Masaryk Station

Sasa

Effi had run into Max Grelling a couple of months earlier, when she and Russell had stopped off at the Honey Trap on Ku’damm for a post-theatre drink. In a beautifully-cut American suit, and with a gorgeous young German blonde on one arm, Grelling had looked the picture of post-war prosperity. Which was hardly surprising. Any member of that shrinking band of Jews still resident in Berlin was entitled to a welter of well-deserved privileges, and a celebrity like Max was entitled to more than most.

He had done more than survive the war in hiding-many had done that-he had been instrumental in helping hundreds of others to escape abroad. An apprentice draughtsman at a Bauhaus design centre before the Nazis rendered such employment illegal, he had taken a long cool look into the future, and taught himself a skill that he knew would be much in demand-forgery. For every ten German Jews now living in exile, Effi reckoned one had an original Grelling framed and hung on a living-room wall. She and Ali had met him on several occasions during the war, picking up a new set of papers when Aslund, for some reason or other, could not. Effi had liked Grelling instantly, and he had taken more than a liking to the much younger Ali. After the war, when Effi had told him of Ali’s marriage and emigration, he had looked heartbroken for at least ten seconds.

He had told her and Russell that he was living on Ku’damm, across from a bombed-out restaurant that they all remembered, and the day after meeting with Lisa, it didn’t take Effi long to find his apartment. He seemed pleased to see her, and insisted on making them Turkish coffee, something she loved but hadn’t tasted in almost ten years. Considering the ruins visible through his back window, all but one of the rooms were beautifully furnished, the exception being crammed with fully loaded tea chests.

‘Are you leaving?’ she asked.

‘I’m off to Palestine. But not for a few months yet.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘a straight question-are you still forging papers?’

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

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

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

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

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

Effi couldn’t help laughing.

‘So what papers does your friend need?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You’re delivering his messages now?’

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

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

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

‘In Belgrade, remember?’

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

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

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

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

‘Don’t you mean “us”?’

‘I work for the CIC.’

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

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

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

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

‘And why did he think that?’

‘Because I told him so.’

‘And where’s the list?’

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

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

‘Yeah.’

‘You could have made a copy.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Idiot,’ Russell muttered after the American.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘My wife needs me there.’

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

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

‘Not at the moment.’

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

‘What? You can’t.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You will come with us, please.’

She felt suddenly alarmed. ‘Why?’

‘We need you to answer some questions.’

‘About what?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would they be back? What should she do? What would she have done if Rosa had been there?

She supposed she should tell someone. This was the British sector, after all, and one of their offices was only a couple of streets away. She put the gun in her bag, and started walking, half-expecting the jeep to roar up behind her.

It didn’t. After listening to her story, the duty-sergeant sternly informed her that Germans weren’t allowed private weapons, and that the gun would have to be handed in.

‘It’s my husband’s,’ she told him. ‘And he’s British.’ Which was true of his birth, if not his current passport. It didn’t seem worth mentioning the fact that the gun was in her bag.

As far as the sergeant was concerned, her marriage to Blighty-what sort of country called itself that? — clearly cast her in a much more sympathetic light. After a long but successful search for the right form, he laboriously took down all the details of ‘the incident’, while loudly lamenting how little he could actually do. ‘But then it sounds like you did what was needed yourself,’ he concluded on a upbeat note.

‘But I can’t sit there with a shotgun across my knees until the Russians all go home,’ she objected.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But maybe they’ve learnt their lesson. I don’t think they’re used to people fighting back.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘Do you have a telephone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, ring us on this number,’-he passed across a printed card-‘if they turn up again. We can be there in ten minutes.’

Which would probably be five too late, she thought, walking on to Rosa’s school. Always assuming her would-be abductors allowed her to make the call.

They could stay at Zarah’s tonight, and tomorrow she would … well, what?

She would try and talk to Tulpanov on the telephone. It would be easier to just turn up at his office, but she wasn’t setting foot inside the Soviet sector again until she had some answers. Surely someone had made a mistake. Kidnapping scientists to work in Soviet laboratories made some sort of evil sense, but abducting actors to work on Soviet films? That was ridiculous.

It turned out that Pyotr Druzhnykov actually did have a lot of interesting information to pass on. Russell had never really appreciated the way in which the Red Army lived off the land, much in the manner of a medieval horde. And apparently this hadn’t changed when advance turned into occupation-these days eastern Europe’s farmers weren’t only feeding their conquerors but also filling the millions of parcels which the latter sent back to their families. In fact the whole occupation had become a giant business opportunity for people denied one at home. An anthropologist would have been fascinated.

None of this interested Dempsey or Farquhar-Smith, who were still glued to their grail of battle orders, weapon deliveries and military timetables. Somewhat predictably, stripping Druzhnykov’s life down to its daily routine revealed potato supply bottlenecks, not the strength and whereabouts of tank divisions.

The good news, as Russell learned when Dempsey dropped him off on Thursday evening, was that the American had arranged transport for his family-a first flight leaving Tempelhof for Munich at 9 A.M. on Friday week, and a second that afternoon to the old RAF base at Aviano, some forty miles north of Venice. ‘You’ll have to meet them there,’ he told Russell, after handing him all the details. ‘Don’t say we don’t look after you.’

Russell walked back to the hostel feeling better than he had for weeks-even the prospect of meeting Artucci brought a smile to his face. Marko was reading a newspaper behind his desk, his children draped across the stairs as usual. There had been no more suspicious visitors since his return from Belgrade, which might or might not be a good sign-either the bad guys had gone away, or now they knew where he was. The layer of dust on his threshold, which he always took care to step over, was happily devoid of footmarks, and nothing inside had been moved.

He stepped out on to the balcony and savoured the scents from the gardens below, remembering his and Effi’s first time in Venice, back in 1934, when they’d only been lovers for six months. One of the happiest weeks of his life.

It would be different now, almost fifteen years later, with Rosa there, too. But they were different, too. And maybe it would be just as wonderful. He could hardly wait.

But tonight, a date with Artucci. He washed, changed, and went out for supper on the Via Nuova before making his way up the hill. The Italian was sitting in his usual seat, the waitress apparently AWOL.

Artucci needed only the merest prompting to relive the evening in question. The Croats had come to Luciana’s house-he, alas, had been out on business-and taken her at gunpoint-at gunpoint! — to Kozniku’s office. Before disappearing the priest had promised them papers, and the Croats had grown tired of waiting. ‘She just hand them over when they hear someone move in next room-a burglar, she think, though robbing priest is bad, even priest like Kozniku. He back, you know. He tell Luciana in Fiume on business, but she not believe.’

‘Does he have any priestly duties?’ Russell wondered out loud.

‘The chasing of little boys,’ Artucci suggested with a grin. ‘They all do this.’

Russell smiled. ‘So what happened next? That night, I mean.’

‘Oh, the man run down street with Croat chasing. Just for fun, I think. Why they care if Kozniku robbed?’

‘But they got their papers?’

‘Oh yes. I expect they’re in Yugoslavia now, finding new women to make frighten.’

So, Russell thought, either Kozniku hadn’t yet heard of the Croats’ arrest, or he hadn’t shared that news with Luciana. He himself hadn’t been recognised, either by her or the Croats. Which was all to the good-his American employers wouldn’t have been pleased if he’d messed up their relationship with Draganovic.

After digging around inside one cheek with a toothpick, Artucci brought a straggly string of chicken skin out into the light, and examined it carefully before popping it back in his mouth. ‘So what other service I do you?’

‘Nothing new. Anything to do with Kozniku and his clients, like before?’

‘Why you want this?’ the Italian asked him earnestly, in the manner of someone keen to solve a riddle.

‘I already told you that. For the story I’m writing.’

‘Yes, yes. So you say American people have big interest in Nazi and Ustashe who escape to South America. Why they care?’

‘Let’s just say they didn’t fight the war so that people like that could get off scot-free.’

‘No? I think they fight because government say they must.’

Russell shrugged. The little bastard had a point.

After seeing Rosa to school the next morning, Effi reluctantly made for her own apartment. Telling Zarah about her visitors would be more trouble than it was worth, and she needed a private conversation, so home it had to be. Walking the last few yards down Carmer Strasse, one hand gripping the gun in her bag, she felt like a semi-hysterical heroine from a Goebbels melodrama, badly in need of stormtrooper rescue.

But there was no jeep parked outside, and no enemies lurking in the stairwell. The flat was as she’d left it, complete with bullet-scarred carpet.

The telephone worked, which was something of a mercy. Lines within the western sectors had become less erratic of late, but the number of mysterious clicks and breaks during calls to the Soviet sector had seemed to increase. Not this morning, though. Effi had no trouble reaching the DEFA office, nor the number which someone there gave her. It took four calls in all, but she finally had Tulpanov’s number.

The great man’s secretary was reluctant to connect her, particularly where ‘a private matter’ was concerned, but eventually she caved in, moved perhaps by feelings of female solidarity.

‘Have you changed your mind?’ the Russian asked without preamble.

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I need to talk to you about something else.’

He didn’t hang up, which was a start. She went over what had happened the previous afternoon, and asked if there was anything he could do. He wasn’t a man to be threatened, so she made no mention of the press-he would think of that himself.

‘I’ll look into it,’ he said, after a few moments’ silence. The line went dead.

Effi hung up the earpiece, and wondered what else she could do. Nothing, she decided-if Tulpanov couldn’t fix things, then she didn’t know who could. Except maybe Russell. If all else failed, she and Rosa would somehow get to Trieste. In John’s last letter, he had asked her to consider a visit when the school term ended.

She took up position by the window overlooking the street, and sat there for what seemed like hours, until she felt she could draw it from memory. ‘This is silly,’ she eventually murmured to herself. She had to do something. Tearing herself away from the window, she tipped an upright chair under the apartment door handle, and settled down on the sofa with the first few storylines for the ‘The Islanders’ series. They were good, she thought. Not great, but there was definitely scope for something worthwhile.

It was early afternoon when the telephone rang, and she almost pulled it off the wall in her eagerness to answer. ‘Effi Koenen?’ a male voice asked. It wasn’t Tulpanov, but the inflection was Russian.

She didn’t know whether to speak or not.

‘My name is Shchepkin,’ the man said in German. ‘I expect John Russell-your husband-has told you about me.’

‘He has.’

‘I’d like to talk to you. Perhaps we could meet in Savigny Platz, on one of the benches.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘I’m waiting for another call.’

‘From Comrade Tulpanov? That’s what I wish to see you about. You’re in no danger,’ he added.

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘I think so.’

She supposed that would have to do. And she was curious to finally meet the man who’d played such a crucial role in their lives over the past ten years.

As she walked towards him ten minutes later, he looked older than she’d imagined, with a rather drawn face and an unusually lean body. Or perhaps it was the white, slightly thinning hair-Effi remembered John had told her that he and Shchepkin were roughly the same age.

He rose with a smile to shake her hand, but the eyes seemed to be in another world. ‘So what do you have to tell me?’ she asked when they were both seated.

‘It was a stupid mistake. The two men coming to your flat, I mean. It won’t happen again.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ she said. And it was, but it begged an obvious question: ‘What did they think they were doing?’

‘I’m not altogether sure,’ Shchepkin admitted. ‘We’re being reorganised, and no one knows what anyone’s doing. As far as I can discover, one particular department came across your name in an investigation they’re running-something to do with the Sonja Strehl suicide …’

‘What?’

‘They wanted to question you about it.’

‘They didn’t tell me that. I thought I was being abducted.’

Shchepkin smiled, probably in sympathy, but she didn’t take it that way.

‘It wasn’t a wild assumption,’ she went on angrily. ‘Several people I know have disappeared over the past year.’

‘Yes of course,’ Shchepkin agreed. ‘If one side doesn’t grab them, the other will. It’s no excuse, of course, just the way it is. The point is, you have no need to worry. They simply wanted to question you about this actress’s death.’

‘But I don’t know anything about it!’

Shchepkin sighed. ‘I will tell them. It has already been made very clear to the Russian officer and his superiors that John Russell is one of our most important assets, and that kidnapping his wife is, as the Americans say, strictly off-limits. Strictly off-limits,’ he repeated, savouring the phrase.

‘And the German?’

‘Ah. One of our recent recruits, I’m afraid. An apprentice of sorts.’

‘God help Germany.’

‘God help us all,’ Shchepkin said wryly. ‘Have you heard from Russell lately?’

‘I had a letter yesterday. He’s still stuck in Trieste.’

‘He was in Belgrade last week,’ Shchepkin said. ‘I saw him a few weeks ago,’ he explained. ‘We need to get him back to Berlin.’

The ‘we’ was instructive. And on the walk back home Effi couldn’t help wondering what it said about her marriage when the MGB had a more up-to-date location for her husband than she did.

Shchepkin’s strange blend of strength and fragility hadn’t been what she expected. With all that sadness he appeared to be carrying around, she was amazed he could still muster the energy to pursue his dubious profession.

She had only been back a few minutes when another jeep pulled up outside the house. This one had American markings, and the man walking up to the door was wearing a US lieutenant’s uniform. Surely they hadn’t come back in disguise?

Effi held the gun behind her back as she answered the door, but there was no mistaking the nationality of the fresh-faced young man standing in front of her. ‘Madame Russell?’ he asked in a soft drawl, apparently confusing his languages. ‘I have some air tickets for you.’

Gerhard Strohm was lunching with Oscar Laue, a fellow-survivor from the Party’s underground organisation in the Stettin yards. Laue was much younger than he was, and had left the railways when the war ended. He was now working at the Party’s Economic Planning Institute.

‘You seem happier than last time I saw you,’ Laue remarked, as they waited for their order to arrive. The restaurant, just off Potsdamerplatz, had only opened the week before, but two of Strohm’s colleagues had already brought back good reports.

‘Yes,’ Strohm agreed, just as the food arrived. Several comrades had remarked on his newfound propensity to smile since hearing Annaliese’s news.

‘Things are about to get better, I think,’ Laue continued, mistaking the reason for his companion’s cheerful demeanour.

‘In what way?’ Strohm asked innocently. The food was more than a match for that served in the Party canteen.

‘Well, we’re headed for what the Americans call a showdown, aren’t we? A sort of Gunfight at the Berlin Corral.’

‘And that will improve matters?’

‘It will clarify the situation, and that’s what’s needed. We can’t go on like this. The Soviets’-here Laue glanced briefly over his shoulder, just to check that no one was listening-‘the Soviets like to see themselves as in loco parentis, but they’re really the children. I mean, Marx and Engels, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg-real thinkers. The Russians have had their moments, of course, but when it comes to sophisticated political thought, they’re the children, not us. Children who don’t know their own strength sometimes, and need careful handling.’

Like the dismantlers out at the repair shops, Strohm thought.

‘You handled that situation in Rummelsburg very well,’ Laue said, reading his mind.

‘I wasn’t proud of it,’ Strohm admitted.

‘Why ever not? From what I heard you averted a crisis. If there’s a bear in your house,’ Laue said, blithely switching metaphors, ‘you don’t make him angry. You give him what he wants, and make sure he knows where the door is.’

‘And what if he shows no sign of leaving?’

‘He will, believe me. We’re all comrades, aren’t we? Once the Western powers are forced out of Berlin, there’ll be no reason for the Russians to stay. That’s why I say the coming crisis will clear things up. The children will all go home, and leave us to fulfil our destiny. We Germans invented socialism, and we’ll have the last word. Don’t you agree?’

Strohm couldn’t help laughing. ‘A happy ending, eh?’

By noon on Tuesday even Dempsey was satisfied that Druzhnykov had coughed up all that he possibly could, and the question arose as to what should be done with him. Dempsey and Farquhar-Smith were agreed in believing the Russian unworthy of a $1,500 exit, and inclined instead to dump him at the train station with a one-way ticket to Venice and a few days’ worth of expenses in his pocket.

It felt to Russell like they were just throwing the young Russian back in the pool, and he told Dempsey so. He might evade the MGB piranhas, might even find himself a ship to Palestine, but as he spoke only Russian and Yiddish, it seemed a lot more likely that he’d end up in an Italian jail. Wasn’t there still a Haganah agent in Trieste, and weren’t Dempsey’s people in contact with him?

The American reluctantly agreed that they might be, and drove off in his jeep to find out. He returned two hours later with an address. ‘You can take him,’ he told Russell, ‘and if they say no, you can drop him off at the station.’

They all drove back down the hill. As Dempsey threaded the jeep through the narrow streets, Druzhnykov’s face seemed to reflect each new sight, alight with curiosity. The American let them out some way from the address, and drove off without even wishing the Russian good luck, but the latter didn’t look bothered. He followed Russell, clutching the carpet bag that someone had found for him, and which now contained a single change of underwear and the photograph of his now-dead family, which he’d carried through the war.

The Haganah agent wasn’t pleased to see them, although he softened when Russell introduced himself. ‘You wrote about us,’ the man remembered. ‘Many American Jews gave us money after your story. Many farms were bought.’

The Arabs wouldn’t thank him, Russell thought. He introduced Druzhnykov, and let them agree to things in Yiddish. The Russian, it turned out, would be the last Jew leaving Europe via this escape line-now that the British had stepped aside, future travellers could take a regular boat.

Russell shook Druzhnykov’s hand and wished him well. As he walked back towards the town centre, he had that rarest of recent feelings-that his day had actually been worthwhile.

With no new defectors to engage him, Russell spent most of the following day working on his weekend travel plans. Aviano was on a branch line, one that joined the main line from Udine to Venice, but the two men on duty in the Trieste Station booking office weren’t prepared to guarantee any actual trains. One man was sure that the retreating Germans had pulled the bridges down after them, and very much doubted that all had been repaired yet, but his colleague seemed to remember their receiving a letter of notification stating that the line had been re-opened. He couldn’t find it though, despite emptying half a dozen drawers. The two men decided that Russell had little choice but to travel to the appropriate junction, where all would be revealed.

It sounded a less-than-reliable way to meet a plane, and the thought of a German woman and child alone on an Italian base rang all sorts of alarm bells. He would have to leave at least half a day early.

Or, it suddenly occurred to him, hire a car. There were such things in Trieste, and surely he could find an owner hungry for dollars. Whatever else he could say about his American employers-whether journalistic or governmental-they paid well.

Thirty-six hours and more than a dozen garages later, he found his vehicle-a maroon and cream Fiat 508 Balilla which had been abandoned on the waterfront two years earlier and brought in by the police. ‘They won’t let me sell it,’ the garage-owner lamented, ‘and they won’t come and take it away, so I hire it out when I can.’

After driving it up and down the waterfront, Russell decided it would do. After the usual haggle, he drove it carefully up to his hostel, and laboriously turned it around in the small piazza. It was a while since he’d driven.

When he came down from his room an hour or so later, the car’s roof had been taken down, and three of Marko’s daughters were sitting in it, looking for all the world like passengers awaiting their chauffeur. Which they were. ‘Please Mister English, take us for a ride,’ the one called Sasa asked him. ‘Yes, yes,’ her younger siblings chorused.

Some practice wouldn’t hurt. After going back in for their father’s permission, he drove them all down to the city centre, took the car up one side of the Grand Canal, across the square in front of the cathedral, and back down the other side to the waterfront. The girls were chattering non-stop in Serbo-Croat, and looked like they were enjoying themselves, so he took the coast road to Miramare Castle, turning the car in the space once used by tourist charabancs. It was a beautiful day, the deep-blue sea studded with boats of all types and sizes-warships, liners, freighters, and fishing craft. There were walkers on the beach, which had only just been swept of mines, and several swimmers braving the oily waters and heaven knew what else. Even with the warship, it looked like a world at peace.

Rosa sat by the window, looking down at the snow-covered Alps. The DC-3 seemed to be almost skimming across the peaks, which Effi found both exhilarating and scary. She wondered how Russell had managed to arrange it all, and hoped he hadn’t paid too high a price. Over the past ten years, as he’d once admitted, too many deals with various devils had looked worse in retrospect than they did at the time.

She looked at Rosa, still engrossed by the magnificent views. Not for the first time, she wondered if they’d done right by the girl, adopting her as their own. In material terms, Rosa now led a relatively privileged life, and no one else had offered to take her in. But the girl had also become entangled-how could she not? — in the web of political debts and threats that fate had woven around Effi and John.

One evening not so long ago, Effi had shared her misgivings with Zarah, who had given them no shrift at all. ‘She’s loved. That’s the only thing that matters. Particularly if you’ve been through what she’s been through.’

Effi hoped her sister was right. As she reached out a hand to stroke the girl’s hair, Rosa turned to face her. ‘Lothar told me the Alps are three kilometres high, but the Himalayas are almost three times that.’

‘Lothar likes numbers.’

‘He’s a boy,’ Rosa agreed, sounding almost sympathetic. ‘Is there snow on the tops all year round?’

‘I don’t know,’ Effi admitted.

‘Lothar will,’ Rosa prophesised.

‘I expect so.’

‘Will Papa be there to meet us?’

‘He’d better be,’ Effi said with a smile.

‘But what will we do if he isn’t?’

‘Whatever we need to. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Okay,’ Rosa agreed, turning back to the view.

Effi leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. She was looking forward to seeing Russell, and she was also glad to be away from Berlin. As so often in the past, a ‘rest’ between jobs was proving more demanding than work. The flat and its cleanliness had been neglected for weeks, all sorts of other matters were crying out for attention, and friends assumed she was permanently available. In the end, Effi had only just managed to get herself packed for the weekend.

She had heard from Lisa Sundgren-good news, or so it seemed. One of the illegal groups Lisa had mentioned had found out where her daughter was-in a small town not too far from Prague-and armed with this information, she was preparing another assault on the indifference of the local Czechoslovak diplomats. Effi hadn’t heard from Max Grelling, but maybe his services wouldn’t be required.

There was still no contract from RIAS, which might prove a blessing in disguise, because the previous day another, rather startling opportunity had presented itself. She’d almost not answered the knock, but curiosity had gotten the better of her, and with gun firmly clasped behind her back had opened the door to a handsome young American. His German was worse than her English, but as far as she could tell he was there representing the American director Gregory Sinfield, who was currently shooting a film in Berlin. And Sinfield wanted Effi for his next movie, which would commence shooting in Hollywood in approximately three months’ time. There was no title as yet, but there was a script for her to read, a script that seemed good, if the first ten pages were anything to go by. She hadn’t brought it with her, because she didn’t want their weekend spoilt by the possible prospect of another long parting.

Could she cope with that? Could John? Was a Hollywood film, no matter how good, worth the upheaval it would mean for them all?

Effi didn’t know, but her excitement at the prospect had certainly pushed other things from her mind. The previous day Eva Kempka had left a message asking Effi to call back, but they’d been airborne before she remembered. Effi hoped it was only a social call, and not some new discovery that Eva had made about Sonja Strehl’s unfortunate death.

Russell left Trieste soon after eight A.M., and drove across the bridge connecting Venice to the mainland not much more than two hours later. Having found a place to park the Balilla over the weekend, he took a water taxi down the Grand Canal in search of a hotel. Given the month, he was expecting crowds, but both waterways and streets were emptier than they had been in 1934 when he was there previously, the city seemingly stuck in post-war torpor. After looking at several hotel rooms, with hoteliers almost falling over themselves to offer a bargain, he settled for a three-room suite overlooking the Grand Canal, just south of the Rialto Bridge.

After eating lunch at a restaurant by the water, he walked slowly back to the car, and drove back over the bridge. This had just been opened when he and Effi last visited, and he remembered hoardings hung with photos of the Duce doing the honours. Mussolini had only been dead three years, Russell realised. It seemed a lot longer.

Escaping the city’s mainland suburbs, he drove north along mostly empty roads, the mountains drawing ever closer. The Aviano airbase might belong to the Italians, but as far as Russell could see the only planes they possessed were a couple of old trainers from the 1920s. The modern planes parked by the perimeter had USAF markings, and their presence suggested a somewhat less than wholehearted commitment to leave. Then again, compared to buying a national election, a couple of planes didn’t seem that much of an intrusion.

Russell watched the DC-3 taxi to a halt some distance from the airbase buildings, then drove towards it across the expanse of tarmac and grass. He got there just as the door was opened to lower the steps, and there was Effi, framed in the doorway like visiting royalty, holding Rosa’s hand. Both faces lit up when they saw him, which almost brought a tear to his eye. He’d been away too long.

Rosa ran up to hug him with Effi close behind, and they enfolded each other in a three-way embrace.

No one else had got off.

‘Were you the only passengers?’ Russell asked.

‘We were,’ Effi told him. ‘Even the pilot was surprised.’

Either the Americans had forgotten the meaning of economy, or he was more important than he realised, Russell thought. Which was worth remembering.

Effi was taking in the air. ‘Even the airports smell good down here,’ she said. ‘And it’s so beautifully warm.’

‘Is this our car now?’ Rosa wanted to know.

‘Only for the next few days.’

‘But I thought everyone in Venice went everywhere by boat.’

‘They do. Well, they walk, too. The car’s to get us there and back.’ He suggested they all squeeze into the front, but Rosa insisted on sitting in the middle of the back seat, where she had had uninterrupted view of the countryside on either side of the road.

The roads were still virtually empty, and they reached Venice with an hour of daylight to spare. After leaving their bags at the hotel, they took a water taxi down to San Marco, and found that the restaurant behind the basilica which Russell and Effi had patronised on their previous visit was still there. More astonishing, the proprietor recognised them, and insisted on serving them all champagne.

Sailing back up the Grand Canal with a moon rising over the roofs, Russell silently thanked whatever god had brought them there to see it. Once Rosa was in bed, the two of them sat for a while by the open balcony doorway, watching the moon’s reflection in the windows across the canal, before finally sharing a look that had them walking hand in hand to their enormous bed. After making love the first time, they lay naked in each other’s arms, feeling the warm breeze on their skin, savouring that sense of intimacy that both had sorely missed.

‘So tell me your news,’ Russell said, after several minutes had passed.

‘Where to begin?’ she asked rhetorically, before taking him through Thomas’s political travails, Strohm’s and Annaliese’s impending marriage and parenthood, Lisa Sundgren’s arrival in search of her daughter, and the questions Eva Kempka had raised about Sonja Strehl’s suicide. And then were the problems the Soviets were causing, both for her and Berlin.

‘You have been through it.’

‘And that’s not all. Two of them turned up at the flat, and tried to take me away for questioning. I thought I was being abducted, so I saw them off with the gun you got me.’

‘You what?!?’

‘I know, but I was right. Your friend Shchepkin came to see me the next day, and apologised for his countrymen. They wanted to ask me some questions about Sonja Strehl, but now they’ve been told to leave me alone-you’re too important to annoy, apparently.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He was shocked, but knew he shouldn’t be-it wasn’t the first time she’d proved she could look after herself. ‘So what did you think of Shchepkin?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. He seemed so wan and sad, but I don’t imagine he takes many prisoners.’

‘No, probably not.’

‘But the really big news,’ Effi said, sitting up against the headboard and pulling the sheet across her lower body, ‘is Zarah.’

‘She’s going to marry Bill and live in America,’ Russell suggested.

‘How did you guess?’

‘I saw it coming months ago. I’ve just been hoping you wouldn’t be too upset.’

‘Well of course I’m upset! But then I know I mustn’t be, because he’s just what Zarah needs.’

‘He is, isn’t he? You know I’ve got to like your sister, after all those years of just putting up with her.’

‘I think she’s almost grown fond of you,’ Effi said.

He smiled. ‘And how’s Rosa?’

‘You can see for yourself.’ She had decided not to tell Russell about the picture just yet-she wanted to see if he noticed anything different about his adopted daughter over the next couple of days. ‘But what about you? You seemed to like Trieste for the first few weeks, but lately …’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Trieste. It’s the people I deal with.’ He described his work as an interpreter, recounted the fun and games in Belgrade, but spared her the details of Palychko’s demise.

‘But you’re writing, too?’

‘Oh, yes. But the story I’m on is hardly uplifting.’

‘But the fact that you’re writing it may be.’

He grinned. ‘That’s one of the reasons I love you. One of many.’

She slid back down to snuggle up against him. ‘Tell me some of the others.’

They spent the weekend roaming the island, only venturing off it once to visit nearby Tocello and its 7th-century cathedral. Otherwise they punctuated gondola rides and rambles through the narrow streets with long rests in coffee shops and restaurants. Their favourite haunt was a cafe in the Piazza San Marco, where they could simply sit and soak it all in-the beautiful buildings, the music from cafe phonographs, the square full of people and pigeons. Rosa sat with her sketchpad whenever they gave her the chance, drawing many a compliment from passers-by. But the views that had inspired Canaletto didn’t call to her; she drew people against barely realised backgrounds, which could have been anywhere. Or indeed nowhere.

‘So how have you found her?’ Effi asked Russell on their last night.

He considered. ‘More grown-up,’ he decided. ‘I’ve only been away for three months, but she seems to have aged more than that. Not physically. Emotionally, I suppose.’

Effi told him about the drawing and her subsequent conversation with Rosa.

His instinct told him there was nothing to worry about, but he trusted hers more. ‘Have you stopped her seeing those children?’ he asked.

‘How can I? She spent three years hidden away with her mother-I can’t keep her locked up in the flat. And there’s nothing wrong with the children she plays with-I’ve talked to them-they’re just normal kids who don’t have the sort of home life that we took for granted. Zarah thinks they’re actually more resilient.’

‘She might be right,’ Russell said. ‘I never thought your sister was the brightest spark in the universe, but she’s done a great job with Lothar.’

‘She has, hasn’t she? So you don’t think there’s any reason to worry?’

He grunted. ‘There’s always that. But if you hadn’t said anything, well, she seems fine to me. And frankly, given her history, I expected a lot more problems than those we’ve actually had.’

‘You never said that before.’

‘Why tempt fate?’

‘Why indeed? Speaking of which, there’s another secret I’ve been keeping. The day before we left I had a visitor from Hollywood-or to be precise, from a Hollywood company that’s making a film in Berlin. The director wants me in his next movie.’

‘In Berlin?’

‘In Los Angeles.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yes, wow.’

‘Do you want to go?’

‘I don’t know. Yes for the experience. And yes for Rosa-once I was worried about moving her around too much, but she loved coming here, and getting her out of Berlin would, er-’

‘Nip any possible problems in the bud,’ Russell cut in.

‘Exactly.’

‘But?’

‘You know the but. I miss you, and the idea of taking off for weeks or even months the moment you come back is …’

‘Not good,’ Russell finished for her. He smiled. ‘Maybe the Soviets need a spy in Hollywood. And I’m sure the Americans would like someone on the inside, telling them which actors are secret communists.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Only a little. Effi, I think you should go. For one film, anyway. It might be good for Rosa-who knows? — but in any case I’m sure she’ll love it. And it’s too good a chance for you to pass up.’

‘I don’t know,’ Effi said again. ‘You know, I actually thought life would get back to normal after the war.’

‘You weren’t the only one.’

‘This film won’t happen before September,’ she added. ‘And I’m not missing Paul’s wedding.’

‘He would be upset.’

Lying awake an hour or so later, it occurred to Russell that one of his oldest dreams had finally had come true-he was sleeping with a Hollywood actress.

It was raining next morning, which suited their mood, because nobody wanted to leave. They got wet in the water taxi, and then had to dry out the Balilla, because no one had thought to put the roof up. But at least the car was there-Russell had woken up fearing that someone had stolen it, and wondering how he would get them both home.

A gorgeous rainbow appeared as they drove out of the city, and by the time they reached Treviso the sun was draped across the mountains ahead. As they approached the Aviano airbase, Rosa leaned forward and suggested that Russell ‘just come home’ with them.

‘I’d love to,’ he told her, ‘but I can’t. I’ll be back soon, though,’ he promised, hoping it was true.

‘And you have to take the car back,’ Rosa remembered.

‘Good thing you reminded me.’

They were an hour ahead of schedule, but the DC-3 was already waiting, the pilots anxious to leave at once.

‘You two look after each other,’ he shouted after Effi and Rosa as they climbed the steps, but he doubted if they heard him over the noise of the engines. They waved once, and disappeared inside, the door slamming shut behind them. Without much more ado, the plane accelerated off down the short runway, rose sharply into the air, and took a long climbing turn towards the mountains. Russell watched it shrink in size and finally disappear, before plunking himself back behind the Balilla’s wheel with a heartfelt groan.

Russell arrived back in Trieste early that evening, returned the car to its reluctant owner, and took a tram along the waterfront to the Piazza dell Unita. Feeling less than ravenous, he eschewed the San Marco for once, and opted for one of the Caffe degli Specchi’s famous toasted sandwiches. The place seemed more full of couples than usual, but after the weekend he was probably just more conscious of being alone.

Outside a huge orange sun was sinking into the sea. He walked back across the darkening Piazza Cavana, where traditional red lights glowed in half a dozen windows, and sun-tanned British soldiers loitered in groups, noisily drinking beer and sizing up the local whores. Travel back two thousand years in a time machine, Russell thought, and only the details-clothing, drinking receptacles, weapons-would be different. The Roman legion back from Judaea had become the East Staffordshires on their way home from Palestine.

Five minutes later, Russell was climbing the stairs to his room. It wasn’t much past eight, but he felt exhausted, and only just summoned the energy to take off his shoes and trousers. The last thing he noticed before sleep overtook him was the moon peeking around his window frame.

It was gone when he woke, the sound of a blast ringing in his ears, a ghostly haze of plaster dust clouding the room.

Silence followed; the silence of the deaf, he realised.

He clambered out of the plaster-strewn bed, reached for his trousers, and pulled them on. The dust was thicker out on the long narrow landing, but was already settling on the threadbare throws which lined the floor. The door to his old room had been blown across the head of the stairs, and through the gap where it had hung he could see a yellow streetlight. The room’s outer wall had all but vanished.

And so, he discovered, had the floor. What was left of the bed had fallen into the room below, and the glinting mess at its centre was presumably Skerlic’s torso. Daylight would find the rest of him glued to the walls, Russell surmised.

He dimly heard shouting; his ears were beginning to recover. People were trying to get into the room below but something was blocking the door. And now he heard a thin mewling sound coming from directly below him. There was at least one person under the fallen floor.

He hurried downstairs to join those carting debris out into the street, and watched as three of Marko’s daughters were carried out. It was the girls he’d taken for the ride only four days before. Two were still breathing, their faces covered in cuts and bruises. Sasa’s face, by contrast, was completely untouched, but a falling beam had stove in her chest, and crushed the life from her body.

An ambulance bell was tolling in the distance.

‘He said he was a professor,’ Marko was half-shouting, half-crying. ‘But who blows up professors? He lied to me, he must have done.’

Russell doubted it. The Croats had assumed he was still in his old room, had waited until he returned from Venice, and then detonated their bomb. They hadn’t meant to kill any Serbs, but they hadn’t much cared if they did.

He had got Sasa killed. He and all the others like him, playing their ridiculous games.