Potsdam Station (44 page)

Russell refused to be deflected. ‘I would lay bets that Kazankin had orders to liquidate me the moment we reached the goods yard.’

Nikoladze’s face confirmed as much. ‘He told you that?’

‘He didn’t need to – you people don’t like loose ends. So I have nothing to gain from simply handing you the papers. On the contrary, I would simply be signing my own death warrant.’

Nikoladze snorted, and pulled himself forward. ‘You are at our mercy. You’re in no position to bargain.’

‘Maybe not,’ Russell admitted. ‘But please, Colonel, I did what you asked me to do. So give me a few minutes. Hear my proposal, and we will all get what we want.’

‘We might as well hear what he has to say,’ Shchepkin said, speaking for the first time. ‘What do we have to lose?’

For a moment Russell thought the Georgian would refuse, but he finally nodded his acquiescence.

‘You want the papers,’ Russell began, carefully marshalling his argument, ‘and you don’t want anyone else to know that you’ve got them. I want safe passage to the American zone for all of my family. My son Paul Gehrts is a prisoner-of-war – he was captured with me in Charlottenburg, but I don’t know where he was taken. His uncle Thomas Schade was in the Volkssturm, and he was last seen at Köpenick just outside Berlin, about ten days ago. He was planning to surrender, so you probably have him too. My wife you know about. She has a seven-year-old orphan with her, and a sister named Zarah Biesinger in Schmargendorf. I want them all rounded up and brought here, and then driven to the Elbe.’ He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and offered it to Nikoladze. ‘A list of the names and addresses.’

Nikoladze ignored the outstretched hand. ‘Why the American zone?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Because Zarah’s son and Thomas’s wife and daughter are already there, and I want my wife and son to be beyond your reach. If I hold the Soviet Union to ransom, I expect the NKVD to be angry with me. But I don’t see why the rest of my family should suffer for my crimes.’

‘And the rest of your proposal? I take it there’s more.’

‘My wife knows a Swedish diplomat here in Berlin. His name is Erik Aslund. He’ll travel to the Elbe with the party, see them across, and then report back to me. Once I know they’re safe, I’ll take you to the papers.’

‘And what’s to stop us killing you after that?’ Nikoladze asked. He was engaged by the logic, Russell realised, which had to be good news.

‘Self-interest, I hope. As long as I’m alive, my family will say nothing that could jeopardise my survival, but if I’m dead…’ Russell smiled. ‘But let’s not consider that possibility. Let’s be optimistic. Taking my family to the Elbe will cost you a few litres of petrol. You’ll get the papers, and no one else will know you have them. None of my family will be able to broadcast the story without incriminating me. And you’ll have a lasting hold over me. If you let me go, you can always threaten to expose my involvement in this, and have the Americans hang me for treason. Or you can make use of me. I’m a well-known journalist with a lot of contacts, and I’ve served you well in the past, as Shchepkin here can testify.’

Nikoladze considered. ‘That is all very clever,’ he said slowly, ‘but direct persuasion still looks the simpler option. And quicker. Or am I missing something?’ He glanced at Shchepkin as he said it, and seemed to be challenging them both.

Shchepkin responded. ‘It would be simpler, but also more risky. The story would probably get out,’ he cautioned. ‘If the man died his family would talk, and even if he only disappeared from view, well… And we have no idea who else he might have told, or whether he’s left a written account with anyone. He’s had several days to set this up. If we do things his way, we still get the papers, and a valuable asset in the Western zone.’

Russell listened gratefully, wondering why he hadn’t thought to take such precautionary measures, and marvelling at Shchepkin’s quick-wittedness. Here was an asset, the Russian had to be thinking, that only he could control. They would save each other’s lives.

Nikoladze was ready to swallow his anger, at least for now. ‘Give me the list,’ he demanded.

Russell handed it over. The Georgian, for reasons best known to himself, had decided to go along with him. Maybe the NKVD torturers were all fully booked, or he was just a sweetheart in disguise. He might have bought the argument, or at least some of it. Whatever the reasons, he could always change his mind. When he got his hands on the papers, he would still have his hands on Russell.

But the others would be free.

To Russell, the rest of the day seemed endless. He spent several hours in the basement canteen, where all his attempts at idle conversation were either rebuffed or ignored. Back in his room he paced and fretted, or lay on the camp bed and stared at the ceiling. He could sometimes hear guns in the distance, but the building’s buzz of activity usually drowned them out.

He eventually fell asleep, and only awoke when sunlight glinted through the boarded-up window. The canteen provided bread and black tea, and a visit to the nearby toilets turned up a bucket of lukewarm water and a paper-thin sliver of soap. The subsequent wash raised his spirits a little, but climbing back into filthy clothes dropped them right back down. He was on his way upstairs when a young NKVD officer intercepted him. ‘The people on your list are being brought here,’ the young man said. ‘They will wait in your room.’

‘All of them?’ Russell asked, as much in hope as expectation.

‘Of course,’ the young man answered, as if partial success was an unfamiliar concept. A riotous succession of hurrahs erupted somewhere upstairs, followed by the clinking of glasses. They both looked upwards, and Russell asked if the war was over.

‘No, but Hitler is dead. He shot himself yesterday. Like the coward he was.’

The NKVD man carried on down the stairs, leaving Russell to carry on up. Hitler’s death seemed almost irrelevant, like a debt already paid.

He let himself into his room and looked around it. An anteroom, he thought. A place between war and peace.

An hour or so later the door swung open, and a soldier delivered Thomas. After exchanging rueful smiles, they embraced like long-lost brothers. ‘So what’s this all about?’ Thomas asked eventually. ‘What have I done to deserve Stalin’s mercy?’

Russell told him who else was coming, and where they were all going.

Thomas’s face lit up. ‘Paul’s all right? And Effi as well?’

‘So the Russians tell me.’

Thomas leaned back against the wall, a smile of wonderment on his face. ‘And how have you managed this miracle?’

‘I did a deal with the Russians,’ Russell said simply. ‘A favour for a favour.’

‘And what sort of favour are they getting from you? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘A big one, I think,’ Russell told him, ‘but I don’t really know.’ The papers had excited Varennikov but, as the young man himself had pointed out, the scientists who mattered were all back home in their nice warm labs. ‘And better you didn’t,’ he added, in answer to Thomas’s second question. ‘But there is one thing. It’s part of the deal that I follow on later – in a few days, I hope, but you never know. In case I don’t, well, I saw Paul two days ago, and he seems in bad shape. Not physically…’

‘You don’t have to ask,’ Thomas interrupted. There were footsteps on the stairs.

It was the boy in question. He looked tired, but the haunted look had gone. Russell remembered Armistice Day in 1918, and wondered if Paul was feeling something similar. The reaction came later, of course, but the sense of release was wonderful while it lasted.

Paul was less than happy when he heard the arrangements. He wasn’t sure why, but just driving away didn’t feel right. And when he heard that his father was staying, he insisted on doing the same.

‘I need you to look after Effi and Rosa,’ Russell pleaded hopefully.

‘Effi’s more than capable of looking after herself,’ his son retorted, something that Russell knew only too well, but which he hadn’t expected from Paul. Three years ago his son would have been flattered by the offer of adult responsibilities, but he was an adult now, and only the truth would do.

‘Then do it for me,’ he begged. ‘If I end up sacrificing myself for the family, then at least let it be the
whole
damn family.’

‘What’s left of it,’ Paul said bitterly. ‘But all right. I’ll go.’

‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ Russell said, realising with a shock that her death had never been mentioned. ‘I only found out a couple of days ago. It hasn’t had time to sink in.’

‘It seems years ago,’ was all Paul would say.

‘And your sisters?’

‘With Grandpa and Grandma. I haven’t seen them for a couple of years.’

‘That won’t matter,’ his uncle told him, ‘they’re still your sisters.’ There was a sad inflection to Thomas’s tone, and Russell realised he was thinking of his own lost son.

The others arrived an hour or so later. Effi threw herself into Russell’s arms, and Rosa’s offer of a hand made Thomas smile again. Zarah looked like she’d been through hell, but was trying not to spoil the party. ‘Later,’ Effi told Russell, when he silently asked what was wrong with her sister.

He told Effi he wouldn’t be coming with them, which was no surprise but still felt like a blow. ‘But you will,’ she insisted.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Or maybe the next day. What’s a few days after more than three years.’

‘Several lifetimes,’ she told him. ‘You should know that by now.’

And then the NKVD troops were at the door, with orders to escort them downstairs. Outside, a line of four jeeps bearing Soviet stars were filling the street with fumes. Nikoladze was there, along with a tall blond Swede whom Effi introduced as Erik Aslund. She had already told Russell about their Jew-smuggling activities, and seeing them together he felt an absurd twinge of jealousy.

He embraced his family one by one, and watched them climb aboard two of the jeeps. A few brave smiles and away they went, roaring down Immelmann Strasse past the blackened hull of a burnt-out German tank.

He turned to go back in. Nikoladze was still on the steps, talking to a Red Army general, and the glance he directed in Russell’s direction seemed anything but friendly. The convoy of jeeps headed west, through Friedenau and Steglitz on the old Potsdam road, the sounds of the battle still consuming Berlin slowly fading to silence. They drove through a landscape of ruins, peopled by shuffling ghosts, smelling of death. In a couple of places Red Army soldiers stood sentry while gangs of German civilians cleared away rubble and gathered in corpses. In a bombed-out space beside one house two piles awaited incineration, one composed of humans, the other of furry pets.

White flags flew from many surviving buildings, red from more than a few. All of the swastikas had vanished, but exhortatory posters still clung to walls, some flapping wildly in the breeze of their passage, as if keen to detach themselves. A dawn had followed the darkest hour, but not the one intended.

And then they were leaving Berlin, and the smell of death wafted away, and the spring seemed suddenly real. A hot sun was beating down, turning dew into mist across the emerald fields.

In the third jeep, Paul found himself thinking about the previous spring, when he and Gerhart had joined the regular army. He could see his friend now, jumping down from the train, and staring entranced at the vast Russian plain that stretched away before them. He could see the surprise on Neumaier’s face as the bullets took him, see the love in Werner’s face when he spoke of his mother and sister.

But it wasn’t painful any more, not for him. It was only painful for the other Paul, the one he had left behind. There was no longer a road leading home for him.

In the jeep ahead, Zarah was crying on Effi’s shoulder. For three days and nights she had conquered the impulse to resist, and allowed the same quartet of Russian soldiers to rape her again and again. Proud of their amenable German girlfriend, the foursome had kept their other comrades at bay, and probably saved her from serious physical harm. She knew in her heart she had done the right thing, but still she couldn’t stop weeping.

They had all suffered, Effi thought. Herself least of all, or so it now seemed. She’d been in terrible danger on several occasions, but no one had ever laid a hand on her. Those first weeks back in Berlin, alone in the flat in Wedding, had been by far the worst of her life, but often, in the years that followed, she had felt more useful, more complete, more alive, than she ever had as a movie star. Saving lives certainly put acting in perspective.

And then there were Rosa, Paul and Thomas. She could only guess at the damage done to the young girl’s heart, and at the damage done to Paul’s. Thomas had been through the horrors of the First War, but even his eyes held something new, a weight of sadness that was not there before.

Yet they were the lucky ones, alive, with all their limbs and loved ones to care for.

There was an undamaged farmhouse across the field to her left, smoke drifting lazily up from its chimney. It had probably looked much the same when she and John had driven this road en route to their pre-war picnics. Not all the world was ruins.

There was much to mend, but it could be done. One heart at a time. Just as long as he came back to her.

Russell settled down to wait. It was around 120 kilometres to the Elbe – in ordinary conditions a two-hour drive each way. Add an hour for haggling, then double the lot, and perhaps the Swede would be back by nightfall.