Potsdam Station (45 page)

He wasn’t. Russell had another night of broken sleep, woken by each step on the stairs, each revving engine on the street outside. Had they run into something on the road, been ambushed by Goebbels’ ludicrous Werewolves? Had the Americans refused to take them?

When he finally awoke something seemed strange, and it took him a while to work out what it was. He couldn’t hear a war. The guns had fallen silent.

He was still digesting this when a young officer came to collect him.

Erik Aslund was downstairs in the lobby, Nikoladze waiting by the door. The Swede looked exhausted. ‘They’re across the river,’ he told Russell.

‘You’ve only just got back?’

‘There were arguments, radio messages to and fro. But we won through in the end. Frau von Freiwald – Fraulein Koenen, I should say, now that I know who she really is – she wouldn’t take no for an answer. And when the Americans found out she was a movie star, they didn’t dare refuse her. There were a lot of journalists at the American army headquarters, all looking for a story.’

Russell smiled. He wondered what the journalists would say if they knew that the price of the movie star’s freedom was a Russian atomic bomb. He thanked the Swede for all his help.

‘You’re welcome,’ Aslund said. ‘I hope we meet again, when things are more settled.’

‘I hope so too,’ Russell agreed, shaking the offered hand. He could feel Nikoladze’s impatience.

‘So where are the papers?’ the Georgian asked, with the Swede barely out of the door.

‘In Dahlem. They’re buried in my brother-in-law’s garden.’

‘They had better be,’ Nikoladze replied.

They had, Russell thought, as the two of them walked down the steps. He was beginning to wish he’d indulged Varennikov, and buried them deeper. If they got to Dahlem and found a crater in the vegetable patch, he could see Nikoladze shooting him on the spot.

Out in the street, two jeeps sandwiched a gleaming Horch 930V. Russell wondered where Nikoladze had found such a car, and then remembered that the Red Army had passed through the Babelsberg a few days earlier. The model had been a favourite with Goebbels’ movie moguls.

A Russian map of Berlin was spread across the leading jeep’s bonnet. He, Nikoladze and a Red Army lieutenant gathered round it, pinpointed their destination, and worked out the route.

‘In the front,’ Nikoladze told Russell, as they walked back towards the Horch.

Yevgeny Shchepkin was sitting in the back, wearing the usual crumpled suit and an expression to match.

Russell got in beside the young Red Army driver, who gave him a crooked grin. The lead jeep started off, small Soviet flags fluttering on the two leading corners. It was a beautiful morning, warm and sunny, with a few fluffy clouds gliding like Zeppelins across a blue sky. Two thin columns of smoke were rising to the north, but the city’s silence seemed almost uncanny, the noise of the vehicles unusually loud in the devastated streets.

They made good progress for twenty minutes, but halfway down Haupt Strasse were halted by a Red Army roadblock. The lieutenant walked back to tell Nikoladze that a sniper was being rounded up, and that they’d only be there for a few minutes. They waited in silence, Nikoladze tapping rhythms on his armrest. After almost half an hour had passed without further news, he got out of the car and strode forward in search of someone to bully.

The driver climbed out too, and lit a surreptitious cigarette. It was the first time Russell and Shchepkin had been alone together.

‘My daughter told me about your conversation,’ the Russian said.

‘Natasha? She reminded me of you.’

Shchepkin grunted. ‘Then God help her.’

‘How long were you in prison?’ Russell asked.

‘I was arrested in November.’

‘For what?’

Shchepkin shrugged. ‘I’m still not sure. My boss fell out with Comrade Beria, and I think I got caught in the crossfire. An occupational hazard, I’m afraid.’

‘Time for a change of occupation’ Russell suggested dryly.

Shchepkin smiled at that. ‘What do you think I should do? Retire to the country and raise bees like your Sherlock Holmes?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘That’s not the sort of world we live in any more.’

‘No.’ Russell agreed. He could see his own potential nemesis in the distance, walking back towards them. ‘This is Nikoladze’s world,’ he murmured, as much to himself as to the Russian.

‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Shchepkin said reprovingly. ‘He staked his life on delivering something, and you made him wait for it.’

Russell turned in his seat. ‘Is it really that bad?’

‘Oh yes.’

Not for the first time, Russell felt sorry for the Russian. And for his country.

The driver slipped back behind the wheel, smelling of cheap tobacco.

‘Do you know what’s fetching the highest prices in Berlin these days?’ Shchepkin asked in English.

Russell gave it some thought. ‘KPD membership cards,’ he suggested at last.

‘Close,’ Shchepkin admitted. ‘Jewish stars.’

Of course, Russell thought.

Nikoladze let himself into the back, and soon they were on their way. A couple of hundred metres down the road, Red Army soldiers were standing over the body of a
Hitlerjugend
, like hunters around a kill. The boy’s dead face was turned towards them. He looked about twelve.

It took them half an hour to reach Vogelsang Strasse. The Schade house was still standing, and if Russell kept his focus narrow he could see what he’d seen six years earlier, arriving for Sunday lunch with Effi. But let his eyes wander a few degrees, and the past lay around him in ruins.

Heart pounding, he led the way round to the back.

Birds were singing in the blossoming trees, and Hanna’s vegetable patch was still a mass of tangled weeds. He realised that he should have used some foliage to camouflage his excavation, which looked like a standing invitation to any passing treasure hunter. Then again, the patch of fresh earth was just the right size for a pet’s grave, and who would go digging for dead cats and dogs?

‘There?’ Nikoladze asked, his finger pointed at the obvious.

Russell nodded.

As two of the soldiers started to dig, Russell looked around the woebegone garden, remembering happier days. Hitler and the Nazis had been evil beyond imagining, but for him and his family the pre-war years had often been a wonderful time. The children growing up, Effi’s incredible success; even the Nazis had played their part, giving him and Thomas something to struggle against, a moral and political lodestone to guide their work and lives.

What would there be now? There was something irretrievably wrong with the Soviet Union, but it was so much stronger. And the Americans were reaching for a parallel empire, whether they wanted to or not. It was hard to feel good about a country that still had a segregated army.

It would be a world of lesser evils and uncertain victories, in infinite shades of grey. And after the Nazis he supposed that wasn’t so bad.

They all heard the spade strike something hard, and Nikoladze gave him a questioning look.

‘It might be Gusakovsky’s gun,’ Russell suggested. ‘I buried it with the papers.’

The soldier put his spade aside, and started sifting through the earth with his hands. He handed up the gun, and then the oilskin parcel. Nikoladze took the papers from their wrapping and quickly riffled through them. They looked stained at the edges, but otherwise undamaged, and his face seemed to sag with relief.

He strode off towards the car without a word.

Russell turned to Shchepkin, and asked him the obvious question: ‘So will the bastard let me leave?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Russian assured him. ‘We never waste an asset.’

Russell smiled. As far as he knew, the gulags were full of them. But it didn’t seem the moment to say so.

T
HE
EXTRACT
THAT
FOLLOWS
IS
FROM
THE
OPENING
CHAPTER
OF
Zoo Station
,
THE
FIRST
‘J
OHN
R
USSELL
AND
E
FFI
K
OENEN
’
NOVEL
,
SET
IN
B
ERLIN
IN
1939.

Into the blue

T
here were two hours left of 1938. In Danzig it had been snowing on and off all day, and a gang of children were enjoying a snowball fight in front of the grain warehouses which lined the old waterfront. John Russell paused to watch them for a few moments, then walked on up the cobbled street towards the blue and yellow lights.

The Sweden Bar was far from crowded, and those few faces that turned his way weren’t exactly brimming over with festive spirit. In fact, most of them looked like they’d rather be somewhere else.

It was an easy thing to want. The Christmas decorations hadn’t been removed, just allowed to drop, and now formed part of the flooring, along with patches of melting slush, floating cigarette ends and the odd broken bottle. The Bar was famous for the savagery of its international brawls, but on this particular night the various groups of Swedes, Finns and Letts seemed devoid of the energy needed to get one started. Usually a table or two of German naval ratings could be relied upon to provide the necessary spark, but the only Germans present were a couple of ageing prostitutes, and they were getting ready to leave.

Russell took a stool at the bar, bought himself a
Goldwasser
and glanced through the month-old copy of the
New York Herald Tribune
which, for some inexplicable reason, was lying there. One of his own articles was in it, a piece on German attitudes to their pets. It was accompanied by a cute-looking photograph of a Schnauser.

Seeing him reading, a solitary Swede two stools down asked him, in perfect English, if he spoke that language. Russell admitted that he did.

‘You are English!’ the Swede exclaimed, and shifted his consider-able bulk to the stool adjoining Russell’s.

Their conversation went from friendly to sentimental, and sentimental to maudlin, at what seemed like breakneck pace. Three
Goldwassers
later, the Swede was telling him that he, Lars, was not the true father of his children. Vibeke had never admitted it, but he knew it to be true.

Russell gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and Lars sunk forward, his head making a dull clunk as it made contact with the polished surface of the bar. ‘Happy New Year,’ Russell murmured. He shifted the Swede’s head slightly to ease his breathing, and got up to leave.

Outside, the sky was beginning to clear, the air almost cold enough to sober him up. An organ was playing in the Protestant Seaman’s church, nothing hymnal, just a slow lament, as if the organist was saying a personal farewell to the year gone by. It was a quarter to midnight.

Russell walked back across the city, conscious of the moisture seeping in through the holes in his shoes. The Langermarkt was full of couples, laughing and squealing as they clutched each other for balance on the slippery sidewalks.

He cut over the Breite Gasse and reached the Holzmarkt just as the bells began pealing in the New Year. The square was full of celebrating people, and an insistent hand pulled him into a circle of revellers dancing and singing in the snow. When the song ended and the circle broke up, the Polish girl on his left reached up and brushed her lips against his, eyes shining with happiness. It was, he thought, a better than expected opening to 1939.

His hotel’s reception area was deserted, and the sounds of celebration emanating from the kitchen at the back suggested the night staff were enjoying their own private party. Russell thought about making himself a hot chocolate and drying his shoes in one of the ovens, but decided against. He took his key, clambered up the stairs to the third floor, and trundled down the corridor to his room. Closing the door behind him, he became painfully aware that the occupants of the neighbouring rooms were still welcoming in the new year, a singsong on one side, floor-shaking sex on the other. He took off his sodden shoes and socks, dried his wet feet with a towel and sank back onto the vibrating bed.

There was a discreet, barely audible tap on his door.

Cursing, he levered himself off the bed and prised the door open. A man in a crumpled suit and open shirt stared back at him.

‘Mr John Russell,’ the man said in English, as if he was introducing Russell to himself. The Russian accent was slight, but unmistakable. ‘Could I talk with you for a few minutes?’