Lehrter Station

New textbooks

‘We need more clothes,’ Effi said plaintively. ‘I’m wearing almost everything I brought with me.’

A wintry sun was shining in through the window, but the air inside the bedroom was cold enough to show their breath, and leaving the nest of blankets was a deeply uninviting prospect.

Soon after waking, Russell had shivered his way downstairs to brew some tea, and they’d spent the last hour reading through Effi’s new script. It was a ritual they’d shared in pre-war days — making a mockery of the Nazi-inspired storylines had been amusing in itself, and, as Russell later came to realise, a way of rendering Effi’s participation in the whole process more palatable than it might otherwise have been. But those days, as ‘The Man I Shall Kill’ made abundantly clear, were over. This storyline was far too apposite to mock, and no apologies were needed for turning it into a film.

The story itself was simple enough — an army surgeon returns to Berlin after service in the East, and seeks refuge in alcohol from the many terrible things he has seen. His own apartment has been destroyed in the bombing, so he moves into one that hasn’t, little knowing that the female owner — Effi’s character — is on her way home after years of imprisonment in a concentration camp. When she arrives back, he refuses to leave, and they eventually agree to share the space. Their relationship is slowly blossoming into love when he learns that his former CO, the man who ordered their unit to murder over a hundred Polish women and children, is living nearby. And that far from paying for his crimes, the CO has reinvented himself as a successful businessman. Despite the pleas of the woman, the surgeon decides to kill him.

In this script he succeeded, but an additional note said the final section was being re-written. ‘Which makes sense,’ Russell thought out loud. ‘I’d have you stop him. More drama, and a better political message. The civilised way, not the Nazi way. Bring the bastard to trial. And then kill him.’

‘Maybe,’ Effi said. ‘It would certainly help my part. My character’s really strong, really interesting, for the first two reels, and then she turns into a helpless bystander.’

‘Not your role in life.’

‘Not in films. At least, not when I have any say in the matter. But it could be a good film, don’t you think?

‘It could. And should be. A good sign, I’d say.’

‘Yes.’ Effi reached across to look at her watch. ‘Oh hell. I have to get up — my script meeting starts at ten. What are you doing today?’

‘I’ll probably play the journalist for an hour or so. And then I’m off to the Soviet zone.’

‘Off to see the wizard?’ she asked. They had taken Rosa to The Wizard of Oz in London.

‘Shchepkin? No. If I sign in at the Housing Office on Neue Konigstrasse I should see him tomorrow. But while I’m in the neighbourhood I might drop in on Thomas at the printing works. And then see if Uwe Kuzorra’s still working at the Alex. I’d like to thank him for saving my life.’

‘Thank him for me,’ Effi said. ‘I think I’d have missed you.’

After they parted, Russell’s first stop-off was at the American Press Camp on Argentinischeallee. Over coffee in the canteen he eavesdropped on several conversations, but the Austrian election results and their significance for Berlin were not among the topics under discussion — the young journalists seemed focussed on the imminent arrival of a baseball star whom Russell had never heard of. This was depressing, and checking out the mechanics of reporting from Berlin offered little in the way of solace. As far as he could see the current crop of American foreign correspondents were simply appending their by-lines to stories which the occupation authorities had already chosen and virtually written. His old American colleague Jack Slaney would have been appalled.

Filing stories to London was not something the Americans could assist him with. And he didn’t think the British authorities would be that eager to help, not now he’d taken out American citizenship. Dallin would have to sort it out, whenever he could bring himself to see the wretched man. There was no hurry. As Slaney had once told him, stories that thrilled or titillated lasted a matter of hours, but news that really mattered usually lasted years.

He took the U-Bahn from Oskar-Helene-Heim to Wittenbergplatz, and changed there for Alexanderplatz. He had a seat on the first train, and managed to read what little there was of the Allgemeine Zeitung. Most of the news was foreign, and he found it hard to imagine that Berliners were overly concerned with events beyond their city. His second train was slow, crowded, and extremely pungent. The long unexplained waits in the tunnels were nightmarish, particularly when accompanied by the not-so-distant sounds of explosions.

Alexanderplatz was a relief, even with the giant poster of Stalin and his usual murderous smirk. The Red Army was much in evidence, and the sight of officers and men enjoying each other’s company made Russell more conscious of the British and American obsession with hierarchy. As if to correct the impression, a Soviet general drove slowly by in an immaculate Horch 930V, looking this way and that to make sure he was being noticed. The woman beside him looked equally pleased with herself, and was probably his wife. Unlike their British and American counterparts Soviet officers were allowed to bring their spouses with them.

The Alex was still standing, its turrets and roof somewhat the worse for wear, rather in the manner of a prize-fighter proudly exhibiting a badly bruised crown and torn ears. But first he needed to visit the designated Housing Office, which was a couple of hundred metres up Neue Konigstrasse. He walked up past a troop of women shifting rubble, and a trio of young men in ragged uniforms. Two of the men were on crutches, having each lost a leg. The third was leaning on a blind man’s cane.

There was a long queue inside the Housing Office, but it moved faster than Russell expected, and a German official was soon examining the papers that the Soviet embassy in London had given him. The man gave him an almost sympathetic glance, as if he knew what Russell’s presence portended. ‘You will be hearing from us in due course,’ he said eventually, for want of anything more convincing.

Back on the pavement outside, Russell watched as another pathetic clutch of returning POWs straggled by in the middle of the road. As a Soviet jeep approached from the opposite direction, it seemed to take all their energy to step out of its path, and one man proved too slow. Clipped by the front wing of the vehicle, he tumbled to the ground. The Red Army driver shouted abuse over his shoulder and kept going, leaving the man to slowly pick himself up. His comrades plodded on, offering no help.

Russell made his way back to the Alex, and went in through the old No. 1 doors on Dircksenstrasse. There was less frenzied activity than he remembered, the faces younger but no less hard. Which was hardly surprising — in Soviet eyes, the German police force would have been irredeemably tarnished by its close association with the Nazi state. Most of the old guard would be gone, replaced by those young or politically reliable enough to satisfy the new masters. The Soviets had their own police HQ in the south-eastern outskirts, but their presence here was no less real for being invisible.

The desk sergeant was one of the few older faces, but denied any knowledge of Kriminalinspecktor Uwe Kuzorra. He suggested a personnel office on the other side of the inner courtyard, but no one there could be of any help. All the police files had disappeared, one young man told Russell. He seemed pleased by the loss, implying that it offered a welcome break with the past.

For the criminals too, Russell thought but didn’t say.

He went in search of Kuzorra’s old office, where he’d first heard the news that the Gestapo were after him. No one challenged his presence en route, but when he reached what seemed the right corridor, all of the likely offices lay empty. There were secretaries in two rooms further along, but neither recalled the detective’s name.

Russell traced his way back to the outside world. Kuzorra might have retired soon after their last meeting in 1941. He — and the possibility was chilling — might have been arrested, even executed, for his part in helping Russell escape. Then again, he was more likely to have been killed by a bomb or a shell, like a hundred thousand other Berliners. But whatever his fate, it seemed strange that no one remembered him in the place where he’d spent his working life.

Russell wondered what to do. His main reason for seeking out Kuzorra was to thank him, but he had also nursed a vague hope that the detective would still be working, and in a position to offer him some help. The old Kuzorra could have provided a rundown of what made the new Berlin tick, and what stories were crying out for investigation. He would also have known how best to mount a search for missing Jews.

Maybe he’d retired at the end of the war — he had to be nearly seventy. If so, and if his building had survived, he would probably still be living on Demminer Strasse, which was only a short ride away on the U-Bahn. Or had been in better times. Descending the steps at Alexanderplatz station, he discovered that an unexploded bomb had been found in the tunnels, and the service north suspended.

Back on the surface, he thought about taking a bus, but the first one that came was so tightly packed that only two of the waiting crowd could get on. He supposed he could walk, but what was the point when tomorrow would do just as well?

The problems besetting public transport reminded him he’d once owned a car. Like most private vehicles, it had been forced off the road by war regulations and the acute fuel shortage. Russell had left the Hanomag at the garage where he’d bought it, from Miroslav Zembski’s cousin Hunder. And if it hadn’t fallen victim to high explosives, the car might still be waiting for him. Ordinary Berliners were still forbidden to drive, and petrol was almost impossible to come by, but he was officially an American, and one of his spymasters might like the idea of motorising their favourite agent. It had to be worth a shot.

This flight of fancy sustained him throughout the S-Bahn ride to Lehrter Station, and down several streets of ruined workshops and small factories. But then came disappointment — Hunder Zembski’s yard had not survived its proximity to the nearby railway sheds. The gates were still standing but little else, and the packed lot he remembered from 1941 resembled a wreckers’ yard.

Clambering gingerly across a skein of twisted metal, he headed for where he’d parked the Hanomag, but that corner of the yard had obviously taken a direct hit, and all he could find was a jumble of pulverised brick and metal shards. If the car had not been moved beforehand, it never would be now.

He made his way back to Lehrter Station. A train was noisily pulling in, and he used a gap in the fence to get a better view. The locomotive was pulling cattle cars rather than coaches, and the waiting platform was lined with soldiers, nurses and men with armbands who Russell assumed were refugee agency officials. When the doors were opened people burst violently out, as if they’d been held in under pressure. The shoulders of one arrival visibly sagged as he took in the jagged skyline that lay beyond the roofless station. Could this be Berlin?

Around the station a sprawling refugee camp had grown up. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people living in burnt-out offices, overturned wagons and any niche that a sheet of corrugated iron could roof over. As he looked back at the train, the first of many stretchers was lifted down from the cattle cars. Each bore a human load, but none showed signs of life.

Russell remembered the nights in 1941, when he and Gerhard Strohm had watched trains like these leaving Berlin with their cargo of Jews for ‘resettlement’. The cattle cars looked the same, but this time the cargo was German. These families had been driven from the old Junker heartlands in the east by the victorious Russians and Poles. They had paid the bill for Hitler with their loved ones and their homes.

His reporter’s instinct told him two things — that this was a huge story, and one that the victors would rather not read. Ninety-nine per cent of these refugees would be innocent of any serious crime, but as far as the world was concerned, being German was guilt enough, and any such suffering thoroughly deserved.

For Effi, entering Ernst Dufring’s house in Schmargendorf was like stepping into a time machine. The hall was plastered with framed movie posters from the golden age of German cinema, the huge living room a shrine to Bauhaus interior design. Even the other actors seemed wellfed, with none of the yellow-grey pallor that characterised most Berliner faces. Only the shell-shattered spire of the church across the street offered proof of the war just fought and lost.

Effi had wondered what sort of reception she would receive, but everyone seemed pleased to have her on board. And more than happy in general, as if they’d just won top prize in a national sweepstake. In a way they had, she supposed. The people in this room were pioneers, the first movie-makers of the new Germany.

The writer Ute Faeder, a tall blonde in her forties with a wry sense of humour, explained some changes she had made in the script, and Dufring then listed the scenes they would run through that morning. He looked much older than Effi remembered, but there was no doubting his enthusiasm for making this particular movie. ‘I know you’ve only just received the script,’ he told Effi, ‘but do your best.’

Her confidence increased as the morning passed, but nailing this character was going to be hard. She wasn’t sure why her character let the man stay on in her flat; she only knew that Lilli’s own experiences in the camp had made it impossible for her to evict him. But what experiences, and how could Effi access them? Her week in a cell at the Gestapo’s Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse HQ had certainly been frightening, but she hadn’t gone hungry, hadn’t been physically abused. Lilli, by contrast, had endured years of the worst that the Nazis could offer. How could Effi make sense of her psyche? She needed to talk to people with such experiences, she thought. If she was going to play this role with any conviction, she needed to hear their stories.

It occurred to her that she had never felt this need before — imagination had been enough. Perhaps that was the point — what had happened over the last few years was literally unimaginable. And it would need films like this to make it less so. Movies like this really mattered, unlike most she had made.

This thought had only just crossed her mind when Lothar Kuhnert appeared at her side. ‘I’m afraid we have a problem,’ were his first upsetting words. ‘The British have refused your Spruchkammer certification.’

‘Oh no. Why, for heaven’s sake?’

‘A lot of nonsense about you playing “iconic Nazi roles”, whatever than means. The real reason is that the Americans have insisted.’

‘What in heaven’s name have I done to upset them?’

‘They’re adopting a harder line towards ex-Nazis, and…’

‘I wasn’t a Nazi!’

‘We know that. But some Americans don’t understand that it was possible to do well in the Third Reich without being one.’

‘Oh God! Doesn’t the fact that the Gestapo was hunting me for four years make any difference?’

‘It should. It will. Just leave it with me.’ He sighed. ‘The good news is that there’s no urgency. They’re still investigating Ernst, and there’ll probably be others. But we’ll get this film made, one way or another.’

‘We should,’ Effi told him. ‘It’s worth making.’

It was almost dark when Russell found himself outside Otto Pappenheim’s door in the Solinger Strasse apartment block. Again there was no answer to his knock, but this time a different neighbour emerged. Three cigarettes — a gross overpayment, as Russell later discovered — was enough to overcome any reluctance he had about disclosing Otto’s place of work. It was a nightclub on the Ku’damm called, suitably enough, Die Honig-falle. The Honey Trap.

Outside it was growing dark. He walked south, took the temporary walkway across the foul-smelling Spree, and skirted the western perimeter of the silenced zoo. Feeling hungry, he stopped for a sandwich at the Zoo Station buffet and idly leafed through a newspaper that someone had quite understandably left behind. There was nothing in it, save for sundry do-it-yourself tips for the average Berlin householder circa 1945 — ‘how to repair a roof without tiles,’ ‘how to mend a wall without bricks’ — and hundreds of messages from people seeking either long-lost relatives and friends or strangers willing to share their body-heat.

There were neon lights burning on the Ku’damm, but not that many by pre-war standards. There were British soldiers on the pavements, and almost as many German girls, but the night was obviously young. According to Thomas, bus-loads of girls from the Soviet sector — where payment of any kind could rarely be taken for granted — arrived around mid-evening.

The Honey Trap was on the northern side, in the basement of a half-demolished building that Russell vaguely remembered as a music school. The two bouncers guarding the top of the steps looked barely out of their teens, and managed to convey the impression that only their dates of birth had prevented them joining the Nazis.

They eyed Russell with professional suspicion, but relaxed when he mentioned Otto Pappenheim. ‘He’ll be in the office at the back,’ one said, in a tone suggesting surprise that anyone wanted to see him. Walking down the steps, it occurred to Russell that mention of his quarry’s name had not yet produced a single positive reaction.

The barely-lit basement room smelt of stale beer, cigarette smoke and sweat. A barman gestured him through to the room at the rear, where another man was seated at a small and rickety-looking table, his head bent over an accounts ledger. As he looked up, Russell saw dark hair, dark eyes, and features sharp enough to invite comparisons with rodents. The man was probably in his thirties, which was about right for Rosa’s father, but he bore little resemblance to the Nazi stereotype of a Jew. But then few Jews did. ‘Otto Pappenheim?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ the man replied after only the slightest of hesitations. The eyes were suspicious, but what Jew’s eyes wouldn’t be after the last twelve years?

‘I’m looking for someone of that name,’ Russell said, looking round for something to sit on. There was nothing.

‘Why? Who are you?’

‘My name’s John Russell. I’m not with the police or anything like that — I’m just an ordinary citizen.’

‘Okay,’ the man said almost cheerfully. The news that Russell had no connection to the authorities seemed something of a relief.

‘I’m looking for an Otto Pappenheim who left a wife and daughter early in the war, most likely through no choice of his own. His wife’s name was Ursel, and they had a daughter name Rosa…’

‘I never had a daughter,’ the man said. ‘And my wife died in a camp. We had no children. Thank God,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Ah. I’m sorry.’

‘No, it’s over.’ He smiled thinly. ‘We have to live in the present now.’

‘Of course. But have you ever run across anyone else with the same name?’

‘No. There are such men, I’m sure, but I have never met one.’

Russell could think of nothing else to ask. He thanked the man and walked back towards the front. Passing through the sparsely populated bar, he realised he fancied a drink.

‘What are you paying with?’ was the barman’s first question.

‘What do you take?’

‘What do you have?’

‘US dollars.’

‘They’ll do.’

‘And what else?’ Russell asked as his beer was poured.

‘Pounds. Cigarettes. There’s a list of exchange rates on the wall over there.’

Russell took a first sip and examined the sign. 3 British Woodbines were worth 1 American Pall Mall, and both were listed in their cash dollar equivalents. ‘What about German currency?’ he asked.

The barman laughed and turned away.

Russell found himself a table, sat down, and surveyed the room. The decor was as minimal as the lighting, and no attempt had been made to disguise the myriad cracks in the ceiling. A small dance floor lay between the sea of closely packed tables and a narrow, curtainless stage.

‘John Russell,’ a surprised voice exclaimed beside him.

‘Irma,’ he said, smiling and standing to embrace her. They had met in pre-war days, when she and Effi had been in the same musical. Hardly a highlight of Effi’s career, Barbarossa had marked a real low for Irma Wocz, who had first earned fame as a cabaret artist in pre-Nazi Berlin. She had to be in her mid-forties, but the dark eyes were still challenging, the full mouth still inviting, and the shining brunette hair would have convinced anyone who hadn’t last seen her as a blonde. Her figure, or what Russell could see of it inside the buttoned coat, still had curves to spare. ‘Please, join me,’ he said. ‘Have a drink.’

‘I certainly will,’ she said, sitting down opposite him. ‘But don’t think of paying for it. I work here.’ She raised a hand to get the barman’s attention, and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. ‘Where have you been since the shit hit the fan?’ she asked. ‘Someone showed me your picture in the papers,’ she explained. ‘After your little disagreement with our late lamented leader.’

Russell laughed. ‘We’ve been in England the last few months.’

‘You had the sense to stick with Effi?’

‘Yes, she’s here too. She’s making a movie with some people at the old Reichskulturkammer.’

She took her drink from the barman, and halved it in one gulp. ‘The comrades? That’s a sensible move. Once the Americans get bored and go home, they’ll be running everything.’

‘You think they will? Get bored, I mean.’

Irma shrugged. ‘Once they’ve fucked every girl in Berlin.’

‘You’re singing again?’

‘You could call it that.’ She smiled and emptied her glass. ‘I’m certainly getting too old to fuck for a living. Look, you and Effi should come one evening, for old time’s sake. We’re open every day but Monday. One on the house?’ she asked him, waving her own glass at the barman.

‘No, thanks. I haven’t eaten yet.’

‘Now there’s an overrated pastime. If there’s one thing we can thank the Fuhrer for, it’s teaching us how to live with hunger. Ah,’ she added, looking Russell’s shoulder, ‘here comes the boss.’

He turned to see a man walking towards them.

‘Good evening, Herr Geruschke,’ she said in greeting. He was around Russell’s age, the short side of medium height, with dark eyes and thick charcoal-coloured hair that was beginning to recede. He was smartly dressed in a dark grey suit, stiff-collared shirt, jazzy tie and shining brogues.

The smile, Russell noticed, did not extend to the eyes.

‘Irma,’ he said with the slightest of bows. He watched the barman replace her empty glass with a full one, and looked enquiringly at Russell.

‘This is an old friend,’ she explained. ‘John Russell. He lived in Berlin before the war.’

‘Are you English?’ Geruschke asked with a smile.

‘I am,’ Russell said. It was simpler than explaining his official pedigree as an American.

‘We have many English customers,’ Geruschke said. ‘But few are here by choice. In Berlin, that is.’

‘I’m just here for a visit,’ Russell told him. ‘Seeing old friends, that sort of thing.’ Something about the man gave him the creeps.

‘His girlfriend’s Effi Koenen,’ Irma volunteered. ‘She’s here to make a movie for the comrades.’

‘An actress? I haven’t heard the name, but then I never go to films.’ He turned back to Irma, whose second glass was almost empty. ‘Try not to get drunk before you perform,’ he told her sharply. ‘Herr Russell,’ he added, taking his leave with a slight nod and the faintest clicking of heels. As he walked away Russell found himself wondering what the man had been doing for the last twelve years. A question you could ask of any prosperous survivor.

‘He’s a real charmer, isn’t he?’ Irma muttered. ‘But he pays well.’

‘What’s his first name?’

‘Rudolf, but I’ve never heard anyone use it.’

The club was slowly filling up. Three British soldiers had just come in with four young girls, and a good-natured dispute about exchange rates was underway at the bar. On the stage a musician had removed his shining saxophone from its case, and was busy replacing its reed.

‘Do you know Otto Pappenheim?’ Russell asked Irma.

‘The accountant?’ I know him well enough to ignore him.’

Russell laughed. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Oh nothing, I suppose. He’s one of Geruschke’s Jews. He says he likes to help them get back on their feet, which is fair enough. He could be a bit choosier, though. I mean, the Jews have their quota of low-lifes, just like everyone else. And in my experience, being persecuted rarely turns people into saints. Turns them into shits as often as not.’

‘You could be right,’ Russell agreed. It was beginning to seem that post-war Berlin — indeed, the whole damn post-war world — was hellbent on meeting his worst expectations.

Back at the house, he found Thomas and Effi sitting on either side of the kitchen table. They both looked less than happy. ‘Has something happened?’ he asked. ‘Is Leon all right?’

‘He’s fine,’ Effi said, raising a smile.

‘We’ve just had what passes for a normal day in Berlin,’ Thomas said wryly. ‘The Russians have been obstructing me, and the Americans have been obstructing Effi.’

‘How so?’

Effi told him what Kuhnert had told her.

‘What’s it do with the Americans?’ Russell wanted to know.

‘Who knows? But anyway, Kuhnert thinks he can sort it out. It’s just left a sour taste, that’s all.’

‘I’m not surprised, after all you went through. It must be really upsetting.’

‘It is,’ Effi agreed. But not just for those reasons, she thought. Part of her dismay came from recognising the grain of truth in the accusations against her. She had played the storm trooper’s widow. She had played the proud Nazi mother.

Russell put an arm around her shoulder. ‘And what have the Russians been doing to you?’ he asked Thomas.

‘Oh, just making life difficult. They don’t understand business. They don’t like business. I think they believe deep down that business is like some fast-growing weed, that if they leave it alone it’ll grow so fast that they’ll never get rid of it.’

‘Couldn’t you relocate to one of the Western zones? There’s certainly no shortage of land for development.’

‘I’ve thought about it. Trouble is, if I set a move in motion the Russians will just confiscate my machinery. And if I could somehow persuade them not to, who knows how welcoming the Americans would be? One of the Soviet officials took me aside today, and warned me again how seriously the Americans would take my hobnobbing with Nazis during the war. And if he was right — if the Americans really are intent on giving me a hard time — then I’m better off staying where I am. At least the Russians let me work.’ He stood up. ‘But enough. I’m hungry, and Effi tells me you two have a dinner date.’

‘God yes,’ Russell said. He’d completely forgotten about Ali’s invitation.

‘And we should be going,’ Effi said, looking at her watch. She ducked out from under Russell’s arm. ‘And you can tell me whose perfume you’re wearing on the way.’

Outside the streets were a lot darker than Russell remembered from pre-war days, but brighter than they had been in the blackout. The sky seemed to be clearing, and the moon’s occasional appearances lent the ruins an aura of ghostly beauty.

He told Effi about his meeting with Irma, and the reason he’d been at the night club. When he let slip that he’d known about Otto since the previous day she gave him an exasperated look. ‘Don’t keep me in the dark,’ she said. ‘I know you mean well, but I’d rather know. All right?’

‘All right.’

‘And how was Irma?’

‘The same as ever. If not more so.’

Effi laughed. ‘We must go and see her perform.’

They reached Hufelandstrasse, and climbed the stairs to Ali’s door. A wonderful aroma was waiting inside, and the dinner that Ali served up a few minutes later offered ample proof of the culinary skills she’d learnt from her mother. And, as she herself was quick to point out, of the extra rations they received as Jews.

Fritz seemed increasingly relaxed with his wife’s friends, and did most of the talking. His thoughts on the pros and cons of the prospective merger between the KPD and SPD were perceptive for a young man, Russell thought, then silently admonished himself for being patronising.

After dinner, Effi and Ali told tales of their time together. Both Russell and Fritz — who had also survived several years in hiding — had heard the stories before, but only from their own partners. Hearing the tales from them both added another dimension, and made them all the more extraordinary. Yet again, Russell was reminded of how easy his war had been compared to theirs. They’d all been living on their wits, but that was where the comparisons ended — each day for years on end these three had woken with the knowledge that any loss of vigilance, any stroke of bad luck, would likely prove fatal. He didn’t know how they’d managed it.

He asked Ali and Fritz if they planned to stay in Berlin. If he’d had their experiences of the city and its citizens he wasn’t at all sure that he would.

‘For the moment,’ Fritz answered him.

‘How about Palestine?’ Russell asked.

‘No,’ Fritz replied curtly. ‘We want to be human beings first, not Jews.’

‘Sometimes we think about America,’ Ali admitted. ‘A completely fresh start and all that. But…’ She shrugged.

‘People say they want to leave it all behind,’ Fritz said. ‘But I don’t think they’ll find it that easy.’

He was probably right, Russell thought. The world was a lot smaller than it used to be.

Before they left Ali handed Effi a list of possible contacts. Some were people they had known during the war, others were Jews that Ali had met in the last six months.

‘Oh to be young again,’ was Russell’s first comment as they started for home down Hufelandstrasse.

‘Would you like to be twenty-one again?’ was Effi’s more serious response.

He thought about it. ‘I’d like that body back — the joints didn’t ache in wet weather. And my youthful innocence… no, maybe not.’

‘Innocence is overrated,’ Effi told him.

It was such an un-Effi-like thing to say that he almost stopped in his tracks.

‘I miss Rosa,’ she added.

It sounded like a non sequitur, but probably wasn’t.

Wednesday morning was as grey as its predecessor. As Russell went through his things prior to leaving the house, he noticed the letter that Paul had given him for the mother and sister of Werner Redlich, the boy soldier his son had met in the final days of the war. Perhaps he would have time to visit them that afternoon. He couldn’t say he was looking forward to it.

Or his meeting with Shchepkin, come to that. Riding a tram up the old Herman-Goring-Strasse, Russell thought it a joke when the tram conductor named the next stop ‘Black Market’, but no one seemed to be laughing. As he left the tram, he noticed that others alighting were all carrying suitcases or bags of some sort, and heading in the same direction as himself, into the adjacent Tiergarten.

He followed them in. Away to his left, allotments gave way to stump-studded wastelands and the shell-pitted flak towers. To his right, in the lee of the dog-eared Brandenburg Gate, an area the size of a football pitch played host to a milling crowd. This market had no stalls, only perambulant sellers whispering their wares. Almost all of them were Germans — women, children and a few old men. The buyers by contrast were mostly soldiers, and most of them were Russian.

Rather to his surprise, he felt more sanguine about his new espionage career than he had when the Soviets first came to call. Wondering why, he realised what had changed. While the Nazis had flourished, he’d had no ethical room for manoeuvre. Helping them, or hindering their enemies, were not things he could live with. Or not with any sense of self-worth. But that black-and-white world had vanished with Hitler, and the new one really was in shifting shades of grey. He could make arguments for and against any of the major players; in helping one or the other he had no sense of supporting good against evil, or evil against good. If, in personal terms, Yevgeny Shchepkin was almost a kindred spirit, and Scott Dallin someone from a distant unfriendly planet, he had no illusions about Stalin’s Russia. And though American help was his only way out of the Soviet embrace, that didn’t mean he wanted a world run by money and big business.

His instructions were to stay on the edge of the crowd, and wait for contact to be made. He started around the perimeter, looking out for Shchepkin, and trying to ignore the repeated offers of items for sale. In less than a minute he was obliged to decline nylons, butter, soap powder and an Iron Cross First Class, all at allegedly once-only prices.

He saw Shchepkin before the Russian saw him, which had to be a first — in the past the other man had made a habit of appearing at Russell’s shoulder with almost magical abruptness. He had half-expected to see Nemedin too, and was relieved to see Shchepkin alone. ‘I see they’ve let you out on your own,’ he greeted the Russian.

Shchepkin smiled. He looked better than he had in London, the skin less stretched, the eyes less darkened. He was wearing a worn dark suit, with a patterned black scarf and grey trilby. ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down,’ he said. ‘My knees are killing me.’

They found an overturned bench which seemed sound, and which still bore traces of the legend denying its use to Jews. Sitting down, Russell felt somewhat exposed, but then he didn’t suppose it mattered if they were seen together. The Russians knew he was working for them, and so did the Americans.

‘I should give you a brief who’s who of the local NKVD,’ Shchepkin began.

‘Why?’

‘Because you should know who you’re dealing with,’ the Russian said with some asperity. The boss here in Berlin is Pavel Shimansky. He’s not a bad man all told, and he’s a survivor — he’s already outlasted Yagoda and Yezhov, and Beria’s made no move against him yet. That may be because Shimansky has friends I don’t know about, or it may be because he lets his deputy — Anatoly Tsvetkov — do what he likes. Tsvetkov is one of Beria’s Georgians, and he is a nasty piece of work. Nemedin is his deputy, and you’ve met him.’

‘How is Comrade Nemedin?’

‘He’s hopeful. And very watchful. My room has been searched twice since I got here.’

‘Did they find anything?’

‘Of course not,’ Shchepkin said, as if his professionalism had been brought into question.

‘Where are you living?’

‘Out in Kopenick. There’s a hotel by the river which we’ve taken over.’

‘I know it. We went boating there before the war. But I don’t suppose your people do that.’

‘You’d be surprised. But let’s get to business.’ Shchepkin placed a folded newspaper on the bench between them. ‘The list of the men we need vetting is inside. They’re all Party members. And there’s a couple more that Fraulein Koenen is working with. We’d like her opinion on them.’

Russell bristled. ‘That wasn’t part of the deal.’

‘No, but ask her anyway. She only has to deal in generalities. We just want a sense of where their loyalties lie.’

‘She’ll refuse.’

‘Perhaps. If she does, then we may have to think again. But I presume you’ve explained the situation to her — your situation, I mean.’

‘Of course.’

‘Then she may surprise you. In my experience women are more hard-headed about such things than men.’

He might be right, Russell thought, as an emaciated dog sniffed round his shoes. ‘I’ll ask her.’

The dog gave them both a reproachful look, and trotted off across the allotments.

‘Good. Now, your list. There are five comrades on it. Two of them you know — Gerhard Strohm and Stefan Leissner…’

‘He survived?’ Leissner was the Reichsbahn official who’d given him and the young Soviet scientist Varennikov a hiding-place back in April. After the latter’s death Russell had come upon Leissner lying just outside his bombed office with his right leg almost severed. He’d loosened and re-tightened the unconscious man’s tourniquet, but there’d been no time to do anything more.

‘Leissner? He lost a leg, but he’s alive. And he has an important job — he’s virtually running the railways in our zone.’

‘He didn’t strike me as the disloyal type.’

‘Maybe not. But he’s certainly being tested — orders keep arriving from Moscow to tear up his tracks and ship them east as reparations.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes. Two of the others should provide no problem, but Manfred Haferkamp — have you met him?’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He was a Party convenor in the Hamburg docks. In 1933 he escaped to Finland, and eventually turned up in Moscow. He taught at the International School for several years, but was arrested during the Yezhovshchina and sent to a labour camp in the North. In 1940 he was one of the German comrades that Stalin handed over to Hitler as part of the Pact. He managed to survive almost five years in Buchenwald, and after his release he chose to live here in Berlin rather than return to Hamburg. We don’t know why.’

‘Has anyone asked him?’

‘He claims this is where Germany’s future will be decided.’

‘Hard to argue with that.’

‘No, but it tells us nothing of how he envisages that future.’

‘With or without a Russian hand on every German shoulder? With his history, he’s hardly likely to have a framed portrait of the Great Leader on his bedroom wall.’

‘Probably not, though stranger things have happened. But we’re expecting you to find out.’

Russell made a face.

‘And you must do a thorough job,’ Shchepkin insisted. ‘I know you. You’re already sympathising with this man, and wondering how you’ll be able to satisfy both Nemedin and your own conscience. Perhaps by reporting enough to demonstrate doubts, but not enough to get the man shot. And yes, that may be possible. But be careful. Nemedin is a clever bastard, and he enjoys catching people out. He and Tsvetkov need this information, but sometimes I get the feeling that Nemedin would get more satisfaction out of skewering us.

‘What’s he got against me?’

‘Everything. You’re an ex-communist with a bourgeois lifestyle and a film star wife. None of which you seem to be ashamed of.’

‘I was on my best behaviour.’

‘Then God help us. Look, he’s dangerous. To both of us. Don’t underestimate him.’

‘Okay, okay, I’ve got the message.’ And he had. His earlier thoughts on pain-free espionage already seemed dated. He couldn’t imagine betraying someone as decent as Strohm, but who knew what the price of refusal might be. And who might have to pay it. Effi’s film and Thomas’s business would certainly be among the casualties.

Shchepkin was asking him whether he’d seen the Americans.

‘I left a message for their man — Dallin, do you know him?’

‘Of him. He’s not one of their brightest.’

‘No. Anyway, I left my address with them on Sunday, and he still hasn’t got back to me.’

Shchepkin shook his head. ‘Amateurs,’ he muttered disapprovingly.

‘I suppose I should remind him I’m here, Russell said. ‘When do we meet again?’

‘Fridays, if that’s all right with you.’

‘One day’s as good as another.’

‘What about your work as a journalist? It’s important that you establish a good cover.’

‘I’m doing a story on the Jews. The survivors. How they’re finding each other, how they’re being treated, where they want to live.’

Shchepkin nodded. ‘That sounds safe enough. And Fraulein Koenen’s film?’

‘The Americans are being obstructive. But maybe Dallin can help out with that.’

‘I expect so. Now that the war’s over, the intelligence agencies are more or less running things.’

‘So we’ve fallen on our feet,’ Russell said wryly.

Shchepkin managed a thin smile. ‘Ah, the British sense of humour.’

Effi was a quarter of an hour late for the morning’s script rehearsal. An expired tram on Hohenzollerndamm was the cause, but she apologised profusely, worried that her new co-workers would be inwardly accusing her of the big star affectations she had always despised. She thought of repeating what her mother, with quite uncharacteristic humour, had once said — that she’d arrived late as a baby, and had been repeating the experience ever since — but the moment didn’t seem right.

Everyone seemed more subdued than the day before, but it wasn’t until after the session was over, and the director took her into his study, that she found out why. ‘The Americans have asked for further checks on three more members of the cast,’ Dufring told her. ‘They’re taking this much further than we expected,’ he added, leaving Effi wondering who exactly he meant by ‘we’. ‘And I think you need to start compiling a dossier of affidavits from those you helped in the war.’

‘Really?’ Effi exclaimed. Gathering testaments to her own political virtue was not an appealing prospect.

‘Really,’ Dufring insisted. ‘And you’ll have to fill out one of these,’ he added, lifting a sheaf of papers from the desk.

Effi looked through the document with increasing dismay. There were pages and pages of questions. One hundred and thirty-one of them. ‘Who did you vote for in 1932?’ she read aloud. ‘How am I supposed to remember that? I probably didn’t bother.’

‘I know,’ Dufring said. ‘It’s absurd. But do your best.’

‘They’ve called it a Fragebogen,’ Effi noticed. ‘Don’t they know that’s what the Nazis called their form proving aryan descent?’

Dufring smiled. ‘Probably not.’

‘Why are they doing this?’ Effi asked. ‘To us in particular, I mean.’

‘It’s hard to know. There are Jews in the American administration who’d happily string up all the ex-Nazis, let alone bar them from making movies. And there are other, more powerful Americans who are worried about movies like ours, movies that ask real questions and support progressive ideas.’

Effi wasn’t Russell’s partner for nothing. ‘So we’ve become one of the battlefields between the Americans and the Russians?’

Dufring gave her an appreciative look. ‘Something like that, yes.’

After leaving Shchepkin Russell took a look at the new Soviet Memorial. It was in the form of a stoa, with six columns bearing the names of the fallen, and a statue of a Red Army soldier atop the centre of the colonnade’s roof. A tank and howitzer had been placed on each side. The context made it moving, but like most Soviet architecture, it seemed firmly rooted in the past.

He walked on past the Brandenburg Gate and into an almost unrecognisable Pariser Platz. Stretching out ahead, the once stately Unter den Linden was a corridor of ruins. The Adlon Hotel, which had still been there in April, had obviously succumbed in the final days, and was now little more than a shell. The American Embassy wasn’t even that.

Wilhelmstrasse had been virtually levelled. The buildings that had housed the Nazi government and its predecessors — the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry, Promi — had all but vanished. Hitler’s new Chancellery, whose ceremonial opening Russell had attended in 1939, was a field of broken stone. The street itself was still lined with rubble, with barely room for two cars to pass each other.

Further up Unter den Linden, his favourite coffee house had disappeared. He knew it was ridiculous, but he’d spent so many mornings at Kranzler’s drinking their wonderful coffee and reading the newspapers, and he’d hoped against hope that it might have survived. On the opposite corner, the Cafe Bauer had suffered the same fate.

He eventually found a functioning canteen in the bowels of Friedrichstrasse Station, and a quiet corner in which to examine Shchepkin’s missive. Rather to his surprise, it was only a pair of lists. There was one for him with five names, each with a personal and work-place address. Effi’s had just two names, Ernst Dufring and Harald Koll.

There were no suggestions at to how these Party members should be approached, and no reiteration of what Shchepkin’s superiors wanted to know. The latter, he supposed, was clear enough. If push came to shove, as it probably would, did these German communists feel that they owed their primary loyalty to their own party or to Moscow, to Germany or to the Soviet Union?

What weren’t so clear were the consequences of a bad report. A word of comradely admonishment? Summary expulsion from the Party? Incarceration? Or even a bullet in the back of the head? He should have asked Shchepkin, Russell realised. He might have received a straight answer.

After everything that had happened in the last twelve years the current members of the KPD should have a pretty shrewd idea of what was what. Those who’d returned from Soviet exile would certainly be well aware of Stalin’s methods, and of the need to use them. But comrades like Strohm and Leissner — who’d spent the Nazi years in Germany, out of touch with their Soviet mentors — they might still have their illusions intact. And these were the men he might have to condemn.

He couldn’t betray Gerhart Strohm, a man he liked, respected and owed. They had first met in the autumn of 1941, when Strohm had contacted him, and asked if he was interested, as a journalist, in the first expulsions of Jews from Berlin. Between then and Russell’s precipitate flight in December, the two of them had borne witness to several departures from different railway yards. It had been a bitter, frustrating experience, but at least they had got to know each other.

Strohm had been born in California to German emigrants, then sent back to his German grandparents when both parents were killed in a car crash. At university he had immersed himself in left-wing politics, and soon after the Nazis took power had been arrested on a minor charge. After serving his sentence he had found work as a railway dispatcher and, Russell assumed, been part of the splintered communist underground. But it was not as a communist that he’d come to Russell — his Jewish girlfriend had been killed by the Nazis, and the fate of her community was almost an obsession. As a railwayman and a comrade he had access to all the relevant information — where the trains left from, when they were scheduled, where they ended up.

In 1941, Strohm had helped Russell recover some crucial papers from the left luggage office at Stettin Station, and a week or so later had helped arrange the first leg of his escape from Germany. Few men had done as much for Russell, and without any thought of personal advantage.

He would talk to Strohm first — find out what the man really thought. If he was head over heels in love with Stalin, then well and good. If he hated the dictator’s guts, then no one need know. And if Strohm seemed oblivious to the perils of an anti-Soviet stance, then a quiet word might not go amiss. The railwayman could do what he wanted with the news that Stalin was watching him.

Russell left the canteen and headed north towards the river. Another temporary walkway allowed him across, and he picked his way east and north through the devastated University Hospital complex. Strohm’s workplace address was on Oranienburger Strasse, only a stone’s throw from the old synagogue, and not much further from the flat where Ali and her parents had lived before the latter’s deportation.

The address in question housed new education and welfare departments, and Strohm’s office was part of the former. He was surprised and pleased to see Russell, and begged him to wait while he dealt with a delegation of angry teachers. Russell watched Strohm listen to their complaints — of which a lack of electricity and fresh water were only the most serious — and was impressed by his response. He neither played down the problems nor apologised for those that were clearly beyond his control, and he didn’t fob them off with promises he might not be able to keep. Just the sort of politician the country needed, Russell thought.

He had noticed a busy canteen on the ground floor, but once the teachers were gone, Strohm suggested they go out for lunch — he knew a good cafe nearby. It was on August Strasse, and reminded Russell of the workers’ cafe Strohm had frequented when he worked at Stettin Station. The long room was full of steam and conversation, the food basic but surprisingly plentiful.

‘So, what have you been doing these last six months?’ Strohm asked him. ‘I heard that you found your girlfriend.’

Russell skimmed through his recent life, something he seemed to be doing several times a day. ‘I never asked you in April,’ he said, ‘but what happened to the comrades who helped us escape in 1941? The Ottings and Ernst and Andreas. And the comrades at Stettin Station whose names I never knew.’

Strohm grimaced. ‘The Ottings were murdered by the Gestapo, and so were the two men who sent you to Stettin. I have no knowledge of the other two. Do you know their surnames?’

‘No.’

Strohm shrugged. ‘I’ll try and find out, but I can’t promise anything. The Poles are in Stettin now…’

‘I know.’

‘But someone you knew came back from the dead.’

‘Who?’

‘Miroslav Zembski.’

‘The Fat Silesian!’ Russell said delightedly. He remembered telling Strohm about Zembski in 1941, and his reasons for believing the photographer dead.

‘The camps had a way of thinning people out — you probably wouldn’t recognise him now.’

‘Is he working as a photographer?’ Zembski had been a well-respected freelance in the 1930s until a brawl at Goering’s country lodge cost him his official accreditation. After that he had run a camera shop and studio in Neukolln, while working undercover for the Comintern.

‘He works for the Party newspaper. At the office on Klosterstrasse. I was talking to him a couple of months ago, and he seemed to remember you fondly.’

‘I’ll go and see him when I get the chance.’ He felt buoyed by Zembski’s survival, though overall it was much as he’d feared. At least four people had died to get him out of Germany. There was only one thing he could do for them — refuse to betray the comrades they had left behind. Comrades like Strohm. He asked him how things were going.

Strohm sighed, which was not a good sign. ‘Some things are going well,’ he said after a pause. He looked at Russell. ‘This is off the record?’

‘This is between friends.’

‘Okay. Well, first the good news. Most of the Soviet administrators in Berlin know what they’re doing. Someone said that the Western Allies sent their worst people here and the Soviets sent their best, and that seems about right. It may not look like it, but they made a big difference before the others arrived, and they’re still making one in this sector. And they’re absolutely determined that we should enjoy their theatre and cinema and poetry and God knows what else. I was hoping for bread but not expecting circuses — they brought both.’

‘And the future?’ Russell prompted.

‘Well, there’s some good news in that regard. I don’t know how much you know about changes in Party policy, but one of the key debates has been about what sort of socialism we want to build in Germany, whether we want to replicate the Soviet system or develop a distinctive German model. And that debate is still going on. It hasn’t been shut down, not yet anyway.’

‘You think the Soviets will shut it down.’

‘I don’t know. To be honest, I’m more worried about the KPD leadership that returned from Moscow — Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck, and all the rest of them. They have their own ideas how things should go, and they’re not good listeners. They may be following Soviet orders, or just being who they are — it’s hard to tell — but if it comes to a choice between their own comrades and Moscow, I can’t see them backing the comrades.’ He took a quick look around, as if to make sure that no one was listening. ‘Look, the Russian soldiers behaved atrociously when they first arrived — the number of rapes was appalling. The situation has improved, but there are still new cases almost every day. And then there’s the reparations policy. I understand the reasons — why shouldn’t they take our machines and factories to replace what our armies destroyed? — but they’re cutting the ground from under our feet. They have to behave like comrades, apologise for their troops’ behaviour, and let us stand on our own. The German people will never vote for us if they think we’re creatures of the Russians.’

‘But Ulbricht, Pieck and the others don’t agree?’

‘When Party members tried to raise the question of rapes, Ulbricht told them that the matter was not for discussion. When others insisted that the law on abortion should be changed for rape victims, he told them that was out the question, and that he regarded the matter as closed.’

‘And the comrades accepted that?’

‘They were angry, but yes, discipline prevailed.’

‘Perhaps the Austrian election results will give the Russians — and Ulbricht — second thoughts.’

‘Perhaps, but I doubt it. It pains me to say it, but these comrades — the ones who came back from Moscow — are not the men I remember. I had to visit the new Party building on Wallstrasse yesterday, and when I went for lunch I discovered that there were four categories of ticket for meals in the dining hall.’

‘All for Party members?’

‘Oh yes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ulbricht and his friends are living in luxury villas out in Niederschonhausen. The whole complex is fenced off and guarded by the NKVD. And anyone who questions the arrangement — as I foolishly did at one meeting last month — is accused of “starry-eyed idealism”.’

There was no humour in Russell’s laugh. This presumably was what Nemedin wanted to hear.

‘But we’ve only just begun,’ Strohm added. ‘If the merger with the SPD goes through, then Ulbricht’s group may find themselves in a minority, and the Soviet may realise that an independent communist Germany is their best bet.’

‘It’s possible,’ Russell said, without really believing it. Stalin didn’t seem like a fan of other people’s independence.

After taking Rosa in during the final days of the war, Effi had gone along with the seven-year-old’s insistence — inherited, no doubt, from her fugitive mother — that their true histories should remain a secret until after the war was over. In the days and weeks that followed their escape from Berlin and Germany she had tried to make up for lost time, and find out all she could about her ward’s past, but Rosa had spent the second half of her life hidden with her mother in Frau Borchers’ garden shed, and all she could remember of the neighbourhood was a nearby railway line. She could summon up a few memories of the years before their voluntary incarceration, but none that offered any indication of where the family had lived before Otto’s disappearance. And the girl had no idea what, if anything, her father had done for a living. It was probably something manual, Effi thought; by the time of Rosa’s birth anything clerical or professional had been forbidden. But before that… well, for all she knew, Otto Pappenheim had been a doctor like Russell’s old friend Felix Wiesner.

In 1933 rich and middle-class Jews had lived all over Berlin, but as the Nazi persecution gathered pace most had either left the country or moved into those working-class areas of eastern Berlin where their poorer brethren resided. Friedrichshain had always had a sizable Jewish population, and Effi was not surprised to find that two of the women on Ali’s list were now living there. Nor, walking up Neue Konigstrasse from Alexanderplatz, was she surprised to see walls and other impromptu notice boards covered with messages from Jews seeking Jews. Some, frayed and faded, had clearly been up for months, and most, Effi knew, would go unanswered — the men and women sought had long since fed the Nazi ovens. Every hundred metres or so she pinned up one of theirs — ‘Information sought concerning Otto Pappenheim, (wife of Ursel and father of Rosa) and Miriam Rosenfeld (daughter of Leon and Esther). Contact Thomas Schade at Vogelsangstrasse 27, or telephone Dahlem 367.’

The first woman on her list had narrowly escaped a Gestapo trap in the summer of 1944, and spent several nights with Effi and Ali while the Swede Erik Aslund arranged a more permanent refuge. She now lived in a smart first-floor apartment over what had once been a restaurant. She greeted Effi with a heartfelt hug, and answered her apologetic request for an affidavit with an immediate yes. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many people have asked me to sign theirs,’ she said. ‘People who wouldn’t have lifted a finger for me if they’d known I was a Jew. Now they all say they knew. So signing a statement for someone who really did help me will be a pleasure.’

She had known one Otto Pappenheim before the war, but he had been in his seventies. And she had known several Rosenfelds, but not a Miriam. She would ask around.

The other woman on Ali’s list who lived in Friedrichshain had only stayed one night in the Bismarckstrasse apartment, but Effi remembered her better. Lucie’s whole world had collapsed on that one particular evening in 1942. As a Jewish — and therefore unofficial — nurse, she’d been returning from an emergency call when the Gestapo arrived in front of her house. Cowering in a doorway, she’d heard shots inside the building and seen her elderly parents frog-marched into a waiting Black Maria. This had soon sped away, leaving uniformed police standing guard outside the front door. There was no sign of her husband and teenage son, and Lucie of course had feared the worst. Only a friend’s determination had got her as far as Bismarckstrasse, and Effi had spent most of the night trying to comfort her. Lucie’s face on the following morning, when news arrived of her husband and son’s escape, had been a sight to treasure.

And all three had survived, as Effi found when she reached their home. The husband greeted her with obvious suspicion, but Lucie recognised her immediately. ‘Frau von Freiwald!’ she exclaimed, jumping up from her chair, and rushing to embrace her.

‘My real name’s Effi Koenen,’ Effi said once they were done.

‘Not the actress?’ Lucie’s husband said in surprise.

‘The same,’ Effi admitted with reluctance.

Many questions followed, and it was almost an hour before Effi could leave with the promise of another signature. Neither Lucie nor her husband had come across an Otto Pappenheim or a Miriam Rosenfeld, but Lucie was doing voluntary shifts as a nurse at Lehrter Station, and said that she would check through what records there were. All their arrivals came from the East, but some at least were returnees, from either hiding or imprisonment. Otto and Miriam might be among them.

Effi enjoyed the time with Lucie and her family, but as she walked back down Neue Konigstrasse towards the old city centre a dark cloud of depression seemed to roll across her mind. She missed Rosa, and the search for the girl’s father seemed set to be endless. Looking for someone in Berlin reminded her of pyramid schemes, each helping hand seemed to spawn ten more. And the movie… She was loving the involvement, but that too seemed a string without end. When would she ever get back to London? And then there was Russell’s problem. Once she had finished her movie, and they’d done all they could to find Otto, she at least could return. But he would still be stuck here.

She wondered again about bringing Rosa back to Berlin, and the ruins around her seemed answer enough. In time, perhaps, but not in winter, not until… what? Until the rubble had been taken away, until all the windows had glass, until the Tiergarten had trees? Her train of thought was interrupted by a cruising jeep full of Red Army soldiers, all of whom seemed to be staring at her. She probably looked too old for sober predators, but she aged her walk just in case.

The jeep sped away.

Until the Russians had gone, she added to her list. But how long would all that take? The war had been over for six months, and Berlin was still in pieces. How many years would it be before a normal life was possible?

It was all so uncertain. She’d always thought of Thomas as a rock, but even he seemed unsure what to do. The way he’d been talking the other night she half-expected him to announce his retirement, and retreat to his in-laws’ country farm. But could he afford it? If his money was all tied up in the works, then the Soviets held the whip hand.

She was reminded of her own flat, and decided to see if it was still there. A crowded Stadtbahn train carried her from Alexanderplatz to Zoo, and the old familiar walk brought her to Carmerstrasse as the last light faded in the western sky. The building was still standing, and lights were burning in the first floor flat that her parents had bought her all those years ago. As she stood and watched, the silhouette of a woman cradling a baby appeared on the thin curtains, and Effi thought she heard an infant crying.

Should she walk right in and assert her ownership? No, or at least not now. There were already too many things to do and worry about — for a fleeting moment she felt more overwhelmed than she ever had in the war. Survival had been such a simple ambition.

Russell spent the early afternoon visiting two more DP camps. Both were in the American zone — one in Neukolln, the other on the edge of Tempelhof aerodrome — but neither had any record of the two they were seeking. At the second camp one of the American administrators told him that all the Jewish inmates had recently been moved to their own exclusive camp in Bavaria. Berlin’s other Jewish DPs would probably go the same way, the man thought, and Russell could see why they’d want to. But he couldn’t help wishing that they’d put off moving until he found Otto and Miriam.

Realising he wasn’t that far from the Redlich address, he decided to get it over with.

Paul had run into fourteen year-old Werner Redlich and his Hitlerjugend unit during the final days of the war. Having already lost his father in the North African campaign, the boy fretted about his mother and sister back in Berlin. When a decent Wehrmacht officer discovered how young he was, and suggested that he return home, Werner had offered only token resistance. And then the boy had walked into an SS patrol, which promptly hanged him as a deserter.

Paul had written it all down. He had thought of saying that Werner had died in battle, thereby saving mother and daughter anguish, but if by some chance the body had been returned to them, then the rope burn on the throat would have undermined everything else he said. And he wanted them to know how brave their son and brother had been, and how much the boy had cared for them.

But as Russell now discovered, it was all beside the point. The address was no longer there.

He found a neighbour who had known the family. According to her, Frau Redlich and her daughter had been buried in their basement when a bomb collapsed their building. The son, she added, had not come home.

‘He was killed,’ Russell told her.

‘Maybe a blessing,’ the woman murmured.

No, Russell thought as he walked away. A family wiped out could never be that.

Back at the house on Vogelsangstrasse, he found the kitchen occupied by the Fermaiers and Niebels. The old couple were busy preparing a meagre-looking dinner, and Frau Fermaier gave Russell what felt like a warning look, as if she feared his asking to share. Frau Niebel and her daughter were sitting at the table, their rations neatly piled in front of them, waiting their turn at the stove. The mother wished Russell a curt good evening before turning her face away, and the daughter gave him a blank look, as if she’d never seen him before.

The rest of the house seemed empty. He took up residence in Thomas’s study, and thought about a stroll to the Press Club for beer and conversation. He was writing a note to leave behind when Thomas came in through the door with — miracle of miracles — three bottles of beer in his briefcase.

‘A gift from a Russian major,’ his friend announced proudly. He opened two of the bottles with his Swiss Army knife.

‘A successful day then,’ Russell suggested.

‘You could say that. The Soviets have given me a huge job, printing the new schoolbooks for Berlin’s lucky children. According to my major the German comrades in Moscow have been hammering out the texts since Stalingrad, and the approved versions have finally arrived.’

Russell was interested. ‘What are they like?’

‘Oh, what you’d expect. The world through Stalin’s eyes. I haven’t had time to look them over properly, but the history books are a hoot. Guess how they deal with the Nazi-Soviet Pact?’

‘A regrettable necessity?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘You’re right — I wasn’t thinking. They don’t do regrets, do they?’

‘They don’t. And the Pact, it turns out, was a figment of our imagination. It’s not even mentioned. The Germans didn’t attack the Soviets in 1939 because the Soviets — all thanks to Comrade Stalin — were much too strong.’

‘And 1941?’

‘Hitler was desperate, Stalin was ready, but the Generals let him down.’

‘Amazing.’

‘And deeply depressing. The Nazis feed our children with one set of lies for twelve years, and now the Soviets come along with another set.’

‘Wait for the American text books.’

‘Oh, don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ Effi said, coming in through the door. She gave them both a kiss and sat down. She looked tired out, Russell thought, but her eyes lit up when Thomas offered her a bottle of beer.

Russell explained about the text books.

‘Don’t talk to me about Americans,’ she said. She reached in her bag for the sheaf of papers. ‘This is what they’re calling a Fragebogen. And I have to fill the whole thing in before they’ll even consider letting me work.’ She passed it across to Russell, who slowly thumbed through the pages. ‘“Question 21”,’ he read out loud. ‘“Have you ever severed your connection with any church, officially or unofficially? 22: if so, give particulars and reasons.”’ He looked up. ‘Why on earth would they need to know that?’ He read on. ‘There’s a long list of organisations here, everything from the Nazi Party to the German Red Cross. The Teacher’s League, the Nurses’ League, all the arts bodies. The America Institute! There are almost sixty organisations here — there can’t be many Germans who didn’t belong to at least one of them. Ah, and that’s not all. “Question 101: Have you any relatives who have held office, rank or post of authority in any of the organisations listed?” That should cover just about everybody.’

‘If it does, it’ll take them years,’ Thomas suggested gloomily. ‘But maybe we shouldn’t complain. We do want them to weed out the real Nazis.’

‘But this won’t do that,’ Russell protested. ‘This will just tar every German with the Nazi brush.’

‘Okay, they’ve gone overboard, and they’ll probably realise as much in a few months. It’ll make them more unpopular than the Russians, and they won’t like that.’

‘I don’t have a few months,’ Effi said.

‘No, of course not. I’m sorry…’

There was a knock on the door.

‘Yes?’ Thomas answered.

It was Esther Rosenfeld, whom Russell hadn’t seen since the summer of 1939. She had aged a lot, which was hardly surprising, but the smile when she saw him seemed full of genuine warmth. Leon was no better, she said, but no worse either. She wondered if Russell and Effi would like to see him one evening.

‘Tomorrow?’ Russell asked, looking to Effi for confirmation.

‘I’d love to,’ she agreed. ‘I left a lot of messages this afternoon,’ she added. ‘And several Jewish friends have promised to spread the word.’

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ Esther said. ‘All of you. And Leon thanks you too. He will tell you himself tomorrow.’

After she’d gone they all looked at each other. ‘I sometimes think we should make something up,’ Russell said quietly, ‘just to give them some peace of mind. Miriam must be dead — six years without a single trace — she has to be.’

‘Probably,’ Thomas agreed, ‘but we’ve only just started looking again. Give it a few more days at least.’

‘Of course. It’s just…’ He left the thought unspoken.

‘How was the meeting with your Russian friend?’ Effi asked him.

Russell grunted. ‘I’d almost forgotten about that.’ He told them about Shchepkin’s list of comrades for vetting. ‘And there are two for you,’ he informed Effi, expecting an explosion. ‘Ernst Dufring and Harald Koll.’

She took the news calmly, as if she’d half-expected it. ‘Dufring’s loyal to a fault,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve even spoken to Harald Koll, but he looks innocent enough. What?’ she asked, noticing Russell’s expression. ‘Am I missing something?’

‘What if he isn’t? What if he thinks that the Soviets are the KPD’s biggest problem?’

‘Then I lie to protect him.’

‘And later, when they find out what he really thinks.’

‘I can always say he lied to me. How could they prove otherwise?’

Russell shook his head. ‘They won’t even bother to try. This is the Soviets we’re talking about. They’ll just assume you lied to them, and take whatever action seems appropriate at the time. Darker threats, if they still think you might be useful. A cautionary death if they decide you’re too much trouble.’

‘Do you have a better idea?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I’m going to tell Strohm, but the others… I don’t owe them anything. I think I’m just going to pass on whatever they say. I mean, they must know that holding a high position in the KPD involves a level of risk. If they choose to incriminate themselves, then they have to take their chances. I’m not sacrificing myself for a few apparatchiks.’

‘What exactly are you going to tell Strohm?’ Effi wanted to know.

‘Everything. He can write the report on himself if he wants.’

It was Effi’s turn to shake her head. ‘You’ll be putting him in an impossible position.’

‘How?’

‘Once you tell him that the Soviets have forced you into this, he’ll know that you’re talking to other German comrades. And some of them will be his friends. But what can he do? If he warns them, he’s betraying you; if he doesn’t, he’s betraying them.’

She was right, Russell realised. They both were.

David Downing

Lehrter Station

Rapists and profiteers

A light drizzle was falling on Thursday morning, washing the air clear of brick dust and reminding Effi of London. Looking out the window of Thomas’ study, she imagined Zarah and Rosa walking round the foot of Parliament Hill on their way to the school, and realised she’d forgotten about Jens. Something else to do.

With half the cast filling out American forms, that morning’s rehearsal had been cancelled. Effi devoted several hours to the Fragebogen, read through her answers, and corrected those that might be considered sarcastic. Her original response to Question 115 — ‘have you ever been imprisoned on account or active or passive resistance?’ — was brief and truthful — ‘I was never caught.’ But would the Americans think she was just being cute? She added an explanatory paragraph just in case.

Was it enough? She had no idea, and was tired of second-guessing a bunch of foreign idiots. She forced the papers into her bag and set off for Schluterstrasse.

Kuhnert wasn’t in his office when she arrived, but a secretary she hadn’t met before promised to pass on the completed Fragebogen. Visiting the cafeteria for tea, she found a message from Ellen Grynszpan on the notice board: ‘Something to tell you, come down and see me.’

She reached the basement to find Ellen escorting an American colonel and his wife around the paintings. Ellen gestured for Effi to wait, and two minutes later was wishing her visitors goodbye. ‘Her brother was a painter,’ she explained. ‘He lived in Berlin until 1942. They think he died at Treblinka.’

‘Did he paint any of these?’ Effi asked, looking round.

‘No, all his paintings were burnt by the Nazis.’

Effi sighed. ‘I should have guessed.’

‘Anyway,’ Ellen said, breaking the spell, ‘I have news for you. A friend’s friend knew an Otto Pappenheim back in early 1941. Otto’s brother lived across the street from them, and both men were trying to get to Shanghai, like a lot of other Jews before the Russian war — by that time no one else was letting us in. My friend’s friend thinks they succeeded in getting Soviet travel permits. She didn’t see him or his brother after that time, so she always assumed they’d gone.’

‘Where was this? Where did your friend’s friend live?’

‘In Friedrichshain.’

‘And how old were these brothers?’

‘In their late twenties, early thirties. Around that.’

‘Did she say anything else?’

‘I can’t remember anything else. Would you like to talk to her? I’ll give you her name and address.’

Effi took them down. ‘Have any of the Jews come back from Shanghai?’ she asked. ‘None that I know of.’

Effi gave Ellen a hug. ‘Thank you for this,’ she said.

On her way home she found herself wondering about this new Otto. Why had he gone to Shanghai? Had he gone ahead, hoping to send for his wife and daughter? If it was only him the Gestapo were looking for, had his wife insisted he leave to save himself, as Effi had done with Russell? Or had nothing more noble than fear led him to abandon them?

Uwe Kuzorra’s old apartment building on Demminer Strasse was scorched and scarred but still in one piece. But no one answered Russell’s knock, and the dust outside the door seemed undisturbed. He tried the neighbours to no avail, but a young boy downstairs said his mother was next door. Russell found her hanging clothes in what had once been someone’s parlour, and which now seemed to function as a neighbourhood drying room. Several lengths of rope were strung between jutting bricks across the barely covered space.

‘He still lives here,’ she said in answer to Russell’s query. ‘Or he did. They took him away about ten days ago.’

‘Who did?’

‘French soldiers. We’re in their zone.’

‘Do you know where they took him? Where’s their HQ?’

She shook her head. ‘Not a clue.’

Russell thanked her and walked back to the busy Brunnenstrasse, where his chances of meeting a German policeman or French patrol seemed better. He walked north past Voltastrasse U-Bahn station without seeing either, turning west between what was left of the AEG factory complex and Humboldthain Park, where the apparently indestructible flak tower still exuded useless defiance. There were children playing football in the park, their hair slicked back by the drizzle. The schools were open again, but according to Thomas a huge number of parentless children were living almost feral existences in the ruins, playing games by day and working the black market by night.

On Mullerstrasse he found what he was looking for. The French HQ, a shopkeeper told him, was just up the street, in part of the old Wedding Police Station. In Nazi days the building had functioned as a fort, its Gestapo occupants mounting armed forays out into the local streets, where hammers and sickles still plastered the walls. Now the tricolour flew from the battlements, and basement beatings were hopefully a thing of the past.

Once inside, Russell was passed around like an unwelcome parcel, his journey finally ending at the desk of a middle-aged civilian in a beautifully cut suit. He let Russell struggle with his French, and had obvious difficulty containing his lack of interest. ‘We don’t give out the names of those in our custody,’ he eventually replied in perfect English. ‘Not to American journalists, in any case,’ he added, with something close to a sniff.

Russell wondered whether exceptions were made for scribes of Mongolian or Paraguayan descent. ‘I’m not asking as a journalist. I’m here as a friend of the man you arrested.’

‘Are you a relative?’

‘No…’ Russell began, realising his mistake too late. He should have said Kuzorra was a cousin. Or something.

‘Then I cannot help you.’

‘Can you tell me who can?’

‘You could apply to our headquarters at Baden-Baden.’

‘That’s four hundred miles away.’

The man shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding anything but.

Russell shook his head, walked out, and stomped angrily downstairs to the lobby. He was still seething when a hand slapped him on the shoulder, and a much friendlier French face appeared in front of his own. ‘John Russell! What are you doing here? You look like someone just slept with your girlfriend.’

It was Miguel Robier, a French journalist whom he’d met the previous winter, when both were commuting between Eisenhower’s Rheims HQ and the Allied front lines. They had enjoyed each other’s company, sharing tastes in wine and political cynicism.

Russell explained about Kuzorra, and the interview he’d just had.

‘Ah, Jacques Laval. He doesn’t like Americans. Or anyone, for that matter. Do you have a few minutes? Let me see what I can do.’

Russell waited and hoped, hugging himself for warmth and watching drizzle drift past the open doorway.

Ten minutes later Robier was back, looking triumphant. ‘I have the story. Not from Laval — I know someone in military liaison. He says your friend Kuzorra was arrested for being a member of the SS — is that possible?’

Russell shook his head. ‘Anything’s possible. In fact I seem to remember that all senior police officers had SS ranks by the end of the war. But that’s…’

‘It gets more interesting,’ Robier interrupted him. ‘Our people arrested him at the request of the Americans — which, by the way, might be why Laval was even less helpful than usual. Anyway, it’s almost two weeks now, and the Americans still haven’t sent anyone to interview him. Our people have already sent them two reminders.’

‘Is he here?’ Russell asked.

‘No. He’s out at Camp Cyclop.’

‘Where?’

‘It’s our military base. Out in Wittenau.’

‘Okay, thanks. So, how are your family?’

They shared personal news and contact details, and agreed to meet up for a drink before Miguel’s return to France. They probably wouldn’t, Russell thought, as he headed on up Mullerstrasse to the Ringbahn station, but it wouldn’t really matter — their paths were bound to cross again. He had long ago lost count of his chance encounters with other journalists.

One thing seemed clearer with each passing day — who was in charge of western Berlin. The Americans were deciding not only who could work in the British zone, but who should be arrested in the French. And no one seemed to find this strange, let alone feel impelled to protest, unless the sulking of men like Laval was counted as such. The war had only been over six months, but the British and the French were already irrelevant — there were only two real powers in the city, or in the wider continent. And as luck would have it, he was working for both.

If the Americans had arranged Kuzorra’s arrest, they could just as easily arrange his release. A meeting with Scott Dallin seemed indicated.

By the time Russell reached the American HQ on Kronprinzenallee, the drizzle had stopped, and there were hints of sunlight in the western sky. After asking for Colonel Dallin he settled down for a long wait, but was only halfway through the lead story in the Allgemeine Zeitung when a corporal came to collect him.

Dallin’s office was high at the back, with a distant view of the Grunewald. The Californian had grown a moustache since Russell had last seen him, and the golden-brown hair was long enough to flaunt its waves. The visual effect was Gatsby-ish, but this son of privilege had none of that character’s easy charm. ‘Where have you been?’ was his first irritated question.

‘I’ve been waiting for your call,’ Russell replied, taking the unoffered seat in front of the other man’s desk. ‘I left a number and address downstairs.’

Dallin grasped his nose between two fingers and sighed. ‘I never received them. But…’ He brought both palms down on his desk. ‘Let’s get on with it.’ He gave Russell a cold look. ‘You can probably imagine how I felt when London told me they were sending you.’

‘Relieved? Ecstatic?’

Dallin grunted. ‘You haven’t changed. So, please, let’s start from the beginning. Give me one good reason why I should believe the story you told Lindenberg.’

‘He did.’

‘He’s in London, and he doesn’t know you like I do. You used to be a communist, you flirted with the Nazis. You even worked for us to buy yourself a US passport. Is there any intelligence organisation you haven’t worked for?’

‘The Japanese. Look, Colonel, I never, as you put it, flirted with the Nazis — every dealing I ever had with the bastards was a matter of necessity. I did used to be a communist, but so did a lot of other people back then. And there are a lot of honourable men still out there who call themselves communists — most of them were fighting Hitler long before Pearl Harbour. But I left the Party almost twenty years ago, mostly because I didn’t like what was happening in Russia then, and now it’s ten times worse. I’m sure you and I have our differences, but we’re on the same side now.’

Dallin looked less than convinced. ‘So what made the Soviets think you would work for them?’

‘I promised them I would. They had my son in a POW camp, and in return for his release I said I would spy for them. I had no choice if I ever wanted to see him again.’

Dallin steepled his hands as he considered this. ‘All right,’ he said finally, with almost palpable reluctance.

They really were desperate, Russell thought. Dallin had been told to enlist him, and was either letting off steam or trying to convince himself that he had nothing to lose. Probably both. The American would give Russell enough rope to either hang himself or tie the Soviets in knots. A win-win situation.

‘So have you been in contact with the Russians?’ Dallin asked.

‘Yes. I saw Shchepkin the other day. He’s my Soviet contact.’

‘How do you spell that,’ Dallin asked, reaching for his fountain pen. Like Russell’s old boss in Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst, he favoured green ink.

He repeated the name. ‘Anyway, the NKVD wants me to check out several high-ranking German comrades. I’ve seen one already. His name’s Gerhard Strohm — he was a member of the communist underground during the war, and I knew him slightly back in ’41. He was actually born in America, but he’s lived here since he was about thirteen. He’s very disillusioned with the Soviets. And I think he might be recruitable in the long term. I’ve found out he’ll be voted onto the KPD Central Committee next spring, so he’d be an excellent asset.’

‘That sounds promising,’ Dallin said, placing his hands behind his head. He seemed pleasantly surprised, but was doing his best not to show it.

‘It is,’ Russell agreed. ‘And from what Strohm told me, there are a quite a few others. The Russians are supporting the German communists who spent the war in Moscow, and they’re not giving the ones who stayed in Germany a look-in. The second group are really ticked off. So there’s quite an opportunity for us.’

‘That sounds good.’

‘And there’s another friend who could be very useful, but I’ve run into a problem with him. His name’s Uwe Kuzorra,’ Russell went on, watching in vain for any sign that the name was familiar. ‘He used to be a detective in the criminal police, and he owes me a few favours. But the French have arrested him for some reason or other, and they won’t let me visit him. A French friend looked into the matter for me, and he says that we asked for him to be arrested.’

‘We?’

‘It was an American request.’

‘It didn’t come from this department.’

‘I didn’t think it did. But could you look into it? He’s not a Nazi. Never was — he actually resigned from the Kripo when the Nazis took over, and set up as a private eye. He only rejoined the police after his wife died, when they were really short of men; he was never in the Gestapo. He could be very useful to us both. He knows Berlin better than anyone I know, and he doesn’t like the Russians.’

Dallin reached for the phone on his desk. ‘You’d better wait outside,’ he said, almost apologetically. Noting the marked change in attitude, Russell closed the door behind him. The way to a spy chief’s heart was clearly to offer him spies.

He could hear Dallin’s tone through the door, and there was no mistaking the rising anger. Call seemed to follow call, and the voice grew harder, more insistent. Finally Russell was summoned back in.

‘I can’t get a straight answer from anyone,’ Dallin told him. ‘No one admits to knowing your friend, let alone demanding his arrest. In the end, I just cut through the crap and phoned the French. You can visit the man on Saturday. 11 a.m., out at their army camp. You know where that is?’

‘Roughly. That’s great, thanks. Just one more thing’, he added, thinking that he might as well push his luck. He explained about Effi, and the problems she was having with other invisible Americans. ‘They promised me in London that she’d be able to work,’ he told Dallin, neglecting to mention that ‘they’ were the Soviets. ‘She’s a heroine of the resistance, for God’s sake — you’d think whoever it is would have some real Nazis to chase. If you could have a word with whoever’s responsible, I’d take it as a personal favour.’

‘I can’t promise anything,’ Dallin said, ‘but I’ll look into it.’ He got up to shake hands. There was, Russell thought, almost a smile on the American’s face.

They had arranged to meet Esther Rosenfeld just inside the main entrance to the Elisabeth Hospital. Effi had last seen the complex in 1941, when she’d been one of the famous names invited to cheer up the wounded. The last four years of bombs and shells had rendered it almost unrecognisable. Now parts of buildings were supported by iron and wooden struts, with temporary shelters nestling in between.

Esther was waiting for them. ‘He’s not so good this evening,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you.’ She led them down a long corridor, across an open space to another building, and up a flight of stairs. Effi suddenly knew where she was — they were passing the office where she and Annaliese Huiskes had often shared a bottle of hospital-brewed alcohol. She wondered what had happened to the blonde nurse. The last time Effi saw her, Annaliese was driving off down Bismarckstrasse in the car they had both ‘borrowed’, hoping to escape the Russians’ pincers as they closed around Berlin.

They passed through one ward and entered another. Leon Rosenfeld was in the penultimate bed, lying on his back with a blank expression in his eyes. He seemed smaller than Russell remembered, and much older — he couldn’t be much more than fifty, but he looked about seventy. The marks of the beating he’d received in Silesia were still visible, but only just.

Esther took his hand, and told him who they were. ‘This is John Russell,’ she said. ‘Remember he stayed at the farm?’

There was a slight flicker in the eyes, and a look, both hopeful and dumb, that reminded Russell of the dog he’d had as a child.

‘And this is his wife Effi,’ Esther was saying. ‘They both helped rescue Miriam.’

The eyes found Effi, a slight smile creasing the lips. And then the eyes closed, and he winced as if in pain. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

After sitting in silence for a couple of minutes, it became obvious that Leon had fallen asleep. ‘He’s not so good in the evenings,’ Esther said again. ‘He’s much livelier in the mornings.’

‘Then next time we’ll come in the morning,’ Effi promised, getting to her feet. ‘Are you coming back with us?’

‘No, I’ll stay a while longer. Thank you for coming.’

The two of them walked back through the wards. At the end of the second Effi noticed a vaguely familiar face. ‘Were you working here in 1941?’ she asked the nurse in question, an unusually plump woman with short brown hair.

‘I feel like I’ve been here since the First War,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘I had a friend who worked here — Annaliese Huiskes. I wondered…’

‘She’s still here. She came back, that is. About two months ago, I think. I saw her earlier — she’s on duty this evening.’

It took them five minutes to find the relevant ward, where another joyous reunion took place. Russell smiled at the patients’ gawping faces as the two women did a jig in the aisle.

Annaliese was wearing a sister’s uniform now. ‘I see you found him,’ she said, eyeing Russell over Effi’s shoulder.

‘I’m not so easy to shake off,’ Russell said, giving her a kiss on each cheek.

Annaliese just stared at them, a big grin on her face. Her blonde hair was longer than Effi remembered, and tied back with a red ribbon. ‘Go wait in the office,’ Annaliese said, ‘I’ll be along in a minute.’

She was back in two. ‘No booze, I’m afraid,’ she told Effi. ‘I’m being good.’

They sat and talked for almost an hour. Effi told Annaliese all about England and Rosa, and the nurse told her what had happened after their nocturnal parting in April. Annaliese had reached her late husband’s parents in Spandau, and they had hidden her in their cellar for several weeks while the Russians raped the neighbourhood’s women. She had then set out across country, hoping for better from the Western Allies, but had ended up in an American camp at Rheinberg. ‘It was more terrible than you could imagine, but I’ll tell you about that another time. I have to do my rounds in a few minutes, and I’d like to show John something before you go.’

‘Me?’ Russell asked, surprised.

‘You’re still a journalist, aren’t you?’

‘I sometimes think so.’

‘Yes he is,’ Effi said, cuffing him round the head.

After finding a nurse to cover for her, Annaliese led them through two large wards to a third, where all the beds were occupied by thin-faced children. Two immediately asked for water, which Annaliese went to fetch. Around twenty pairs of eyes stared dully at Russell and Effi.

‘They’re all diabetic,’ the returning Annaliese explained, ‘and we don’t have enough insulin.’

‘Why not?’ Russell asked, though the answer wasn’t hard to guess.

‘The only suppliers are Grosschieber — the big-time black marketeers — and they make sure that supplies are tight. When they do release some, they invite all the hospitals to bid on them, to maximise the price. They do the same with penicillin, and the VD drugs, Pyrimal and Salvarsan. The staff dip into their own pockets, but it’s not enough. There was a twelve-year-old in that bed there’ — she pointed to the one lying empty — ‘but she died this afternoon. When she arrived ten days ago there was nothing wrong with her that an insulin injection wouldn’t fix.’

‘Where did it come from before?’ Russell asked.

‘There were two labs in Berlin, but both were bombed out. We did get some from Leipzig for a while, but the supply dried up — we don’t know why. One doctor went down there on his day off with some money we’d collected, but he never came back. And no, he wasn’t the sort to steal it.’ She looked at Russell. ‘This would be a story worth telling, don’t you think?’

‘It would,’ he agreed.

It would, he thought, as they walk back through the wards. Trouble was, he’d had the same thought looking at Leon. And watching the dazed refugees tumbling out of their train at Lehrter Station. The victims were different, but there was only one story, and it wasn’t the one he wanted to write. He had spent enough time with sadness and evil, and to what useful end? Any fool could shout ‘never again’, but he might as well change his name to Canute. It would happen again. Somewhere, sometime in the not too distant future. Most people were incapable of looking beyond themselves selves and those they loved — the camp on the other side of the hill was never their business. There was nothing new or surprising about children dying for someone else’s greed. As the seventeen-year-old Albert Wiesner had told him six years earlier, the only mystery in this world was kindness.

Effi was asking Annaliese when they could meet again.

‘I get Saturday afternoon and Sunday off. I usually go out to see Gerd’s parents on Saturday, but if the weather’s nice on Sunday we could go for a walk in the Grunewald.’

They agreed to rendezvous at Thomas’s house.

‘And think about that story,’ Annaliese told Russell. ‘Anyone here will talk to you.’

‘I will,’ Russell told her.

Effi said nothing until they were back outside. ‘You didn’t sound very enthusiastic.’

‘I’m not. It’s terrible, of course it is. But it won’t be news to anyone in Berlin, or anywhere in Germany.’

‘What about England and America?’

‘No editor would buy it. He’ll know his readers, and they won’t care about Germans killing Germans.’

‘How long do you think we’ve been back?’ Russell asked as he shaved the next morning.

Effi was still cocooned in their blankets. ‘Oh I don’t know. It feels like weeks.’

‘This time last week we were on our way to Victoria,’ he told her.

‘I don’t believe it!’ She sat up against the headboard. ‘Your friend Shchepkin — do you think he’d check out the Shanghai Otto for us?’

‘He might, if I ask him nicely.’

‘The Soviets must keep records of people who travel across their country. And we’d know for certain that he went.’

‘True. I’ll ask him when I see him, but that won’t be till next Friday.’

‘Oh… So what about Shanghai? If he did go, how can we find out if he’s still there?’

Russell rinsed his face in the bowl. ‘I’ll ask Dallin. The Americans must have a consulate there.’

‘Your spymaster friends are coming in handy.’

Russell shook his head. ‘Don’t joke about it.’

‘All right. So where are you off to this morning?’

‘The Soviet sector. I’ll try and see a couple of the men on Shchepkin’s list.’

‘What do you say to them? I’m running a survey for Stalin?’ Russell laughed. ‘Something like that.’

‘No, seriously.’

‘I’ll tell them I’m writing an article on reconstruction, and talking to those most responsible. Off the record, of course — no names or direct quotes. If they say yes — and most people do love talking about themselves and what they’re doing — then I’ll ask how they’re getting on, what problems they’re having, that sort of thing.’

‘Problems like the Russians taking half their zone back to Russia?’

‘A failure to mention that could be construed as loyalty. And vice versa, of course. You get the idea. I make up the details as I go along.’ He checked his jacket pockets for pen, paper and cigarette currency. ‘Are you going out?’

‘Yes, Kuhnert left a message — there’s a rehearsal at eleven. And this afternoon I thought I’d go over to Lehrter Station, and see if I can find Lucie. She was going to look out the arrival lists.’

‘I could meet you there,’ Russell said. The arrival he’d witnessed at the station was still fresh in his mind.

‘Where?’ Effi asked. ‘It’s probably a sea of rubble.’

‘No, it’s mostly cleared. The clock’s still there — we can meet under that. Say four o’clock?’

A couple of broken-down trams and another unexploded bomb in the tunnels stretched Russell’s journey to almost four times its pre-war duration, but both intended interviewees proved willing to see him without a prior appointment. Kurt Junghaus, a harassed-looking man with prematurely grey hair and a chubby face that ill-suited his skinny figure, worked for the recently-established Propaganda and Censorship Department at the KPD’s new Wallstrasse headquarters. The job itself suggested a high degree of trust, and Russell found no reason to doubt him, at least in the short term. If disillusion ever came it would be complete, but this was a man who wanted to believe, and Russell had no qualms about stressing his loyalty.

Uli Trenkel worked in a new Soviet-sponsored planning office further down the street, a long stone’s throw from the Spree. The glasses perched halfway down his sharp nose gave him the air of an intellectual, but the rough-skinned hands told a different story — this man had probably worked in one of Berlin’s war industries. He seemed much more relaxed when it came to technical issues than he did with politics, and where the latter was concerned Russell guessed he would follow the path of least resistance. He wouldn’t be any trouble to the Soviets or their KPD friends.

After talking to him, Russell sat in the building’s canteen with a mug of tea. There was no sign here of different grades, and the overwhelming impression was of energy and enthusiasm, of people enjoying their chance to start again. On the other hand, the two interviews he had conducted that afternoon, with men he assumed were important to the Soviets, hadn’t exactly left him feeling excited about the future.

He was just getting up to leave when three Soviet officers entered, all wearing the light blue shoulder tabs of the NKVD. One of them was Nemedin.

The sight of Russell induced a slight hesitation in the Georgian’s stride but no overt sign of recognition. Russell wondered whether Nemedin and his colleagues had noticed the change in atmosphere that accompanied their entrance, a sense of deflation rather than fear, as if the joy had all been sucked away.

He had to decide about Strohm, Russell thought, as he stood on the pavement outside. At least he had a week before his next meeting with Shchepkin. Maybe Effi’s solution was best after all — he would simply make something up, give Strohm enough doubts to make him credible, but not enough to cause him problems.

On impulse, he walked the final few metres down to the river. Away to his right the Jannowitz Bridge lay broken in the water, and beyond it, to the south and east, a few surviving buildings stuck out like broken teeth against the blue sky. This area between the Old City and Silesian Station had taken a dreadful hammering.

There was only half an hour before he was due to meet Effi. Rather than trust to public transport, he set off at a brisk pace, heading up Breite Strasse towards the sad wreckage of the Schloss, silently mouthing what lines he could remember of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. He expected more of the same beyond, but the Lustgarten proved a scene of transformation. On one side a tank was being towed away by Russian horses, on the other, beneath the pocked northern facade of the Schloss, Soviet soldiers and German civilians were erecting three carousels. It was the last day of November, Russell realised — Christmas was less than four weeks away.

The Soviets had obviously sanctioned the Christmas fair, and Russell felt almost sorry for the image that popped into his head — of Soviet Santa Clauses dropping down German chimneys and stealing the presents left under the trees.

As on the previous occasion, his arrival at Lehrter Station coincided with that of a refugee train. This one had old carriages as well as cattle cars, but the people emerging onto the platform looked every bit as lost. Maybe the wind was blowing in a different direction, because this time he could smell the human waste.

What was the number he’d read in that English paper? Was it six million dispossessed Germans on the move? Or seven? How many trains would that involve? And how many passengers would be carried off on boards or stretchers, bound for hospital or the waiting graves down the road?

He aimed for the main terminal building, forcing his way through the anxious crowd. ‘Is this Berlin?’ one man asked him, as if he couldn’t believe it possible. A woman in once-expensive clothes asked directions to the Bristol Hotel, and stood there open-mouthed when he said it no longer existed. When a couple asked him for money, he gave them four cigarettes, knowing that would buy them a meal. But they looked more annoyed than grateful, as if they thought he was trying to cheat them.

Inside the old booking hall things seemed less frantic. He was early, but Effi was already standing under the clock, which the war had stopped at half-past twelve.

‘I’ve already seen Lucie,’ she said. ‘She’s been through what records there are, and there’s no Otto Pappenheim. No Miriam Rosenfeld either.’

‘She’s busy, I take it,’ Russell said, as a single woman’s wail rose and fell in the tumult outside.

‘They’re saints, these people,’ Effi said. ‘And what am I doing? Acting…’

‘Not that they’ll let you,’ Russell ventured in mitigation.

‘Oh, I haven’t told you yet. The Americans have apparently decided that I’m safe to let out. Maybe your talk with the colonel did the trick.’

‘Good. You said this film needed making.’

‘I did. But when I see what’s happening here… well, I can’t see these people queuing up outside a cinema, can you?

‘But that…’

‘I know,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’m feeling useless, John. Ever since we got here.’

He opened his mouth to disagree, but thought better of it. He understood where the feeling came from, although ‘useless’ was not the word he would have chosen for himself. Frustrated, perhaps, or uncertain. Lost, even. And the strange thing was, it had almost come as a shock. Who would have thought that peace would prove more difficult than the war? The diminished danger of a violent death was certainly to be welcomed, but what else had peace brought in its train? Chaos, hunger, and corrupted ideals. Ivan the Rapist and GI Joe the Profiteer.

‘We need cheering up,’ he decided. ‘How about an evening at the Honey Trap? Irma said she’d get us in.’

When they entered the nightclub that evening, Russell hardly recognised the place. The lighting was dimmer than before, just a few chandeliers with most of the bulbs removed, and the white tablecloths shone like dull spotlights within each circle of patrons. Tuesday’s bare brick walls were now festooned with posters from Berlin’s pre-Nazi past, along with large portraits of Churchill, Truman and Stalin.

The place was more than full, and they were lucky to be passing a table as a couple stood up to leave. They had barely sat down when a waiter whisked away the empty glasses and demanded to know their order. A bottle of red wine set them back seven cigarettes, the waiter providing change for their pack from a tin case he carried in his inside pocket. The wine proved weak and slightly sour.

Russell and Effi gave their fellow revellers the once over. The male clientele seemed exclusively foreign, and mostly uniformed. The nightclub was in the British Sector, but that hadn’t deterred the Americans and Russians, who were both present in large numbers. The Americans were mostly officers or NCOs, but the Russians ranged from general to private, all bedecked in medals and wearing several visible wristwatches. For the moment at least, the room seemed almost awash with international goodwill.

Almost all of the females were German, and most of them were young. There were many low-cut tops and short skirts on display, but the fashions seemed dated to Effi, as if the girls had been raiding their mothers’ wardrobes. How many were ‘real’ prostitutes, how many girls just trying to get by? Or did that distinction no longer apply? She could see three girls happily chattering away as male hands fondled their breasts.

Up on stage a small orchestra of middle-aged men was offering a lively mixture of jazz and popular music. They’d been playing ‘In the Mood’ when Effi and Russell arrived, but the subsequent tunes had all been around since pre-Nazis days, when these musicians had presumably learnt them. Three couples were dancing on the small floor, two gyrating wildly, the third locked together with almost ferocious insistence.

‘It feels like a trip in a time machine,’ Russell said between tunes.

‘There were German men in those days,’ Effi replied. ‘This feels…’

‘Wrong?’

‘Humiliating.’

‘Yes,’ Russell agreed. There didn’t seem any point in stating the obvious, that victors had always humiliated losers, and fucking their women was just one of many means to that end. At least these women were getting something back, which was more than could be said for most of the Red Army’s victims.

‘Effi!’ a voice cried out behind them. It was Irma, floating on a cloud of expensive-smelling perfume. As the two women hugged, Russell grabbed an empty chair from the next table. For the next few minutes, Effi and Irma swapped tales of Barbarossa-the-musical and brought each other up to date. They were only silenced by the behaviour of a nearby couple, whose tongue-wrestling and under-table groping became impossible to ignore.

‘Where do they go?’ Effi asked, half amused and half disgusted. ‘As least I assume they’re not going to do it here.’

Irma laughed. ‘Does it shock you?’

‘No. Well, yes, a bit. Is it really the only way to survive?’

‘They think so. And to answer your question, there’s an alley out back with plenty of darkened doorways. But most girls like to take the soldiers home — if they give them family as well as sex it’s more likely to last. The parents lie there listening in the next room — they might disapprove, but they’re usually willing to share the spoils.’ She looked at her watch, an American Mickey Mouse model. ‘I’m on in half an hour; I have to get changed. How long are you staying?’

‘What time do the fights usually start?’ Russell asked.

‘Not for a couple of hours yet. The amount of water Geruschke adds, it takes most of the evening to get drunk.’

‘I haven’t seen him this evening.’

‘He’ll be around somewhere — he always is.’

They watched her squeeze her way through the packed tables, responding to each boisterous soldier’s greeting with a wave and a smile. The band started playing ‘Sentimental Journey’.

‘Do you think we’ll get our seats back if we have a dance?’ Effi asked.

Russell looked around. ‘Other people seem to,’ he said, noticing several empty tables with half-full glasses and coat-draped chairs.

They had three dances, and were beginning to enjoy themselves when two British soldiers decided to show off their jitterbugging skills. Effi was nearly laid out by a flailing arm, and decided enough was enough. Their seats were still vacant, but another couple had colonised one side of the table — a Russian corporal and a German girl who looked about fifteen. The former asked in stilted German whether they minded sharing their table, and seemed almost ecstatic when Russell responded in Russian. He spent the next ten minutes complaining how much he missed his wife, children and village by the Volga.

Russell sought escape with a trip to the toilet. In the corridor outside, two men were doing some kind of deal. They both gave him a quick once-over, decided he posed no threat, and went back to their business at hand. In the toilet, Russell detected marijuana among the less agreeable odours.

Back at the table, the Russian was ready to resume his life-story. Russell could think of no polite way of stopping him, but the German girl contrived to alleviate her own boredom, and finally shut him up, by the simple expedient of inserting a hand in his trouser pocket.

He grasped her by the arm, pulled her to her feet, and almost dragged her away towards the rear exit.

‘A darkened doorway,’ Effi murmured.

‘If they make it that far.’ As he watched them disappear, Russell had the sudden sensation that he was being watched. Turning his head, he found Rudolf Geruschke looking straight at him. The nightclub boss raised a hand by way of hello, and turned away.

A few minutes later two glasses of bourbon were delivered to their table. Unwatered. Compliments of the boss.

Why? Russell wondered. The man only knew him as Irma’s friend, and he didn’t seem greatly enamoured of her. And he’d never heard of Effi.

The thought was drowned by a drum-roll, and the appearance of a nattily-dressed MC. He treated his audience to a few jokes — all either rich in sexual innuendo or dripping with amused contempt for the no longer dangerous Nazis — and introduced Irma to rapturous applause.

A spotlight revealed her, now wrapped in a metallic-looking sheath of a dress. The voice was slightly huskier than Russell remembered, but she could still hold a note. She sang a couple of songs in English, then switched to German for a version of ‘Symphonie’ which reduced several of the Russians to tears. One more song in English had the Brits and Americans happily singing along, before she closed the set with a song that Effi knew of but hadn’t yet heard — ‘Berlin Will Rise Again’. It was stately, sad, defiant:

Just as after the dark of night,

The sun always laughs again,

So the lindens will bloom along Unter den Linden,

And Berlin will rise again.

The lights went out as the applause began to fade. Irma had vanished when they came back on, and Rudolf Geruschke was standing by the side of the stage, deep in conversation with an American colonel.