Masaryk Station

A Walk into the Future

Effi arrived at the RIAS building on Winterfeldstrasse a few minutes early, which would have surprised most of her friends. She had taken the U-Bahn from Zoo, and her dress-one of her finest-had drawn several admiring glances on the train. ‘Why do you care what you look like,’ Rosa had asked with her usual maddening logic, ‘when it’s an audition for radio?’

Which was true enough, but the man conducting the audition-it was bound to be a man-wouldn’t be at the other end of a wireless connection.

His name was Alfred Henninger, and she assumed from his accent and fluency that he was an American of German descent. He was about forty, with short but untidy blond hair, and a habit of flexing his fingers as he spoke. ‘Have you done any radio?’ was his first question.

‘Never,’ Effi answered cheerfully.

‘But you’re willing?’

‘Eager, you might say. I really liked the outline and script you sent me.’

‘Oh, good. We have a name for it now: “The Islanders”. In a Soviet sea,’ he added in explanation.

‘I got it.’

‘Of course. I’m always spelling it out for the people back home-they don’t understand what it feels like here. Anyway … the part we have in mind for you is the portierfrau, Frau Dorfner. It’s not the most glamorous role, of course …’

‘It’s the one I was hoping for,’ Effi told him truthfully. Trudi Dorfner was a character that most Berliners would instantly recognise, but the writer had managed much more than a stereotype.

‘Oh excellent. Well, let’s go through to the studio and have you do a reading.’

Ensconced in front of a microphone, Effi went through one scene, with Henninger voicing the other part.

‘Excellent,’ the producer said again once they were finished. ‘You, I mean, not me. We’ll be broadcasting live, of course. You’ll be okay with that?’

‘I’ve done a lot of theatre,’ Effi assured him. The hours might be a problem-she wanted to spend more time with Rosa, not less-but there was no point in worrying about things like that until there was a contract to sign.

It had all been a little too easy, she thought. After three years of dealing with DEFA and their Soviet backers, Henninger had seemed refreshingly straightforward. Famous last words, she told herself.

She was back home just in time for the DEFA studio car-asking it to pick her up at RIAS had seemed like tempting fate, and she’d resisted the temptation to say she’d make her own way. Journeys through the Soviet sector were normally safe, although women were still sometimes assaulted by drunken Red Army soldiers, and more lasting abductions were far from unknown. Before signing up for this film, Effi and the other Western-sector-based actors working on Anna Hofmann had insisted on being chauffeured to and fro, and the Russians, rather to everyone’s surprise, had conjured up a fleet of old government cars to do the ferrying. The one she was sitting in now had probably taken Goebbels on philandering expeditions.

They reached the new Weisensee studio complex just as the cast and crew broke for lunch, and Effi spent the next hour in makeup, having the years added on. When the girl was finished, Effi smiled at herself in the mirror. This was how she had looked for long stretches of the war, when the world knew her as Erna von Freiwald, dressmaker and milliner. In those days she had applied the makeup herself.

She only had one scene to play that afternoon, but it seemed to take forever. It was with her supposed granddaughter, but the young actor playing the part just couldn’t get her lines right. The girl was nice enough, but not very talented, and Effi found herself wondering how she’d landed the part. A Party official’s daughter, or a Party official’s object of lust. She was growing as cynical as John.

She was just removing the last of her makeup when a DEFA secretary put her head around the dressing-room door, and told Effi that someone from the Soviet Propaganda Department wanted a word before she went home.

‘About what?’ she asked.

The woman shrugged. ‘He’s waiting in the manager’s office.’

‘All right. But don’t let the car leave without me.’ Effi had no idea what the Russian might want, but it was unlikely to be her autograph.

The official in question was one she hadn’t seen before, which made her doubt that he worked for the Propaganda Department-she had attended enough of their receptions over the past few years. He was a short and burly man, probably in his thirties, who quickly stood up as she entered the room, smiled as he offered his hand, and introduced himself as Victor Samoshenko.

‘So how can I help you?’ Effi asked, more abruptly than she intended.

He reached for a large envelope on the desk behind him. ‘This is the screenplay that you’ve been expecting.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’ A Walk into the Future was stencilled on the cover. ‘Is there any reason why it wasn’t sent in the usual way?’

‘Only one. Please, take a seat. Comrade Tulpanov decided that a personal delivery would give someone-myself-the opportunity to stress how important we feel this film will be, and how important your own involvement will prove in making it a success.’

Effi gave him a sceptical look. ‘I’m flattered, of course. But there’s no shortage of good actors in Berlin, so I don’t quite understand why the Minister thinks I’m indispensable.’

Samoshenko’s smile didn’t waver. ‘I think you underestimate yourself, and your, shall we say, symbolic importance to many Berliners, as both a famous film star and a heroine of the resistance.’

Her acting skills, Effi noticed, were obviously neither here nor there. ‘I’m looking forward to reading it,’ she said non-committally, picking up the envelope.

‘There are also two copies of a contract,’ the Russian continued. ‘The suggested fee is of course open to negotiation, but we think it’s generous.’ He paused, while she took a look.

It was probably the most she’d ever been offered for a film, but then Goebbels had been notoriously stingy with actresses who wouldn’t sleep with him. ‘It is,’ she agreed.

‘Payable in American dollars,’ Samoshenko added, as if that would be the clincher.

‘I’ll start reading it tonight,’ she promised. If only to discover why the film, and her participation, seemed so vital to Tulpanov’s Ministry. She started to rise.

‘One more matter,’ Samoshenko said, as she gathered up her bag.

‘Yes?’

‘Your adopted daughter, Rosa.’

There was a way in which he accented the ‘adopted’ that sent a chill through Effi’s heart. ‘Yes?’ she said again, fighting to keep the fear from her voice.

‘She has extraordinary talent.’

‘She has.’ Rosa had been compulsively drawing people and scenes since Effi had inherited her, aged eight, in the past few weeks of the war. One drawing of a Red Army soldier playing with a German child had appeared in a Soviet magazine, and become an almost iconic image of the Soviet liberation. Not in Berlin, of course, where the Soviet-built Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was known as the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist, but almost everywhere else in the civilised world. Stalin’s government had even paid her one tranche of royalties.

‘A talent that can be hardly be nurtured in Berlin today,’ Samoshenko suggested. ‘In Moscow and Leningrad we have world-famous institutes of art which could really help her development.’

Effi could hardly believe it. ‘You’re asking us to send an eleven-year-old girl off alone to a foreign country? You must know what she’s been through.’

‘Yes, of course. And no, not alone. You would be expected to accompany her-we do make films at home, you know. And your husband, too. He’s an American journalist, I understand. I’m sure there are many American papers who would welcome a fully accredited Moscow correspondent.’

Effi didn’t know what to say. She decided to be diplomatic. ‘I appreciate the offer,’ she began. ‘And I know how wonderful Soviet education is, and the value your country puts on culture. Instinct tells me she’s still too young. But I will discuss it with my husband. He’s away at the moment, but when he comes back …’

‘Of course,’ Samoshenko interrupted, still smiling. He shook her hand again, and held the door open.

The car was still waiting outside, along with the chauffeur and three impatient colleagues.

‘What was that all about?’ one of the women asked Effi.

‘My daughter,’ she said, in a tone guaranteed to deter further questions. As they drove back towards the centre of the city, she went through the conversation again in her head. There had been no threats, so why did she feel so threatened? Was it merely the thought of losing Rosa?

She told herself the whole business was more absurd than menacing. Was it possible that Tulpanov’s people didn’t know that the Berlin MGB considered John one of their own? How would they feel about the Propaganda Ministry relocating one of their people to Moscow, where the only people he could spy on was them?

No, she told herself, there was no need to worry. They needed John in Berlin, and he needed his wife and daughter with him.

That evening Effi fussed over Rosa more than usual, and received several bemused looks in return. But on the following morning she suffered a serious shock. With another afternoon start at the studio, she spent part of the morning cleaning the flat, and one of the items she tidied away was Rosa’s latest drawing book. Looking through it, Effi found several pictures of Rosa’s neighbourhood friends, most of them adolescents, three or four years older than her. Many subjects were smoking, which didn’t surprise Effi, but there were also bottles in evidence, which she doubted contained lemonade. And then there was a couple kissing, sweetly drawn. And then a girl with small pubescent breasts, sitting astride a naked boy.

‘Oh God,’ Effi said out loud.

She needed to talk to someone. Not Zarah.

She rang up Thomas, hoping he might be home. He was, and he had a couple of hours to spare before some meeting or other.

‘So what’s the emergency,’ he asked, when she let him in half an hour later.

She showed him the drawing book.

He went through the pictures one by one, shaking his head, almost in wonder, at the one which had stopped Effi in her tracks. ‘Christ, she can draw,’ he said.

‘That’s hardly the point,’ she almost snapped.

‘No, of course not. I’m sorry. But what can I say? Where did you find this-had she hidden it?’

‘On the table.’

‘So she doesn’t think she’s doing anything wrong. She’s just drawing what she sees, like she always has.’

‘So the point is more what she’s seeing.’

‘Which comes down to the company she’s keeping.’

‘I can’t keep her locked up.’

‘No, of course not. I’m sorry, Effi-I have no answers. Other than talking to her, listening to her. Maybe she needs professional help-I don’t know. She’s troubled, but with her history it would be strange if she wasn’t. And these pictures … Well, they’re full of innocence. I don’t think you should worry too much.’

‘I suppose I should talk to her about sex. When did Hanna explain it all to Lotte?’

‘I seem to remember it was when she started to menstruate. She started young.’

Effi looked down at the table, shaking her head.

‘You could tell Rosa that you’d like to meet her friends, and ask her to bring them back here.’

‘How would that help?’

‘They’d know that Rosa had adult protection. I’m not saying she needs it, but it couldn’t hurt.’

Effi nodded. ‘And it would probably be better if John was here too. I wish he’d come home. But thanks, Thomas. I think I panicked a bit when I saw the pictures, but I feel a lot better now.’ She got up. ‘Why don’t you tell me how you are while I make us some tea.’

‘Rushed off my feet,’ he told her.

‘So what happened to the easy life you were promising yourself? When the Russians bought the business you were telling us that all you wanted was a few years’ rest.’

‘Well, I had a few days off, and just when boredom was setting in an old friend suggested I got into politics.’

‘You’re loving it, aren’t you?’

He grinned. ‘A little. In reality, it’s not much different-I’ve still got Americans pulling one way, and Russians the other.’

‘How are the family? Is Lotte still working at Radio Berlin?’

‘Yes. She finally joined the KPD last week, and she’s already a hardliner.’

‘I remember when she had pictures of the Fuhrer on her bedroom walls.’

‘That’s my daughter. She obviously has a knack for being on the wrong side of history.’ He smiled. ‘But she works hard these days. I’m proud of her.’

‘And Hanna?’

‘Busy in the garden. She spent the winter planning the biggest vegetable plot in Dahlem, and now’s the time to make it happen. If you hadn’t called I’d be out there digging.’

‘No wonder you hurried over.’

‘You’ll see it all on Sunday week. If the Russians ever cut the city off we’ll all need to take turns guarding the vegetables. Day and night.’

Once Thomas had left, Effi felt relieved enough by their conversation to pick up the screenplay of A Walk into the Future. The story, as she already knew, concerned an American Zone-based company’s attempted theft of new prosthetic-limb technology from their own subsidiary in the Soviet Zone. The company was interested in making money, the subsidiary in helping those who had lost limbs in the war, and the former was eventually thwarted by two trade-union workers, a widower in the West and a widow in the East, who knew each from years before, when they worked together in the anti-fascist resistance.

As a story, Effi supposed it was just about feasible, but then so were many of those dreamed up by Goebbels’ cinematic minions. The characterisation did nothing to help-even the leads were cardboard cut-outs-and the writing in general lived down to the plot, with both leading characters prone to spout slogans as they turned their hopeful gazes towards the inevitable socialist future. All in all, the script felt as if someone had gone though it ruthlessly, excising any hint of nuance or shades of grey. Even the title was dreadful. Effi wanted no part of it.

Russell visited Father Kozniku’s office, which was close to the San Giusto cathedral, late on Friday afternoon. A buxom Italian woman with a wonderful mane of black hair-Artucci’s Luciana, presumably-showed him through to the inner sanctum, where the priest himself, a corpulent figure with a bulging red face and almost black eyes, was busy copying figures into a leather-bound ledger.

‘I’m here for the Balanchuk papers,’ Russell announced, in reply to the look of enquiry. Roman Balanchuk was the name on Palychko’s new passport.

‘You’re new,’ Kozniku noted, opening a desk drawer and removing a small sheaf of papers.

Taking the seat that hadn’t been offered, Russell reached inside his jacket for the documents Crowell had given him-the passport and fake baptismal certificate-and the wad of Benjamin Franklins.

The priest waved away the baptismal certificate-so much for Draganovic’s Catholics-only strictures-and didn’t even bother to count the hundred-dollar notes. He even looked mildly irked when Russell took time to check the details on the new Colombian visa against those on the American-forged passport. They tallied perfectly.

‘The sailing ticket will be waiting in Genoa,’ the priest said. ‘A pleasure to do business with you,’ he finished with, attention already back on his ledger.

Walking back down the hill in search for dinner, Russell found himself wishing that Shchepkin would suddenly appear at his shoulder. There was so few people who shared his utter dismay at what had happened to Europe over the past thirty years.

Russell drank too much that evening, and felt like hell when one of the Marko’s daughters woke him the following morning with news that an American soldier had come to see him. The lieutenant in question had scarcely credible news-TRUST, the optimistically acronymed Trieste United States Troops, had run out of jeeps, and Russell would have to reach Udine by other means of transport. There was a military travel pass for him, allowing free passage on all public transport inside Zone A, but once outside the Free Territory, he would have to pay his own way. This information was delivered between disapproving sniffs, as the young man circled Russell’s room, examining his belongings like a Kripo officer seeking out evidence of crimes as yet unknown. Only Effi’s publicity shot stopped him. ‘Your wife?’ he asked, as if he could hardly credit it.

‘Yes,’ Russell admitted. The word still sounded strange, though almost a year had passed since they’d finally got married. They had always said they would wait until love was the only reason, but it had been Rosa’s adoption which forced them into it. The love of a child.

The lieutenant stared at the picture once more, probably hoping to find a flaw, and then abruptly made for the door. ‘Return the pass to the Miramar HQ as soon as you get back,’ was his parting shot.

Russell lifted his battered suitcase on to the bed, and added a change of clothes to the documents in the bottom. He wasn’t that sorry about the jeep-he had always loved sitting in trains-but the journey would probably now take most of the day, and he ought to be on his way.

The walk to the station took fifteen minutes, the wait for a train considerably longer. A Venice service eventually carried him up the coast to the Italian border, where the guard demanded payment for an onward ticket to Udine. A change was required at Monfalcone, where a three-hour wait allowed him time to find a reasonable lunch. It was almost three by the time his connection-two ancient coaches behind a rusty tank locomotive-started off up the Isonzo valley, skirting the first of what soon seemed an endless series of First War cemeteries. After a lengthy stop in Gorizia, the train slowly puffed its way northwestward across the southern edge of the Alpine foothills, crossing stream after swollen stream rushing south toward the sea. Once Russell allowed himself to accept the lack of haste, he found himself enjoying the journey-after Trieste and its ludicrous politics, here was the earth reborn again, with all the bright greens of spring.

He had never been to Udine, which was larger than he’d imagined, and seemed, from the back of a cab at least, to be blessed with a wealth of interesting architecture. Another time perhaps.

The Hotel Delle Alpi was impressive, and more luxurious than he’d come to expect when American Intelligence was footing the bill. It and its proprietor, who introduced himself as Boris, and who looked more German than Italian, had survived the war apparently unscathed, a circumstance that Russell always-and, he admitted, often unfairly-considered grounds for suspicion.

Only one room had been booked for himself and Mister Balanchuk, which was much more in line with the usual stingy CIC practice. And it was barely big enough for two, let alone the three which Boris suggested. The rooms on either side were taken, but after only a brief show of annoyance, the proprietor found him two adjoining rooms farther down the corridor. Babysitting a human monster was bad enough, and Russell was damned if he was going to share a bed with him.

The hotel restaurant looked less than inspiring, but it was already growing dark outside, and he supposed he should be there when Palychko arrived. As it happened, the food was exquisite, the wine as good as any he’d drunk since pre-war days. Russell lingered over coffee and brandy, reading with one ear cocked for a vehicle outside, but when the lobby clock chimed eleven he decided to call it a day.

It felt like he’d only just closed his eyes when someone knocked on his door. ‘Your friends have arrived,’ Boris half-shouted.

Two apparent soldiers were drinking in the bar, one a CIC Major whom Russell recognised from a meeting in Salzburg a year or so earlier, the other Maksym Palychko, who was dressed as a GI corporal. He was shorter than Russell had imagined from the picture, with an unexpectedly appealing smile. The long white scar on the neck seemed the only predictable thing about him.

They all shook hands like civilised people, and the Major-whose name, Russell remembered, was Hanningham-poured Russell a generous measure of Scotch.

‘Any problems?’ Russell asked, for want of anything better.

‘None,’ the Major said cheerfully. ‘I think everyone manning that border is on our payroll.’

Palychko was looking around the empty bar.

Russell introduced himself in Russian. ‘Or would you rather use German?’ he added in that language.

‘Deutsch,’ the Ukrainian said shortly. He drained his glass. ‘It’s been a long day,’ he added.

Either Hanningham had no qualms about sharing the bed ‘big enough for three’ with Palychko, or he was too tired to care, and soon Russell was lying in his own. They met again at breakfast in the wood-panelled dining room with its distant view of the mountains, and after half an hour of Hanningham’s overweening arrogance, Russell was beginning to wonder which man was the more objectionable of the two. The mass murderer Palychko just sat admiring the view, offering the occasional friendly smile. Only when the American’s jeep had finally shrunk to a dot on the road heading north, did he offer more than a single syllable. ‘Where did you spend the war?’

Russell had no desire to tell this man his life story. ‘In the States, and then with the US Army in France and Germany, as a war correspondent.’ All of which was true enough, if hardly the complete picture. ‘How about you?’

‘In Poland and Ukraine.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Fighting communists. And losing.’

‘Any regrets?’ Russell couldn’t help asking.

‘You know who I really am, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

He offered up that smile again. ‘That’s more than I do.’

Oh shit, Russell thought, a psychopath with an identity crisis.

It must have shown on his face. ‘My father was a priest,’ Palychko said, as if by way of explanation. He looked at Russell. ‘Were you old enough to fight in the First War?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you know what men can do to each other.’

‘I still don’t why,’ Russell said, getting drawn in despite himself.

‘Neither do I. That’s what I meant-evil is a mystery, even to those who do it. Especially those.’

‘That’s why we have courts.’

Palychko shook his head. ‘Do you really believe after everything you’ve seen and heard that men are capable of judging their brothers?’

‘What’s the alternative-universal absolution?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

Moving to the lounge when two women arrived to clean the dining room, Russell found an English newspaper from several days earlier. A report from the paper’s correspondent in Palestine claimed, with what appeared good authority, that Jewish fighters had massacred nearly all the Arab inhabitants of a village named Deir Yassin. And so it went on, he thought, remembering Shchepkin’s list of villages that his current companion had laid to waste. Now even Jews were doing it.

‘Do you play chess?’ Palychko asked him. He had found the set reserved for the use of guests.

‘Badly,’ Russell said discouragingly, just as Boris appeared in the doorway.

‘I’ve just had a telephone call,’ the hotel proprietor told Russell. ‘I’m to tell you that there’s been a hold-up, and that your friend won’t be here until tomorrow morning. I assume that means you need the rooms for another night?’

Russell sighed. ‘I suppose we do.’ He explained the delay to Palychko, who seemed neither surprised nor upset.

‘So how about a game?’ he asked.

‘Why not?’

It took the Ukrainian about ten minutes to checkmate him, and the subsequent re-match was shorter still. ‘You really do play badly,’ Palychko agreed belatedly.

After finishing lunch an hour or so later, Russell was wondering what to do with the afternoon when the Ukrainian suggested a walk. ‘I’d like to find a church,’ he said, and Russell was still swallowing an unspoken gibe about the other man’s need to confess when Palychko admitted that this was indeed his intention. ‘I don’t think I’ll be running into any enemies by accident,’ he added, when Russell hesitated.

They found a church on the road heading into the centre, and the first priest they found was willing to take Palychko’s confession. Russell briefly wondered how they were going to understand each other, settled for being grateful that he wasn’t the listener, and sat in a convenient pew for twenty minutes, wondering whether confessing one’s sins really was good for the soul, or was just another way for the church to keep its flock under some sort of control.

When Palychko eventually reappeared, they decided on walking on into town. ‘I’d like to try a real Italian coffee,’ the Ukrainian told Russell, as they both surveyed the cafes spread around the central piazza. One chosen, they took a table outside, ordered espressos, and stared at the lovely old buildings around them. ‘I shall hate America,’ Palychko said, almost wistfully.

‘Then why are you going?’ Russell asked unnecessarily.

Palychko took the question seriously. ‘There are too many Europeans who want me dead. Your bosses in Washington actually want me alive, at least until I’ve told them all that I know. But I shall still hate it.’

Two young boys stopped by their table, hands outstretched, and Russell was still reaching for his pocket when Palychko handed them a small wad of lira. They gave him disbelieving looks, and ran off across the piazza exchanging joyous shrieks.

‘How much did you give them?’ Russell asked.

Palychko shrugged. ‘No idea. After we crossed the border your Major Hanningham said I needed “pocket money”, and handed it over. But what do I need it for? You people won’t let me starve.’

Back at the hotel, they took to their rooms for naps, then met again for dinner like ordinary travelling acquaintances. Russell kept waiting for the war criminal to emerge from behind the mask, but Palychko seemed set on being friendly, to Russell, the waiters, the world. Only once did he hint at something else, scanning the room and remarking with a hint of surprise: ‘Italians look like Jews, don’t they?’ I suppose that’s why they protected them from the Germans.’ Seeing Russell’s face, he smiled again. ‘I shall have to do better in America, won’t I?

They said their goodnights around ten, but Russell needed more than an hour’s reading before he dropped off, and his sleep was both fitful and dream-laden. At least the sun was shining when he woke up, and with any luck enough Italian trains were running on Sundays to see him back in Trieste that day.

The first sign that things had gone awry was the lack of response when he knocked on Palychko’s door. The second was the door not being locked, the third the sight that greeted him when he stepped inside.

The Ukrainian was laid out naked on his bed, a mass of congealed blood where his genitals had been. These were stuffed in his blood-ringed mouth, where the tongue used to be. This was lying on his stomach.

Which helped explain why Russell hadn’t heard anything.

Four Cyrillic letters had been incised in Palychko’s forehead-after death, if the lack of smudging was any guide. The language was Ukrainian, but the characters which ended the word were the same in Russian, D and A in English. He would have to look the others up, but JUDA-the Russian for Judas-seemed a pretty good bet. The Jews and the communists hadn’t caught up with Palychko, but his old buddies had.

At least the blood was almost dry-the perpetrator or perpetrators would be long gone. They hadn’t only known where to find him, but also how to reach his room without sounding an alarm, which suggested careful surveillance and planning. Someone had spilled the beans-could it have been Shchepkin? It was possible, but the Russian had a purely selfish interest in Russell’s survival, and he couldn’t have known they’d be in separate rooms. Russell could always ask him of course, but he’d never been able to tell when Shchepkin was lying.

The important question was what to do now. An immediate check-out seemed the most appealing prospect, but he knew his American superiors wouldn’t commend him for it. On the contrary. They had been using this hotel for several years, and wouldn’t want it compromised. More importantly, any sort of police involvement would open a very deep can of worms. He had to get the body out of there, and since he couldn’t carry it out into the countryside on his shoulders, he would need help. Boris would have to earn whatever it was the Americans were paying him.

He gave Palychko one last look. If anyone deserved to die like that, this man probably did, but pity welled up nevertheless. Russell stepped out into the corridor, locked the door behind him, and went in search of the hotel proprietor.

Boris, when told the unfortunate news, was surprised, annoyed and alarmed in roughly that order, but he didn’t try to walk away from the problem. His face turned white when he saw the body, but a quick retch in the water basin more or less restored him. That would have been his own reaction before the First War, Russell thought. Bodies were supposed to be in one piece.

‘Wrap him in his blanket,’ Boris said, once he’d recovered, ‘I’ll get another.’ Russell had rolled up Palychko and the bloody sheets by the time the proprietor returned with a second layer and some twine to tie up the ends. ‘I could call a staff meeting in the lounge,’ Boris suggested. ‘Once they’re all in there, we could carry him down the back stairs and out to the hotel van without being seen.’

‘You’re a natural,’ Russell told him.

And the plan worked. Fifteen long minutes later, the two of them were manhandling their huge Christmas cracker down the back stairs, out through the empty kitchens, and into the back of the van. ‘You wait in the cab,’ Boris said. ‘I’ll tell them the meeting has been cancelled.’

He was back almost instantly, and soon they were on the road heading north.

‘Where should we go?’ Boris wanted to know.

‘You must know the area. Just find us a quiet place, off the main road, where we can dump him.’

‘All right.’ A few minutes later he turned the van up a narrow side road. ‘Are we going to bury him?’

‘That sounds like a good idea.’

‘But we don’t have a spade.’

‘Then I guess we can’t. Where does this road go?’

‘To a farm eventually. There are others off to either side.’

Looking right, Russell could see smoke rising from a distant chimney. ‘Just find a place to turn around,’ he said. ‘And we’ll dump him in a ditch.’

Boris did as suggested, but after they’d unwrapped the parcel, rolled the corpse into a stream bed, and covered it with branches torn from a nearby bush, he still seemed unhappy. ‘What will the police think when they find him?’

‘If they bother to think at all … Just another victim of the war, I suppose. Aren’t the local partisans still settling scores?’

‘He doesn’t look Italian.’

‘True, but there’s nothing on the body to identify it, and no one local will know who it is.’

‘What about the blankets and sheets?’

‘Call another staff meeting and stick them in the hotel boiler.’

‘I suppose …’

‘Look, if the worst come to the worst, just say you found him in his room and brought him out here to save the hotel some bad publicity. It’s not as if you killed him. All they’ll do is slap your wrist.’

‘You don’t know our police.’

‘Maybe. If there’s any real trouble, get hold of your American friends. They’ll sort it out if they have to. He was their contraband.’

‘You’re right,’ Boris said, as they turned back on to the main road. ‘Bastard Americans.’

Russell’s second meeting with Bob Crowell was less convivial than the first. Not that Crowell said much-he just sat there looking disappointed. His colleague, a younger man named Tad Youklis with a shaven head and angry blue eyes, did all of the talking, and seemed incapable of mincing his words.

Russell had arrived at the safe house expecting another day of Kuznakov’s evasions, but the Russian plant had been spirited away over the weekend, and by now was doubtless lapping up all the wine, women and song that the CIA could deliver. And instead of Dempsey and Farquhar-Smith, he had found Crowell and Youklis lying in wait, demanding a thorough accounting of Palychko’s grisly demise.

Russell saw no reason to leave anything out, or otherwise play with the truth, which might have been a mistake.

‘What do you call a babysitter whose baby gets tortured and killed?’ Youklis asked him sarcastically.

‘I don’t know-is it a riddle?’

‘A fucking moron, that’s what.’

‘So fire me.’

Youklis gave him a contemptuous look. ‘What the hell were you doing sleeping in a separate room?’

‘Surviving, as it turned out.’

‘Here and now, that doesn’t seem like such a great outcome.’

Russell just about kept his temper. ‘May I remind you that Bob here told me there was-and I quote-“nothing dangerous” about this job. There was no mention of potential assassins. And while we’re at it-how did they know where to find him? Northern Italy’s not exactly awash with Ukrainian death squads, so my guess is that one of your people let the cat out of the bag. And probably for the best of reasons, that they didn’t enjoy seeing the bastard escape justice.’

‘It sounds like you were tempted yourself. And maybe succumbed.’

‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ Russell lied.

‘But you’re happy enough that he’s dead.’

‘I don’t consider him a great loss to humanity, no.’ Unbidden, Russell had a mental picture of Palychko’s fingers, poised above the chess board.

‘Well, he’s a real loss to our cause.’

‘You might consider what that says about us.’

Youklis flashed Russell another angry look. ‘It says that we do what we have to.’

‘Yeah? Well you don’t do it very well. And I don’t like being blamed for other people’s incompetence. Are we done here?’

‘Just about. I’m told that our people in Berlin put a high value on your services, but I’m fucked if I can see why.’

‘Then send me back there. What do you need me for here now that Kuznakov’s gone?’

‘You have a job to do in Belgrade, I believe. If you manage that better than you’ve managed this, then we’ll think about it. But I’m not making any promises.’

Russell got to his feet. Another retort came to mind, but why waste any more breath?

Monday morning in Berlin, and it looked as if spring had been deferred again. A blanket of grey cloud hung just above the rooftops, or, in many cases, the tops still awaiting new roofs. The news was just as depressing: Over the weekend the Soviets had suddenly cut off the Western sectors’ milk supply, claiming a sudden shortfall of petrol and labour. The Western authorities were told they were welcome to pick up the milk themselves, but while they scrambled to find the necessary fleet of trucks, several thousand babies were going hungry.

Few believed the Soviet excuses; for most, it was just one more twist in a growing campaign of harassment. The only real question was how long this operation would last, and how far Stalin’s cronies were willing to go.

Quite a way, Effi thought, as she waited for Eva Kempka outside the Ku’damm cafe. If a government was willing to target babies, then who could think themselves safe?

As usual on those rare occasions when she arrived earlier than the person she was meeting, Effi remembered all the times she had kept people waiting, and she resolved to do better in future. It never worked, of course.

She was almost ready to admit defeat when Eva finally arrived, out of breath and full of apologies. With a few drops of rain in the air, they took a table inside, and ordered coffees from a waitress who looked about fourteen. These days nearly everyone in Berlin seemed either too young or too old.

Eva seemed more nervous than she had at the funeral, and kept glancing at the doorway to the street. ‘A man came to see me,’ she said, as if in explanation.

‘Who?’ Effi asked. ‘What did he want?’

‘He never gave me his name, and I was too agitated to ask. He implied he was a friend of the family-Sonja’s family, I mean. But he didn’t actually say so.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That I was upsetting the family.’

‘How? What have you been doing?’

Eva stole another glance at the door. ‘Just talking to people, asking questions.’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, colleagues. I mean, I haven’t spoken to the newspapers, or anything like that.’

Effi digested this for a few moments. ‘What could you tell the newspapers, Eva? What do you know?’

‘Well, nothing much. Nothing definite anyway. But I was with her, a few days before she died.’

‘Were you in a relationship?’

Eva smiled sadly. ‘Not then. We were for a short time. Last year. Sonja was … well, she wasn’t really a lesbian. She was fed up with men, and she was willing to give it a try. That’s what she told me-almost word for word. And she did, but it didn’t feel right. Not to her.’

But it did to you, Effi surmised.

‘We stayed friends,’ Eva went on, ‘and we used to see each other every few weeks, usually somewhere like this, but she couldn’t get a babysitter that evening and so she invited me round to her apartment. And that’s when I overhead the telephone call. Someone-I don’t know who-was trying to get her to do something, and she kept trying to refuse. But whoever it was wouldn’t take no for an answer, and eventually she agreed. But I could see she was frightened, and she wouldn’t talk about it, which wasn’t like her.’

A tear was rolling down Eva’s cheek.

‘Have you told all this to anyone else?’

‘I went to the police, and spoke to a kriminalinspecktor. And he wasn’t unsympathetic. Women like me usually get very short shrift from men in uniforms-somehow they know-but this one promised to look into it. He warned me not to expect too much, which seemed fair enough. Since I didn’t have a name for the caller, or any idea what the call was about, I hadn’t really given him anywhere to start.

‘That was before the funeral. I went back to see him last Wednesday, and he more or less fobbed me off. He said he’d looked into it, and that there was nothing to suggest foul play. Which might have satisfied me, if he’d seemed like the same man I’d seen earlier. But he wasn’t. He was more aggressive and more defensive, if you know what I mean, as if dealing with me was something he resented having to do.’

‘As if it made him feel guilty?’

‘Perhaps. But maybe I was just imagining it. I mean, he was right the first time-I hadn’t given him anything, not really. And I had more or less decided to let it go, when this other man came to see me.’

‘A German, right?’

‘Well, he wasn’t Russian. And he wasn’t nasty or anything. But after he’d gone, I felt-I don’t know-I felt as if I’d been threatened, even though I hadn’t.’

Effi remembered having the same feeling after meeting the man from the Propaganda Department. And though Eva mightn’t actually know anything, someone might fear that Sonja had confided in her. But what about? And what could it matter if Sonja had killed herself? Volker Heldt had no doubts about that, and it stretched credulity to imagine him as a creature of the Russians. And even if there was something behind all this-which still seemed far from certain-there seemed no point in pursuing the matter. They couldn’t bring Sonja back, and in the unlikely event that they uncovered evidence of a crime, the likeliest sufferers would be themselves.

But how could she convince Eva of that?

‘I asked a friend-someone with access to the Russians-to see what he could find out,’ Effi said. ‘Discreetly, of course. And maybe he’ll hear something. But for the moment I really think you should let this go. Think about it, Eva. If you’re wrong, and the call you overheard had nothing to do with Sonja’s death, then making a fuss is going to hurt and anger others who loved her. And maybe that’s all the unknown man was trying to tell you. If you’re right, and there is something terrible we don’t know about, then someone might decide to really shut you up. Either way, you’ll be the loser.’

‘I know,’ Eva said, looking utterly miserable.

‘So you’ll let it alone.’

‘Yes, yes, I will. Thank you for talking to me.’

‘It’s good to see you.’

‘I’m usually better than this. But Effi, you will let me know if your friend finds anything out.’

‘Of course,’ Effi agreed, with more conviction than she felt. ‘But I’m not really expecting him to.’

They exchanged industry small talk for a few minutes, and then went their separate ways.

Walking back to her flat, Effi felt depressed by the conversation. She wasn’t convinced that there was anything suspicious about Sonja Strehl’s death, but the elements of Eva’s story-the threats on the phone, the resentful policeman, the nameless visitor who might or might be who he said he was-all seemed depressingly characteristic of the current situation.

Earlier that morning Effi had attended a farewell gathering at Charlottenburg Station. Another actor she had had known since pre-War days had been offered a part in a Hollywood movie, and had decided to take it. Two years earlier, Effi had heard the same woman scorning those who abandoned Berlin, ‘the city where real films are made’. But she, like so many others, had been worn down by the occupiers and their endless machinations against each other. It was a world in which Berliners, high and low, could only function as extras.

Watching the train steam out towards the West, Effi had felt more envious than she expected. In 1945 Russell had persuaded the Soviets to get his whole family out the city, but even then, with the streets on fire and the Russians raping anything female that moved, she had felt a strange reluctance to leave. She wasn’t sure she felt that now.

Effi wasn’t looking forward to the conversation, but after supper that evening seemed as good a time as any. ‘Before you go to bed,’ she told Rosa, once the wireless programme was over, ‘we need to have a talk.’

Rosa looked pleased. She had seemed a bit withdrawn since Effi picked her up from Zarah’s, and it wasn’t the response that Effi expected.

‘The other morning, when you were at school, I had a look through your drawing book. There were some I hadn’t seen before. Of your friends.’

‘What did you think?’ Rosa asked, clearly oblivious to the possibility that something might be wrong.

Which was encouraging. ‘I think they’re wonderful,’ Effi said, opening the book. ‘But I wanted to ask you about one of them.’ She found the drawing in question. ‘This one. What are these two doing?’

‘You know,’ Rosa said with a slight giggle.

‘I think I do, but you tell me.’

‘They’re special friends. Like you and Daddy. They touch each other a lot. Sometimes with their clothes off.’

‘And did they ask you to draw them touching each other like that?’

‘Oh no. They didn’t even know I was there. I found them like that, but they didn’t see me.’

‘I see. But why did you want to draw them?’

Rosa sighed. ‘I don’t know. They were excited. And happy. I like drawing happy people.’

Effi felt a growing sense of relief. ‘What they were doing,’ she said. ‘What Daddy and I do sometimes. It’s called sex. Or making love. There are lots of words for it.’

‘Fucking,’ Rosa suggested.

‘That’s one of them. But the important thing-one of the important things,’ Effi corrected herself, ‘is that most people like to be alone with each other when they’re doing it. It’s a private thing, just for the two of them. And they would be angry if someone drew them, or took a photograph. Do you understand?’

Rosa gave her a look. ‘I shouldn’t draw people fucking without asking them first.’

It seemed a reasonable summation, if not quite the one that Effi had hoped for.

Darkness had fallen when Strohm emerged from the Wedding U-Bahn station and crossed an eerily empty Muller Strasse. Road transport was still sparse in Berlin, particularly at this time of the day, when most transport was either public or military. At least the U-Bahn and S-Bahn were now running until late in the evening, and one of the latter’s trains pulled out of the station above him as he walked eastward along the badly damaged Lindower Strasse.

Harald Gebauer’s political office was in the old bankruptcy court building on Nettelbeck Platz, which bore the marks of both Allied bombing and Red Army shellfire, but unlike its neighbours still stood. ‘On the second floor,’ his old friend had told him on the telephone, somewhat unnecessarily-the ground floor was dark and empty, the sound of several voices coming from above. Strohm climbed the stairs to find a landing lined with chairs, three of them occupied by people waiting to see Gebauer.

When he put his head around the door to let Harald know he’d arrived, his friend raised ten fingers once, twice and-smiling and shrugging-a third time for luck. Strohm gave him a grin in return and went back out to a chair. He had known Gebauer as long as he had known anyone-they had gone on KPD youth marches together in the years before the Nazis seized power, and been members of the underground cells centred on the Stettin Station railway yards before and during the war. Since 1945, they had both held relatively important positions-Strohm in the central railway administration, Gebauer in the yards and on the Wedding District Council.

‘You look miserable,’ was Harald’s greeting forty minutes later, when the last local supplicant had disappeared down the stairs.

‘You don’t,’ Strohm told him. ‘Working every hour God sends must be good for you.’

Gebauer laughed. ‘No time to think,’ he agreed, ‘but let’s go and have a drink. I’m afraid I can only spare an hour-I’ve got paperwork here that has to be finished.’ He reached for the coat that was hanging on the back of his door, and fought his way into it. The elbows were in dire need of patching, Strohm noticed.

Downstairs at the door, they discovered it had started to rain.

‘Shit,’ Harald said with feeling. ‘My shoes leak,’ he added in explanation. ‘But what the hell.’ He led the way across the square and under the railway.

‘Are you still living on Liesen?’ Strohm asked.

‘I moved into the office. There’s an old army camp bed I can use. And it cuts down the journey to work,’ he added wryly.

‘What happened to your apartment?’

‘I let it go. There were so many families living in one room, and there I was living in three-I couldn’t justify it. And there were too many memories.’

Gebauer had lost his wife and children in an American bombing raid.

‘And, as you so rightly said,’ he continued, ‘I’m working every hour History sends. What do I need an apartment for?’

Rest, Strohm thought, but he didn’t say it. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked instead.

‘The Northener.’

‘It’s still open? I thought it had been flattened.’

‘It was. But look,’ Harald said as they turned a corner, pointing out a yellow light further down the street. ‘The wonders of reconstruction.’

It was a different building in all but name, boasting some of the old decorations. But not, Strohm noticed, the double-faced portrait which had hung on one wall, with Lenin on one side and Hitler on the other. That had presumably been taken by the Gestapo, after the raid that finally closed the bar down. Strohm had often imagined the moment when they realised that the picture was reversible, and confronted the problem of how to burn one side without harming the other.

In the old days, when most of the clientele were railwaymen, comrades, or both, finding a spot to stand had often been difficult, but tonight’s population was no more than twenty. It still made Strohm feel nostalgic though, and as Gebauer bought their beers, he found himself sifting through mostly fond memories. Life had been simpler in opposition.

Once they were seated he said as much to Gebauer, but his friend didn’t want to talk about the past. ‘Back then all we did was hide and hope; now the world is at our feet. This is a hard time, I know it is, but it’s a wonderful time as well.’ He saw the doubt in Strohm’s eyes. ‘Yes, yes, but look how well we are doing.’

‘We are?’ Strohm asked with a smile.

‘I believe so. How many are we-a few hundred, a thousand perhaps? Committed comrades, I mean. And few of us with a proper education-the Depression and the Nazis saw to that. And you remember how it was in 1945-all of us worried that we couldn’t do the job, that without the training we’d mess it all up. But we haven’t. We improvised, we learnt as we went along, and we’ve made it work. We had everything against us-even our Allies stealing half our industry-but we’ve made it work. And this is only the beginning. Anything’s possible.’

‘You really believe that?’

‘Of course.’

‘A German socialism.’

‘Eventually, yes. Oh it won’t happen overnight, but in time-why not?’

His conviction was catching. ‘Your job brings you closer to the people,’ Strohm admitted. ‘Mine … well, it’s the worst kind of politics, more about power than people.’ He shrugged. ‘And then there’s the Russians.’

‘The Russians are a pain the arse, but if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be here. We’d all be dead, most likely.

‘True.’ Strohm laughed. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘And you.’

They parted half an hour later, Gebauer shuffling wearily back towards his office, Strohm heading west for the U-Bahn. He didn’t have long to wait for a train, and as it thundered through the tunnels he sat in the almost empty carriage reflecting on the evening. He had known quite a few comrades like Harald, who thought personal life was a luxury, who wore leaky shoes and patched-up clothes, and never used an official car when walking was an option. Who were happy to live in material poverty while pursuing a richer life for all.

People like that had always been the heart and soul of the Party, and Strohm longed to believe that enough of them remained.

In Trieste it had been raining on and off for days, but the supply of defectors had dried up. The general tightening of borders was probably responsible for the shortage of genuine asylum seekers, and as for the fakes, well maybe the Soviets were waiting to see how Kuznakov fared before rolling a successor off the assembly line. Russell’s employers didn’t seem overly concerned-Dempsey and Farquhar had both taken the opportunity to visit Venice, and the local CIA contingent were busy celebrating their successful purchase of the Italian election. All of which left Russell free to pursue his story.

The business with Palychko had gone some way to confirming his major suspicions. There was always the chance that he was a one-off, but Russell doubted it-there were too many east Europeans with innocent blood on their hands who could help the Americans understand the Soviets. Other questions remained, though. Who was choosing whom to save-the intelligence people in Europe, or the government back home? And did the fact that Draganovic had an office in the Vatican mean the Pope himself had sanctioned the Rat Line? Given that the Catholic Church was still apologising for its shoddy performance in the war, a Nazi passport with a Papal signature would certainly win Russell a headline or too.

Such evidence was easier imagined than found. His employers mightn’t need him at the moment, but he doubted they’d sanction a week in Rome.

That morning a message from Artucci had been pushed under Russell’s door-‘same place, same time, FA’. He remembered the place but not the time, which seemed to sum up his sojourn in Trieste. ‘Could try harder,’ as one schoolmaster had written on his term report several aeons ago.

Eight o’clock rang a vague bell, so Russell allowed ten minutes for the walk, and duly ventured out into the rain. This had grown noticeably heavier since his last outing, beating a heavy tattoo on his umbrella as he splashed his way up the streaming cobbles. Artucci was waiting for him in the small deli-restaurant, alone as before, and apparently wearing the same set of clothes. This time there were no bones on his plate, just a pool of tomato sauce which he was sponging up with a wedge of ciabatta.

He raised the bread in greeting, and summoned the same young woman to pour Russell a drink.

‘So what do you have for me?’ Russell asked when she was gone. ‘Has Signor Kozniku been selling any more documents?’

‘He away,’ Artucci said. ‘Go to family in Verona. For holiday, he says, but Luciana say he runs out the door. Very angry with Americans, but she not know why.’

Russell could guess. Given Kozniku’s part in Palychko’s intended emigration, certain Ukrainians would be wanting their piece of flesh.

The memory brought a pang to Russell’s groin. ‘So what do you have?’ he asked Artucci, shaking his head at the offer of a cigarette.

The Italian lit his own. ‘The two Krizari I tell you about, the Croats from Osijek. They multiply.’ He smiled. ‘Is that right word?’

‘I don’t know. What do you mean?’

‘There are four now, and they all move to a house above the city. A house with no one home. An Englishman arranges it all. A man named Seddon. And soon they go to Yugoslavia.’

Russell had met Seddon, and strongly suspected he was employed by MI6. In fact, an MI5 acquaintance had more or less told him so. ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked Artucci.

‘You care?’

‘Yes, actually.’

Artucci gave him a resentful glance, as if Russell was deliberately making it difficult for him to play a Man of Mystery. ‘There is a man-another Croat-who makes papers for Kozniku. He also make paper for English and Americans, and this week the English ask him to make new paper for Yugoslavia.’

It sounded convincing. ‘Do you know when they’re crossing the border?’ Russell asked. He couldn’t see any way to use the information, but you never knew.

‘No,’ Artucci admitted. ‘But why wait when glory calls?’

‘Or Goli Otok,’ Russell said dryly. Goli Otok, or Naked Island, about a hundred miles south of Trieste, was where Tito had established a prison camp for his growing number of opponents.

Artucci laughed, displaying gold molars which Russell hadn’t known were there.

‘Can you get me all the names on the new papers?’ he asked.

‘I think so. How much you pay?’ After they’d settled on a price, the Italian pulled the list from his pocket.

At least it had stopped raining when Russell left. He walked back down the narrow streets, between lines of dripping eaves, wondering what benefits the British and Americans thought helping people like that would bring them. Whisking war criminals out of Tito’s reach would further stain the West’s reputation, and sending their descendants into Yugoslavia was just a waste of lives-the Communist regime there might be vulnerable to Soviet pressure, but not to anything the West and its sordid allies could do. Intelligence services had once seen their job as collecting intelligence, but these days they seemed to be paraphrasing Marx: ‘Spooks have hitherto interpreted the world, the point however is to change it.’

And by arming Europe’s disaffected and letting them loose on their enemies, they were only changing it for the worst. Russell was sick of the lot of them.

Outside his hostel two of Marko’s daughters were playing what looked like a Serbian version of hopscotch on the slippery paving stones. The older of the two, whose name he knew was Sasa, treated him to a big-eyed smile.

Which was something to take from the day.

It was a pleasant spring Sunday in Berlin, and after admiring Hanna’s vegetable garden the adults all sat out in the sunshine, sipping the French wine which Bill Carnforth had liberated from the PX stores. Rosa and Lothar were busy exploring the rest of the garden, and Effi found herself remembering Thomas’s children at that age, in the last couple of summers before the war. Joachim had died in Russia, but Lotte was only a few feet away, looking now very grown up.

The ten who eventually sat down to eat were likely to share an appreciation of Hanna’s cooking, but Effi was wondering how much disagreement the traditional Sunday discussion would unleash. For the moment though, it all seemed fine. Any group containing Major Bill Carnforth and one of the KPD administrators charged with making American lives difficult was likely to be fraught, but, for the moment at least, Strohm and Zarah’s boyfriend were getting on much better than their governments did.

Various aspects of Russian behaviour soon came to dominate the conversation, and Effi was impressed by Carnforth’s refusal to join the chorus of condemnation. Others were much less restrained: Thomas with a scathingly funny account of the latest events at City Hall, Annaliese with a heartfelt attack on Soviet interference in the city’s hospitals. And Effi soon found herself lamenting the recent shift by the Soviet cultural authorities, and lampooning the story of A Walk into the Future.

Strohm took it all in good spirit, although he regretted the general tendency to lump the KPD in with the Soviets, as if they were one and the same. He rhapsodised about his old friend Gebauer, and expressed his own hope that Germans would get to decide their own future.

It was left to Lotte to defend the Russians. ‘What do you expect of them?’ she asked indignantly. ‘They lost twice as many people as all the other countries put together, and they deserve all the reparations they can take. I know some of their soldiers behaved badly here in Berlin, but were they any worse than some of our soldiers in the Soviet Union? They’ve got the economy moving again in their zone, and theatres and cinemas open, and their dancers and orchestras come here to play. And the Americans-I’m sorry, Major-but your government is so aggressive. Everyone knows the Marshall Plan is just a way of getting their businesses back into eastern Europe. And it is absurd that they and the British and the French have these sectors inside the Soviet zone. They’re like three Trojan horses!’

Effi noticed Thomas smiling and shaking his head.

Bill Carnforth seemed lost for words.

‘But cutting off the milk supply?’ Zarah asked. ‘How could that be justified?’

‘It can’t,’ Strohm agreed. ‘It was a stupid thing to do. But both sides make mistakes. I think these mistakes might even be an inevitable consequence of occupying a foreign country.’ He turned to Carnforth. ‘And wouldn’t your men be happier at home.’

‘Sure they would, but how would that work?’

‘Get back to the table. Unify the country again. Demilitarise it. Make it neutral. From what I can see both you and the Russians have punished all the Germans you’re going to punish, so why not leave us to rebuild our country?’

‘It sounds like sense,’ Carnforth agreed, ‘but then I’m just a soldier.’

‘It sounds a bit ingenuous to me,’ Thomas said. ‘Gerhard, you’re a communist-don’t you believe that a country has to choose between one socio-economic system and the other? You can’t have both free enterprise and state planning, can you? It has to be one or the other-the American way or the Soviet way.’

‘I’m not convinced,’ Strohm replied. ‘I agree it looks difficult, but just because it’s never been done, doesn’t mean it never will be. If we could take the best of both systems, and get rid of the worst. A free socialist country-that’s what Marx intended.’

‘That was his dream,’ Thomas agreed. ‘And I don’t want to demonise the Russians-they have their reasons, like Lotte said.’

‘It’s all above my head,’ Annaliese said equably, ‘but I can see what Gerhard’s getting at. It just doesn’t seem the way things are going.’

‘You may be right,’ Strohm admitted, covering her hand with his own. ‘I guess we shall see.’

‘No more nasty shocks in the offing?’ Thomas asked mischievously.

Strohm smiled. ‘I only find out an hour before you do.’

Thomas had the last word. ‘Actually, we all seem to be in the same boat. Effi in her studio, Bill and his country, Gerhard and those in his party who don’t want to replicate the Soviet experience-we all want to say “thank you, but no” to the Russians and their various offers. And we’re all reluctant to do so, for fear of making things worse. It’s not a great position to be in.’

Tuesday morning at the Weisensee studio, and the director was confidently predicting that shooting would be complete by the following Monday. Such news usually provoked an end-of-term style euphoria on cast and crew, but not in this case. The on-set atmosphere was unlike any Effi had ever experienced, both regretful and resentful, as if everyone knew that they wouldn’t be making more movies like this one. Most people, Effi guessed, had either seen the script of A Walk into the Future, or something very like it.

Effi hadn’t yet responded to Victor Samoshenko, hoping, against all reasonable expectation, that he might just go away. But he was waiting for her that afternoon, wearing the same grey suit and the same fixed smile. A red enamel badge bearing a golden hammer and sickle shone on his lapel.

Effi tried to let him-and herself-down gently. ‘I just don’t feel right for the part,’ was her opening shot.

He frowned slightly, as if that didn’t make sense. ‘Surely that’s for the writer and director to know,’ he said.

‘No,’ she responded firmly. ‘They have their ideas, of course, but the actor has to decide.’ And how long would I be considered a serious actor, she thought, if I accepted propagandist rubbish like this? She had played such parts in Goebbels’ movies when the alternative was no career at all, but even if that was the choice again, she wouldn’t do it twice. She felt bad enough about doing it once.

Samoshenko wasn’t done. ‘Is there any chance you might reconsider? As a personal favour to Comrade Tulpanov?’

‘No, I’m sorry. I have the greatest respect for Comrade Tulpanov-if anyone was responsible for Berlin’s cultural re-awakening, it was him. All Berlin is in his debt,’ she added, realising as she said it that she actually meant it. But that was then. ‘It’s not just the part. I need to spend more time with my daughter, and that means I shall only accept work that really engages me.’

Samoshenko’s smile was suddenly gone. ‘I understand you’ve accepted a part in a new radio serial at the American Sector radio station.’

‘You’re misinformed. I’ve been offered a part, but I haven’t decided whether or not to accept it.’ Effi decided some annoyance was in order. ‘But how did you know about it?’

He shrugged. ‘You know what actors are like-nothing is secret for long. And you know what people will say, that you have changed sides.’

‘I didn’t know there were any sides in film-making.’

He snorted. ‘Come now, Miss Koenen, you’re a lot more intelligent than that. You must realise how this will look.’

She did. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I’ll make it very clear to anyone who’ll listen that I’m not making a political point, that if I take this part at RIAS, it will be because the hours are fewer and easier, and I’ll get to see more of my daughter.’

Samoshenko sighed. ‘Comrade Tulpanov will be very disappointed,’ he said, adding almost ruefully that he hoped there’d be no regrets, before striding out through the door.

All of which, Effi thought, was little short of ridiculous. Even Goebbels and his minions had taken no for an answer without making a song and dance about it. They wouldn’t let you work against them, but working for them hadn’t been compulsory. Why did the Russians behave like such idiots?

Samoshenko’s car was receding into the distance when she got outside, the battered studio limo waiting by the kerb to take her and her colleagues back to the British sector. The sun was shining for a change, the temperature somewhere up around twenty, and by the time they reached Carmer Strasse, she felt more at peace with the world.

Upstairs she found a letter from Russell, and put it aside to read later. Zarah, Lothar and Rosa had been to the American cartoon cinema, and were still laughing at one of the Tom and Jerry sequences. Effi usually picked Rosa up at Zarah’s, and with the children engrossed in a game, took the opportunity of her sister’s visit to bring out the offending drawing.

Zarah, rather to Effi’s surprise, wasn’t shocked. ‘You’ve talked to her?’ was all she asked.

‘Of course.’

‘And was she evasive?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Well, then. These aren’t normal times.’

‘Yes, but given her history …’

Zarah wasn’t having it. ‘We’ve all have things we’d rather forget,’ she said pointedly, as if Effi might have forgotten that her sister had been gang-raped for two days by four Red Army soldiers.

‘But Rosa was a small child,’ Effi protested.

‘I wasn’t making comparisons,’ Zarah insisted. ‘But if I was, then people say that children are more resilient.’

Effi let that go-sometimes her sister was less than helpful. ‘I’m beginning to wonder whether Berlin’s the best place for her,’ she mused out loud.

Zarah looked surprised. ‘We’re more fortunate than most.’

And they were. With Effi’s Grade A actor’s rations, Russell’s income from several sources, and Bill Carnforth’s access to US Army bounties, they could hardly be luckier. ‘I know,’ Effi said, ‘but the whole city’s on edge. It can’t help.’

‘No, I suppose not. And …’ Zarah hesitated, and then smiled. ‘I can hardly advise you to stay when I’m thinking of leaving myself.’

‘You are? What? Oh! He’s asked you to marry him!’

‘Last night.’

‘Oh Zarah!’ Effi said, flinging her arms around her sister. ‘That’s wonderful.’

‘You like him, don’t you?’

‘Haven’t I said so over and over?’

‘Yes, yes, you have.’

The penny dropped. ‘You’ll be moving to America.’

‘I suppose so. What could Bill do here? And all his family’s back there.’

‘All yours is here.’

‘There’s only you now.’ Both their parents had died two years earlier, within a week of each other. ‘And I do find it hard to imagine you being more than a few minutes away. But what can I do?’

‘Nothing. If you love him, go with him. We won’t lose touch.’ Something else occurred to Effi. ‘But you still haven’t got a divorce.’

‘Oh Jens will agree-he’ll be able to marry his schoolgirl.’

‘She’s almost as old as I am.’

‘Pah!’

‘But he won’t like losing Lothar. Have you told Lothar, by the way?’

‘Not yet.’

‘How do think he’ll react?’

‘I don’t know. He really likes Bill, and he’s crazy about all things American, but he’s always loved his father. God only knows why.’ She shook her head. ‘But there’s plenty of time. Bill doesn’t go home for another six months.’

Effi gave her another hug. She was happy for her sister, who seemed, at the second attempt, to have found a man worth having. But America! Ali Rosenthal, the young Jewish woman whom she’d lived with during the war, had moved there more than a year ago, when her husband Fritz had secured a teaching post at a southern college for negroes, and Effi still missed her. Now Zarah. As sisters they had always been what John said the English called ‘chalk and cheese’, but from childhood on the bond had been strong. Not seeing each other for six months in 1942 had been painful enough, and living an ocean apart would be … well, impossible was the word that came to Effi’s mind.

After Bill had picked up Zarah and Lothar, she and Rosa played skat for a while, but Rosa could see that she was distracted. Effi’s usual rule of thumb was to tell her daughter the truth, but in this case it didn’t seem advisable-Rosa, a child with a history of abandonment, was very fond of Zarah.

It was only when the girl was fast asleep that Effi finally opened the letter from John. Written on the previous Tuesday, it was disappointingly short, and said little of what he’d been doing. There were touches of the usual self-deprecating humour-it couldn’t have been written by anyone else-but there was something not quite right about it. About him. He wasn’t in a good place, Effi thought. He needed to come home. They both needed him to.

Russell stood in the shadows of the covered porch, staring at Kozniku’s darkened office. It was a depressingly clear night, stars twinkling in the overhead corridor of sky, an out of sight moon washing the roofs across the street with milky light.

It was almost midnight. In the last quarter-hour two prowling cats had stopped to check him out, offered plaintive meows, before padding away across the cobblestones, but the only signs of human life had been the dousing of bedroom lights.

Earlier that day Russell had visited the office, and told the voluptuous Luciana that he urgently needed to see Signor Kozniku. As he had hoped, she’d told him her boss was still away, and would be for several more days. Russell had looked suitably chagrined, vowed to return, and taken his leave.

Luciana had presumably left at the usual hour, and by this time was probably enjoying a post-coital cigarette with Artucci. Russell had a fleeting mental picture of them, and wished he hadn’t.

What was the matter with him?

It had been a bad week. He had spent most of it pursuing leads that went nowhere, asking questions of people who had no answers, no matter how emphatically they claimed they had. He had spent far too many hours sitting in the Piazza del Unita, being shat on by pigeons and watching the wretched little locomotive clank up and down the promenade with its trio of wagons. And he had endured another lengthy briefing from Youklis on his imminent trip to Belgrade. They had someone they wanted him to contact-one of Mihajlovic’s former favourites, no less-with an eye to recruitment. When Russell had suggested that a man like that would be under surveillance, the CIA man had actually looked surprised, as if something so utterly obvious hadn’t occurred to him. He had swiftly recovered himself. The potential gain was worth the potential risk, Youklis had decided out loud, as if the man he was risking was somewhere out of earshot. And when Russell had pointed that out, all he’d received were a smirk and a shrug that translated as ‘you’re expendable’.

Well, fuck them, he thought. He would go to Belgrade, and maybe-maybe-take a careful look at the man in question, but all other bets were off. And so here he was, loitering outside Kozniku’s office with felonious intent, knowing full well that such action would piss the Americans off no end.

It was foolish, and he knew it, but like Shchepkin had said, journalists and spies had the same objectives. So why not use the same sleazy methods, particularly on scum like Kozniku?

He took a deep breath, and hurried across the street. Forcing the front door was out of the question, but there was another entrance off the ginnel which burrowed between Kozniku’s building and its neighbour. Here, where the shadows were deepest, he hoped to find a way in.

The door was locked, and seemed more than a match for his shoulder. There were no windows overlooking the passage, so he risked using his flashlight, first on the keyhole and then on the foot of the door. The news was good in both cases-the key was in the lock, and the gap beneath the door looked big enough to take it. He took the folded newspaper from his inside pocket, flattened it out, and slid it through the gap. A gentle prod with the two-inch nail he had brought with him pushed the key out on to the paper, which he carefully drew back out. He couldn’t remember which detective novel had introduced him and his school friends to this trick, but in the thirty years since it was the first time he’d performed it.

He unlocked the door, slipped through, and re-locked it from the inside. It was pitch dark within, and after wasting a few seconds hoping his eyes would adjust, he resorted to the flashlight. The door in front of him was, he assumed, the one he’d noticed behind Kozniku’s left shoulder during their meeting. This was also locked, but the same tricked worked its magic. Kozniku’s office was windowless, but there was enough light seeping in through the glass panels of the connecting door for him to see his way. This door wasn’t locked, so he walked across Luciana’s office to check that the outer one was.

‘Okay,’ he murmured to himself, stepping back into Kozniku’s inner sanctum. He hesitated for a moment over whether or not he should shut the connecting door-leaving it open would give him warning of unexpected arrivals, while shutting it would make it less likely that anyone would notice his use of the flashlight. Close it, he decided-who would turn up at this time of night?

First the desk, he told himself. Then the cabinets. He had no idea what he was looking for, but hoped he would know if he saw it. The man’s absence had been too good an opportunity to miss.

Russell tried to leave each drawer as he found it, which wasn’t that difficult-Kozniku had everything arranged just so. A sudden burst of laughter in the street gave him a jolt, but also reassured him; the interior wall were clearly thin enough to prevent his being caught in the act.

Two minutes later, he heard more voices-it was like Piccadilly Circus out there. He was just thinking that they seemed surprisingly close when he picked up the sound of a turning key. A few seconds later, the light went on in Luciana’s office, and spilled through the windows of the connecting door.

Russell froze. If anyone opened that, at least he’d be standing behind it, but that was the best he could say. For the moment at least, no one in the next room seemed inclined to do so-in fact they seemed more concerned with trying to understand each other. There seemed to be three of them: Luciana, who sounded annoyed to be there, and two males, who sounded annoyed with her. They were all trying to speak English, and mostly failing in the attempt. The men had Balkan accents, and Russell recognised Serbo-Croat when they spoke to each other. Oh great, he thought. He’d spent half that morning listening to a British journalist recount, with wholly reprehensible glee, some of the worst atrocities carried out by the Ustashe. And here he was, at their mercy. Why the hell hadn’t he brought his gun with him?

Time to leave, he told himself. And quietly as a mouse. He was just about to make his move toward the back door when the connecting door swung open, and someone seemed to exhale only inches from his head. A switch clicked, flooding the office with light, but before he had time to raise a fist it clicked again, restoring the relative darkness. He heard his own sigh of relief, but by then the men were talking again.

Russell took another deep breath and tiptoed across Kozniku’s carpet to the other door. Thanking fate he hadn’t locked it, he eased the door wide enough to slip through, and was just congratulating himself on making no noise when the key fell out of the lock, and struck the corridor tiles with a loud ringing sound.

‘Paznja!’ one male voice exclaimed, and the connecting door crashed open.

Russell’s hand was already on the outside door. After almost falling through it, he accelerated down the ginnel, conscious of someone shouting, and reached the entrance just as a silhouette filled it. His momentum threw the man backwards, away from Russell’s flailing fist, and into the street. The man’s gun clattered away across the wet cobbles, and rebounded from the opposite kerb with a sharp crack.

By this time Russell was ten metres down the street, running for his life. He was just thinking that they wouldn’t risk advertise their presence by opening fire, when the first bullet ricocheted down the narrow street, striking sparks on both walls.

He swerved right down a partly-stepped passageway, almost slipping on the wet stone treads, and forced himself to slow his pace just a little. The passageway was longer than he remembered, and another bullet went singing past him just as he gained the street beyond. But no lights went on around him-the neighbourhood was taking as little notice of the odd gunshot as he himself had been doing these past two months.

He heard his pursuer cry out, but didn’t stop to find out why. There was silence for several seconds, which suggested he might have fallen, but the footsteps pursuing him soon resumed, albeit further behind. Russell raced down the long and winding street, grateful to its architect for denying the possibility of a direct shot. Another stepped passageway offered itself, and he flung himself down it, still only one slip away from disaster. It opened into a small piazza, where a group of men were sitting out under a cafe awning, playing cards. He couldn’t remember feeling so pleased to see other human beings.

A couple of gaudily made-up women gave him enquiring looks. He smiled, shook his head and hurried on across the piazza, pausing at the top of another street for a quick look back. On the far side of the square a man appeared at the bottom of the steps, one hand held behind his back, and took in the possible audience. One glance in Russell’s direction, and he withdrew back up the stairway, feet finally passing from sight.

Russell turned and walked on down toward the distant bay, still breathing heavily, and cursing his own stupidity. If the man had been a better shot, or hadn’t slipped on the steps … It was all very well risking your life for something worthwhile, but to take such a chance on a childish whim? To get away with a young man’s prank, in Trieste or anywhere else, he needed a young man’s legs.

Effi had just kissed Rosa goodnight when there was a knock at the apartment door. It was almost ten, which seemed late for a visit, so she raised her voice to ask who it was as she tried to recall where Russell had put their gun.

‘You knew me as Liesel,’ a woman said clearly.

Effi opened the door, trying to remember someone of that name. Seeing the dark, petite, well-dressed woman in her late thirties who stood on the threshold, her first reaction was almost panicky-had some unknown relation of Rosa come to claim her? But then she recognised the face. Liesel had been one of the Jewish fugitives whom she and Ali had harboured for a night or two while Erik Aslund arranged their escape to Sweden. One of the more self-possessed, Effi remembered, a woman who had known enough to be terrified, but who was damned if she was going to give in to it. Like all the others, she had come and gone without leaving a physical trace, but Effi remembered liking her more than many.

‘I’m Lisa now,’ the woman said after Effi had invited her in. ‘Lisa Sundgren. I live in America, in Minneapolis.’

‘My geography’s terrible,’ Effi said, reaching for the kettle.

‘I had no idea where it was either,’ Lisa admitted. ‘It’s in the middle. They call it the Midwest but it’s closer to the east coast.’

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘I came to thank you.’

‘You didn’t come all this way to do that.’

‘Well, no. I’ve come back for my daughter.’

Effi took out the cups. ‘I didn’t know you had one.’

‘I have two now, but Anna is back home with her father, and my mother-in-law. Uschi was the one I left behind five years ago.’ She sighed. ‘This is a strange question, but back then, how much did you know about me?’

‘Nothing,’ Effi said, filling the teapot. ‘We were only ever given first names-which for all we knew were false-and instructions on where and when to pass people on. It was safer that way.’

‘Well, my name then was Liesel Hausmann. I was from the Sudetenland, which was part of Czechoslovakia until 1938, when the Nazis took over. I’m Jewish of course, but my husband Werner was a Christian, and we were well off. He owned a factory in Reichenberg-the Czechs call it Liberec now-and though the Nazis brought their anti-Jewish laws with them, my husband thought Uschi and I would be safe. And we were for several years, until he interceded on behalf of my brother’s family, who had all just been arrested. In case things went badly, he wanted Uschi and me to go off with our maid, whose family lived in a remote mountain village. But I insisted on staying by his side, and Uschi went on her own-she was sixteen by then, and we thought she’d be all right.’

Lisa took the offered cup of tea, and placed it on the table beside her. ‘And then my husband was arrested. I heard nothing for several days, and then an old friend from the local police called to tell me that he was dead, that I was about to be arrested, and that I should flee if I could. So I packed a bag and walked to the station and somehow reached Berlin, where we still had friends. And they knew someone who knew someone else, and that’s how I ended up staying with you in that house, and finally escaping to Sweden. Which is where I met my second husband. He had a wartime job at the American Embassy in Stockholm, and when he went back I went with him.

‘That was four years ago. We got married, and I had another child, but I always intended coming back for Uschi. If my mother-in-law hadn’t been ill for most of last year I’d have come over then, despite my husband’s objections. He didn’t-still doesn’t-like the idea of me being over here alone, but he knew he’d have no peace until he agreed.’

‘Have you had any news of Uschi?’

‘None. Once the war was over, we called the Czechoslovak Embassy in Washington, and they promised to investigate. When weeks went by and we didn’t hear anything, we tried again, and they made the same promises. The same thing kept happening, and there was no way we could tell whether they were having a hard time finding her or just fobbing us off. I had no real address, you see, only the name of the village, but even so I can’t believe they really tried. And by the time I finally decided that I had to come over myself, the communists had taken over. I’m an American citizen now, and I’ve been told that no visas are being issued to Westerners in the foreseeable future, so there doesn’t seem any way to get in. And as far as I can tell the communists aren’t letting anyone out. It seems my only hope of getting Uschi out is to smuggle her across the border.’ She smiled. ‘And that’s my other reason for looking you up.’

‘My smuggling credentials? I’m afraid they were only good for a particular time and place.’

‘Oh, I know you don’t do that sort of thing anymore. I read an article about you in an American paper-that’s how I found who you really were-so I’m not expecting practical help. But I did think you might advise me, or know someone who could. The people I knew here are dead or gone, either to America or Palestine. But with so many families still looking for relatives, there must be people who’ve learnt how to find them.’

Effi’s heart went out to her. She didn’t know of anyone, but maybe John would.

She explained that her husband was away, but that she would write and ask him. And maybe Strohm could help-she would ask him, too.

Lisa thanked her for that and again for Effi’s help in the past, and they arranged to meet up once Effi had finished filming. After her visitor had gone, she heard Rosa call her name.

The girl, it seemed, had listened to the whole conversation. ‘My mother never left me,’ she insisted, as if she feared the opposite.

‘No, she didn’t,’ Effi confirmed. ‘And neither did your father. As long as they lived, they would never have done that.’