told him not to discourage her.

‘Are you in Trieste? I didn’t know you could phone from there.’

‘I’m in Vienna. I should be home in a few days. Maybe Wednesday.’

‘Oh good. Do you want to tell Mama?’

‘Yes, sweetheart.’

He could hear them talking, then Effi came on. ‘In a few days?’

‘Yes, thank God.’

‘What changed their minds?’

‘Oh, this and that.’ He didn’t want to tell her about the bombing over the phone. ‘I’m off to Prague tomorrow, and I wanted you know that. I don’t really think there’s anything to worry about, but just in case. If by any chance I do disappear, then Shchepkin will eventually come looking. Tell him where I went, and he’ll ride to my rescue. Okay?’

‘Not really, but I’m used to it by now. I don’t suppose you’ll have time to look up Lisa’s daughter?’

‘I don’t know. Do you have an address?’

‘I’ll get it.’

He could hear them talking again, hear something drop. His home, he thought. He would soon be back there.

‘I just found it in the rubbish,’ Effi said. ‘She’s in Kolin.’

‘I remembered that.’

‘Seventeen Karlova Street.’

Russell wrote it down. ‘If I get the chance,’ he promised. ‘Is everything okay with you two?’

‘We’re fine. The sun was even shining today.’

‘I’ll see you next week. I love you.’

‘And I love you, too. I can’t wait.’

Which had to be worth more than twenty dollars, he thought. Twenty million perhaps.

His good mood lasted most of the evening, and it wasn’t until he was lying in bed at the press club that an unfortunate thought occurred to him. He was assuming that the Americans had forgiven Giminich his crimes in exchange for his anti-communist contacts in Prague, but what if the Austrian had kept his new allies in ignorance of some misdeeds? He might be worried that Russell would betray him. Giminich might even be worried enough to sabotage his own mission, and get Russell himself locked away.

His first stop in Prague, Russell decided, would be the Soviet Embassy; he needed one of those ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards that he’d mentioned to Shchepkin. When it came to the Czechoslovak police, he would just have to trust that these days they were playing by Soviet rules.

At the Rugen Island conference centre, the morning’s topic was ‘Material Incentives: For and Against.’ It was, Ströhm thought, in many ways the crucial issue. Workers were accustomed to working for money, and deciding how hard or enthusiastically they would work according to how much they were paid, so the Party couldn’t hope to do away with material incentives in the short run. But if socialism was the goal, then a start had to be made in weaning the workers away from this way of thinking—seeds had to be sown. The question was how.

No satisfactory answers emerged, but the discussion itself was fruitful, perhaps even hopeful. Which was more than could be said for the afternoon session on ‘Central Planning and the Political Process’. This seminar made Ströhm profoundly uneasy; the subheading could have been ‘Managing the People’. All in their own interest, of course. The Party always knew best, after all. It had the information, the statistics—it knew what was actually possible and what was reckless utopianism. The latter was an enduring curse—offering what couldn’t be delivered would, in the long run, lead to mass unhappiness and unrest.

The responsibility for such decisions could only be borne by the Party. An over-reliance on democratic procedures would open the door to a bourgeois resurgence, with all that that implied. The workers would again be seduced by the one big lie, that the free-for-all was fair to all, when in fact it was just a lottery, and a heavily rigged one at that.

No, they couldn’t go down that route. The Party would consult of
course—no worker’s voice would go unheard—but since it alone spoke for all, it had to have the final say. There would have to be safeguards against abuses of power, but the power itself could not be questioned. Not yet.

It was a delicate balance that had to be struck and, not surprisingly, there was some disagreement as to how that should be accomplished, with some delegates arguing for more openness inside the Party, others less inclined to see the need. Ströhm was in the former camp, and might have argued his case a trifle too forcibly, for that evening, after another sumptuous dinner, he was publicly taken to task by Hans Gerstein, one of the two Central Committee members who were attending the conference.

‘You people who spent the war at home,’ Gerstein began. ‘All very heroic, no doubt, but hardly a learning experience. While you were hiding from the Gestapo, those of us lucky enough to be in Moscow were learning how to run a country. Yet here you all are, looking down your noses at us!’

He was more than a little drunk, but Ströhm could see he meant it. ‘Surely we can talk openly among ourselves?’

‘A naive point of view, Comrade Ströhm. Any divisions weaken us. Unity is everything. We must accentuate what unites us, not what divides us.’

‘If we don’t talk things through in an open manner, how can we sure we have reached the right decisions?’

Gerstein snorted. ‘Are you no longer a Marxist-Leninist? The Party is the agency of history—its decisions have to be right.’

Ströhm refused to be cowed. ‘I expect the Yugoslav Party leaders are saying much the same thing.’

Gerstein’s face turned an angry red. ‘It takes more than a few adventurers to forge a true communist party. What have these comrades ever done but kill honest German soldiers?’

Soon after six on Saturday evening a DEFA limousine arrived to take Effi and Thomas across town for the premiere of
The Peacock’s Fan
. With Russell away, Effi had been resigned to the lack of an escort, but when Thomas let slip that Hanna was away visiting her parents, she had successfully inveigled him into the role.

On the ride he seemed quieter than usual, and it suddenly occurred to her that he might be nervous about entering the Soviet sector.

He laughed at the suggestion. ‘God, no. The day I’m frightened to go anywhere in my own city is the day I’ll leave. What gave you that idea?’

‘You haven’t said a word since we left.’

‘Oh, I suppose I haven’t. I’m sorry. Just wretched politics—I’m beginning to regret ever standing for election.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘Why spoil the evening?’ He smiled. ‘You look fantastic, by the way.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, looking down at the low-cut burgundy dress. She had taken a lot of trouble, and for one particular reason—Tulpanov had said he would be there tonight. If she knew him, and she thought she did, then he was one who might be swayed by other things than reason.

Since Tuesday, barely an hour had gone by without her picturing Eva Kempka in a prison cell. But what could she actually do? She had telephoned everyone she could think of who might know Eva, but nobody had heard anything. She had called the police in all four sectors, and made a physical nuisance of herself at the three Western sector HQs. The only reason she hadn’t made her presence felt in the Soviet sector was a realisation that she wouldn’t help Eva by sharing her fate.

Tulpanov was the only high-ranking Soviet official with whom she was on speaking terms, and somehow or other she would make him listen. As she and Thomas were shown to their seats, she looked around for the Russian, but the rows at the front, the usual preserve of Soviet officials and guests, were still largely empty.

Surveying the scene, she had to admit that the cinema looked the part. It had been one of Berlin’s seediest in the 1930s, and the last time she’d walked down Neu König Strasse it hadn’t been much more than a shell. But the Russians had restored whatever grandeur it had once possessed, and added some more of their own besides. They might have given up on making better films than the Americans, but they could still out-do them when it came to glitter and pomp.