Masaryk Station

Sacrificial wolf

Monday morning Strohm took Annaliese to work in the car. They had used it twice the previous day, once to visit her former boyfriend’s parents out in Spandau, and once for a ride around the city. Strohm had felt a little uneasy, but they had paid for the petrol, and-as Annaliese said-what use was a parked car? As the better driver, she had done most of the driving, and this had given him ample opportunity to notice the facial reactions of the people they passed. Some had looked envious, some resentful, a few had simply smiled. It was a beautiful vehicle, after all.

Strohm was behind the wheel that morning. ‘I could get used to this,’ she said, as they passed a crowded tram stop.

‘I’m sure we’ll have one eventually,’ he told her. ‘I expect every family will.’

She made a face. ‘I forgot to tell you-last week at the hospital one of the ambulance drivers told me about this, er, this painting, it’s on a wall in Link Strasse-you know where that is?’

‘It’s one of the streets off Potsdamerplatz.’

‘Yes. It’s in the American zone, but only a few hundred metres from the Russian, which I guess is why they chose it.’

‘Who? What is it?’

‘You must have played Monopoly?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, someone has painted the board on the wall of a bombed-out house. It’s big. It must have taken him all night. Or her, I suppose.’

‘What for?’

‘Ah, there’s a twist. But I won’t spoil the surprise. You should drive past it on your way to work. Today, before the Russians get permission from the Americans to wipe it away.’

After dropping her at the hospital entrance, Strohm did as she suggested. The giant monopoly board was too large to miss and exquisitely detailed, but for a moment he couldn’t see the point. And then he did-the three most expensive properties had new names. Unter den Linden had become Wall Strasse, where the KPD Central Committee had its headquarters, and Grunewald had turned into Bernicke, where the same institution had its luxurious rest home. Insel Schwanenwerder, the most expensive square of all, now bore the name Seehof, where the Party had just opened an even more exclusive resort for the use of Senior Members of the Central Secretariat.

Strohm stared up at the wall, awed by the sheer amount of effort that he, she or they had put into making this oh-so-simple statement, knowing only too well that its life would be measured, at best, in days. He was indeed surprised to find it still there-if the higherups knew about it, a squad of cadres would have been sent to expunge it over the weekend, American permission or not. But surely some Party members must have seen it. A delicious possibility crossed Strohm’s mind, that those comrades who had seen the painting had failed to report its existence. And that could only be because they felt the same way he did, that he wasn’t alone, with his doubts and sense of loss.

If Strohm had had a camera, he’d have taken a picture, and sent it to the Neue Zeitung. Maybe someone already had.

He was still smiling when he reached his office, and found that Marohn had asked for him. He went upstairs expecting criticism of his conduct in Aue, but his boss had other things on his mind. Did Strohm know that General Sokolovsky, the head of the Soviet Military Administration, had written a letter to his Allied counterparts more or less claiming Soviet control over the whole of the city?

Strohm said he hadn’t. ‘Has there been a reply?’

‘Not yet,’ Marohn conceded, ‘but maybe the Western allies really will leave. Then we can get back to running a railway.’ He was clearly in a good mood-‘at least you tried’ was all he said about the trip to Aue. The only time Strohm felt disapproval was when he said he’d brought back the Horch.

‘No, you must keep it,’ Marohn told him.

‘But I don’t need a car,’ Strohm protested.

‘It’s not a matter of need; it’s a token of respect for the position you hold. All cadres above a certain level are to be allocated personal vehicles, and refusing to accept one will be interpreted as dissent. Understood?’

Strohm nodded.

On his way home he picked up a paper, but there was no news from Aue. The Soviets would keep this one quiet, he thought.

Annaliese knew him well enough not to be over-delighted with the car, simply noting that after the baby was born, they could take him or her out to the country. Strohm just grunted-on the way home from work he’d been wondering how to get rid of it, but all he’d come up with was hiding the damn thing away in a garage and throwing out the key.

As he got off the train at Zoo Station, Russell wondered whether he should make an effort to disguise himself. Some workingman’s clothes perhaps, or a pair of spectacles. But he hadn’t, and it was too late now. He pulled his hat down another centimetre and walked on towards Carmer Strasse.

Reaching the end five minutes later, he saw a couple of pedestrians and several parked cars, but neither of the former were loitering and all of the latter looked familiar. As he neared their building one of the neighbours emerged, saw him, and raised a hand in greeting before walking off in the other direction. If Beria’s men were lurking in the stairwell, they were well-concealed.

The stairwell was empty. He listened outside their door for a few moments, then rapped on it. No one answered, which seemed a good sign until he put himself in their position. Why would they?

He had tried to leave the new gun with Effi, but she had insisted he take it. ‘If they’re after us,’ she had said, ‘then they’ll be waiting for you.’

Well, were they? Russell took out the gun, turned the key, and pushed the door all the way open. There were no Russians on the sofa, and none in the bath. Everything looked exactly as they’d left it.

It was half-past two P.M.; he had half an hour to wait. He spent it by the window, eyes on the street and ears cocked for feet on the stairs. After an hour he reluctantly accepted that Shchepkin wasn’t going to ring, then belatedly checked that the phone was working. It was.

He locked the flat back up, and showed the same caution departing that he had on arrival. At a bank on Hardenberg Strasse he joined the queue for changing currency and eventually took possession of sixty new Deutschmarks. After walking back to Zoo Station, he spent the half-hour waiting in the buffet for the Wannsee train, and reading the local British newspaper. All the good news was on the front page-two days earlier, Foreign Secretary Bevin had told the world the British wouldn’t leave Berlin ‘under any circumstances’. The Americans had not yet given any such assurance, but that didn’t worry Russell. The steady stream of C-47s skimming the Wilmersdorf skyline seemed a lot more compelling than any words.

Strohm had been anticipating the radio programme for most of the day. The Hungarian Arthur Koestler had been a member of the Party in the 1930s, and Strohm had a vague memory of seeing him at a KPD meeting in the pre-Hitler years. He had worked for the Comintern in France, and as a journalist in Spain, before disillusionment caught up with him, and caused him to write the novel which RIAS had dramatized for that evening’s broadcast, Darkness at Noon.

Strohm had heard a lot about the book, but was still unprepared for the impact it had on him. He already knew it concerned a fictional Bolshevik named Rubashov, whom Stalin had turned on and imprisoned. The man’s philosophising proved fairly predictable-it was more his memories that undid Strohm. Little Loewy, the Party secretary who hanged himself, was Rubashov’s Stefan Utermann. In Darkness at Noon, the Bolshevik Rubashov journeyed from Moscow to Antwerp, and ordered Loewy to sacrifice comrades and conscience for the greater good of the Soviet Union. He had travelled the much shorter distance from Hallesches Ufer to Rummelsburg, and done exactly the same.

Strohm thought of Harald Gebauer up in Wedding, as he often did at such moments. That usually reassured him, but not this time. Harald’s criticism of the Party was implicit, because it came from the heart, and he would probably pass unnoticed for longer than those more cerebrally-gifted comrades whose critiques were spoken or written. But eventually someone would notice, and be all the angrier when they realised how long it had taken. And then someone else would discover that Strohm had known the man for years, and might be prevailed on to show him the error of his ways. The error of believing in mankind.

The play was still underway, but Strohm was caught by this glimpse into his future: Gerhard Strohm, closer of doors, firer of metaphorical bullets. Confiscator of dreams.

Once Rosa had fallen asleep, Russell and Effi discussed how long they could afford to wait for Shchepkin. They had agreed to give him until Tuesday, but how much longer than that? There was no easy answer. The moment they made the film public, their bargaining power would be finished, but so, they hoped, would be Beria’s career. At that point the MGB chief would have nothing to lose, but, unless Josef Stalin was completely impervious to world opinion, he and his country did. But would Uncle Joe act quickly enough, and kill Beria before a vengeful Beria succeeded in killing them? Even if Stalin did move promptly, the chances were still good that Russell’s role in the atomic business-not to mention his concealing of the film from his CIC bosses-would reach the light of day. Broadcasting proof of Beria’s infamy might bring justice for Sonja, her sister, and all the other women the man had probably raped or killed, and it might even lead to a diminishing of Soviet cruelty at home and abroad, but it wouldn’t do much for Russell and Effi.

Waiting, though, would get riskier by the day. If Shchepkin was in the Lyubyanka, then literally hundreds of MGB agents would be scouring Berlin for them and their copy of the film.

‘A few more days,’ Effi suggested. ‘Until Thursday. We can take it to the Americans on Friday morning.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Russell argued. ‘I wish we’d made more copies. I’d feel a lot happier if we had a dozen to distribute. Then we’d know it couldn’t be suppressed.’

‘Why would the Americans suppress it?’

‘Think about it. If we can blackmail Beria with it, then so can they.’

Annaliese was on nights that week, and Strohm was alone when the phone rang late that evening. It was Uli Trenkel from the office, and he sounded more than a little drunk.

‘Have you heard?’ he asked excitedly.

‘Heard what?’

‘The Yugoslavs. They’ve been kicked out of the Cominform.’

‘What?!’

‘I’ve seen tomorrow’s Telegraf. The headline reads “Tito breaks with Stalin; Tito accused of Trotskyism”.’

‘But that …’ Strohm was lost for words.

‘Absurd. Isn’t it? But there’s nothing we can do.’ Trenkel prattled on, until Strohm abruptly ended the call for both their sakes. He poured himself a glass of payok whisky and went to stand by the open window. It was a chilly night, the sky full of stars.

So that was it, he thought. He had always imagined their first years in power as years of trial and error, the way they had been in Russia. An experimental journey, in which they all learnt from their mistakes. But now he knew different. There would be none of that in Germany, or anywhere else in eastern Europe. Wherever the Soviets were in control, their journey was being re-run. And if they hadn’t learnt from their mistakes, then those condemned to repeat them wouldn’t be allowed to either.

‘To the comrades in Belgrade,’ Strohm murmured, raising his glass to the star-filled sky.

It was raining again on Tuesday morning. Russell had anticipated another solo trip into town, but Effi and Rosa, having exhausted the possibilities of all those things they’d brought to entertain themselves, refused to live in exile any longer. ‘We’ll go to Zarah’s,’ Effi told him. ‘And if Shchepkin rings with good news then we can just walk home.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘I don’t know. Let’s worry about that when it happens.’

Russell wasn’t convinced, but there was no changing her mind. After they got off the train he accompanied them to the end of Zarah’s street, and then approached Carmer Strasse with the same caution, and the same result, as before.

Only this time the telephone rang, and it was Shchepkin who spoke when Russell picked up. ‘Remember your daughter’s namesake?’ he asked. ‘Where we remembered her? Five o’clock.’

The line clicked off.

No mention of success, but maybe Russell was supposed to infer that from the Russian’s survival. The only other explanation he could think of was that Shchepkin had shrunk from confronting Beria, and that they were all back to square one.

He would know soon enough.

A cafe on Ku’damm offered refuge for an hour so, and then Russell started working his way westwards through the streets north of the elevated Stadtbahn. Shchepkin hadn’t stressed the importance of not being followed, but he hadn’t needed to, as finding the two of them together in one place would now be the stuff of Beria’s dreams. Russell was already convinced that no one was shadowing him, but he used the Elisabeth Hospital to make sure, using the main entrance and then leaving by a back service door which Annaliese had shown him and Effi the previous year. The street outside ended by the Landwehrkanal.

Reaching it, he sat down on a convenient bench. The waterway was devoid of traffic, a victim no doubt of the Soviet blockade, and despite the early evening sun, walkers were almost as sparse. The towpaths on either side of the canal had always been a favourite spot for exercising Berlin’s dogs, but the latter’s population had hardly begun to recover from the ravages of the war.

The city’s cats had fared slightly better, and one mangy specimen emerged from a nearby bombsite and rubbed itself against his legs, meowing piteously.

The spot where Rosa Luxemburg’s corpse had been fished from the water was a few hundred metres to his right, close to the bridge that carried Potsdamer Strasse over the canal. It was at least two years since he and Shchepkin had last met there, and Russell idly wondered how differently the Russian Revolution might have developed had she survived the Spartacus Rising. No other figure in European Marxism had possessed the moral and intellectual stature that might have given Lenin pause.

It was a minute to five. He rose from the seat and walked on, the cat following for a few metres, before abruptly giving up on him, and scampering off across the cobbles.

Shchepkin was waiting on a bench near the bridge, his white hair hidden under his hat. It occurred to Russell that they were only a stone’s throw from the Soviet sector. ‘Well?’ he asked, sitting down.

‘He accepted our terms,’ Shchepkin said calmly, with only a hint of a smile.

As Russell let his breath out, he realised how much he’d expected the worst.

‘Irina and Tasha are in a hotel on Konig Strasse,’ the Russian went on. ‘Tomorrow morning the three of us will hands ourselves over to the Americans. I shall tell them that the Soviets finally realised that you and I were working against them, offer myself as a defector, and demand asylum for my wife and daughter as the price of telling them all that I know. You will tell the Americans that since the Soviets have finally rumbled us, your usefulness has to be over, and you’re submitting your resignation. And once you’ve convinced them that you won’t reveal any of their secrets, they’ll have to let you go.’

‘It sounds good,’ Russell said. In fact the sense of relief was so overpowering that he began to doubt it. Had Beria really caved in so completely? Were they safe again? Was he finally off the hook?

Searching for a flaw, he found one. And with sinking heart wondered how they-and particularly Shchepkin-could have missed it. ‘Look, as things stand he kills one of us and the other releases the film. But if he captures us both at the same moment, then neither of us will know what’s happened until it’s too late. Okay, we have him for now, but in the long run, surely it won’t be beyond him to coordinate two kidnappings. No matter where we go, we’ll be looking over our shoulders.’

Shchepkin smiled briefly. ‘There’s one thing you don’t know,’ he said. ‘There is no long run for me. I shall be dead in a few weeks.’

‘What?’

‘The doctors tell me my heart is giving out. Broken, perhaps,’ Shchepkin added with a wry smile.

Russell felt a mixture of emotions, of which sadness was the strongest.

‘But I’ve put the film beyond their reach, and I shall be in American custody. I will tell them Beria wants me dead-not why, of course-and they will protect me as long as I keep telling them things. And believe me, I will talk and talk.’

His pauses for breath, Russell realised, were not for dramatic purposes.

‘Beria will have no reason to threaten you, because he believed me when I told him that you don’t know where I’ve hidden it.’

‘I hope so.’

‘One more thing. The moment I’m safe with the Americans, you must destroy your copy of the film. It kept me alive in Moscow, but after tomorrow it will serve no purpose. On the contrary, if Beria’s enemies ever learned of its existence …’

‘His enemies?’

‘The Americans, the GRU, he even has enemies in the Politburo. If any of them found out about the film, and forced you to reveal its location; or if someone stumbled across it by accident in its hiding place, then Beria would consider we had broken our side of the bargain, and God only knows what he’d do. So better to get rid of it. My copy is enough to keep you safe.’

‘I’ll see that it’s destroyed. But your wife and daughter-do they know you’re dying?’

‘I think Irina guesses, but she hasn’t said anything.’

‘How will they survive in the West without you?’

‘I don’t know. They will have no money, but at least they’ll be safe. Natasha is a bright girl.’

‘I know, I’ve met her.’

‘So you have. Of course, if you can help them in any way I would appreciate it.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I don’t think they’ll miss me,’ Shchepkin said, surprising Russell. Personal emotions didn’t usually come up in their conversations. ‘These past few days I’ve realised-we’re strangers to each other. I feel like I’m standing outside their house and watching them through the window. I love them, of course, but more in memory than anything else. And love should be more than an echo.’ He glanced at Russell. ‘But now I’m getting morbid, and you and I have work to do. For three years now we’ve been feeding the Americans a diet of truths, half-truths, and outright lies, and now they’ll expect to be told which is which. Unless we intend to be completely honest with them-which I, for one, do not-there are some comrades, for example, whom I won’t betray-then we need to agree our version of events.’

‘That could take a week,’ Russell observed.

‘I told Irina I’d be back in three hours.’

For the next two, as the sun slowly sank towards the distant rooftops, and the American planes droned across the sky beyond the canal, they trawled their joint career, discussing those American and Soviet agents they had betrayed and those they had not, agreeing which names they would offer up and which they wouldn’t, going over which nuggets of information they could happily divulge and which would be safer to keep to themselves. As a rough guiding principle, they agreed to protect those on either side who actually believed in their cause, and give up those who were only interested in advancing their careers.

Russell’s brain was spinning by the time they finished. ‘I’ll never remember it all,’ he said.

‘Neither will they,’ Shchepkin said reassuringly. ‘I had an old teacher, back in the twenties,’ he went on, almost dreamily. ‘He was about sixty, and he’d faced interrogations in a dozen countries. When we found ourselves in that situation, he told us, we should make our inquisitors feel like they were looking in an honest mirror, seeing both the good and the bad in themselves. And once we’d managed that, we should try and offer them some sort of absolution. He said we’d be surprised how grateful they would be, and how much getting them to question themselves reduced their ability to question others.’

‘You don’t have a manuscript stashed away somewhere, do you? “Tips for Political Prisoners: A Bolshevik Handbook”.’

Shchepkin’s eyes twinkled. ‘Unfortunately not.’

A tram was crossing the bridge to their left as they both stood up.

‘I doubt we’ll meet again,’ the Russian said, offering his hand.

Russell took it. ‘I won’t forget your wife and daughter,’ was all he could find to say. Or you, he thought, as Shchepkin walked slowly off in the direction of the Soviet sector.

When Russell got to Zarah’s, she and her American fiance were having a loud argument in the kitchen.

‘It’s nothing serious,’ Effi told him. ‘And quite wonderful in a way-I don’t think she ever shouted at Jens.’

Russell put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Speaking of wonderful, it seems we’re in the clear.’

Her eyes lit up. ‘Really?’

‘According to Shchepkin.’ He sighed. ‘Who’s dying, by the way.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He wasn’t specific. Some sort of heart disease apparently.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, me too. But he’s got his wife and daughter out, and he thinks we’re all safe.’

‘And you think so to?’

‘Well, he’s never been wrong about anything before.’ Apart from the system he’d devoted his life too, Russell thought, but didn’t say.

‘So we can go home?’

He considered suggesting they stay for the night, but the argument in the kitchen showed no sign of abating. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.

Told they were leaving, Zarah emerged. ‘Rosa’s half asleep,’ she said, ‘why don’t you leave her here, and I’ll take them both to school in the morning?’

Rosa, though, was keen to go home. ‘Why are they fighting?’ she asked once they were outside.

‘People do,’ Effi told her. ‘It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.’

‘I know that.’

They walked most of the way in silence, the two adults digesting what seemed their new-found liberation. They were turning on to Carmer Strasse when Effi wondered out loud how the Americans would react.

‘Oh, I expect they’ll give me a hard time for a few weeks,’ Russell told her. ‘But they’ll let me go eventually.’

‘And in the meantime, I can decide between The Islanders and Hollywood,’ Effi said. ‘Assuming we can still get out of Berlin.’

‘Can’t you do both?’

‘Maybe. And you know, I really would like to do a movie with Cisar. Not right away, but when I can think about Prague without shivering.’

There were several cars parked close to their building, but Russell recognised them all, and the stairwell was reassuringly empty. It was only after he’d closed the apartment door behind them that the two young men emerged from the bedroom. One had fair hair and a typical Slavic countenance, the other Asian eyes and slightly bowed legs. Both were gripping Tokarev pistols with business-like silencers.

One held them at gunpoint while the other patted them down, and then ordered them on to the sofa while his comrade searched Rosa and Effi’s bags. A grunt of minor triumph accompanied his discovery of the newly-purchased handgun.

Russell was noticing signs of a search. Things had been moved and then put back, but not quite in the same position. They’d been looking for the film.

‘Do these two speak Russian?’ the obvious Russian man asked him, waving his gun in Effi and Rosa’s general direction.

Russell could see no point in lying. ‘No,’ he said.

This seemed to please his interrogator. ‘Well, where is it?’ he asked.

‘Where’s what?’

The man smiled. ‘If you waste our time you’ll only make it harder on yourself and your family. We know you have it, and if you won’t tell us where it is, we shall take you all to our sector and question you until you do. And once we have you over there, I can’t see what reason we’d have for ever bringing you back.’

Listening, Russell knew he had no choice. His first thought when the two men appeared had been that Shchepkin had badly misread his boss, but this Russian’s repeated use of ‘it’ suggested otherwise. If these men believed there was only one copy, then they hadn’t come from Beria. GRU most likely, Soviet Military Intelligence. But how had they found out about the film? There was one obvious candidate. ‘How is Merzhanov?’ Russell asked.

‘He’s dead.’

‘And the woman who was with him?’

‘The same. You admit, then, that they gave you the film?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is it?’

‘If I tell you, what’s to stop you killing us, too?’

‘If you give us the film, why would we do that?’

He was almost certainly lying, but as Russell had noticed in a similar situation three years earlier, hope really did spring eternal. And sometimes with reason.

The Russian added a real stick to his dubious carrot: ‘But if you don’t tell us where it is, I shall hurt your wife or daughter. And if that doesn’t convince you, then I shall kill one of them.’

As Russell looked at Effi and Rosa, it felt like ice was forming in his brain. ‘I buried it in the forest,’ he told the Russian.

‘Which one?’

‘The Grunewald,’ he said, noting the flicker in Effi’s eyes as she caught the word.

‘We will go there at once. My comrade will stay with the woman and girl as a guarantee of your behaviour.’

‘Can I explain that to them?’

‘Tell them to do as he says.’

Russell explained the situation to Effi, trying not to scare Rosa any more than she already was. There was no point in telling Effi to take any chance that arose-she would know that already-and for all he knew one of the Russians understood German.

Effi squeezed his hand and gave him an unconvincing smile. The thought that he might never see her again seemed utterly ridiculous.

As he and the Russian walked down the stairs, Russell tried to think through the implications. The GRU wanted the tape to use against Beria, but they wouldn’t want the world to know about it-only the West would gain from that. This was both good news and bad news. Good because the Americans would remain in the dark; bad because any Westerners who knew about the film would need to be silenced.

The bad news seemed to render the good news redundant.

The car, a Maybach SW42, was around the corner. ‘You drive,’ the Russian said.

It wasn’t a car he’d driven before, but after grinding his way down to Ku’damm, he finally got the hang of the gear stick. The boulevard was busy, and when a red light held them halfway down, he thought about leaning his head out of the window, and telling the world he was being abducted. What would the Russian do-shoot him?

He probably would. And then shove the body on to the street and drive off. There would be plenty of witnesses, but none would lift a finger to help Russell, any more than they had in the ’30s, when the brownshirts had picked on some hapless Jew.

And what was the point of fighting back now? Effi and Rosa should be safe until the Russians had the film in their hands. It was better to wait, and take the chance he’d planned for.

He drove on, half-blinded by the setting sun, crossing the Ringbahn by Halensee Station, and following the winding Konigs Allee to the Grunewald’s eastern perimeter. Private vehicles weren’t permitted beyond the lightless Hundekehle Restaurant, but Russell drove on down the access road. There seemed little chance of their being challenged at this hour, and he had reasons of his own for not wanting too long a walk after he had dug up the film.

They only passed one couple, who gave them a dirty look but kept on walking. The twosome had taken them for warmer bruder, Russell thought, men who were out for an illegal fuck in the forest.

A minute or so later he brought the car to a halt. As far as he could tell in the fading light, they’d reached the nearest point on the road to where he’d buried the film.

They both got out.

‘How far is it?’ the Russian asked.

‘A few minutes. No more.’

They started walking, Russell showing the way. Under the eaves it was darker still, but he found the clearing without any problem. ‘It’s over here,’ he said, walking towards the tree.

‘Where?’

‘Here,’ Russell told him, sinking to his knees. This was the moment he feared, when the Russian might order him aside and do the digging himself.

He didn’t.

Russell took his time scooping out the still-loose earth with his hands, and just as his questing fingers made contact with metal, the Russian leaned over his shoulder to see what was happening.

‘You’re in my light,’ Russell told him.

‘Well, hurry up,’ the Russian said, stepping back a pace.

Uttering a short and very silent prayer that internment hadn’t disabled the gun, Russell curved his hand around the grip, inserted one finger ahead of the trigger, and jerking it free of its temporary grave, opened fire at point-blank range.

The crack echoed through the forest, scattering loudly cawing birds up into the night sky.

The Russian was still moving, whimpering softly. The eyes looking up at Russell were those of a small boy.

He raised the gun, steeled his heart, and fired again.

When the door closed behind Russell and his escort, Effi’s first impulse was to have a good weep. But Rosa had beaten her to it-Effi’s daughter was sobbing in eerie silence, the way her real mother had taught her, when they lived in a Christian friend’s garden shed, and the Gestapo’s main hobby was seeking out hidden Jews.

She took the girl in her arms and tried to hide the hatred she was felt for their Russian guard. After drawing the curtains he had sat down opposite them, lit a cigarette, and held them in his gaze. His narrow eyes made Effi think of Mongols, and cruelty, but so far at least he’d shown no sign of murdering them.

Effi told herself there was no reason for despair, not yet anyway. When Russell had told her about his brainstorm-the death-camp escapee’s advice and the gun he’d buried with the film-she’d thought it all a touch absurd, but it might well save their lives. It would be almost dark by the time they reached the Grunewald, which would surely improve his chances. She had to believe he’d come back.

What would happen when he did? What would he do? Just knock on the door and shoot this staring Russian when he opened it?

But she didn’t think the Russian would be so obliging. Either he and his partner would have a signature knock, like she and Ali had had in the war; or he’d wait to hear the other man’s voice.

And if he didn’t hear it, then what? He would probably assume it was a friend or a neighbour who had knocked, and send her to answer it. And he would hold on to Rosa just in case. If Russell just burst in shooting, the girl might be killed in the crossfire.

But Russell would already have worked all that out, Effi knew. The reason he’d taken the death-camp escapee’s advice to heart so readily was that it chimed so well with his own way of doing things.

So, what would he do? And how could she help them all survive it?

It had taken Strohm until late afternoon to get his hands on the full text of the Cominform Resolution, and after leaving work he stopped at a bar on Potsdamer Strasse to read the whole thing through. His sense of outrage increased as he did so. The Yugoslavs were accused of ‘left deviationism’ one moment, and then ‘supporting capitalist elements’-a rightist deviation-the next. The Yugoslavs were criticised for their ‘hostile attitude to the Soviet Union’, when everyone knew they had bent over backwards in praise of Stalin; and for creating a ‘military bureaucratic system’, which was too ironic to be true. Strohm didn’t see how anyone could believe such rubbish. But all the East European parties, including his own, had put their signatures to the Resolution and its principal demand, that the current Yugoslav leadership either change course or face instant removal.

Strohm ordered another beer and read the Resolution through again, seeking even the faintest echo of the movement he had joined and served. There was none. It was the work of bullies looking after their own.

He was tempted to get really drunk, but told himself not to be so pathetic. Strohm knew he needed to be strong, to look the truth in the face without anger or self-pity. He needed to talk to someone.

His first thought was Trenkel, whom he knew shared much the same doubts, but what was the point of talking to a mirror? John Russell would be better, Strohm decided. Russell had left the Party a long time ago, but he understood why others had stayed.

Strohm walked out to the wretched car, glad for once that he didn’t have to walk, and clambered in behind the wheel. He felt sober enough to drive.

Ten minutes later he pulled up outside the building on Carmer Strasse. Darkness was beginning to fall, and he wondered if it was too late for a visit-he should have called them first. But the living-room curtains were rimmed with light, suggesting they hadn’t yet gone to bed. And it wasn’t that often that a friend mislaid his purpose in life. They would make allowances.

He ascended the stairs and knocked on the door to their apartment.

No one came to answer.

Strohm heard nothing when he put his ear to the door, but perhaps they were in the other room. After some hesitation he tried again.

This time there were footsteps.

The door half-opened, revealing Effi. He was still smiling apologetically when she said, ‘I’m sorry, Kurt, but I can’t talk to you now,’ and firmly closed it in his face.

He stared at the door. Kurt? Had she been drinking too?

Strohm raised his hand to knock again, then let it fall. After standing there for a few moments, he walked downstairs and climbed back into his car. Something was wrong, he thought. But what?

As he turned to look up at the flat, a curtain twitched. Someone was making sure he went.

He obliged whomever it was, driving down to Steinplatz and around the triangular block, pulling over on Kant Strasse where he couldn’t be seen from the flat. Lighting a cigarette, he wondered whether to call the police.

Ku’damm was still busy as Russell drove back towards Carmer Strasse. He’d been running through options since leaving the Grunewald, but still hadn’t found one that seemed at all promising. The moment he stepped through the apartment door without his escort he would be putting the others’ lives at risk. The other Russian might just open fire, with God only knew what results; but if the guard’s gun was already at Rosa or Effi’s head, he’d have no need to gamble. The threat would force Russell to drop his gun, and they could all be shot with impunity.

But sooner or later he had to go through that door. He needed a diversion of some sort, but short of shouting ‘fire’ and hoping for the best, he couldn’t think of one.

Driving around Savigny Platz he wondered where he should stop. Since it no longer mattered who saw the car, the Russian inside would expect him to leave it out front, but he didn’t want to advertise his return until he knew what he meant to do. He couldn’t leave it too long-that would make the Russian nervous-but he had to have some sort of plan.

There was a Horch 851 in the old spot, another Soviet favourite. Had the man in the flat been joined by colleagues? And, if so, what chance did he have of saving Effi and Rosa?

As Russell eased past the other car, he saw there was someone behind the wheel.

It was Gerhard Strohm, staring straight back at him.

What was he doing there? Russell wondered, as he pulled the Maybach over. Surely Strohm couldn’t be with the Russians.

He watched Strohm get out of his car, walk forward, open the passenger door to Russell’s car, and plunk himself down in the adjacent seat.

‘I’ve just been up to your flat,’ Strohm said.

Russell’s heart missed a beat. ‘And?’

‘Effi opened the door, called me Kurt, and shut it again.’ He looked enquiringly at Russell.

‘Ah.’ He had to tell Strohm something, but what? The truth? Russell had always liked the man-they’d become good friends over the last couple of years-but Strohm was still a high-ranking KPD functionary, part of the new establishment.

Russell decided he would say that he and Effi had just had a row, and she was in a bad mood.

He turned to Strohm, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. To hell with it, he thought. This man had gone way out on a limb for him in 1941, and again in 1945. If he couldn’t trust Strohm, then what was the point?

‘When Effi opened the door to you,’ Russell told him, ‘there was a Russian in the other room holding Rosa at gunpoint.’

Strohm blinked. ‘Why?’

‘There were two of them waiting in the flat when we got back a couple of hours ago. They want something from me. This,’ he added, pulling the tin box out from under his seat. ‘It’s a reel of film. I’d buried it in the Grunewald, and the other Russian drove me out to dig it up.’

‘What’s on it?’

‘You don’t want to know.’ He doubted that Strohm would be brushed off so easily, but his friend had an even more pertinent question.

‘Where’s the other Russian?’

‘In the boot.’

Strohm almost burst out laughing. It wasn’t the slightest bit funny of course, but he’d been harbouring homicidal thoughts about the Soviets for most of the day. ‘MGB, I presume?’

‘GRU, I think, actually. But right now it doesn’t seem to matter that much.’

‘No. Well, the obvious thing to do is call the police.’

Strohm sounded as unconvinced by that idea as Russell was.

‘There are problems with that idea.’

‘The man in the boot.’

‘Apart from him, unfortunately. Look, Gerhard, with that bastard holding Effi and Rosa I don’t have time to explain what this is all about. I do know that the police would worry a lot more about the consequences of killing a Russian official than they would about Effi and Rosa’s safety.’

‘I do have some influence.’

‘I know, but anything like that would take an age, and Ivan up there is already wondering why his buddy and I are taking so long. Help me think up some sort of diversion.’

‘Use me.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll go up there and force my way in. He’s not going to shoot a candidate member of the KPD Central Committee.’

‘They planned to kill us all once they had the film. I’m sure he’d apologise profusely after killing you, but that would be the only difference.’

‘He won’t shoot me out of hand,’ Strohm insisted. ‘Not if he thinks I’m there on Party business. He’ll wait for his partner before taking a decision like that.’

‘I’m not convinced.’

‘What else do you have?’

Russell tapped his fingers on either side of the steering wheel. ‘Nothing,’ he admitted.

‘Well, then.’

‘What’s your reason for turning up?’

‘The last time I talked to Effi, she was being pressured by the Soviet culture people. I could be an emissary from Tulpanov.’

Russell had a sudden inspiration. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have a better idea. One that should save Rosa.’

Up in the flat, the Russian was still staring at Effi and Rosa through his veil of cigarette smoke. His partner had been gone for almost two hours now, but he didn’t seem concerned. Rosa had stopped crying, and was simply hugging her mother as tightly as she could, her blonde head pressed against Effi’s chest.

When the knock sounded on the door, the guard gestured Effi to answer it, and moved himself behind the sofa, his gun at Rosa’s neck.

As Effi opened the door, Strohm breezily forced his way past her, talking in Russian. ‘Comrade,’ he said, ‘I know you’re in there.’

The Russian’s gun was pointing straight at him, and for a moment Strohm thought he would shoot. ‘Our kommissariats have reached a mutual decision,’ he added quickly.

‘What kommissariat? Who are you?’

‘I’m sorry. My name is Strohm. KPD Central Committee. And K-5 of course, though it doesn’t say that on my papers. May I?’ He reached in a hand before the Russian could say no, and brought out his Party accreditations.

The Russian studied the papers without moving his aim. ‘So this is who you are. What are you doing here?’

‘I’m here for the girl.’

‘The girl?’

‘You do know who she is?’

The Russian looked blank.

‘This is the girl who drew the famous picture of the Red Army soldier on Bismarck Strasse. You must know it.’

‘Of course.’

‘Well your culture people have plans for her. And your department has agreed that she be spared.’

‘We were told no witnesses.’

‘She’ll be in Moscow, so that won’t matter.’ He reached into his pocket for cigarettes, and offered one to the Russian. ‘I thought there were two of you.’

‘My partner will be back soon. He will decide about the girl.’

Rosa was staring at Strohm as if he’d gone mad, and he suddenly realised that she might use his name. He leaned forward and ruffled her hair. ‘Pretend you don’t know me,’ he said in German. ‘I told her she has nothing to fear,’ he told the Russian in his language.

‘We shall see.’

‘You said your colleague wouldn’t be long,’ Strohm said, checking his watch. In two minutes Russell would be at the door. With the Russian happy to wait in silence, he counted out sixty seconds, then abruptly strode across the room, winking at Effi once his back was turned to the enemy. He peeled back the edge of a curtain, and looked out.

‘They’re here,’ he said over the Russian’s angry insistence that he come away from the window. ‘Let me take the girl in the other room,’ Strohm pleaded. ‘If she sees you kill them she’ll be harder to handle.’

‘All right,’ the Russian agreed. For all his sangfroid, he was obviously relieved that his partner was back.

Strohm took Rosa by the hand, gave her a reassuring smile, and ushered her through the bedroom door. ‘Stay in there,’ he said gently, and shut it behind her.

It was almost too late. Turning back to the room, he heard the key click in the apartment door, and as the Russian reached, almost casually, for Effi’s arm, Strohm bundled into her back. They were both still falling when the silenced gun coughed, and the sound of their bodies hitting the floor found an echo a few seconds later.

The Russian was seated on the floor, his back against the sofa, his legs splayed out in front of him, a bullet hole in his chest. He wheezed, grimaced, and somehow seemed to settle, like a puppet whose strings had been dropped.

Effi got to her feet, took one look at the dead Russian, and went through to the bedroom to comfort Rosa.

‘What are you going to do with him?’ Strohm asked Russell after a few moments’ silence. ‘Him and his partner.’

Russell put down the pistol and ran a hand through his hair. ‘While you were doing your K-5 impression I was wondering exactly that, and I did come up with one idea. I have no right to ask you this-you’ve done more than enough already-but …’

‘How can I help?’

‘Well, I need to dump them somewhere in their car. It has to look like an accident, or we’ll be getting more visits like this one. If you bring your car along, you can give me a lift back.’

‘Okay, but won’t the bullets be a giveaway?’

‘They’ll have to come out.’

Strohm went to the window to look at the street. ‘When do you think we should leave?’

‘The sooner the better. The place I have in mind is up in the British sector, and they don’t do night patrols any more. But let me tell Effi what’s we’re doing.’

‘Give me the keys and I’ll bring the Russians’ car around,’ Strohm offered.

In the other room Effi was sat on the bed, Rosa’s head on her shoulder.

‘It’s all over, sweetheart,’ Russell said, leaning over to kiss the child on the forehead. ‘He can’t hurt you and Effi now.’

‘Is he dead?’ she whispered.

‘He is. It was him or us, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m glad,’ Rosa said.

‘What about the body?’ Effi asked.

‘Gerhard and I will take it away. Are you okay?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Be careful.’

‘Aren’t I always?’

One thing about their building, as Russell and Effi knew from previous complaints, was that they were always the last ones to bed. The two men carried the corpse down through the silent stairwell, and once Strohm had signalled the all-clear, Russell dragged it out to the street. Fitting another body into the boot wasn’t easy, but between them they managed somehow. There was always the chance that someone one had seen their struggle from a window, but the street lighting was poor, and Berliners weren’t as conscientious about reporting wrong-doing as they had been at one time. Either they’d seen too much of it, or their trust in authority was at a very low ebb. Both, most likely.

‘Where are we going?’ Strohm asked.

Russell told him.

‘Okay. I’ll get my car and follow you.’

‘If I didn’t know better,’ Russell said wryly, ‘I’d say you were almost enjoying yourself.’

‘I might be now,’ Strohm admitted, ‘but I wouldn’t want to go through those ten minutes again.’ As he walked to the Party car, he asked himself why he had actually risked his life. Several reasons came to mind-too much alcohol, his fury with the Russians, loyalty to a friend. But what mattered now was that he’d got away with it.

Strohm started up the Horch, and drove it around the corner into Carmer Strasse, where Russell was just walking out to the Maybach with bottle in hand.

They started off, and within a few minutes were heading northwest up a mostly empty Berliner Strasse. Occasionally another car would pass in the other direction, but they saw no British patrols. The Western Allies would all be keen save petrol, Strohm thought, now that they couldn’t bring anymore in.

Up ahead, Russell was looking for flaws in his hastily conceived plan. If a proper investigation was held-and he hoped the British authorities would make that as difficult as possible for the Soviets-then it had look like the two GRU men had been on their way home with the film when one of two things had happened-either Beria’s men had got to them, or they’d had a terrible accident. And since he couldn’t think of any way to fake the former, it had to be the latter. Complete with flames. Two burnt bodies and one burnt film.

The boys in the boot had even supplied the accelerant-the spare of can of petrol in the back was probably standard issue for GRU murder squads.

It took twenty minutes to reach the bridge across the choked canal. The long gap in the parapet, which he’d noticed several months earlier, was, like most of Berlin, awaiting repair. Even the string of warning flags had blown away. It was, as Russell had thought at the time, an accident waiting to happen.

He stopped and got out. There were lights in the distance in both directions, but the immediate area was lit by the moon, revealing an industrial wasteland of hulk-filled docks, burnt-out factories, and sidings strewn with splintered wagons.

Strohm joined him, and they pulled the corpses out on to the bridge. ‘Now for the difficult bit,’ Russell murmured, getting down on his haunches and taking out his pocket knife. In the First War they’d used to say that dead men didn’t bleed, but digging out the bullets was a messy business, and the smell of innards did evoke the trenches with a vengeance. When he was done, he walked back twenty metres and dropped the three bullets in the stagnant water below.

There was still no sign of other traffic. After lifting the Russians into the front seats, and jamming their Tokarev pistols into their pockets, Russell doused them and the film with petrol, then fashioned a Molotov cocktail using the bottle and handkerchief he’d brought along for that purpose.

There was no need to push the car-just removing the handbrake and turning the wheel would suffice. In the event, the car gathered speed faster than Russell expected, and he barely had time to light the cocktail and thrust it through the open window. The blaze was instant, the two bodies silhouetted in flame as the car toppled over the edge and out of sight. A split-second later it hit the concrete towpath with a crash that was probably heard in Karlshorst, and a curtain of flame soared upwards, like an all-too-effective beacon.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Russell said, unnecessarily.

They spent several minutes in fear of approaching lights, but once Strohm had pulled them off the main highway and into the Westend back streets both men felt a lot safer.

‘Thank you,’ Russell said. The two words seemed hardly enough, but he couldn’t remember meaning them more.

‘You’re welcome,’ Strohm said lightly.

‘What chance in a thousand brought you around tonight?’ Russell asked him.

Strohm laughed. ‘Believe it not, I wanted to talk about the Yugoslavs.’

‘What about them?’

‘Haven’t you heard? The Soviets are throwing them out of the Cominform for having minds of their own. It’s over,’ he added after a moment.

‘What is?’

Strohm ignored that. ‘What made you leave the Party?’ he asked.

So that was it, Russell thought. ‘You know I can’t remember any particular thing-it was a lot of things, all adding up. One day I just knew that I wanted out. That the reasons I’d had for joining no longer made any sense to me.’

Strohm thought about that for a minute or so. ‘They say Brecht’s coming back,’ he said eventually, as if the poet’s blessing might make all the difference.

‘ “Hatred, even of meanness, contorts the features”,’ Russell quoted.

‘Always?’

‘I don’t know. I do know that socialism’s dead in the water, for our lifetime at least. The Yanks and Stalin-they’ve got each other now, perfect scapegoats for anything that goes wrong in their own empires. The Yanks prattle on about freedom and free enterprise, the Soviets about welfare and full employment, and neither will admit that they lack what the other has. They’ll both spend a fortune on weapons and come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who makes trouble on their own patch.’ Russell grunted. ‘You know what happened? The Nazis made everyone look good for a few years, but now they’re gone, and we’re back with crap meets crap.’

Strohm shook his head, but more in sadness than disagreement. ‘Only a year ago, I would have pitied you for your cynicism.’

‘And now?’

‘It fits the facts. But I haven’t given up on socialism-not quite yet.’

‘I may have given up on politics,’ Russell said, ‘but I don’t think I have on justice. Though what that means in practice … well, I guess I’ll have to find out.’ He turned to Strohm. ‘When we ran into each other this evening, and I told you about the film and the dead Russian in the boot, why didn’t you just walk away, like any sensible human being?’

‘You still haven’t told me what’s on this precious film.’

‘And I’m not going to. There are some things you’re safer not knowing.’

‘All right. But one day?’

‘One day,’ Russell agreed. The day they put Beria into the ground, or someone drove a stake through the bastard’s heart. ‘What will you do?’ he asked, changing the subject.

‘God knows. Work for a change, of course, and get kicked out of the Party? Hold my nose and join the SPD? I can’t learn Serbo-Croat and run off to Belgrade-I have a child coming. Which reminds me: Annaliese must not hear about tonight. From you or Effi.’

‘If you say so. But after all the adventures she and Effi had, I think she’d understand.’

‘Oh, so do I, but that doesn’t mean she’d forgive me. And she’d probably be right.’

Russell didn’t argue. They drove on through the moonlit streets, seeing no other vehicle until they reached Bismarck Strasse.

‘Drop me a few blocks away,’ Russell said. ‘You don’t want this car seen on Carmer Strasse again.’

A few minutes later he was watching the Horch recede, Strohm’s arm held aloft in farewell. After wiping his gore-stained hands on a convenient tuft of grass, Russell started for home. He felt tired to the bone, but strangely buoyant considering the past few hours. Would it all work? It just might, he supposed.

Some Soviet forensic genius might find bullet holes in the charred flesh, or some unforeseen proof that it hadn’t been an accident. The GRU bosses might wonder why Russell was still alive, and why their men had shown such mercy. Would they try and correct this oversight? Perhaps, but probably not-with the film gone, what would be the point?

There was no sure and certain way out, no Gordian knot that Russell could cut. He would have to live with the knowledge that assassination by the GRU was a life-threatening possibility, like cancer and falling masonry. To be actively avoided, but not at the cost of all else.

He walked on through the dark and silent streets. Beria would be in bed at this hour, if he wasn’t out trawling Moscow for young girls. After his tete-a-tete with Shchepkin the bastard would be perching a little less easily on his blood-stained throne, which was something. He would certainly be more careful when it came to hidden cameras.

It occurred to Russell that if the GRU did succeed in killing them all, then the film’s release and Beria’s subsequent fall from power would posthumously offer some slight compensation.

It was almost three in the morning. In a few more hours Shchepkin would be knocking at the Americans’ door, and not long after that Johannsen would ring with the terrible news that Russell’s cover was comprehensively blown.

It would doubtless take several weeks of boring questions, but then he would be free of them all.

His strange career in the shadows, which Shchepkin had launched more than ten years before in that shabby Danzig hotel room, would finally be over. They might eventually kill him, but they would never recruit him again.

And in September his son was getting married. His son, who’d survived the Eastern Front, and now seemed as sane as anyone could be, who’d entered that madhouse with a functioning heart and a soul. And if he and Effi had do anything to with it, Rosa too would come into her own.

Russell turned into Carmer Strasse, where the only light showing was theirs.

‘It’s me,’ he said softly, as he opened the door.

‘So it is,’ Effi said, taking him into her arms.