Lehrter Station

The men from Moscow

John Russell reached across and rubbed the tea shop window with his sleeve to get a better view of what was happening on the pavement outside. A middle-aged man in uniform was hectoring two boys of around twelve, jabbing his finger at first one and then the other to emphasise his indignation. The boys wore suitably downcast expressions, but one was still clutching a fearsome-looking catapult behind his back. Once the adult had run out of useful advice and stalked haughtily away, the two youngsters raced off in the opposite direction, giggling fit to bust. Russell somehow doubted that they had seen the error of their ways.

He took another sip of the still-scalding tea, and went back to his News Chronicle. Like most of the newspapers, it was filled with evidence of Britain’s newly split personality. While half the writers explored, with varying degrees of eagerness, the socialist future promised by the new Labour government, the other half was busily lamenting those myriad challenges to Empire that the war’s end had conjured into being. Palestine, Java, India, Egypt… the outbreaks of violent disaffection seemed never-ending, and thoroughly inconvenient. The British press, like the British public, might want a new world at home, but they were in no mood to relinquish the old one abroad.

The sports page was still full of the Moscow Dynamo tour, which had begun so inauspiciously the previous weekend. A fellow journalist had told Russell the story of the Football Association reception committee’s dash to Croydon Airport, and the subsequent rush back across London when it transpired that the Russians’ plane was about to land at Northolt. The FA’s choice of Wellington Barracks as a hotel had gone down badly with the tourists, particularly when their arrival coincided with the drilling of a punishment detail. Several of the Soviet players had concluded that they were being imprisoned, and had refused to leave their bus. It seemed as if things had improved since then — yesterday the visitors had been taken to the White City dog-track, where only the Magic Eye photo machine had denied them a rouble-earning win.

Russell looked at his watch — as usual, Effi was late. Clearing a new patch in the condensation he could see the queue outside the cinema already receding up Park Street. He gulped down the rest of his tea and went to join it, hurrying to beat the crowd pouring off a pair of trolleybuses. The visibility on Camden High Street was worse than it had been twenty minutes earlier, and the air seemed twice as cold and damp.

Several people in the queue were stamping their feet and clapping their hands, but most seemed in surprisingly high spirits. Only six months had passed since the end of the war in Europe, and perhaps the novelty of peace had not quite worn off. Or maybe they were just happy to be out of their overcrowded houses. Russell hoped they weren’t expecting an uplift from the film they were about to see, which the same journalist friend had warned him was a sure-fire wrist-slitter. But then Effi had chosen it, and it was her turn. She still hadn’t forgiven him for West of the Pecos.

The queue was beginning to move. He looked at his watch again, and felt the first stirrings of anxiety — Effi’s English was improving, but still a long way from fluent, and frustration always seemed to render her German accent even more pronounced. Locals with grudges had no way of knowing that she was a heroine of the anti-Nazi resistance.

He was almost at the door when she appeared at his side. ‘The trolleybus broke down,’ she explained in German, leaving Russell conscious of the sudden silence around them.

She noticed it too. ‘I have to walk half way,’ she added in English. ‘How is your day?’ she asked, taking his arm.

‘Not so bad,’ he said, with what had lately become his usual lack of candour. Was she just as reluctant to share her worries with him, he wondered. When they had found each other again in April, after more than three years apart, everything had seemed just like before, but slowly, over the succeeding weeks and months, a gap had opened up. Not a large one, but a gap all the same. He was often aware of it, and knew that she was too. But try to talk about it, as they had on several occasions, and all they ended up doing was re-state the problem.

‘Solly has a couple of ideas he’s looking into,’ he told her, forbearing to add that his agent had seemed even less hopeful than usual. Since the San Francisco Chronicle had dispensed with his services in May, Russell had returned to freelancing, but pieces sold had been few and far between, and he sometimes wondered whether he was on some unknown blacklist. He had done enough to warrant inclusion on such a list, but as far as he knew no one else was aware of that fact.

And money was decidedly short, he thought, counting out the three shillings and sixpence for their tickets. Effi and her sister Zarah were earning a little from their needlework, but Paul’s job with Solly was their only regular source of income. It was all a far cry from their affluent life in pre-war Germany.

They found two seats in the centre of the back stalls and watched the auditorium slowly fill. For Effi, such moments always brought back memories of her years alone in Berlin, when a darkened cinema was the only place she could meet with her sister. And she was also reminded of evenings with Russell, watching herself up there on the screen, back when she’d been a famous actress. It seemed several lifetimes ago, but lately she’d found herself missing the stage, and wondering if she would ever act again. Not here, of course, not with her English, but back in Germany? Several theatres had already re-opened in Berlin, and sooner or later her country would start making films again.

It would probably be later, she thought, as the Pathe News camera panned across the ruins of her home town. The streets seemed clearer than they had in April, but nothing much else seemed changed. There were no signs of new construction, only military jeeps and haggard-looking women weaving their way through a maze of perforated masonry. British servicemen looked up from their lunches to grin at the camera, but she doubted whether the locals were eating so well.

The ‘B’ movie had London policemen successfully rounding up a gang of black market spivs, something they seemed incapable of doing in real life. Russell missed the name of the film being trailed, but it involved a man and a woman sharing meaningful expressions in a railway station buffet, and looked likely to end in tears. Another wrist-slitter.

Effi’s choice of main feature proved a good one, well-written, well-acted and very atmospheric. Russell found the masculinity of the leading actress somewhat off-putting, but the California-by-night setting was wonderfully evocative, the storyline taut and involving. And something was definitely being said between the lines about a woman’s place in the post-war world.

When they finally emerged from the cinema the fog had grown much thicker. They crossed Camden High Street and walked arm in arm past a crowded pub — the beer shortage was clearly less severe than advertised. The interior looked as murky as the streets, blue cigarette smoke merging with greyish fog in the light from the nearest lamppost.

‘So how was your day?’ Russell asked.

‘Good. Rosa had a good day at school. And Zarah had another flirt with the man downstairs.’

They were speaking German now, which won them curious looks from a couple walking in the other direction.

‘And you?’ Russell asked.

‘Oh, I queued for bread, made dinner for everyone. I read this afternoon — three whole pages of Great Expectations. But I’m still looking up one word in three, or that’s what it seems like. I was never any good at languages.’

‘It’ll come.’

‘I doubt it. But…’ Her voice trailed away… ‘So what did you think of Mildred Pierce?’

‘I liked it, I think.’

‘You think?’

‘I was never bored. It looked good. Though the daughter did seem a bit over the top — would any mother be that blind?’

‘Of course. I’ve known mothers who’ve put up with much worse. No, it wasn’t that…’ She paused. They had reached the bus stop on College Street, and a trolleybus was already looming out of the fog. It was crowded with over-exuberant West End revellers, and continuing their conversation in German seemed ill-advised. Effi spent the five-minute bus journey trying to sort out her reaction to the film. The dominant emotion, she decided, was anger, but she wasn’t at all sure why.

After alighting on Highgate Road she said as much to Russell.

‘The portrayal of women,’ he guessed. ‘Though the men were just as appalling. The only sympathetic character was the younger sister, and they killed her off.’

‘There was also the friend, but she was too smart to attract a good man.’

‘True.’

The fog seemed thicker than ever, but perhaps it was the added smoke from the nearby engine sheds.

‘But you’re right,’ Effi went on, as they turned into Lady Somerset Road, ‘it was the way the women were written. When the Nazis were portraying them as submissive idiots, it was so wonderful to see someone like Katherine Hepburn show how happy and sexy independent women could be. And now the Nazis are gone, and Hollywood gives us Mildred, who can only have a successful career if she fails as a mother and husband. Goebbels would have loved it.’

‘A bit harsh,’ Russell murmured.

‘Not at all,’ she rounded on him. ‘You just…’

Two figures suddenly emerged in front of them, silhouettes in the mist. ‘Stick ’em up,’ one of the two said, in a tone that seemed borrowed from an American gangster movie.

‘What?’ was Russell’s first reaction. The voice sounded young, and both potential robbers seemed unusually short. But it did look like a real gun pointing at them. A Luger, if Russell was not mistaken.

‘Stick ’em up,’ the voice repeated petulantly. The faces were becoming clearer now — and they belonged to boys, not men. Fourteen perhaps, maybe even younger. The one on the left was wearing trousers too long for his legs. A relation who hadn’t come home.

‘What do you want?’ Russell asked, with what felt like remarkable good humour, given the situation. Only that morning he’d read about two thirteen-year-olds holding up a woman in Highgate. Far too many boys had lost their fathers.

‘Your money of course,’ the second boy said, almost apologetically.

‘We only have a couple of shillings.’

‘You Germans are all liars,’ the first boy said angrily.

‘I’m English,’ Russell patiently explained, as he reached inside his coat pocket for the coins in question. He doubted the gun was even loaded, but it didn’t seem worth the risk to find out.

Effi had other ideas. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she muttered in German, as she stepped forward and twisted the gun out of the surprised youth’s hand. ‘Now go home,’ she told them in English.

They glanced at each other, and bolted off into the fog.

Effi just stood there, amazed at what she’d done. She was, she realised, shaking like a leaf. What mad instinct had made her do such a thing?

‘Christ almighty,’ Russell exclaimed, reaching out for her. ‘For a moment there…’

‘I didn’t think,’ she said stupidly. She started to laugh, but there was no humour in the sound, and Russell cradled her head against his shoulder. They stood there for a while, until Effi disentangled herself and offered him the gun.

He put it in his coat pocket. ‘I’ll hand it in at the police station tomorrow morning.’

They walked the short distance home, and let themselves in to the ground floor flat that Russell had rented. It had two large rooms, a small kitchen and an outside toilet. Russell, Effi and Rosa shared the back room, Paul, Lothar and Zarah the curtain-divided room at the front. Other families of four and five lived above and below them.

Paul was reading a book on architecture in the kitchen, his English dictionary propped up beside him. ‘They’re all asleep,’ he told them quietly.

Effi went to check on Rosa, the young Jewish orphan who had been her ward since April. Though perhaps not an orphan, as Effi reminded herself. The father Otto had disappeared around 1941, and not been seen or heard of since. He was probably dead, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Effi thought the uncertainty worried Rosa — it certainly worried her.

Sitting down on the side of the bed, she could smell the Vick’s Vapo-Rub that Zarah had put on the girl’s chest. Effi pulled the blanket up around her neck, and told herself that Rosa was coping better than most with the post-war world. She was doing well at the school that Solly had found for them. Although there were many other refugee pupils, the instruction was wholly in English, and Rosa’s command of that language was already better than Effi’s own. And Solly seemed more excited by her Berlin drawings than by any of John’s ideas. The girl would end up supporting them both.

In the kitchen, Russell was telling his son about the attempted hold-up. Paul’s smile vanished when he realised his father wasn’t having him on. ‘Was the gun loaded?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t looked,’ Russell admitted, and pulled it from his pocket. ‘It was,’ he discovered. ‘I’ll put it out of harm’s way,’ he added, reaching up to place it on the highest shelf. ‘Anything interesting happen at work?’

‘Not really,’ Paul said, getting up. ‘It’s time I went to bed,’ he explained. ‘Another early start.’

‘Of course,’ Russell said automatically. His son didn’t want to talk to him, which was neither unusual nor intended personally: Paul didn’t want to talk to anybody. But he seemed to be functioning like a normal human being — only that lunchtime Solly had confided how pleased he was with the boy — and Russell knew from experience what havoc war could wreak on minds of any age. ‘Sleep well,’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ Paul said. ‘For everyone’s sake,’ he added wryly — his nightmares sometimes woke the whole house. ‘Oh, I forgot,’ he added, stopping in the doorway. ‘There was a letter for you. It’s on your bed.’

‘I’ve got it,’ Effi said, squeezing past him. She gave Paul a goodnight hug before handing the envelope over to Russell.

He tore it open, and extracted the contents — a short handwritten note and a grandstand ticket for the following Tuesday’s match between Chelsea and the Moscow Dynamo tourists. ‘Your attendance is expected,’ the note informed him. It was signed by Yevgeny Shchepkin, his erstwhile guardian angel in Stalin’s NKVD.

‘So the bill has finally arrived,’ Effi said, reading it over his shoulder.

Lying beside her half an hour later, Russell felt strangely pleased that it had. In May he had bought his family’s safety from the Soviets with atomic secrets and vague promises of future service, and he had always known that one day they would demand payment on the Faustian bargain. For months he had dreaded that day, but now that it was here, he felt almost relieved.

It wasn’t just an end to the suspense. The war in Europe had been over for six months, and the Nazis, who had dominated their lives for a dozen years, were passing into history, but all their lives — his and Effi’s in particular — had still seemed stuck in some sort of post-war limbo, the door to their future still locked by their particular past. And Shchepkin’s invitation might — might — be the key that would open it.

Monday morning was unusually crisp and clear, columns of smoke rising from a hundred chimneys into a clear blue sky as Russell walked down Kentish Town Road. There were long lines outside the two bakeries he passed, but most of the queuing women seemed happy to chat while they waited.

It had been a strange weekend. On Saturday morning he had taken the gun to the local police station, and been asked to peruse an alarmingly extensive array of juvenile mug shots. He hadn’t recognised his and Effi’s would-be robbers, who had presumably just set out on their new career of crime.

That afternoon the whole family had gone for a walk on the nearby Heath, but their collective mood had matched the grey weather. Paul and Lothar kicked around the latter’s new football — one of Zarah’s acquisitions from their street’s resident spiv — but only the youngster looked like he was enjoying the experience. Effi still seemed subdued by the previous evening’s excitement, and Rosa, as usual, responded to her new mother’s mood. Only Zarah seemed determined to be cheerful, and after what she’d been through with the Russians — repeatedly raped by a Red Army foursome for three days and nights — Russell could only admire her for that.

Sunday the rain had come down, and they’d tiptoed around each other in the crowded flat, waiting for the weekend to end.

At least today was fine, and the long walk into town could be enjoyed for more than the saving of the bus fare. It took him half an hour to reach the Corner House opposite Tottenham Court Road tube station, where he had lately taken to having his morning coffee. It was a far cry from Kranzler’s in Berlin — the decor was dreadful, the coffee worse — but a ritual was a ritual. A journalist had to read the papers somewhere, even one who was out of work, and he had grown used to the Corner House’s heady blend of non-stop bustle, sweat and steam.

As usual, he began with the more digestible News Chronicle. Remembering he would soon see them play, he sought out the latest news of the Soviet footballers. The Sunday papers had been unimpressed — one witness of a training session at the White City had deemed them ‘so slow that you can hear them think’ — and the Monday Chronicle seemed of similar mind. Russell didn’t know what to expect. Stalin’s Russia seemed an unlikely source of imaginative football, but the English had a notorious propensity to over-estimate their own prowess. It would be interesting, if nothing more. A nice sugar-coating for whatever pill the Soviets had decided he should swallow.

The rest of the paper held no surprises. There was advice for demobbed husbands returning home — ‘be glad to be back, say so as often you can’ — and another child drowned in an emergency water tank. In Yorkshire three young women had been sacked from their jobs for refusing to swap their slacks for skirts.

The front page was full of the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington. Attlee was apparently asking the Americans to share their atomic secrets with the Russians, and their wealth with an impoverished Britain. The Americans seemed more interested in persuading him to abandon his policy of imposing restrictions on Jewish emigration to Palestine.

There was nothing to match Russell’s favourite revelation of the last few days, that Eva Braun’s father had written to Hitler before the war, demanding to know the Fuhrer’s intentions. Having never received a reply, Herr Braun now believed that his letter had not reached its intended recipient.

What other explanation could there be?

Turning to the weightier Times, Russell found some Berlin news. A ‘Battle of Winter’ had been proclaimed, which sounded rather ominous, and involved cannibalising badly damaged buildings for those with a better chance of being patched up. Meanwhile owners of slightly damaged buildings had been given a year to claim compensation. This would interest Effi, whose building on Carmerstrasse had still been essentially intact when they last saw it.

The Soviets had celebrated the anniversary of Lenin’s revolution by handing out gifts: a small sack of coal for each human resident, and extra food for the lions, elephant and hyena who had survived the shelling of the Zoo. And should this seem like small change for raping half the city’s women, they had also unveiled a memorial to the liberating army. Anyone expecting a keener sense of irony from the nation of Gogol would be disappointed.

It was almost time for his meeting with Solly. Leaving the Corner House, he walked down Charing Cross Road, checking the windows for any new books. Solly Bernstein’s office on Shaftesbury Avenue had survived the Blitz, but the ground floor steam laundry of pre-war days was now an insurance office. Russell walked up the four flights of stairs to the second floor, paused to recover his breath, and let himself in. Solly had a receptionist these days — a waif-like Hungarian refugee named Marisa with dark, frightened eyes and a very basic grasp of English. Told that Mr Bernstein was ‘engage-ed’, Russell found his son in the smaller of the two back rooms, bent over what looked like the firm’s accounts. Given Paul’s emotional state at the time, Solly’s offer of a job had been somewhat charitable, but the boy seemed to be managing all right. And his English had improved no end.

The two of them talked football while Russell waited for Solly, and Paul expressed an interest in seeing the Russians’ second game in London, against the Arsenal. The Gunners’ bomb-damaged ground at Highbury was still under repair, so they were hosting the Dynamos at nearby White Hart Lane on the following Wednesday.

He’d try and get some tickets, Russell told his son. He could ask Shchepkin when he saw him at Stamford Bridge.

Marisa put her head round the door, smiled sweetly at Paul, and told Russell he could now see Solly. The agent’s news proved as bad as Russell had expected — all his recent ideas for feature articles had been rejected. Solly himself looked older than usual, his hair a little greyer, his eyes a little duller. As usual, he spent ten minutes telling Russell that he should take a break from journalism, and use the time to write a book. His escape from Germany in December 1941, Effi’s adventures with the Berlin resistance — either, in Solly’s not-so-humble opinion, would sell like fresh bagels. He was probably right, but the idea was still unappealing. Russell was a journalist, not a writer. And while an unsuccessful book would do nothing for his finances, a successful one might raise his profile to a dangerous degree. And what would he live on while he wrote it?

He said goodbye to Paul, walked back down to the street, and stood on the pavement outside wondering what to do with the rest of the day. More walking, he supposed, and set off in the general direction of the river. If the Soviets had no immediate plans for him perhaps he would give the book a try; at least he would be doing something. The world of journalism certainly seemed closed to him. The British nationals and London locals had no vacancies, and should one arise his American citizenship — acquired to allow his continued residence in Germany once Britain and the Reich were at war — was bound to complicate matters. As were other chunks of his personal history. His time living in Nazi Germany made the left suspicious, and his former membership of both British and German communist parties had a similar effect on those with right-wing sympathies. If editors needed a further excuse for rejecting him, they could always point to his long exile and its obvious corollary, that he was out of touch with British life. Russell always denied this, but without much inner conviction. He did often feel a stranger in the land of his birth and childhood. If he wanted to function as a journalist again, then Berlin was the place to do so.

But Berlin, as The Times had told him only that morning, was still on its knees. His extended family had already experienced a stunning variety of traumas in that city, and taking them back for more seemed almost sadistic.

He walked on across Trafalgar Square, down the other side of Charing Cross Station to the Embankment, and slowly up past Cleopatra’s Needle and the Savoy Hotel towards the new Waterloo Bridge. He, Paul, Zarah and Lothar had stayed at the Savoy in 1939; they had come to see a wellknown Scottish paediatrician, in the hope of allaying Zarah’s fears that Lothar was in some way mentally handicapped. Russell had been their chaperone and interpreter, and a tour guide to his eleven year-old son.

It had been a wonderful couple of days. Lothar had been given a clean bill of mental heath; he and Paul had seen a match at Highbury, inspected the streamlined Coronation Scot at Euston, and walked past Bow Street Police Station, where the fictional Saint’s sparring partner Chief Inspector Teal had his office. In the bar of the Savoy, an idiot from the War Office had tried to persuade Russell that risking his life for His Majesty’s Government was the very least he could do.

And that was the other complicating factor, Russell thought, as he leaned his midriff against the railings and looked down at the swirling brown waters — his mostly unresolved relationships with the world’s leading intelligence agencies. Between 1939 and 1941 he had performed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, services for the Soviets, Americans, British and Germans. Getting into this world had been all too easy, extracting himself wholly beyond him. He had concentrated on surviving the war with a more or less functioning conscience, and just about succeeded. But there was no way of breaking the bond, no way to wipe the slate clean.

The Nazis at least were gone. He had worked for them under duress, and as far as he knew had never done anything actually helpful, but there was always the chance of accusations that only the dead could refute. The British had ignored him since 1939, the Americans since 1942, but Russell doubted whether their indifference would survive a return to Berlin. He was of no use to them in London, but his many contacts in the German capital — on both sides of the new political divide — would make him a valuable asset.

The Soviets, though, were the real danger. In May he had secured his family’s exit from Berlin and Germany by leading the NKVD to the cache of German atomic energy documents which he and the young Soviet physicist Varennikov had stolen from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Reasoning that the Soviets might be tempted to ensure his permanent silence on this matter, he had forcibly reminded them that he couldn’t tell the Americans anything without incriminating himself. The Soviets had probably already realised as much, and soon made it clear that they would use the threat of revelation to force Russell’s cooperation in whatever future ventures seemed appropriate.

It was an effective threat. Neither the Soviets nor Russell knew how the Americans would respond should the story of his theft of the atomic papers become public, but Russell had reason to fear the worst. Another wave of anti-communist hysteria was building in the US, and an American citizen putting family above country when it came to atomic secrets might well end up in the electric chair. At the absolute best, he would never get another job with an American — or British — newspaper.

And now the Soviets had come calling. What would they want this time? Whatever it was, it would probably involve a return to Berlin, and another separation from his son and Effi.

Paul was still in bad shape, but Russell suspected that there was little he could offer in the way of help, that the boy had to find his own road back. And there were signs, every now and then, that he was doing just that. It might be wishful thinking, but he thought his son would eventually work out how best to live with his past.

He was not so certain that he and Effi could survive another long separation. It had been wonderful finding her again, but once the joy of the first few days had passed they had struggled to re-establish the easy loving companionship that they had once taken for granted. It could be a great deal worse — the recently reunited couple upstairs came to mind — but something indefinable had gone missing. What it was, and why it had gone, were still a mystery. Was it just the length of the separation? Three and a half years was a long time, and their lives in that period had been so different: hers fraught with danger, his a relative cakewalk. Had Rosa come between them? Russell felt no resentment — he loved her as much as Effi did — but the girl might have shifted some balance in their relationship. Or was it something simpler, like their both being out of work, or the length of time that they’d been together?

He didn’t know, and neither, he guessed, did she. It was probably all those things, and a few more besides.

Maybe time would cure them, but somehow he doubted it. Looking out across the brown river, he felt more than a little scared for the future.

A light rain began to fall as Effi waited outside the school gates, and she gratefully unfurled the umbrella which Zarah had insisted she take. There had been smiles of recognition from a couple of other women, but frowns of disapproval from a couple more. Her being German had upset some in the beginning, and Effi had hoped that recounting her anti-Nazi exploits in the local paper might reduce any opprobrium which she — and by extension, Rosa — would have to cope with. But while some had probably been mollified, others seemed even more inclined to hold up their noses.

Looking round, she saw another new male face — as the term went by, more and more demobbed fathers were collecting their children. Effi wondered if Rosa had noticed, and thought that she probably had. The girl didn’t miss much.

There were other children whose fathers were not coming home, but most of them seemed to know it. Would it be easier for Rosa if she knew that her father was dead?

The young Jewish girl had arrived at the door to Effi’s Berlin apartment just weeks before the end of the war. Rosa and her mother Ursel had been hidden by an elderly gentile woman for several years, but first Ursel was killed by an American bomb, and then the woman fell seriously ill. The girl had been left with no one to look after her, and the Swede Erik Aslund, who ran the Jewish escape line that Effi worked for, had begged her to take Rosa in.

She never regretted saying yes — the girl, though obviously and deeply traumatised, was an absolute delight. And now that Effi was thirty-nine, the only child she was ever likely to have.

Effi had asked the girl about her father Otto, but all Rosa could remember was his leaving one day and not coming back. She had been about three, she thought, which would place the man’s disappearance sometime around 1941. He was most likely dead, but they couldn’t be sure. Up until June of that year, Jews had still been allowed to leave Germany, and even after that date, some had escaped. Of those that stayed, several thousand of the so-called U-boats had survived several years in hiding, mostly in Berlin. So there was more than a fleeting chance that Otto was still alive.

But if he was, no trace had yet been found. Effi had been round all the refugee agencies in London, and each had agreed to pester their Berlin offices, but so far to no avail. Private correspondence between Germany and the outside world was still not allowed, so there was nothing they could do themselves. When a returning British soldier had kindly dropped off a letter from his ex-wife’s brother Thomas, Russell had tried and failed to find a carrier for his reply. When the restrictions were lifted, Effi knew Thomas would conduct a thorough search for Otto, but in the meantime…

The school doors opened, and a host of children swept out to the gate, borne on a tide of laughter and chatter. Such a comforting sound, Effi thought, one of those things you never appreciated until it disappeared, as it had in Berlin during the final years of the war.

Rosa was walking with a blonde girl around her own age. Catching sight of Effi, she almost pulled the other girl across to introduce her. ‘This is Marusya,’ she said. ‘She’s from Russia.’

‘How do you do?’ Effi said carefully in English. She was leaning down to shake the girl’s hand when the mother bustled up and seized it instead. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she almost shouted, and tugged the girl away.

Effi stared after them, feeling more upset for Marusya than herself. Rosa, though, seemed unconcerned. ‘Marusya likes drawing too,’ she confided.

They started for home, sharing Zarah’s umbrella and taking the usual path across the foot of Parliament Hill. Rosa chatted happily about her day at school. If she was thinking about her father, she was keeping it to herself.

Back at the flat Zarah was preparing the evening meal and listening to The Robinson Family on the wireless. She was also glancing frequently at the clock, Effi noticed. Lothar had announced the previous week that he was too old to be collected from school by his mother, and the way Zarah’s whole body relaxed when she heard him in the hall was almost painful to behold. He gave his mother a dutiful kiss and an ‘I told you so’ look.

A few minutes later the neighbours upstairs started one of their loud and increasingly frequent arguments. The demobbed husband had been home for several weeks now, and things were clearly building to a climax — the last time Effi had seen the wife she had clumsily tried to conceal the fact that both eyes were blackened. Effi itched to intervene, but knew it wouldn’t help. She also had vivid memories of the anti-German outburst that the women had directed at her while complaining about Paul’s noisy nightmares.

Listening to them scream at each other in a language she barely understood, she felt a sudden intense yearning for her real home.

‘Is John here for dinner?’ Zarah asked, interrupting her thoughts.

‘I think so.’

‘Are you two all right?’ her sister inquired in a concerned voice.

‘Yes, of course. What makes you ask?’ Effi replied, hearing the defensiveness in her own voice.

Zarah didn’t push it. ‘Oh, nothing. This is a hard time for everyone.’

‘How often do you think about Jens?’ Effi asked, partly in self-defence. Zarah had last seen her husband, a high-ranking bureaucrat in Hitler’s regime, in April. During their final conversation he had proudly announced that he had suicide pills for them both.

‘Not as often as I used to. I don’t miss him, but I do wonder what happened to him. And I know Lothar does. He has good memories of his father. I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s better not to know. Other times… well…’

Through the doorway to the front room Effi could see Rosa drawing. There was so much unfinished business, so many loose ends… She had a sudden mental picture of the blood-soaked operating room in the Potsdam Station bunker, of stumps being tidied up and cauterised. It wasn’t so easy with minds.

Tuesday morning, the fog eventually lifted to reveal a cold and overcast day. Russell caught a Fulham-bound bus in Piccadilly, and was soon glad he had done so. As part of their current dispute, the conductors were still refusing to allow anyone to stand, and the packed bus was soon leaving knots of irate passengers behind. Traffic was heavy in any case, and their conductor’s determination to explain himself at every stop rendered their progress even slower than it might have been. When the bus finally ground to a halt halfway down the Fulham Road a large proportion of the male passengers decided to continue on foot.

The hawkers were out in force, and doing a fine trade in toffee apples and oranges. The local children were busy pocketing pennies for storing bicycles in their front gardens and ‘looking after’ cars in the side streets. There were two programmes on sale — an official blue one and a pirate version in red. Russell bought them both for Paul, more out of habit than anything else. Paul had been an avid collector as a boy, but the urge had obviously faded, at least for the moment. Russell wondered what had happened to the boy’s stamp collection. If the albums had been left at the house in Grunewald, someone would have stolen them by now.

Picturing that house brought Paul’s mother Ilse to mind. He had met her in Moscow in 1924, at the same conference where his and Shchepkin’s paths had first crossed. He still found it hard to believe she was dead.

The crowd grew denser as he approached the ground, with many pushing against the tide. The gates were closed, he heard one man say, but if that was the case it didn’t seem much of a deterrent. As Russell crossed the West London Line railway bridge he could see people walking along between the tracks, and others scaling the back of the grandstand. Away in the distance small figures could be seen lining roofs and walls, or precariously clinging to chimney stacks.

He fought his way through to the grandstand entrance, where ticket-holders were still being admitted, and took his place in the fast-moving line. When he passed through the turnstile there was still half an hour before kick-off, so he joined the queue for tea. A party of Russians was ahead of him, happily swapping banter with some of the locals. Watching the exchange, Russell was reminded that most ordinary people still considered the Soviets as friends and allies.

The British press was certainly helping to preserve the illusion. J. B. Priestley had just chronicled a visit to the Soviet Union in a series of articles for the Sunday Express, and his impressions had been overwhelmingly favourable. Russell was glad that the popular playwright had noticed some Soviet plusses — particularly in education and culture — but rather more disappointed that he had missed most of the minuses. And Priestley was far from alone. Some descriptions of the Soviet leadership in the British press were naive to the point of idiocy. One journalist had recently compared Stalin to ‘a collie panting and eyeing his sheep’; another had announced that his successors would be ‘middle-aged Men of Good Will’. Which planet were they living on?

Tea in hand, he followed the signs for the appropriate block and climbed the relevant steps. Emerging above the dull green pitch he found himself looking out across a huge crowd, a large portion of which had already spilled out onto the greyhound track that ringed the playing surface. More to Russell’s surprise, the Russian players were already out, passing several balls between them. Their shirts and shorts were different shades of blue, with a old-fashioned white ‘D’ where British clubs wore their badges. Their socks were a fetching bottle green.

He found his row, and searched the gloom for Shchepkin. The old Comintern operative was a dozen or so seats along, his newly white hair peeking out from under a fur hat. There was an empty seat beside him.

As Russell forced his passage along the row he realised that all those making way were Russians — the whole block was occupied by fur-hatted men smoking strange-smelling cigarettes and conversing in nasal accents. Shchepkin smiled when he saw him coming, and Russell, rather to his own surprise, found himself reciprocating. If a list were made of those ultimately responsible for the mess his life was in, then Shchepkin’s name would undoubtedly come close to the top. But so, Russell knew, would his own. And the past was not for changing.

He took the seat beyond Shchepkin, beside a burly blond Russian in a shiny new suit.

‘This is Comrade Nemedin,’ Shchepkin announced, in a tone which left no doubt of the man’s importance.

‘Major Nemedin,’ the man corrected him. His blue eyes were a definite contender for the coldest that Russell had ever seen. ‘Mister Russell,’ the Russian said in acknowledgement, before turning his attention back to the pitch.

‘We will talk business at half-time,’ Shchepkin told Russell.

‘Right.’

‘How do you like living in London?’ Shchepkin asked him in Russian. Nemedin, Russell guessed, did not speak English.

‘I’ve been in better places,’ Russell replied in the same language. ‘It’ll take a lot more than six months to make up for the last six years.’

‘Did you grow up here?’

‘No, in Guildford. It’s about thirty miles away. To the southwest. But my father worked in London, and we used to come up quite often. Before the First War.’ He had been thinking about those visits lately. On one occasion he and his parents had been caught up in a suffragette rally. To his father’s chagrin and his mother’s great amusement.

Down below them the Dynamos were leaving the pitch. The crowd was now over the inner fence of the greyhound track, and, despite the best efforts of the police, creeping towards the touch and goal lines. On the far side a woman was being lifted across a sea of heads towards a posse of waiting St John Ambulancemen.

‘How are your family?’ Russell asked Shchepkin.

‘Oh.’ The Russian looked disconcerted for a moment, but soon recovered. ‘They are in good health, thank you. Natasha is training to be a teacher.’

‘Good,’ Russell said. They both knew that Nemedin was listening to every word, but Russell felt childishly intent on not being cowed into silence. ‘And how long have you been in London?’

‘Since the Sunday before last. We came with the team.’

‘Of course.’ Russell shifted his attention to Nemedin. ‘And how do you like it here, Major?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Nemedin replied, as if he’d heard a different question. ‘Are they going to force them back?’ he asked, indicating the crowds below.

‘I think they’ll be happy with keeping them off the pitch,’ Russell told him.

‘But… is this normal? There is no control.’

Russell shrugged. Where the English were concerned, the controls were internal. ‘Do you like football?’ he asked the Russian.

‘Of course.’

‘Will the Dynamos do well, do you think?’

‘Yes, I think so. If the referee is fair.’

There was a sound of breaking glass away to their right. Someone had fallen through the grandstand roof, and presumably landed in someone else’s lap. It wasn’t a long drop, so Russell doubted that anyone had died.

The two teams were filing out now: Chelsea in a change strip of red, the Dynamos carrying bouquets of flowers. They lined up facing each other, and those in the seats rose to their feet as the Royal Marines band launched into the Soviet national anthem. The crowd was respectful to a fault, and the wave of emotion which rolled across the stadium was almost palpable, as minds went back to those months when their two nations were all that stood between the Nazis and global domination. The Americans and their economy had certainly played crucial roles in the Allied victory, but if Britain had broken in 1940, or the Soviet Union in 1941, all their efforts might well have been in vain.

‘God Save The King’ followed, and the moment it died away the eleven Dynamo players stepped forward and presented the bouquets to their blushing Chelsea counterparts. A storm of laughter engulfed the stadium, leaving most of the Russell’s immediate neighbours looking bemused. In the seats below one man shouted that it must be Chelsea’s funeral.

A minute later the game was underway, and it was looking as if he’d been right. Far from being ‘so slow you could hear them think’, the Russian players were soon swarming towards the Chelsea goal, passing their way through their opponents with a deftness and speed which left the crowd gasping. Within minutes shots had hit the goalkeeper, the side netting and the post, and the Russians around Russell were almost purring with pleasure at the lesson their countrymen were teaching the English team.

For twenty minutes they did everything but score. And then, after hitting the post for a second time, they conceded at the other end — Tommy Lawton, much to Nemedin’s disgust, forcing the ball from the Dynamo keeper’s hands and setting it up on a plate for Len Goulden. When a stupid mistake at the back gifted Chelsea another goal, the sense of injustice was almost too much for Russell’s companions to bear. And, rubbing salt into the wound, the Dynamos contrived to miss a penalty just before half time, the left-winger hammering his shot against the post. When the teams disappeared beneath them with the score at two-nil, Russell couldn’t recall a less appropriate scoreline.

On his right, Shchepkin seemed less put out that most of his compatriots; on his left, Nemedin was muttering darkly to himself, which probably boded ill. The NKVD were hard enough to deal with when things were going their way.

Nemedin, however, proved able to set aside his disappointment. ‘We have two jobs for you,’ he told Russell once their mini-conference was underway, the two Russians leaning sideways until all three heads were only inches apart. ‘First, you will make contact with several German comrades in Berlin, some of whom you know, some of whom you don’t. We want to know where these comrades stand on several crucial issues. There has been a lot of discussion in the German Party about a “German Road to Socialism”. This is acceptable, but only insofar as it doesn’t become an anti-Soviet road. We want to know how these men feel about this in particular, and where their loyalties lie. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ Russell said. He did. Perfectly.

‘You will be supplied with all the relevant information when you reach Berlin.’

‘Uh-huh. And the second job?’

‘You will offer your services to American Intelligence. They are desperately trying to recruit Berliners, and you will obviously appeal to them. But you will of course be working for us.’

Russell was conscious for a moment of the Russians sitting in the next row down. They were also NKVD, he assumed. He was probably surrounded by a dozen of them. ‘You want me to function as a double agent inside American intelligence,’ he said.

It wasn’t a question, but Nemedin answered it anyway. ‘Yes.’

It was no worse than he’d feared, but that was little consolation. ‘You expect me to move back to Berlin?’

‘Of course.’

Russell risked a slight demurral. ‘Moving to Berlin is not a simple matter these days. And I have a family to consider. We would all need somewhere to live.’

‘Of course, but we’re assuming the Americans will take care of such matters.’ Nemedin seemed relieved, as if he’d been expecting more basic objections. ‘It would look suspicious if we openly organised your return. But these are details for you and Comrade Shchepkin to discuss.’

‘We will take care of you,’ Shchepkin interjected, ‘but not openly. Fraulein Koenen will soon be offered a job in Berlin — a prominent part in a film. And we will help you with exclusive stories. It is crucial that you remain a credible journalist.’

They were thinking things through, Russell thought. ‘And what if the Americans turn me down?’ he asked.

‘Comrade Shchepkin will discuss contingencies with you,’ Nemedin replied, with the slightest hint of impatience. ‘Mr Russell, what is your opinion of the current international situation?’

‘It’s another war waiting to happen.’

‘Mmm. And there can only be one winner — you agree?

‘Yes,’ seemed the diplomatic answer. ‘But it make take a while,’ Russell added, hoping to maintain some sort of reputation for realism. ‘The Americans have their atomic bomb now.’

‘We shall soon have one ourselves,’ Nemedin said dismissively, ‘and partly thanks to your own efforts. But you have correctly identified the principal enemy of world socialism. The British are finished,’ he said contemptuously, his blue eyes scanning the vast crowd. ‘The Americans are all that matter now, and you will help us there.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Russell said, in a resolutely deadpan tone. He wondered who the man was trying to convince — his brand new agent or himself? Nemedin was investing a lot in him, and clearly had mixed feelings about it. The Russian’s career might soar as a result, but he clearly resented his dependence on a foreign bourgeois. And if things went wrong, he would show no mercy.

The teams were coming out beneath them. ‘Do you have any questions?’ Nemedin asked, in a tone that invited none.

Why pick on me, was the one that came to mind, but he already knew the answer.

Nemedin took his silence for acquiescence. ‘Then that is all,’ he said, leaning back in his seat to watch the game re-start.

Russell decided he might as well enjoy the game and depress himself later. There would be plenty of time to run through the likely consequences of what he’d just been told..

The Dynamos started the second half the way they’d started the first, repeatedly bearing down on the Chelsea goal, only to waste their chances. This time, however, the sustained pressure paid off, and one of their forwards finally scored with a fine shot. The Russians around Russell leapt to their feet, and he found himself doing the same.

The Dynamos had recovered their confidence, and soon scored an equaliser. Chelsea responded, going ahead once more, but as the last fifteen minutes ticked away the Russians looked less tired than their opponents, and another equaliser followed with five minutes remaining. Nemedin thumped the seat in front in his excitement, causing its Russian occupant to swing angrily round, and then do a double-take when he recognised the source of his ire.

The Soviets almost scored a winner, but had to settle for a draw, and the men around Russell seemed happy enough. All the British press experts had been wide of the mark, and the visitors had come away with a clear moral victory. The collie in the Kremlin would be one happy dog.

Nemedin rose and moved away, without so much as a look. ‘We all leave for Cardiff tomorrow afternoon,’ Shchepkin told Russell, ‘so you and I must meet in the morning. We’re staying at the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square, and when I looked out of the window this morning I noticed a mobile canteen in the park. Can we meet there, say eleven o’clock?’

He waited only for Russell’s nod, then also hurried off.

On the long bus ride home, Russell went over what had been said, and wondered what to tell the others. They all knew why he’d been invited to Stamford Bridge, but he decided to save the inevitable family discussion until after his meeting with Shchepkin. And maybe not until he’d made contact with the Americans. Another meeting he wasn’t looking forward to. He sometimes wondered whether he should simply throw in the towel and go into hiding for the rest of his life. If his press contacts could be believed, South America was working for the Nazis.

At home, the women and children were on the floor, playing a board game that Lothar had made in class that day, with Paul watching from an armchair. Russell shook his head in response to Effi’s questioning look, and went out to make a pot of tea. Paul joined him in the kitchen to ask about the game, having heard the BBC radio coverage of the second half. It wasn’t until eight-thirty, with the children in bed and It’s That Man Again finished on the radio, that Russell and Effi could walk down to the local pub for a private conversation. It was a clear night, and there was no sign of the local boy gangsters.

The public bar was crowded and full of smoke, the saloon much more sparsely populated. ‘So what are their plans for you?’ Effi asked, once they’d settled in a secluded corner.

Russell told her everything that Nemedin had told him.

‘You’re going back,’ Effi said, with traces of both resentment and wistfulness.

‘For how long?’ she asked.

‘God knows. I can’t see them running out of useful things for me to do.’

‘So they’re expecting you to finger any independent-minded German comrades, and then spy on the Americans for them?’

‘That’s about it.’

‘Oh, John.’

‘I know.’

‘And they spelt out what will happen if you say no?’

‘They didn’t have to.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ She wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected, but it hadn’t been as bad as this.

‘Ninety-nine per cent. Nemedin made sure to mention my contribution to their atomic research, just in case I’d blocked it out. If he tells the world, my credibility as a journalist will be shot to pieces. And that’s the very best I could expect — the Americans might charge me with treason.’

‘Okay,’ Effi agreed, ‘but how would it help the Russians to publicise your involvement? And maybe they don’t want the world to know that they’ve got those German secrets. Perhaps they’re bluffing.’

Russell smiled. ‘Perhaps. But if they are, and I call them on it, I don’t think they’ll hold up their hands and say “ah, you’ve got us there.” They’ll just find some other way of exerting pressure, and invite me to think again. None of us would be safe. At least while I’m doing their bidding in Berlin, the rest of you will be able to get on with your lives here. And once I’m there, maybe I can find some way out of it all.’

She gave him an exasperated look, and reached for his hand. ‘I don’t want to get on with my life without you.’

‘I was hoping you felt that way, because the bastards have invited you too.’

‘What do you mean?’

He told her about the imminent offer of a film role.

‘What sort of film?’ she asked, both pleased and suspicious.

‘They didn’t give me any details.’

‘Oh. But why, do you think?’

‘Who knows? Perhaps they think I’ll be happier in Berlin with you. Or just more vulnerable. And both would be true.’

Could she leave Rosa with Zarah, Effi wondered. And if not, could they take her with them? She couldn’t shake the feeling that Berlin was the last place on earth this girl would want to live.

‘And there’s another thing,’ Russell told her. ‘They want me working as a journalist. The Soviets will feed me good stories, and probably the Americans too. And if either of them try to stop me from telling the truth, I can tell them that an independent voice is the best cover a spy could possibly have. So at least I’ll get my professional life back. Which is something. Not a lot, but something.’

‘Yes,’ Effi agreed, though she found herself thinking he was clutching at straws. If so, there were probably worse straws to clutch at. But what did she want herself? To act again? Yes, she did, but more than anything else she wanted some sort of resolution concerning Rosa’s father. For the girl of course, but also for herself. And in Berlin she could find out what had happened to him. ‘We always knew we’d go back,’ she said, trying to cheer him up.