Lehrter Station

Leon and Esther

Russell watched as the two open lorries were loaded, around twenty people to each. A dozen of them were children, and all but one had left Poland as orphans. All had since been adopted, temporarily at least, by one or more of the adults. Russell had spoken to most of the latter that day, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lidovsky acting as an interpreter. They had all impressed him with their singularity of purpose, some more than others with their outlook on the world. Their Palestine would not lack for solidarity, but it might have trouble loving its neighbour.

The quarter-moon lighting the scene was the reason for their early departure. It was due to set soon after midnight, and without it, as Lidovsky explained, the obligatory detour through the forest would be very dark.

It was five past nine when they set off, the two lorries rolling quietly down towards the River Gail, and drumming their way across the girders. There were sometimes British spot checks at the bridge, but thanks to a Jewish lieutenant at the local British HQ, they knew that none were arranged for that night.

The lorries started climbing, their engines noisy in the clear mountain air. Most of the passengers were standing, hands clutching the sides for balance as they stared out at the moonlit landscape. The phrase ‘shining eyes’ came to Russell, which sounded romantic but fitted the bill. A night this beautiful would cause most eyes to shine, and these people had a vision to live for. He thanked fate and Isendahl for letting him share their journey.

The lorries rumbled down the cobbled street of a small and almost lightless town, where a swaying drunk sidestepped the leading lorry with a matador’s aplomb, then sunk gracelessly back against the kerb. The road was now sharing the valley with a river and railway, the three of them intertwining their southerly course as the slopes above them steepened.

Two more towns followed, each darker than the last. A few minutes after leaving the second, the lorries drew to a halt in a passing place above the noisy river. It felt like the middle of nowhere, but was, as Lidovsky told Russell, just three kilometres from the Italian frontier. ‘We used to get nearer, but the British started moving their checkpoints towards us. So now we have a longer walk.’

Once everyone was off the lorries, Lidovsky’s partner Kempner gathered them in a circle and stressed the need for silence, before leading them across the road and up the bank beyond. Soon a long column was winding its way up through the trees, grateful for what little illumination the quarter-moon could offer. Behind and below them, the sound of the returning lorries slowly faded into silence.

About fifty metres above the road a parallel path wound through the pines. They followed this for what seemed a long way, with only an occasional whisper disturbing the silence. The valley below was lost in shadow, but they could hear the river rushing over the stones, and the moon still hung above the opposite ridge, threading the forest with a wash of pale light. It was bitterly cold, and despite the risk of stumbling Russell had both hands buried in his sleeves.

They’d been walking about half an hour when Lidovsky appeared, working his way down the column. He was warning everyone to be extra careful — they would soon be passing above a British checkpoint.

Russell heard it before he saw it, the sounds of laughter rising above the ferment of the river. And then he could see the glow of the brazier, and the jeep it illuminated. Four of them stood round the fire, evenly spaced like points of the compass, holding their hands out to warm them, first the palms, then the backs.

The column trekked on in silence, the light of the fire disappearing from view. It was another half an hour before they stopped, and then for no apparent reason. Russell’s curiosity got the better of him, and he worked his way up the stationary column to where the trees abruptly ended. About seventy metres in front of him, across a wide stretch of snow-dusted meadow, smoke was drifting from the chimney of a small building. This, he presumed, was the Italian guardhouse that Lidovsky had told him about, one of many built in the mid-1930s, when the Duce still had doubts about Hitler.

And someone had got there before them, someone who soon would get a surprise. As Russell watched, two shadowy figures — presumably Lidovsky and Kempner — arrived beside the door, where they paused for a second before entering in quick succession. There were no sudden shots, which had to be good, but a long couple of minutes elapsed before one man emerged and waved the rest of them forward.

It was Kempner. ‘It’s a man and his son,’ he said. ‘They have papers from the Rothschild.’

‘But what are they doing out here alone?’ one woman asked.

Russell didn’t hear the answer. He was staring at the man who’d followed Kempner out. The last time he’d seen that face it had been a good deal chubbier, and the body had been encased in the black cloth and leather of Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst — the SS foreign intelligence service. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth had been his handler in the summer of 1939, when the SS had employed him as a double against the Soviets. It had been either that or see Effi dispatched to a concentration camp.

The son had now emerged, a boy of about ten. He held his father’s hand and stared at the assembled Jews.

Then Hirth saw Russell. The eyes blinked in disbelief, the lips opened and closed, then mouthed the word bitte. Please. And as if to strengthen the plea, he glanced down at the boy beside him.

Hirth’s other hand, Russell noticed, was thrust deep in his pocket. Did he have a gun?

Russell hesitated. If he exposed the man now, people might get shot. And there seemed no urgency — Hirth had nowhere to run.

People were squeezing into the guardhouse, drawn by the warmth of the fire. Russell left Hirth hanging, and went in search of Lidovsky. They’d be there for several hours, the Haganah man told him. Until dawn. Then an hour’s walk back to the road, where their transport would be waiting.

Russell asked him where the man in the hut was from.

‘Danzig originally. His wife was Polish, a shiksa. They spent the war on a Polish farm, but she died in the summer. Why do you ask?’

‘Just a journalist’s curiosity. I thought I’d seen him somewhere before.’ He watched Lidovsky disappear inside, and felt Hirth arrive at his shoulder.

‘Please,’ the former Hauptsturmfuhrer pleaded in a whisper, ‘don’t give me away. For my son’s sake. He’s already lost his mother. Don’t…’

‘The shiksa,’ Russell said sarcastically.

‘No, his real mother. She was killed last year in the bombing.’

Which was probably the truth, Russell thought. He asked Hirth where he was going.

‘Rome. Then, well, there are people there who will help me. South America, I expect. A new life. Look, if you give us away, they’ll turn us over to the authorities. They’ll shoot me, and then they’ll have to shoot the boy. And he’s done nothing to deserve that.’

He probably hadn’t. Neither had the millions that Hirth and his kind had sent to their deaths, but Russell had to admit that wreaking vengeance unto the last generation seemed a touch medieval for 1945.

Could he really let Hirth walk away?

What did he actually know that the man had done? Hirth had worked for Heydrich when the death camps were being planned, but Russell had no idea how implicated the Sicherheitsdienst had been in the actual slaughter. They hadn’t run the camps, driven the trains or fed the ovens. Had Hirth used a Jewish head for a paperweight? He had to have blood on his hands, but how much? Enough to justify killing his son?

The son couldn’t have been much more than five when the orders went out — he had nothing to answer for. But Hirth was right — if the Jews didn’t kill the boy they would probably leave him to die. At best he’d be an orphan.

There was no justice in letting Hirth go free, and none for the boy in killing his father.

‘All right,’ Russell agreed reluctantly.

‘Thank you,’ Hirth said quietly as Lidovsky walked towards them.

‘You and your son must come with us,’ the Haganah officer insisted.

‘We’d be most obliged,’ Hirth said, after a quick glance at Russell. ‘I must find my son,’ he said, after Lidovsky had gone.

There was no need. They were entering the guardhouse by one door when one of the Jews burst in through the other, holding Hirth’s son by the scruff of the neck. The boy was screaming, his trousers round his knees. ‘See what I saw,’ the man said, pushing the boy to the ground. He tried to cover himself, but there was the tell-tale foreskin.

Hirth tried to help his son, but Lidovsky had a gun to his head. He pushed the SS man onto the ground and held him down with a foot on his chest. ‘Pull off his trousers,’ he told two of the men.

Hirth squirmed and kicked, but all to no avail. First the trousers and then the underpants, and another uncircumcised penis was shrivelling in the cold.

It was the way the Gestapo had checked for Jews, but Russell doubted whether Hirth was relishing the irony.

Kempner was going through the coat and trouser pockets. They had already seen the fake papers, but not the gun. It was a Sauer 38H, with SS lightning rods engraved in the grip.

Russell imagined Hirth taking it from his desk, realising the risk it represented, but bringing it along regardless, because any gun was better than none.

Now Lidovsky and Kempner were discussing his fate — short sentences batted to and fro across the few inches that separated their faces. Russell considered intervening, but to say what? He glanced at the boy, who was firmly held by one of the Jews, trousers still flopping around his ankles. The fear in his face was almost too much to bear.

Kempner and Lidovsky pulled Hirth to his feet, took an upper arm each, and dragged him out through the door. The boy cried out once, a heartfelt wail, and struggled in vain against the arms that were holding him.

The shot came sooner than Russell expected.

Hirth’s son screamed and redoubled his efforts to break free; the man held him for a few seconds more, then abruptly released his grip. The boy hitched up his trousers and half-stumbled out through the door, holding one palm raised before him, as if to ward off evil.

Russell sank down to the floor with his back against the wall. He told himself that Hirth had gone to whatever Jew-hating Valhalla Heydrich’s finest went to, and that most SS Hauptsturmfuhrers probably deserved shooting. But it was the look on the son’s face that he would remember. The dawning of irretrievable loss.

Several hours later, when Lidovsky came round announcing that it was time to go, Russell asked him what they intended doing with the boy.

‘We’ll leave him here. One of the women tried to talk to him — she told him we would take him to the nearest town, but he just ignored her. He’s out there trying to dig a grave with his bare hands.’

‘He’ll die if we just leave him.’

‘Only if he wants to. The path to the road is clear enough.’

Russell walked outside. Hirth’s body was lying on its side in the frosty grass, an angry red hole above the ear. The boy was sitting a couple of metres away, staring out at the lightening sky to the east. His assault on the frozen earth had barely scratched the surface.

‘Come with us,’ Russell said.

‘I’d rather die,’ the boy replied without turning his head.

Some days at Babelsberg, after hours inside the skin of camp survivor Lilli Neumann, Effi would stare at the face in the dressing room mirror and wonder whose it was. Sometimes it would take as much as an hour to claw her own self back, but even with Russell away she never doubted the need — this was a character that could take her over, and drag her down to who knew where.

She was more or less herself again when a knock sounded on the door. ‘Come in,’ she called out, expecting to be told that the bus was waiting.

A man stepped into the room. ‘Effi Koenen?’ he asked, with only the slightest hint of query.

‘Yes.’

‘May I have a word?’ he asked in more than passable German. The accent was American, but he was in civilian clothes, a smart black coat over a light grey suit. He was about thirty, Effi guessed, with straight brown hair, regular features and unusually white teeth.

‘What about?’

‘May I sit down?’ he asked, indicating the easy chair.

She gestured her acquiescence. ‘I can’t give you very long,’ she said.

‘I only need a few minutes.’ He put one leg over the other and brushed an imaginary speck of dirt off his knee.

‘Who are you?’

‘I represent the American Government — your husband’s employer. Or one of them at least.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘Seymour Exner.’

She went back to the mirror to finish removing her make-up. ‘So what can I do for you, Seymour?’

‘We have a request to make. Well, to be honest, it’s more than a request. Two weeks ago your partner John Russell asked for our help in removing certain obstacles to your participation in this film, and at the time we were happy to oblige…’

‘At the time?’

‘If you had confined yourself to the job in hand we would have no regrets about helping out. However…’

She turned to face him. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘The black market.’

‘What about it? I don’t have time to visit markets, black or otherwise.’

‘The other night?’

The penny dropped. ‘I was helping a friend buy medicines — she’s a sister at the Elisabeth Hospital.’

He brushed that aside with a wave of an arm. ‘The black market is a fact of life,’ he said. ‘You must realise that. People must buy and sell whatever they have to in order to survive, to prevail, and morality doesn’t come into it — not for the moment. And the same is true of politics. The Nazis are gone and people would like to think that there’s an end to it, but we believe that the new enemy is already here in Berlin. And we will do whatever we have to, use whoever we have to, in order to prevail. Do I make myself clear?’

‘You’ll do what you have to. It sounds familiar, but I never took much notice of politics. And I still don’t understand what all this philosophising has to do with me.’

He breathed a sigh of frustration. ‘Nothing, if you confine yourself to what you are good at, and leave crusades to the church.’

Effi smiled inwardly, remembering something Russell had told her weeks ago, that a quarter of the country’s Protestant clergy had joined the Nazis before they even came to power.

‘We intend talking to Mr Russell when he returns,’ Exner said, as if that would make Effi feel better. ‘Perhaps the two of you should talk this through before you take any more unconsidered actions.’

That made Effi angry — receiving an incomprehensible telling-off from a brash young idiot was bad enough; hearing him suggest that she wait for the balm of Russell’s calming influence was downright insulting. ‘So you’re telling me I should come to work each day, do my job and go back home, and forget about everything else.’

‘A dramatic way of putting it, but yes.’

She shook her head. ‘And if I don’t? What are you threatening me with?’

‘Nothing terrible. You will just find that the difficulties you encountered in getting a work permit — those difficulties that we resolved for you — will rear their ugly heads once more, and the film will need a new leading lady. If it proceeds at all, that is. We help those who are prepared to help us,’ he added, his voice turning suddenly colder.

Effi’s first and almost overwhelming impulse was defiance, but she bit back her tongue on the words that were forming. ‘I understand,’ she said, a deal more graciously than she felt. ‘No more crusades.’

He smiled at that. ‘It’s in all our interests,’ he said. Job done, he got up to leave. ‘Have a good weekend.’

Once the door had closed behind him she went back over the conversation. If their trip out to Teltow had occasioned his visit, then there had to be more to it. Neither she nor Annaliese had done anything to suggest they were anything more than buyers, so where had anyone got the idea they were starting a crusade?

There was only one explanation that fitted. The men they had met must work for Geruschke — hadn’t Kuzorra told Russell that the black marketeer included drugs and medicines among his illicit trades? One or both of the men had recognised her as Russell’s partner, and reported it to Geruschke. And he had concluded that her presence at the canal basin was part of a continuing ‘crusade’ on her and Russell’s part.

So Geruschke employed the former Gestapo officer. She had been wondering what to do about the latter ever since she recognised him. She had thought of reporting him to the occupation authorities, but what was the point if she didn’t know where to find him again?

Now she probably did. She had arranged to meet Irma at the Honey Trap on Saturday — she would see if the singer recognised the man’s description.

But — and the realisation brought her up short — she had also learned something else, something much more troubling. If Geruschke was behind it all, how come his envoy was a man from the American Government? Had she just been warned to lay off the black marketeer because he was vital to their war against the ‘new enemy’?

That, she realised, could explain why Geruschke had let Russell go. The Americans needed them both, so first they saved Russell from Geruschke, and now Geruschke from Russell and her.

How crazy was that?

The party reached the transit camp at Pontebba early on Tuesday evening. Since reaching the road on the Italian side of the border, they had endured a day of seemingly interminable waits, first for the lorry, and then for the various Italian authorities to decide on what bribes they were willing to accept. The British had been conspicuous by their absence, but that hadn’t felt surprising — even up here in the northern foothills, Italy seemed far removed from the war and its hangover, from the bleakness afflicting so much of northern Europe.

It was partly the relative warmth, Russell thought, as he stiffly climbed down from the back of the lorry. It was the first time in a week that he hadn’t felt really cold.

The Pontebba site had hosted a munitions dump before the Jewish Brigade arrived, and now that both were gone it look like a half-abandoned POW camp, a few dusty barracks in a sea of discarded packing. Russell headed straight for the office to enquire after Otto Pappenheim.

‘He’s here,’ the Haganah representative confirmed, once Russell had explained why he wanted him. ‘But he and a few of the others have driven down to Resiutta — there’s a cinema there. And girls.’

Russell walked across to the group’s designated barracks and left his suitcase on an empty cot. The room was full of excited chatter — his Jewish companions might still be a long way from their Palestine, but reaching Pontebba obviously felt like a huge step in the right direction.

He went in search of something to eat, and ended up sharing a table with two young men from Breslau. They were happy to describe their escape from Poland — a meet at the abandoned farmhouse, the walk across the mountain border, a long train journey through Czechoslovakia. But what had impressed them most was the warmth of their reception in the small Czech town of Nachod, where two local Jews had created a place of refuge for those heading south and west. This was brave but not surprising — what astonished Russell’s companions was the whole-hearted involvement of the town’s non-Jews. Nachod, almost alone in Europe, seemed eager to lend a helping hand.

Listening to the two young Zionists, Russell knew he would have to visit the town. Not on this trip perhaps, but soon. Both Poles and Czechs had treated their new German citizens appallingly in the immediate aftermath of the war — like Nazis, as one sad American journalist had told him in London — and if one Czech town was doing well by the Jews it deserved both praise and publicity. In post-war Europe kindness was a story in itself.

He returned to his bunk intent on waiting for Otto, but thirty-six hours without sleep had taken their toll. The next thing he knew a hand was gently shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes to morning sunlight and someone standing above him.

‘You wanted to speak to me,’ a male voice said. ‘I’m leaving in half an hour so I thought you’d want me to wake you.’

‘You must be Otto Pappenheim,’ Russell said. He levered himself off the bunk and offered his hand. This Otto was a tall young man in his twenties, with bushy black hair and a friendly smile. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Palestine, I hope.’

‘Thanks for waking me,’ Russell said. Looking around, he saw that many others were still asleep. ‘We’d better talk outside.’

It was a lovely morning, the sun dousing the distant hills in an almost golden glow. A large bird of prey was drawing circles above the camp, presumably hoping for breakfast. Otto lit a cigarette as Russell launched into his now familiar spiel.

Otto shook his head. ‘I have no children,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been married,’ he added, in apparent explanation.

‘Are you sure? I don’t mean to question your honesty, but you’re a good-looking boy…’

Otto gave him a self-deprecating smile.

‘You didn’t know a girl, a woman, named Ursel? In the summer of 1937?’

‘I had my first real girlfriend in 1938, and she threw me over for a goy. I was only sixteen in the summer of 1937.’

‘Okay,’ Russell said. ‘Thanks.’

‘Pappenheim is not an unusual name,’ Otto remarked, grinding his cigarette out in the dust.

‘So I’ve discovered,’ Russell agreed. ‘You’re our third Otto.’

‘Well, good luck with the fourth.’

‘And to you,’ Russell replied. Watching the young man walk away, he wondered whether Shanghai Otto would prove to be the one. With any luck Shchepkin would have some news the next time he saw him. Whenever that was. He wondered how long an absence from Berlin the Soviets would tolerate.

With no little effort, he worked out what day it was — Saturday the 15th of December. What should he do? If he continued on with the group, he might end up hanging around some South Italian port for weeks on end. Sailing on to Palestine — or a British internment camp on Cyprus — would certainly round off the story, but could he spare the time? And he had the gist — the journey and how it was organised, the people and why they were taking it.

The Soviets might or might not be pining for him, but he was certainly missing Effi. If he started back now he should reach Berlin by the end of the week, in plenty of time for Christmas.

Always assuming he could find some sort of transport. He doubted whether any trains or buses were running into Austria, at least along the road they’d travelled. There might be flights north from Venice or Trieste, but it would be a long journey south to find out. Hitching a lift seemed the best bet. A lorry most probably, though a private car would be nicer.

A car like the one moving northwards along the road that skirted the camp. He thought of waving to attract the driver’s attention, but knew he was too far away. And then the need disappeared — as if in response to his silent entreaty, the car turned in through the open gates and drove up to the barracks containing the office.

The young man who got out seemed familiar, but Russell was still trying to work out why when the man caught sight of him. ‘Herr Russell!’ he exclaimed with what sounded like pleasure, and walked across to meet him.

It was Albert Wiesner.

Russell should have been surprised, but he wasn’t, not really. In these circumstances, running across Albert was not such a great coincidence — there couldn’t be many young Palestinian men better versed in the whys and wherefores of fleeing a hostile Europe.

Almost seven years earlier, in March 1939, Russell had helped smuggle the seventeen-year-old Albert out of Germany. Originally employed by Albert’s doctor father to teach English to his daughters Ruth and Marthe, Russell had quickly become a friend of the family, and when Frau Wiesner had begged him to talk to her son — whose angry outbursts were putting them all in jeopardy — he had reluctantly agreed. Albert was certainly prickly, but few of Berlin’s Jews were brimming with good humour in March 1939. At their meeting in Friedrichshain Park, Albert had calmly predicted the death camps. ‘Who’s going to stop them?’ was the question he’d posed to Russell.

Then his father Felix Wiesner had been beaten to death in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and Albert had gone into hiding after braining a Gestapo officer with a table lamp. As part of a convoluted deal with British and Soviet intelligence, Russell had managed to arrange the boy’s escape to Czechoslovakia and the rest of the family’s emigration to England. Albert had gone on to Palestine, and had been there ever since.

He was now in his mid-twenties. He looked bigger and healthier than Russell remembered, with shorter hair, a permanent tan and the same intelligent eyes. ‘It’s good to see you,’ Albert said. ‘The last time Marthe wrote to me, she said you’d all had dinner together in London.’

‘In early November,’ Russell confirmed. It seemed months ago. He explained his and Effi’s return to Berlin as best he could, given the need not to mention spying.

‘So what are you doing here?’ Albert asked.

‘Telling these people’s story. Someone thought I’d be a sympathetic witness.’

‘And are you?’ Albert asked with a disarming smile.

‘How could I not be?’ Russell replied in kind. ‘But what are you doing here?’

‘I’m a sheliakh. You know what that is?’

‘An emissary.’

‘Yes. I’m here to find out how things are going — the camps, the transport, all the arrangements. There’s more trouble in Poland, and that means more people we have to move. So I’m travelling back up the chain, checking that everything’s working smoothly.’

‘Do you feel like company?’

‘I thought you were travelling south.’

‘I don’t think so. I have all I need at this end — I’m much more interested in the early stages of the journey. There’s a place called Nachod — are you going there?’

‘Ah, Nachod.’

‘Do you remember, in the car on the way to Gorlitz, you said that cruelty was easy to understand but that kindness was becoming a mystery?

‘Did I really say that?’

‘You did. I was impressed.’

Albert shook his head. ‘How wise I was at seventeen!’

On Saturday evening, Effi asked Thomas to accompany her to the Honey Trap. ‘If I go on my own I’ll spend the whole evening fending off drunken Russians — they won’t care that I’m almost forty. And you need a break,’ she insisted.

He told her he spent his weeks watching Russians behaving badly, and doing so at weekends hardly constituted a break.

‘But you’ll come anyway?’

‘All right. But only because Frau Niebel has invited friends over for dinner.’

The latter were arriving as they left, two women who stared at them with almost indecent interest. Frau Niebel must have been gossiping overtime.

On their walk to the bus Effi asked Thomas exactly how badly the Russians were behaving at the Schade print works.

‘Oh, no worse than anywhere else. They’ve brought in extra presses for the school books, but no one will tell me whether I’m expected to pay for their hire. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whose business it is — I sometimes think it would make more sense if they confiscated it, and then hired me to run things. I know it’s Lotte’s inheritance, but…’

His voice trailed off, and Effi knew he was thinking about his son, who should have inherited the works, but had died in far-off Ukraine.

They didn’t have long to wait for a bus, and there were even seats to spare. Across the aisle a woman was sitting beside a pile of Christmas shopping. Where she’d found gifts worth giving, let alone the beautiful paper and ribbons, was something of a mystery, and half the passengers were staring at her with the same perplexed expression.

‘Are you going to Hanna’s family for Christmas?’ Effi asked Thomas.

‘I’m negotiating with the Russians. They think the works should only close for Christmas Day, and they don’t believe anyone else is capable of running things if I’m away. But there are several who could — I just have to convince them.’

‘You must miss Hanna terribly.’

‘Of course.’ He paused. ‘It sounds ridiculous, I know, but when we’re together there seems more of a point to life. To all of it, I mean. Eating, sleeping, anything.’ He looked at her. ‘You had more than three years apart.’

‘We did. It was different, though. Or for me it was. The life I was used to just vanished, and normal feelings seemed almost beside the point. And then of course there was Ali — once we joined forces I was never alone.’

The tram was on the Ku’damm by this time, the sidewalks full of Germans scurrying home and soldiers in search of excitement. The Honey Trap was already doing good business, but tables were still to be had. A six-piece band were pumping out American boogie music, and two GIs were teaching their German partners to jitterbug on the small dance floor, while a group of British soldiers offered loud disparaging comments. Most of those drinking at the tables and bar were Anglo-German couples, with the girls even younger than Effi remembered. There were, as yet, very few Russians.

After buying two beers, Thomas surveyed the scene with obvious disapproval.

‘We don’t have to stay long,’ Effi said, looking at her watch. ‘Irma should be here in ten minutes, and she’ll be singing not long after.’

‘I want to hear her,’ Thomas said. ‘And don’t mind me, I’m just getting more conservative in my old age.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m afraid I look at all these young women…’ He hesitated. ‘I was going to say — this could have been my Lotte. But it’s more than that. First we have the rapes — 80,000 of them, someone told me the other day — and now we have half the women in the city prostituting themselves. For the best of reasons, I understand that. But still. What will the outcome be? What is it doing to us all — to the women themselves, to the men in their lives? And it’s not just sex — everything seems for sale. Everything has a price, and only a price.’ He saw the look on Effi’s face. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll shut up. Next thing you know I’ll be feeling nostalgic for Hitler.’

‘No,’ Effi said. ‘I know what you mean, but… who was it said you can still see the stars from the gutter?’

‘It wasn’t Goebbels, was it?’

Effi laughed, and caught sight of Irma slinking her way through the tables towards them.

The singer ordered them all complimentary drinks, and recounted a long talk she’d had the previous day with a visiting American film producer. ‘They’re worried that the Russians are making all the running,’ she reported, ‘and next year they’re going to start making films here themselves. American money and German talent. He mentioned a couple of ideas for musicals, and said I’d be ideal. He was probably trying to get into my knickers, but that’s okay. I told him to look me up again when he had a contract for me to sign. He wasn’t bad looking. And neither is your friend,’ she added, once Thomas had gone off to the toilet.

‘He’s married,’ Effi told her. ‘And he loves his wife,’ she added in response to the raised eyebrow.

‘No harm in asking,’ Irma murmured.

‘None at all.’

When Thomas came back she took her leave, and ten minutes later was up on stage, going through the familiar repertoire. As before, she finished with ‘Berlin Will Rise Again’, and Effi noticed a glint of tears in Thomas’s eyes.

‘I’ll just use the bathroom before we go,’ she told him when the performance was over, and worked her way through to the back of the club. Noticing Irma through the open door of her dressing room, Effi was just leaning in to say goodbye when a familiar voice sounded just down the passage. She stepped quickly over the threshold and pulled the door to.

‘Oh it’s you,’ Irma said looking up.

‘Shhh,’ Effi told her, opening a narrow gap between door and jamb, and pressing one eye up against it. The youth from the canal basin rendezvous was standing outside another doorway, apparently waiting for someone to come out. He looked even younger than he had in the dark, and she noticed a long thin scar on the left side of his neck.

He turned to go, and the other man — the Gestapo thug from the station platform — emerged through the doorway. She had a fleeting glimpse of his face as he turned away, and followed his young partner out towards the back door. There had to be somewhere for parking, she realised — Geruschke didn’t seem like a man who took buses.

She pushed the door shut.

‘What are you doing?’ Irma asked.

‘Just someone I didn’t want to see again.’

‘A fan?’

‘Not exactly.’

Irma worked it out. ‘One of Geruschke’s goons?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t mess with him, Effi. He’d cut out his grandmother’s heart and sell it for dog food.’

‘Why do you work for the bastard?’ Effi felt compelled to ask.

Irma gave her a sharp look. ‘Same reason we both worked for Goebbels. Sometimes there’s only one show in town.’

Albert’s business with the Haganah people at Pontebba had used up most of Saturday, and persuading a local garage to supply him with a full tank of petrol took care of the rest. He had purchased the car, a black Lancia Augusta, from the widow of a long-vanished Fascist mayor in the Po valley, and was delivering it to a Haganah base outside Salzburg. According to the widow her husband had rarely used the car in peacetime, and had kept it locked in its garage throughout the war. Motoring smoothly up towards the frontier on that Sunday morning, it seemed eager to make up for lost miles.

As they neared the frontier Russell kept a lookout for Hirth’s son, but saw no sign of the boy. The descending path from the guardhouse had indeed been easy to follow, and he hoped that hunger would eventually drive the boy down.

There were no problems at the border — Albert’s papers were exquisite forgeries — and none at the subsequent checkpoints. They stopped for lunch at the Villach transit house, which had just received another shipment of orphans. They would be going south in the next few days, Lidovsky told Russell. And no, he added without being asked, there had been no sightings of the Hauptsturmfuhrer’s son. He felt it too, Russell thought. They had let themselves down.

Soon after one o’clock they set off again. Albert was eager for news of his mother and sisters. ‘I can’t believe I haven’t seen them for so many years,’ he said. Did Russell think they would eventually come to Palestine? ‘I live on a kibbutz, but I can find them a flat in Tel Aviv.’

Russell told the truth as far as he knew it, that his mother was torn, that the girls were happy in England, at least for the moment. ‘Of course, if you do get your state…’

‘We will.’

‘You’re that certain?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a journalist friend who agrees with you. He says the Zionists have the two things that matter — sympathy and money.’

Albert smiled at that. ‘He’s right.’

‘The Arabs won’t give up their home without a fight.’

‘No, I’m sure they won’t. But they will lose.’

‘There are more of them.’

‘That won’t matter. Our men have learned a lot, first in our Palmach militia, then in the British Jewish Brigade — and we’re better fighters than they are. And our morale will be better. We Jews are all in it together, but the Arabs with money treat the others like shit.’

Russell grunted his concurrence.

‘And there’s another thing. The Arabs in Palestine have other countries they can move to — Transjordan, Syria, Egypt, the Lebanon. We have nowhere else. We have to win. The British will try and stop us, but their hearts aren’t in it, and in any case their day is over. The Americans are the ones that matter, and they support us.’

‘Anti-Semitism is hardly unknown in the States,’ Russell said mildly.

‘No, but a third of our people now live there. That’s a lot of money, a lot of sympathy. And a lot of voters that the politicians won’t be able to ignore. Americans love an underdog.’

‘That’s the British. Americans love a winner.’

‘Even better. We will win, believe me.’

‘Oh, I do,’ Russell said. And he did. In fact, only the British Government seemed otherwise inclined.

They drove up the Drau valley to Spittal, then turned onto the mountain road to Radstadt. There was snow on the slopes but rain in the air, and no fear of the road being blocked. It was around two hundred kilometres from Villach to Salzburg, and by late afternoon they had reached the first of the three Jewish DP camps that Albert needed to visit. The first, a permanent affair, bore the unofficial name of New Palestine; the others were purely for transients, and had less to offer in terms of food and accommodation. The Haganah had an arrangement with the American authorities not to increase the number of residents in their Austrian zone, Albert told Russell, so they needed to keep people moving, shifting groups on across the Italian or German borders to make room for new arrivals.

Having dropped off the car soon after dawn, they hitched a ride on a lorry heading east to pick up another group of Jews travelling west. Cold rain fell in sheets for most of the three-hour journey, and the River Enns, when they reached it, looked almost too choppy to cross. But a small boat heaved its way to their landing stage an hour or so later with thirty Jews on board, and Russell watched several look round in wonderment before climbing aboard the lorry. They had reached the relative safety of the American zone.

Russell and Albert clambered aboard the boat, and watched with admiration as the captain worked his way up and across to the eastern shore. It was a half hour walk from there to St Valentin, but they saw no sign of Russian occupation forces until they reached the station, where a few Red Army men were drinking tea in the platform cafeteria. They seemed unusually subdued, Russell thought. Probably hung over.

Their train to Vienna only stopped once, and it was still early afternoon when they arrived at the Westbahnhof. Russell had expected an overnight stop, but Albert was anxious to reach Bratislava that day. A cab carried them across the city and over the Danube to the station in Floridsdorf, where a local train was waiting, seemingly just for them. The whistle blew the moment they were safely on board, and an hour or so later they alighted at a desolate country halt. A ten-minute walk brought them to the Austrian end of a long wooden footbridge, which extended out across a wide expanse of marsh and river. The frontier was in there somewhere, and two Red Army soldiers were guarding the Austrian end, albeit with no great diligence. They waved the two men through without even checking their papers.

‘How about coming the other way?’ Russell asked once they were on the bridge. ‘Do they just let your people through?’

‘A small bribe is usually enough,’ Albert replied. ‘The only people they stop are their own.’

There were no guards on the Czech side, but a longer walk to transport. After twenty minutes or so they met a party of Jews heading in the opposite direction, around thirty in total, with the usual male majority. The luggage on display was remarkable, with everything from battered old suitcases to paper bags pushed into service. Spare pairs of shoes were laced together and hung around necks, and several umbrellas were vainly raised to ward off the mist. Many were carrying fresh loaves of bread, parting gifts from the refugee centre in Bratislava.

The two of them reached the city as darkness was falling, and walked down through rapidly emptying streets to a square at the heart of the old quarter. A domed Byzantine church loomed over one side; the other was dominated by the stone-built Hotel Jelen, where UNRRA and the Haganah shared quarters and responsibility for the Jewish emigrants. A small door cut in a larger gate led into a woebegone courtyard, overlooked by scum-covered windows and rusted iron balconies. They climbed the stone staircase to the first-floor reception, whose walls were plastered in writing. As Albert talked to the man at the desk, Russell skimmed through the messages in search of an Otto or Miriam. He found no trace of either, but the walls themselves seemed worthy of preservation. The wrong religion perhaps, but they brought back memories of reading Pilgrim’s Progress at school; there was something both chaotic and intensely focussed about this migration, and a sense that nothing could deflect it.

The Jews he met that evening did nothing to shift this impression — even those intent on reaching America seemed committed to the Zionist idea. Albert gave a brief talk on current conditions in Palestine, and Russell sat at the back of the rearranged dining room, watching the eager faces of those all around him. He was impressed by Albert, who managed to enthuse and reassure his audience without minimising the obvious difficulties. When one man asked what their chances of reaching Palestine were, he said ‘one hundred per cent’ — some might have to accept British hospitality for a while, but everyone would get there eventually. When another man asked if their women would be safe, he didn’t just say yes, he turned the question round. ‘Where,’ he asked his audience, ‘could a Jew find greater safety than in a Jewish state?’

Afterwards, when Russell congratulated him, Albert thought he might have ‘laid it on a little thick. But we need them,’ he insisted. ‘We need every Jew we can get.’

Russell said nothing to the contrary, but Albert must have detected some hint of ambivalence. ‘You’re not sure about it, are you?’ he said later, as they lay in their parallel bunks. ‘Our need for a homeland.’

Russell took the question seriously. ‘I don’t know. It’s hard. I spent most of my life learning to hate nationalism, and all the other evils it gives rise to. And nationalisms built around race — as you and I know only too well — can be even more murderous. But putting all that to one side, and accepting that the Jews have the same rights to a homeland as anyone else, there’s still the problem of the Arabs. Palestine already has a population. You’re not moving into an empty house.’

‘Jews have lived there for thousands of years.’

‘So have Arabs.’

‘God gave it to the Jews.’

‘Says who? I didn’t think you were religious.’

Albert grinned. ‘I’m not.’

‘I don’t think you can use the Bible as a title deed,’ Russell insisted.

‘Some people do. Like the Europeans who conquered the Americas — being in touch with the right God made everything okay.’

‘You don’t believe that.’

‘I think that’s what will happen.’

Russell thought about that. ‘Maybe it will,’ he conceded. ‘A friend of mine suggested emptying Cyprus — the Greeks to Greece, the Turks to Turkey — and then giving it to the Jews. Lovely beaches, good soil, not that far from Jerusalem.’

Albert propped his head up on one arm and gave Russell a look. ‘We already have our homeland.’

‘Yes, I expect you do.’

‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Albert said. ‘I understand why the Poles are expelling the Germans from their new territories. And I understand why they’re making it impossible for the Jews to return. If my friends and I have our way, the Arabs will all be expelled from Palestine. Anything else is just storing up trouble for the future.’

‘That will put a bit of a strain on the world’s sympathy, don’t you think?’

‘Once we have the land, we can do without the sympathy.’

Since deducing the connections between her ex-Gestapo man, Geruschke and the Americans, Effi had been wondering what she should do. The sensible course, the one Seymour Exner had advised her to follow, was to wait for Russell’s return. They could then ignore his threats together.

The fact that Exner had suggested waiting for Russell rather prejudiced her against the notion, but as long as working consumed most of her waking hours, and exhaustion ruled the rest, she had little choice in the matter. Then on Tuesday the film’s leading man came down with a heavy cold, the cast was given the whole day off, and the chance arose to set something in motion.

But what? After giving the matter more thought, she still had no idea where to start with Geruschke, and reluctantly conceded that waiting for Russell might, in this one case, make sense. So what else could she do? Russell was dealing with Otto 3, Shchepkin, hopefully, with Otto 2. Kuzorra’s sighting of Miriam had given them hope, but there were no more people to ask and no more places to check — all she could do was wait and hope for some response to their messages.

Once satisfied that logic, and not Seymour Exner, had ruled out anything else, she decided it was time to deal with her flat, and the people who were living there. It wasn’t a prospect she was savouring, but she couldn’t put it off for ever.

She and Thomas had discussed the situation again, and he’d more or less confirmed what she already knew. If abandoning the property and ejecting the occupants were equally unpalatable, then all that remained was negotiation — she would have to meet those concerned, and make it clear that she wanted the flat back at some not-too-distant point in the future. If the occupants were reasonable people, then they could all agree a timetable. If they weren’t, Effi would just have to tell them she was starting legal proceedings.

All of which sounded fine, she thought, standing outside on the familiar street. And now for real people.

She climbed the communal staircase and knocked at the door. The woman who answered was thin and almost haggard, with pale blue eyes and straggly blonde hair.

‘What do you want?’ the woman asked, as Effi searched for the right thing to say.

She took a deep breath. ‘There’s no easy way to tell you this. My name’s Effi Koenen, and this is my flat.’

‘Yours?’

‘Yes. My parents bought it in 1924, and gave it to me in 1931. I lived her for ten years, until 1941, when it was confiscated by the government.’

The woman looked bewildered. ‘So how can it still be yours?’

‘It was the Nazi Government that confiscated it. Their laws are no longer recognised,’ she added, with less than complete honesty.

‘Oh.’ The woman seemed unsure what to do. ‘Well you’d better come in.’

Effi accepted the invitation to examine her old home. Some of the furniture was hers, but the flat as a whole seemed like somebody else’s, and for a few brief moments she experienced an acute sense of loss.

A child was sitting in the middle of the floor — a girl of about four with her mother’s hair and eyes. ‘What’s your name?’ Effi asked.

‘Ute,’ the girl said.

‘I’m Effi. How long have you lived here?’ she asked the mother.

‘Since March. We were given the flat by the Housing Office — you can check with them. No one said anything about an owner.’

‘Maybe the records were destroyed. Or they didn’t realise I was still among the living.’ The little girl was still staring at her, and Effi realised how cold it was in the flat. There were a few pieces of wood by the fireplace, but they were probably being saved for the evening. Noticing two rolled-up beds in the corner, she asked the woman where her other two children were.

‘The boys are at school. Look… we came from Konigsberg — my husband was killed by the Russians.’ There was a dreadful weariness in her eyes as she looked around her. ‘But if this is yours…’

Anger or resentment would have been easier. ‘Please,’ Effi said, ‘I don’t need the flat at the moment — I’m staying with friends. I shall want it back eventually, but I won’t ask you to leave until you have somewhere else to live. And I’ll help you find somewhere. In the new year, we can start looking.’

The woman was using a hand on the table to hold herself upright, Effi realised. Both mother and daughter were in desperate need of a decent meal.

‘Look, I’m an actress,’ Effi told her. ‘For reasons best known to themselves, that means the authorities give me top-grade rations. More than I need. So please take these,’ she said, searching through her bag for the relevant coupons. ‘Give your children a good meal. And yourself.’

After only a slight hesitation the woman took them. She looked more bewildered than ever.

As well she might, Effi thought. A stranger arrives, claims the family home, and then dispenses gifts. ‘I’ll come and see you again after Christmas,’ Effi said. ‘And don’t worry — you can stay as long as you need to.’

‘Thank you,’ the woman said.

‘What’s your name?’ Effi asked her.

‘Ilse. Ilse Reitermaier. Thank you.’

Effi went back down to the street. Sensing watching eyes, she turned to see mother and child looking out of the window. She waved and they waved back.

She wondered how many families Hitler had torn apart with his stupid war. And how many more Seymour Exner would destroy with the one that he was planning. Did men never learn?

Of course the war had been good to some. Men like Geruschke and his ex-Gestapo underling were thriving on the misery of other people’s lives. She wondered how many other Nazis he was employing.

A sudden thought stopped her in her tracks. She could bring Jews to the Honey Trap, Jews from Schulstrasse and the survivor organisations, Jews that Ali and Fritz and Wilhelm Isendahl knew. They were bound to recognise some Nazis.

No, she thought. After what Exner had told her, it seemed clear that the authorities weren’t interested, and without some guarantee of official protection she would be putting the Jews in danger. So no.

She had only walked ten metres when the solution presented itself. Photographs. If she obtained photographs of Geruschke’s employees, she could show them around. The photographer would need an acceptable reason for popping off flashbulbs in the Honey Trap, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. Some pictures for an article about something or other — how the soldiers enjoyed their leisure, the renaissance of cabaret, the rebirth of jazz in Berlin. Maybe Irma could pretend to commission some publicity photos.

First she needed a photographer. The one John used to use, the one Strohm had told him was back from the dead. Zembski, that was his name. The Fat Silesian. John had said he was working at the KPD newspaper offices. She had no idea where they were, but they shouldn’t be hard to find.

Next morning, Russell and Albert walked back up the hill to the station. Russell had vivid memories of catching a train there in August 1939 — his American editor had sent him to Bratislava to report on a pogrom, before hustling him on to Warsaw to witness the countdown to war. Ambulance-chasing on a continental scale.

His fellow passengers on that train had included a family of Jews intent on reaching the safety of Poland. All dead, most probably. And if they weren’t, they’d be fleeing in the opposite direction. In such circumstances, Zionism made perfect sense. A homeland in Palestine or shuttling to and fro across European borders, one step ahead of the knout. Put like that, it was no choice at all.

Their train headed north through the Czech countryside at a funereal pace, stopping at stations, on bridges, in the middle of dark, silent forests. Albert expressed no resentment over Russell’s reservations — he was, Russell realised, sure enough of his own mind to forgive the doubts in others. They talked for a while about Otto Pappenheim, and the possible reasons for his disappearance. When Russell mentioned Effi’s fear of handing Rosa back to a man who had abandoned her, Albert grew more serious, and warned them against pre-judgement. ‘After what some of them went through,’ he said sadly, ‘you could forgive them almost anything.’

After Brno they had the compartment to themselves. Albert laid himself out across a row of seats and was soon asleep, but Russell sat by the window, watching the wintry Moravian countryside and thinking about the next few days. They would reach Nachod that night or the following morning, and after finishing their business would cross into Poland. There had been an atlas in the UNRRA office at the Hotel Jelen, and Russell, boning up on the local geography, had discovered that Glatz — or whatever the Poles were now calling it — was the nearest railway station. He could travel to Breslau from there, along the line he’d once used to visit the Rosenfeld farm. Breslau was now in Poland, and doubtless sporting a new name, but the tracks would still be leading west to Berlin. If the Poles were uncooperative, he’d find some friendly Russians.

Thinking about the Rosenfeld farm, a possibility occurred to him — one that he and Effi had somehow missed. If Miriam had had her baby, and somehow healed herself in the process, might she then have tried to go home? Kuzorra had seen her in January 1942, so it would have been after that. But if she’d gone home that year or the next, only ruins awaited her — by that time her parents had long since fled over the mountains. So what would she have done — gone back to Berlin?

There was only one source of sanctuary that Russell knew of — Torsten Resch, the gentile neighbours’ boy who had always been sweet on her. He had worked in Breslau until his call-up in 1941. One or two years later, he was probably still in uniform, and Miriam would have sought him in vain. But the boy might have been invalided out; he might have been on leave when she came looking. It was the thinnest of chances, but she had to be somewhere. Alive or dead, she had to be somewhere. So why not Breslau? It shouldn’t take him more than a few hours to find out.

The afternoon wore on, until darkness finally filled the valleys. Yellow lamps now glowed on the station platforms, and myriad wood fires crackled beside the frequent refuge sidings. At one such passing place, their train pulled up alongside another, and the sound of singing rose from the latter’s lightless compartments, a young girl’s voice both sweet and infinitely sad. It was, Albert said, a song about a Jewish mother who saves her daughter by placing her in a Christian orphanage.

Another song followed, this one sung by many voices and accompanied by mandolin. According to Albert it was a paean to the writer’s home, a simple village somewhere in the Pale which he or she would never see again.

When their own train jerked into motion, and swallowed the voices up, Russell found himself feeling almost bereft. The emotions which flickered on Albert’s face were the ones Russell remembered from 1939 — anger and bitterness.

They travelled on, eventually reaching the junction for Nachod too late for the last connection. After checking the time of the first morning train, they walked across the dung-strewn forecourt to the only available inn. The proprietor’s initial suspicion of Albert was mollified by the false documentation, and Russell’s American passport was enough to secure them a late supper. The latter was somewhat spoiled — for Russell at least — by their host’s insistence on regaling them with tales of Czech revenge against the local Germans. Albert seemed happy to hear them, but the proprietor’s wife, who had served up their supper, looked even more disgusted than Russell. ‘What an achievement,’ she said sarcastically. ‘We’ve become just like them.’

There turned out to be several Party offices, but the one where Miroslav Zembski worked was on Klosterstrasse, in a building that Effi remembered as once housing an art gallery. The size of Zembski’s second floor office suggested a man of some importance.

He stared at Effi for several moments before recognition dawned. ‘Fraulein Koenen,’ he finally said, his face breaking into a smile. ‘Or are you and Herr Russell married these days?’

‘No, we still haven’t got round to it,’ Effi told him. Zembski was hardly wafer-thin, but it was difficult to believe that Russell had dubbed him ‘the Fat Silesian’.

‘I heard he was back. How is he?’

‘He’s all right. He’s in Austria at the moment — at least I think he is. But I know he means to come and see you — he only just heard you’re alive. When he turned up at your studio in 1941 and found that you’d been arrested… well, he feared the worst.’

‘He wasn’t the only one,’ Zembski said drily. ‘It would be good to see him again,’ he added, ‘but what can I do for you?’

She looked at him. Until that moment, she’d been planning on hiring him — or whoever he recommended — with some sort of cock-and-bull story, and without revealing her motives. But it made more sense to be straight with him. She would have a clearer conscience, and probably get better results. ‘I need a photographer,’ she began. ‘I need someone to take pictures at the Honey Trap nightclub on the Ku’damm without arousing suspicion. Inside and outside. Inside, the photographer should look like he’s concentrating on the singer Irma Wocz — she’s an old friend, by the way — but catch as many people in the background as he can. Staff in particular, but customers too. The club is on a corner, and there’s a back way out onto Leibniz Strasse which only employees use. The buildings across the street were destroyed, and there’s plenty of rubble for a photographer to hide in. I need pictures of anyone using that exit.’

‘Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’ Zembski asked.

‘The man who owns the club is a black marketeer who employs ex-Nazis. If I have photographs, I can get them identified.’

‘Why not just go to the Americans?’

‘That’s a long story. John could tell you…’

‘Ah, Mr Russell. Always in trouble with the authorities.’

‘I’ll tell him you said so. He’ll be pleased.’

Zembski laughed.

‘So do you still work as a photographer?’

‘No, I don’t.’

There was something in the way he said it that made her ask why.

‘The camp I was in — the commandant saw the occupation on my arrest sheet, and made me his camp photographer. I won’t go into what he had me photograph.’

‘I understand. Can you recommend someone else?’

‘Actually I can. He’s the son of someone I knew in the camp — someone who died there. I let the boy use my old studio in Neukolln. His name’s Horst Sattler. He’s young, but he’s good. Mostly he buys and sells cameras — there’s not much demand for wedding pictures at the moment — but he knows how to use a camera. And I think he’d like your proposition.’ Zembski looked at his watch. ‘He’s usually there until about six. Say that you talked to me about the job, and that I recommended him.’

She wrote down the address he dictated, promised to convey his good wishes to Russell, and walked to the nearest U-Bahn. Half an hour later she was in the studio, introducing herself to its young proprietor. Horst Sattler was skinny, with bushy black hair and glasses that made him look like a teenage Trotsky. Through the window behind him several young boys were playing football with a battered tin can.

Sattler’s eyes lit up when Effi outlined what she wanted — which was hardly the reaction she expected. Did he realise who she was talking about, that there might be dangers involved?

‘Of course,’ he said with a grin, as if surreptitiously photographing black marketeers was something he did all the time.

‘I haven’t sorted out the inside part yet,’ Effi told him; ‘I have to talk to my singer friend.’ Which was not only true, but would also give the boy a chance to prove his worth without actually sticking his head between Geruschke’s jaws. ‘If you could start outside…’

‘Absolutely. I have the perfect lens.’ He took it out to show her, and rattled on about stops and apertures and heaven knew what else.

‘You must be careful,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t let them see you.’

He raised both palms towards her. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll have an escape route planned. And my assistants — he waved a hand in the direction of the boys outside — will be on the look-out. We’ve done this sort of thing before.’

She was astonished. ‘When? Who else have you been taking pictures of?’

‘Wives,’ he said succinctly. ‘Most husbands these days know not to ask where their food and fuel come from. But there’s still some stupid enough not to make the connection. They think their wives are being unfaithful for the fun of it.’ He shook his head, as if the antics of the adult world were too strange to credit. ‘These days I’m more like a private detective than a photographer.’

Effi had to smile. ‘So how much is this going to cost me?’

He considered. ‘Given who the mark is, I’d almost do it for free. But I am running a business, and there are my “irregulars” to consider…’

‘Your what?’

‘The boys outside. Haven’t you read Sherlock Holmes?’

‘Never.’ John’s son Paul had tried to persuade her, but all she’d read in those days were scripts.

He tutted his disapproval, but otherwise let her failing pass. ‘A pack for every face I capture?’ he suggested, lingering almost lovingly on the final word.

‘Okay,’ Effi agreed. She had no idea whether that was a good deal, but was sure she could find more cigarettes from somewhere. And she didn’t think he would cheat her.

She started to give him directions, but he interrupted her: ‘I know where the Honey Trap is. Will you come here to see the pictures, or do you want them delivered?’

‘Deliver them, if you can. I live in Dahlem, and I rarely get enough time off work to travel this far.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m an actress.’

He looked impressed. ‘Should I have recognised your name?’

‘Not these days,’ she said. And not at your age, she thought.

‘Do you have a telephone that works?’

‘Sometimes.’ She gave him the number and the Dahlem address. ‘You can talk to me, John Russell or Thomas Schade — no one else. Okay?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll be in touch when I have something to show you.’

She was halfway to the door when another idea came to her. ‘Your “irregulars” — do you ever use them to follow erring wives?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Well some of the men leaving by the rear exit might go off on foot. I’d throw in another pack of cigarettes for each address that goes with a face.’

In the morning their one-coach train wheezed its way up through the snow-strewn foothills, arriving in Nachod soon after nine. The small town seemed unmarked by the war, but appearances were clearly deceptive — according to Albert, only twenty of its three hundred Jews had survived. And it was two of these — Moshe Rosman and Yehuda Lippmann — who had turned Nachod into a staging post for the Jews now fleeing Poland.

Both had been prominent businessmen before the Nazi takeover, and unlike most of their Polish counterparts had experienced little difficulty recovering their assets once the Germans were gone. Rosman’s oak-panelled office near the station certainly seemed of long standing, and it was hard to believe that the man behind the desk had recently been in Auschwitz. Once Albert had introduced Russell, and told Rosman what his friend was writing, the Czech insisted they both have lunch with him and Lippmann.

Leaving Albert to conduct his Haganah business, Russell worked his way down the short list that Rosman had given him, of individuals and families who took in transient Jews. None had any that day, but more were expected soon, and no one seemed put out by the prospect. They weren’t doing anything special, one woman told him — just providing food and lodging for a few nights.

At lunch he and Albert heard the full story from Rosman and Lippmann. Both seemed around forty, but were probably younger. Rosman’s parents and only sibling had died in Auschwitz, as had Lippmann’s wife, child and sisters. Soon after their return to Nachod a nearby camp had been liberated by the Russians, and they had done their best to feed and shelter the several hundred emaciated women who suddenly appeared on their doorsteps. They had approached their non-Jewish neighbours for help, and been almost overwhelmed by the response.

At first the townspeople were helping Jews find their way back to Poland, but since the summer the flow had reversed. Most returnees had searched in vain for the families left behind, and many had been given a hostile reception. The new Polish government had said all the right things, but fresh outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence were becoming an almost weekly occurrence, and those Jews that could had decided to cut their losses. They might have a future in Palestine or America, but none seemed on offer in Poland, and now several thousand were leaving each month. A figure likely to rise and rise over the coming year.

Russell asked Rosman and Lippmann how the government in Prague viewed their efforts.

‘Oh, they seem to have realised that something not quite legal is going on,’ Lippmann said. ‘The police even arrested one man for sheltering an illegal immigrant. But there was an outcry straight away — everyone here supports us. I mean, it’s not as if the Jews are planning to stay, either here or anywhere else in our country — we’re just helping them get where they want to go. How could anyone in Prague object to that?’

How indeed, Russell asked himself that evening. He, Albert, Lippmann and around a dozen other locals were sharing a convivial time in one of the town’s inns, and looking round the faces, Russell thought he detected an absence of the fear and resentment that still haunted most of Europe. Maybe he was imagining things, but Nachod seemed proof of the old adage that doing good was good for the doer.

Thursday was cold and clear, the line of mountains that marked the border stretching far into the distance. Jews travelling south were usually led along unwatched paths by friendly guides, but Russell and Albert had only to walk down the road and present their papers at the Czech and Polish frontier posts. They were soon parting company, and Albert was full of messages for his family in London, should Russell see them first. He also invited Russell and Effi to Palestine: ‘Come and see what we’re doing. It’s not often you see a country built from scratch.’

Russell asked if he had any plans to visit England.

‘If my letters won’t persuade my family to join me, then I may have to do it in person. But not for a few years, I expect. Only when we have our homeland.’

They said their goodbyes in the small village just beyond the Polish frontier post, Albert walking off to see the local Haganah organiser, Russell engaging a decrepit-looking taxi to take him down to Glatz, or Klodzko as the Poles had re-named it. He felt immensely pleased that his and Albert’s paths had crossed again, and looked forward to telling Eva, Marthe and Ruth what an impressive young man their son and brother had become.

In Glatz he found a bank that was willing to sell him Polish currency for dollars. At the station he discovered that trains were still running to Breslau, or Wroclaw as the ticket-seller testily insisted. And yes, the next one stopped at the former Wartha, or whatever he called it. He purchased a through ticket and walked out to the waiting carriages, which were German with Polish markings. A locomotive was huffing its way backwards to join them.

Soon they were off, and hurrying down the valley. Wartha Station looked unchanged, save for the Polish flag and stationmaster. There was even a Polish taxi, and with no little help from the stationmaster, Russell managed to explain his hoped-for destination. On his first visit here he had walked the six kilometres there and back, and the taxi ride seemed almost insultingly brief.

They stopped first at the neighbouring farm, which Torsten’s parents had owned. They had once been friends of the Rosenfelds, but fear and the local Nazis had put an end to that. And now it was a Polish woman who answered the door, suspicious and slightly aggressive. ‘Zniknal,’ she said several times. Gone. When Russell tried to asked her where, she shut the door in his face.

They drove on down the lane to the Rosenfeld farm. In September 1939 both house and barn had been blackened shells, but the house had at least had been partly rebuilt, and smoke was rising from a hole in the ramshackle roof.

The reception there was just as hostile. He wasn’t at all sure that the man understood his questions, but there was no mistaking the answer. ‘Polska,’ the man said, encompassing the landscape with sweeping waves of his arms, one hand to the right, the other to the left. ‘Polska,’ he repeated angrily when Russell tried to speak. ‘Polska.’

He too slammed the door in his visitor’s face.

Back at the station he read the chalked-up times and groaned — there were almost two hours to wait. After a while the stationmaster took pity on him, opening up the waiting room and even starting a fire in the small grate. A few shared smiles was the best they could manage when it came to communication, but by the time the train arrived the official had done more than he knew to salvage his nation’s reputation.

The land seemed emptier than the last time Russell had made this journey, the fields more neglected, the skies clear of smoke. If the Germans had all been driven out, not enough Poles had arrived to replace them.

As the train approached Breslau the residue of war grew commonplace — gapped rows of houses, the shattered trees and craters strewn across the fields, a cemetery of scorched and mangled rolling stock where the marshalling yard had been. The station was a functioning wreck, the city itself looked a lot like Berlin — the parallel lines of empty facades stretching north towards the Oder, and probably beyond. He should have known what to expect. Breslau, like all of Hitler’s so-called ‘fortress cities’, had been promised eternal glory if it fought to the very last German. Refusal had not been an option.

And the Poles were inheriting the ruins. Their uniforms were everywhere, mingling with those of their Russian liberators. Too much history there, but appearances would be maintained, probably for decades. The men now ruling Poland were no less in thrall to the Soviets than Ulbricht and his gang. They’d all shared digs in Moscow, all learned to toe the collective line. National feelings would be repressed, at least for the conceivable future. The Moscow Poles would give great chunks of their country to the Russians, and the Moscow Germans would compensate the Poles with great chunks of theirs. All smiling as they did so. What their people felt was neither here nor there.

The only vehicle in the station forecourt was a horse-drawn cart piled high with scavenged bricks. No fire was visibly burning, no smoke curling up to the sky, but a faint smell of scorching hung in the air, reminding him of Berlin in the last days of the war. He started walking towards the city centre, down what he guessed was the old Taschenstrasse. The name itself had been whitewashed out, and replaced by something Polish.

As he crossed the old moat on a makeshift footbridge he began to wonder whether anything survived in the centre. The streets seemed desolate, particularly for the middle of the day. Whatever municipal offices there were — Russian, Polish, even German — must be out in the less damaged suburbs.

He turned left towards the Ring, and found himself walking toward a group of young men in uniform. They were Poles, he realised — some sort of militia. One held up a hand to stop him, while the others all looked at his suitcase.

The leader barked something incomprehensible in Polish.

Russell was about to ask if they spoke German, when he realised how mistaken that might be. ‘Speak American?’ he asked, with what he hoped was a winning smile.

This had them glancing at each other, uncertain how to proceed. Was the suitcase still fair game?

Disinclined to lose his notes, let alone his cigarettes and post-war wardrobe, Russell pushed his advantage. ‘Do you speak Russian?’ he asked in that language.

‘A little,’ the leader admitted.

‘I’m looking for the Russian administrative headquarters. NKVD,’ he added, enunciating each letter with a hint of relish.

‘Ah, Russians,’ the leader said sadly. He gestured down the road in the direction of the Ring, then passed on the bad news to his comrades, who couldn’t resist a few rueful glances at the suitcase before resuming their patrol.

Russell watched them go. If he’d just been an ordinary German, there seemed a very good chance that they’d have stolen his suitcase and clothes, and left him lying in his own piss and blood. ‘And the first shall be last, and the last first,’ he murmured to himself.

He walked on to the ravaged Ring, and searched in vain for a building in use, let alone a working office. There were two Red Army officers sitting side by side on a salvaged bench, staring out across the rubble-ringed square with the air of experienced conquerors surveying their recent work. He approached them with suitable humility, and either that or his use of their language earned him a friendly response. The Soviet administrative HQ was in the big building behind the station, they told him in response to his question. As for the Germans, they had an office that dealt with their own affairs and made representations to the occupation authorities. It was housed in the cellars of the old Market Hall, up near the river.

Russell thanked the two of them, and headed north along another devastated street. Around a quarter of the old buildings were still standing, he reckoned, and many of those were badly damaged in one way or another. All for one man’s addiction to death — the war had long been lost when all this happened to Breslau.

The market hall was a shell, the cellars beneath crowded with Germans. The relevant office was hidden away in one corner, a small oasis of quiet lit by several candles. Without being asked, the old man in charge told Russell that he wasn’t leaving, that he’d worked for the city all his life, and intended to stay. When Russell told him what he actually wanted, the man looked almost aggrieved, but only for an instant. ‘We have no lists of German residents,’ he said, ‘only of the dead.’

‘Can I see those?’ Russell asked.

The man reached for a ledger and hoisted it onto the table. It was a converted cash ledger, divided alphabetically with long lists of names underneath each letter.

There was three pages of ‘R’s. He started moving his finger down the column of names, conscious of the old man’s wheezy breathing. There was no Rosenfeld on the first page, none on the second, and he was almost at the bottom of the third when he saw it. He had only been looking at surnames, but somehow the Miriam caught his attention. Not Rosenfeld but Resch.

No sign of Torsten, but it had to be her. Torsten marrying another Miriam would surely be too much of a coincidence.

Miriam Resch had died on the 3rd of May, while the city was still under siege. An address was written beside the name.

Russell went back through the ‘R’s, looking for a Resch he might have missed. There was none. Torsten might have died somewhere else, or he might still be alive. The child in Berlin might not have been Miriam’s, or might be listed under the father’s name.

‘Where is Jahnstrasse?’ Russell asked the old man.

It was a kilometre to the east, just beyond the Konigsplatz.

The walk took him twenty minutes, first along the wreck-strewn Oder, then south through streets still choked with rubble and seemingly empty of life. Black flags hung from several balconies, but Russell had no idea why. He doubted whether anarchists lived there.

Miriam’s address was a three-storey building which almost alone in the street remained whole. The Pole who answered the door was dressed in the same militia uniform as the four young men he’d met earlier, and was just as easily intimidated by Russell’s aggressive Russian. When he understood that his inquisitor was looking for the former occupants, he led him down to the door of the neighbouring basement, and left him with a frightened-looking German woman. She, Russell saw, was wearing a white armband with the letter ‘N’ on it. ‘N’ for Niemiec — German — presumably. The Poles had watched and learned.

He asked about Miriam, but the name didn’t ring any bells. The German inhabitants of the house next door had been evicted to make room for two Polish families from Lublin. ‘Bauern,’ she murmured, peasants. She thought the Germans had moved out to Popelwitz. ‘That is one of the German areas,’ she told him, as if describing a ghetto.

‘But you don’t know which street?’

‘No, but Frau Hoschle will. She knew those people.’

‘And where can I find her?’

‘Ah, just across the street here.’ She shepherded him up to the pavement. ‘You see over there. But mind her steps — I almost fell the other day.’

‘What are the black flags for?’ he asked, catching sight of one further down.

‘Typhus,’ she said succinctly, and scuttled back down the steps.

He strode across the empty street and took care with his descent. Frau Hoschle looked worn out and hungry, but her eyes flickered at the mention of Miriam, and after a moment’s obvious hesitation, ushered him inside. The one habitable room contained an old rocking chair, several boxes of keepsakes and other possessions, and a ragged-looking mattress. A single candle was burning on an old-fashioned cake stand.

She lowered herself onto the rocking chair. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘What happened to Torsten Resch?’

‘He’s gone. They left several weeks ago. But why do you want to know — are you a relative?’

‘Not exactly,’ he said, standing up his suitcase and using it for a seat. ‘I knew a Miriam Rosenfeld in Berlin, before the war even started. We lost touch, and I knew…’

‘Rosenfeld,’ the woman interjected. ‘I always knew she was Jewish. Don’t get me wrong,’ she said to Russell. ‘I’ve got nothing against the Jews, and Miriam was a lovely girl. But she never admitted to being Jewish. Why would she, I suppose. Torsten must have known.’

‘He did.’

‘You knew him too?’

‘I met him once, here in Breslau. Before his call-up he worked at the Petersdorff department store.’

‘He went back there.’

‘When? Why did the Army release him?’

‘He lost an arm at Stalingrad. Early on, before they were surrounded. Which was lucky in a way. He was in hospital for a long time, and then they discharged him. He went home for a while, then came back to his old job. That’s when I met him — he took the room across the street.’

‘And what about Miriam?’

‘She arrived a few weeks later. He told people she was his cousin from Berlin, but eventually they dropped the pretence, at least with people they knew. And once it was clear she was pregnant… I was invited to the wedding. They got married at the Kreuzkirche, across the river. The 6th of June, 1944. That evening we heard that the English and Americans had landed in France.’

‘The child — was it a boy or a girl?’

‘A girl, which was nice. One of each.’

‘She brought the boy with her?’

‘Yes, and I don’t think it can have been Torsten’s. But it didn’t seem to matter — he always treated Leon like a son, and a well-loved one at that.’

He showed her the photograph he’d been carrying for over six years. ‘Just to be sure — is this her?’

‘Yes. Yes it is.’

‘How did she die?’

‘In the siege. She was queuing for water at one of the street taps. A shell killed them all. At least it was quick — she wouldn’t have known anything about it.’ The woman looked up at Russell, and must have noticed the tears forming in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘we all loved Miriam. She was such a happy girl. They were such a happy couple.’

Russell found he was shaking his head. Of all the things he’d expected to find, the very last was Miriam’s happiness. He wished that Leon and Esther were here with him now, that they might find some consolation for what had befallen their daughter, both before and after her year of joy.

He asked if the children were both still alive.

‘They were ten days ago, when he came to say goodbye. But who knows. Hundreds are dying each day. For all I know they’re still waiting at Freiburg Station. That’s out in the western suburbs.’

‘That’s where they went?’

‘That’s where everyone goes who’s allowed to leave. Torsten was high on the list, on account of his work on the anti-Fascist committee.’

‘And he took the children with him?’

‘Of course.’

‘What’s the girl’s name?’ Russell asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Esther.’

‘And you have no idea who Leon’s father was? How old is he?’

She thought about that. ‘He’ll be six in April,’ she said eventually. ‘He was five just before his mother was killed. And no, if Torsten wasn’t the father, then I’ve no idea who was.’

Neither, Russell suspected, had Miriam. He thanked Frau Hoschle for her help and offered her a pack of cigarettes. The way she stared it might have been gold dust, but she made no move to take the gift. It was only when Russell insisted that she stowed it away in the pocket of her faded housecoat.

Outside the light was fading, and Russell felt disinclined to wander the streets after dark. He needed somewhere to stay, and hadn’t yet seen a surviving hotel. The main station was probably his best bet — there had been enough Russians in evidence to inhibit the Poles, or so he hoped.

Walking south he felt strangely buoyed by what he had heard — strangely because Miriam was actually dead. Perhaps he had always known that, but he had never imagined that she would find happiness. Once the bad news had been taken for granted, the good news came into its own.

He wondered if Miriam’s parents would feel that way. Would grandchildren named in their honour prove some consolation for the loss of their only child? They probably would. But first they had to survive the journey, and then they had to be found.

It took him twenty minutes to reach the station, which was much more crowded than it had been that morning. The reason for this soon became clear — trains were arriving but not departing, and the roofless concourse was packed with Poles newly arrived from the east, and uncertain where to go. Russell spent half an hour queuing for information, only to be told that none was available. The man behind the window would certainly sell him a ticket, but couldn’t guarantee a journey. The next train west for ordinary mortals might run that evening, might run next week, and only the Russians could tell him which. If of course they knew.

At least there was food to be had. He bought himself some bread and sausage, and took it upstairs onto one of the platforms, which offered the same view of the stars, without the congestion. The appearance of a Berlin train would be tempting, but he knew that he couldn’t leave Breslau without checking Freiburg Station. In the event, the only train rumbling in the right direction was made up of empty wagons, probably intent on collecting whatever was left of German industry.

It felt a lot longer than twelve hours since he’d said goodbye to Albert. He laid himself out on a platform bench with a sweater for a pillow, and finally found a use for the tie he’d been carrying, threading it through the suitcase handle and looping it around his wrist.

The night passed slowly by. There was no sign of the Polish militia, and hardly any traffic on the road outside, but distant cries and gunfire jerked him awake on several occasions. As soon as it began to grow light, he made his way back to the concourse and, picking his way through the sleeping bodies, found someone selling tea. Equally welcome, and much more surprising, the left luggage office was open for business. After dividing his last few packs of cigarettes between suitcase and coat, he deposited the former and started out for Freiburg Station.

The city was still waking up, and all he encountered on the half-hour walk were two mangy dogs and a swarm of bloated flies. Freiburg Station was a field of rubble, but a train was being loaded in the sidings beyond. A locomotive was backing onto the long line of cattle cars, leaking steam from every orifice and joint.

Russell held back for a moment, surveying the scene. There were several hundred people around the train. Most were German, but he could see small groups of Polish militia. The former were trying to get themselves and their meagre possessions aboard, the latter doing their best to separate the two, and the consequent struggles had already left several bodies on the asphalt. Some Red Army men were standing near the head of the train, apparently oblivious to the robberies going on all around them, but their mere presence probably explained the lack of gunfire or obvious bloodshed. They certainly made Russell feel safer.

He walked down the train, looking for Torsten. He felt sure he would know him, even without a lost arm to assist recognition, and young men in any case seemed thin on the ground. After drawing a blank, he sought out the dispatch office, where a couple of elderly Poles — old railwaymen, by the look of them — explained the situation. As none of the Germans were expected back, no records were being kept of their departures. And since the destinations were rarely known in advance, no records were kept of those either. The wretched Germans were leaving Poland, and where they ended up was of no interest to the Poles.

He walked back to the main line station, where more bad news was waiting. According to a friendly official, in two days time the Russians were planning on closing the Oder-Neisse border to all traffic but their own. When Russell asked how he might avoid permanent incarceration in the new Poland, no answer was forthcoming. Travel on scheduled trains to the border was restricted to those in possession of Soviet passes, and these, the official added with almost indecent relish, were never dished out to ordinary foreigners, only to fraternal Party officials or bosom friends of Uncle Joe.

Russell considered it unlikely that Stalin had bosom friends, but the rules seemed straightforward enough. So all that remained was to bend them. He walked through the pedestrian tunnel to the southern side of the station, and across to the old Reichsbahn building, which the two officers in the Ring had told him housed the Soviet HQ. The huge structure had taken several obvious hits — the six statues above the colonnaded entrance were down to three and a bit — but still seemed in working order. Inside the service was what he’d come to expect from the Soviets — slow verging on comatose.

Asking to see someone from the NKVD provoked the usual look — was the foreigner out of his mind? — but a representative was duly summoned from the lair upstairs. He was young, fair-haired and looked suitably paranoid. Russell led him gently away from the desk, offered up his American passport, and quietly revealed that they were working for the same organisation. Comrade Nemedin in Berlin could vouch for him. Or even Comrade Shchepkin.

The young man examined the passport again. What did Russell actually want?

‘A rail pass. I have to be in Berlin by tomorrow morning. If you contact Comrade Nemedin he will confirm the importance of my work there.’

His companion visibly relaxed — distributing passes was obviously part of his remit. ‘Wait here,’ he said, ‘I will talk to Berlin.’

Russell found himself a seat and prepared for a long wait, but only minutes had passed when the officer reappeared, clattering back down the staircase. He handed Russell his passport, open at the newly-stamped page. Phoning Berlin had obviously seemed too much of a chore.

He still needed a train, and one finally arrived at six in the evening. It was part-passenger, part-freight: three carriages half-full of Soviet soldiers, theatre directors, actors and Party apparatchiks; several boxcars full of who knew what. Russell sat with the thespians, who had plenty to drink, and were happy to share it with someone from the land of Shakespeare. They were doing King Lear in Berlin, which seemed, after several vodkas, astonishingly appropriate.

His new companions, whom he guessed had been drinking for days, passed out at regular intervals. Russell sat by the window of the barely-lit carriage, peering out at the darkened Silesian fields, wondering how many bottles he needed to drown out the taste of post-war Poland.