Masaryk Station

Bearers of light

After taking Rosa to school on Tuesday morning, Effi walked home intent on sorting out her professional life. The first task was to finish reading the Hollywood script, and this took her the rest of the morning.

It had what she considered the usual Hollywood weaknesses-a tendency to sentimentalise, and the habit of assuming that only regular outbreaks of violence would keep the audience interested. But overall she liked it, and a director as good as Gregory Sinfield would doubtless make it better. If she wanted a reason to turn them down, she would have to look elsewhere.

Nothing had come from RIAS, so she called Alfred Henninger on the telephone. He was most apologetic, but had no news. ‘I’m sure the series will go ahead,’ he said. ‘It’s just a matter of when.’

Which wasn’t very helpful. With three hours to spare before Rosa’s return, she walked down to Zoo Station and took a tram to the Elisabeth, hoping that Annaliese would have a few moments to spare. As it turned out, it was her friend’s half-day off, and Effi only just caught her leaving for home.

Gerhard had left for Rugen Island and some sort of Party conference, and Annaliese was happy to share a walk along the Landwehrkanal and into the slowly reviving Tiergarten. After one botched effort, the British had finally succeeded in blowing up the huge flak towers that had sullied the landscape for almost seven years, and the park’s trees, decimated by bombings and the desperate need for firewood, were springing back to life. It seemed to Effi as if the city’s lungs were beginning to breathe again.

She asked Annaliese if she any ‘political news’, their code for the rumours and gossip that Strohm brought home from work.

‘None,’ she said. ‘Either the Russians are biding their time or they’ve decided the Americans won’t be scared into leaving.’

‘Which does Gerhard think?’

‘That they can’t make their minds up. He doesn’t believe they have a plan. He thinks they just react to whatever their enemies do. So as long as no one provokes them, they’ll be reasonable.’

‘Why should the Americans provoke them?’

Annaliese shrugged. ‘God only knows. I just wish they’d all go home.’

Russell played the innocent over the next twenty-four hours, as the local police, under the none-too-subtle supervision of the Allied authorities, carried out their investigation. Two visits from Dempsey kept him informed of their progress in concocting a politically acceptable narrative. The bomb had apparently been planted by ‘remnants of the Ustashe’, as part of an ongoing cycle of revenge attacks that went back at least to the war and probably a thousand years further. If Skerlic hadn’t been a philosopher in this life, Russell thought sourly, he would surely be one in the next.

‘He must have been a spy,’ the hosteller kept saying, loading the three-letter word with enough contempt to sink one of the cruisers out in the harbour. One of the surviving daughters had lost an eye, the other had two badly broken legs, but they would both live. The building, on closer inspection, was less badly damaged than might have been expected. Russell’s old room needed reconstruction, but those around it hadn’t been that badly damaged. None of the guests had had to leave.

On Wednesday afternoon, a car came to take Russell up to the villa, where Youklis and Dempsey were both waiting on the pine-scented terrace. ‘It was Croat Krizari,’ Youklis told him. ‘And they were definitely after you. Would you like to tell us why?’

Anticipating the question hadn’t provided Russell with a satisfactory answer. He couldn’t admit to shopping Croat ‘freedom fighters’ or writing an expose of the Rat Line without bringing the wrath of his American employers down on his head. ‘Beats me,’ he said, with all the insouciance he could muster. ‘All I can think is that it must have been the fucking Ukrainians-either friends of Palychko who think I sold him out, or enemies angry that I tried to help him.’

‘It was Croats,’ Youklis insisted. Dempsey was saying nothing, just looking disappointed, as if Russell had let the side down by becoming a target.

‘What have I done to offend them?’

‘That’s what we want you to tell us,’ Youklis persisted.

Russell shrugged. ‘I can’t. Unless I’ve trodden on some toes without realising it. I have talked to victims of the Ustashe …’

‘Why, for God’s sake?’

‘The same reason we held the Nuremberg Trials, so that war crimes won’t be forgotten. I’m a journalist, remember?’

‘So you keep telling me. I don’t suppose you’ve been playing around with a woman named Luciana Fratelli?’

‘What? Who’s she?’

‘Monsignor Kozniku’s secretary.’

‘Her? No, not my type. Why do you ask?’

‘Her body was found floating in the docks on Sunday evening. And Dempsey here had the mad idea that her boyfriend discovered the two of you were playing around behind his back, and decided to kill you both.’

‘Brilliant theory,’ Russell noted sarcastically. ‘She’s an Italian, not a Croat.’

‘She works for a Croat organisation,’ Dempsey insisted.

‘And I’ve only ever met her once,’ Russell went on, ignoring him. ‘When I collected Palychko’s papers.’ He guessed that the Croats, seeking the betrayer of their comrades, and knowing that she had access to the names, had tortured the truth out of her. He didn’t ask Youklis what state the body was in.

‘Right,’ Youklis was saying. ‘And there’s no other Croat woman you’ve been fucking, no Croats you owe money to?’

‘No and no. Maybe they really were after the Serb.’

‘Not according to our informants.’ Youklis sighed with apparent frustration. ‘But whatever you’ve done to piss them off-and I don’t for a goddamned minute think you’ve told us all you know-you’ve made yourself a target. And we can’t carry on babysitting you until they get bored and go home.’

‘I wasn’t aware that you had been.’

‘You know what I mean. You’re no use to us here anymore. We’re sending you back to Berlin.’

‘Well, I won’t object.’

‘I didn’t think so. But on your way home, there’s a job that needs doing.’

His punishment, Russell thought, or was he just being paranoid? ‘Where this time?

‘Prague.’

‘And what’s the job?’

‘You’ll be briefed in Vienna.’ Youklis extracted a sheet of paper and an envelope from his briefcase. ‘That man at that address, he’s expecting you sometime tomorrow. Your ticket’s in the envelope.’

Russell’s first thought was that he would miss Sasa’s funeral, after promising her parents he’d be there. His second was that denying him even that modicum of atonement was strangely fitting. Killers shouldn’t turn up at a victim’s funeral.

Youklis, bizarrely, was holding out a hand in farewell. Russell shook it, marvelling at the hypocrisy. The American disliked and distrusted him, and had cheerfully risked Russell’s life in Belgrade without a moment’s compunction, but no one could fault his manners.

After Dempsey had dropped Russell off downtown, he started for home intending to pack, and then realised he couldn’t cope with any more of Marko’s grief at this particular moment. Instead, he ate a final dinner at his favourite restaurant, and then sat out in the Piazza dell Unita, watching the sunset until the darkness was almost complete. Walking back up the hill he stopped at a public telephone to ring Artucci’s two contact numbers, but no one answered at either. The Italian was long gone, Russell guessed-either communing with the fishes, or halfway to Sicily.

He approached the ravaged hostel with caution, but no one was lurking in the piazza’s shadows with murderous intent. Two of Sasa’s younger siblings were sitting on the stairs, their bodies listless, their faces full of dull resentment. As well they might be, he thought, shutting the door to his room, but taking the faces in with him. He should be glad to be alive, he thought, but that feeling was beyond him.

Wednesday morning brought rain and a letter from Eva Kempka. Effi had twice tried to call her on the previous day, but each time the phone had kept ringing. That and a line in the letter-‘i know it’s ridiculous, but I think I’m being watched’-convinced her a visit to Kreuzberg was in order.

Eva lived opposite an infants’ school, just around the corner from Russell’s pre-war home on Neuenburger Strasse. Block residents had been forbidden to open their windows when the heating was on, and sometimes Russell’s top-floor flat had grown so hot that they’d stretched out naked on his bed with a pair of borrowed film-set fans blowing right at them. The portierfrau Frau Heidegger had always called her John’s ‘fiancee’, and assuming she’d survived the war, would doubtless be pleased to hear of their marriage.

Eva’s flat was on the second floor. There was no response to Effi’s first knock, nor to a louder second. The view through the keyhole was limited, and offered no clues to the tenant’s whereabouts. After finding that everyone else was out on that floor, she went down to the basement in search of the portierfrau.

The woman in question was around fifty, unusually fat for post-war Berlin, and disinclined to be helpful, particularly when she found out who Effi was looking for. ‘Frau Kempka has been arrested,’ she stated, almost triumphantly.

‘What for?’ Effi asked.

‘I don’t exactly know, but I’m sure we could both make a good guess. Your kind can hardly …’

‘My kind?’

‘You know what I mean. It’s still illegal, you know, despite everything that’s happened.’

If the woman hadn’t been so fat, Effi thought, she’d be one of those people painting 88 on high walls and bridges-88 for HH or Heil Hitler. ‘I am not a lesbian,’ she told the portierfrau, adding a note of indignation for effect.

‘Oh. Well I’m sure I’ve seen you before.’

On the silver screen or a wanted poster, Effi wondered. ‘Not here,’ she said.

‘So what did you want with Frau Kempka?’

‘I’m a work colleague,’ Effi improvised. ‘She hasn’t turned up, and her boss wants to know why.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘So when was she arrested?’

‘They came on Sunday afternoon. About four, I think.’

‘Were they German or Russian?’

‘They weren’t in uniform. The one who spoke was German, but the other one could have been Russian. He had that flat face they have.’

‘Did Eva, er, Frau Kempka resist?

‘Oh, she kicked up a right fuss, screaming her head off as they put her in the car.’

‘But no one tried to help her?’

‘Well, it was the police, and anyway, no one around here likes her kind.’

‘I understand. Look, if she comes back could you ask her to telephone Effi?’

‘Oh, I doubt she’ll be back. Like I said, it is still illegal.’

‘But if she does?’

The woman was staring at her. ‘You’re Effi Koenen, aren’t you? I remember you in Mother. And what was that other one? More Than Brothers. Wonderful films. They knew how to make them before the war. Not like the moody nonsense they put out today. Would you give me your autograph?’

Without waiting for an answer she ducked back inside for something to sign.

Effi stood there, thinking that now the woman would call her if Eva did return. Fame did have its compensations.

There was a long wait while their first-class carriages were shunted aboard the ferry for the short ride to Rugen Island. As he watched others travellers stream past his window on foot, Gerhard Strohm couldn’t help noticing the resentful looks aimed his way, and the reason offered for his and his comrades’ special treatment-that they would be able to work on the journey-suddenly seemed a lot less convincing.

He had never been to Rugen Island, and neither, he imagined, had most of the others. In pre-Nazi days only the bourgeoisie had been able to afford weekends or weeks away in the expensive hotels, and after 1933 eager groups of Hitlerjugend and Bund Deutscher Madel had pretty much monopolised the island’s woods and beaches. The only people working there had been those shipped in to service others.

It was as beautiful as Effi had said it was, Strohm thought, as a conference-centre car carried him and three other delegates the last few kilometres to the converted hotel. The local Party had suggested a new holiday camp for city workers and their families, but had been overruled by Berlin. Too many echoes of ‘Strength Through Joy’, one official had told him; the Party needed a conference centre away from the capital, where its leading officials could escape the stresses of their daily work, and plan for the people’s future.

It didn’t look as if any expense had been spared. Strohm’s room was probably the nicest he’d ever had, with its own tiny bathroom, large soft bed, neat modern desk and leather-backed chairs. The terrace below his window was a few steps up from the beach, the grey-blue Baltic beyond, stretching to a sharp horizon.

The main conference hall, as he soon discovered, was even more impressive, a slight stage overlooking rows of comfortable chairs beneath gabled wooden rafters. It all felt so new, so modern, so clean.

The first session that afternoon was devoted to administrative procedures, and the importance of standardisation in a socialist economy. Strohm found nothing to argue with in either the initial presentation or the various remarks from the floor. Of course they had to be efficient. Who would argue otherwise? Afterwards, as they all trooped off to the dining room, he found himself hoping that future sessions would offer rather more in the way of controversy.

The food, when it arrived, was something of a shock. For one thing there was so much of it, for another everything tasted so incredibly good. Scanning the room, Strohm could see that others were just as surprised. Some agreeably so, as if they could hardly believe their luck, although others had dubious looks on their faces. Strohm could imagine the chain of thought: the initial uneasiness turning into self-doubt, and then to a sort of wry resignation-‘i won’t help anyone else by leaving it on the plate.’

Or in the bottle. Strohm knew very little about wine, but had no doubt that this was the best he had tasted. It was so smooth, so velvety. So rich.

After dinner, he joined one of the groups in the lounge. The conversation quickly settled on their pasts, and after a few minutes Strohm realised why-that was where they had to go to find their justification. They had all worked hard, often for many years, with precious little reward. Many had suffered, losing friends and family, spending years in Nazi prisons or camps. Even those in exile had hardly slept on beds of roses. After all those years of sacrifice surely a little pampering wasn’t so inappropriate.

With his head full of wine, Strohm was inclined to give them all the benefit of the doubt, and eventually a drunken chorusing of the ‘Internationale’ sent them all off to their beds with a glow in their hearts.

The journey to Vienna was as long and irksome as Russell expected it to be. It took him over three hours to reach Udine, where a further two-hour wait was promised. He resisted the temptation to drop in on Boris the hotelier for a chat about dismembered corpses and their disposal, settling instead for a second breakfast at the surprisingly well-stocked station buffet. The train for the Austrian border eventually arrived, and chugged slowly up into the mountains, eventually passing Pontebba, where he’d run into Albert Wiesner almost three years earlier, while researching the Jewish escape line to Palestine. Albert was probably commanding a brigade by now.

The border formalities took less time than Russell expected, as did the wait for his connection in Villach. He’d taken this train in the opposite direction at the end of 1945, and been uplifted by nature’s handiwork after too many months of living with man’s. The sunlit mountains looked much the same today, but he felt like a different person, and the views were only that.

At Semmering, where the British Zone ended and the Russian Zone began, the walk from train to train was the same, and the Austrian capital, at first sight, looked little repaired from 1945. Taking a taxi from the Sudbahnhof to the address in the American sector which Youklis had given him, the only real signs that thirty months had passed were the overgrown buddleias running riot in the ruins.

The address was in Josefstadt, an innocent-looking four-storey house on Florianigasse. His contact Sam Winterman had a top-floor office at the back of the building, with windows looking out on a plain brick wall. Winterman himself was tall and muscular, with a face that first looked handsome, but soon seemed merely wooden. He spoke with the sort of faint Southern accent that Russell associated, probably wrongly, with Virginia. His eyes were brown, and as dead as Youklis’s blue. ‘John Russell,’ Winterman muttered, for no apparent reason.

So far, so familiar, Russell thought, but a shock was in store.

‘Ah, good,’ Winterman said as the door behind Russell opened. ‘I think you two have met.’

They had indeed. It was Giminich-formerly Obersturmbannfuhrer Giminich of the SS Security Police, the Sicherheitsdienst-whom Russell had last seen in Prague, towards the end of 1941. And Giminich wasn’t in handcuffs, chains, or some other appropriate form of restraint. In fact, he looked as pleased with this new world as he had with that previous one. He was older, of course, and the blond hair was no longer swept back in imitation of the great god Heydrich, but the smile was still every bit as smug.

‘Herr Russell,’ Giminich said, offering his hand.

‘You’ve got be joking.’

Giminich was unperturbed. ‘I understand,’ he said, in such a way that he seemed to be apologising for Russell’s lack of manners.

‘Let’s not beat about the bush,’ Winterman said. ‘We all know that you two were enemies once, but that war is over now. And Volker here is a key player in our Czechoslovak game plan.’

Volker? Russell thought. During their last encounter in Prague, ‘Volker’ had casually ordered the shooting of ten hostages. The reason for their both being in the Czech capital had been Giminich’s command of an elaborate SD sting operation against Admiral Canaris’s Abwehr, for which Russell had then been working.

‘What do you know about Masaryk’s death?’ Winterman was asking.

‘Father or son?’ Russell asked, just to be difficult.

‘Jan Masaryk, the son,’ Winterman patiently explained. ‘He was Czech Foreign Minister until someone threw him out the window of his official residence. He was the only non-communist with a popular following in the government, so they got rid of him, and told the world he’d committed suicide.’

‘Maybe he did,’ Russell suggested, although he didn’t believe it for a minute. ‘There wasn’t much of a future for him in a communist Czechoslovakia.’

‘He was killed,’ Winterman insisted, ‘and some of Volker’s people in Prague have been gathering the evidence. Three affidavits signed by men who were in the building at the time, or saw the crime scene straight afterwards. We need you to bring them out.’

More deja vu, Russell thought. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to forge them?’ he asked.

Giminich smiled at that, but Winterman seemed faintly outraged. ‘These men have risked their lives for these documents,’ he said sternly.

‘You mean you’ve risked their lives.’

Winterman wouldn’t rise to the bait. ‘We’re not holding a gun to anyone’s head. These men are Czech patriots-they want the Russians and their commie stooges out.’

Russell felt like pointing out that the Czech communists had won post-war elections fair and square, but debating democratic values with men who had just bought an election in Italy seemed a waste of energy.

‘You’re writing a story on Czech popular culture for our magazine,’ Winterman went on.

‘Your magazine?’

‘We’ve just started one. It’s called The Lampadary-do you what that means?’

‘A bearer of light?’

‘That’s what we are. We’ve arranged for you to interview a filmmaker, a poet, and a conductor. All have leftist views, and the commie authorities are only too happy to have you talk to them-it’ll be great propaganda for them.’

‘And at some point during your stay,’ Giminich interjected, ‘you’ll be contacted by one of our people, and given the arrangements for collecting the affidavits.’

Russell nodded. In each of his last three trips to Prague, his life had hung by a thread, and this visit seemed set to continue the pattern. ‘And if at any point I smell a rat, then I just walk away?’

‘There’s no reason to think that any of my people in Prague have been turned,’ Giminich said.

‘But if it looks as if they have?’ Russell asked Winterman.

‘Well it obviously won’t help us to have the documents seized and you arrested, ‘Winterman conceded.

‘That’s all I wanted to hear.’

‘I’m not done. We won’t get anywhere being over-cautious. This is important stuff, worth a few risks.’

‘Why?’ Russell wasn’t to know. ‘I mean, why is so important? How will these affidavits help? I wasn’t joking when I said you might as well forge them, because the Soviets will certainly claim that you’ve done so, whether you have or not.’

Winterman smiled for the first time. ‘I can see where your reputation comes from,’ he told Russell.

‘For being perceptive?’

‘For being a pain in the arse. Now you have your instructions-Volker will fill you in on the details. We’ve found you a bed at the American Press Club-you know where that is?’

Russell nodded.

‘You’re travelling tomorrow, staying the weekend, coming back on Monday. With the affidavits. Right?’

‘I’ll do my humble best.’

Winterman wished him gone with a gesture, and went back to the file on his desk. Giminich ushered Russell down the corridor to a smaller office with the same brick view. The framed photograph of Patton on the wall was probably reversible, Russell thought. But who was on the back-Heydrich or Hitler?

‘Ironic, us meeting again like this,’ Giminich observed.

‘Ironic?’

‘Once we were enemies, and now we are on the same side,’ Giminich explained.

‘That’s tragedy, not irony,’ Russell told him. ‘Now give me the boring details-who, where, when. The usual preposterous password.’

The German’s eyes narrowed for a second, but the smile was soon back in place. The man had learned to control his temper on his journey from Nazi to American buddy. He had probably needed to.

Walking back towards the Press Club half an hour later, Russell found himself passing one of Vienna’s more famous hotels, and went in to ask whether, by some miraculous chance, the old telephone connection between Vienna and Berlin was operational again.

‘If you pick the right place,’ the desk clerk told him mysteriously. The lines were still officially out of use, but private calls could be arranged for a price.

Half an hour later Russell was ensconced in a what felt like a large cupboard somewhere deep in the bowels of the Central Exchange, twenty dollars lighter, and standing on a carpet of cigarette stubs. Someone was doing good business.

The telephone looked as if it had only just been screwed to the wall, but dialling their Berlin number elicited a ringing tone.

Rosa answered.

‘Rosa, it’s me, Papa.’ Russell still felt strange using that name, but she had settled on it, and Effi had told him not to discourage her.

‘Are you in Trieste? I didn’t know you could phone from there.’

‘I’m in Vienna. I should be home in a few days. Maybe Wednesday.’

‘Oh good. Do you want to tell Mama?’

‘Yes, sweetheart.’

He could hear them talking, then Effi came on. ‘In a few days?’

‘Yes, thank God.’

‘What changed their minds?’

‘Oh, this and that.’ He didn’t want to tell her about the bombing over the phone. ‘I’m off to Prague tomorrow, and I wanted you know that. I don’t really think there’s anything to worry about, but just in case. If by any chance I do disappear, then Shchepkin will eventually come looking. Tell him where I went, and he’ll ride to my rescue. Okay?’

‘Not really, but I’m used to it by now. I don’t suppose you’ll have time to look up Lisa’s daughter?’

‘I don’t know. Do you have an address?’

‘I’ll get it.’

He could hear them talking again, hear something drop. His home, he thought. He would soon be back there.

‘I just found it in the rubbish,’ Effi said. ‘She’s in Kolin.’

‘I remembered that.’

‘Seventeen Karlova Street.’

Russell wrote it down. ‘If I get the chance,’ he promised. ‘Is everything okay with you two?’

‘We’re fine. The sun was even shining today.’

‘I’ll see you next week. I love you.’

‘And I love you, too. I can’t wait.’

Which had to be worth more than twenty dollars, he thought. Twenty million perhaps.

His good mood lasted most of the evening, and it wasn’t until he was lying in bed at the press club that an unfortunate thought occurred to him. He was assuming that the Americans had forgiven Giminich his crimes in exchange for his anti-communist contacts in Prague, but what if the Austrian had kept his new allies in ignorance of some misdeeds? He might be worried that Russell would betray him. Giminich might even be worried enough to sabotage his own mission, and get Russell himself locked away.

His first stop in Prague, Russell decided, would be the Soviet Embassy; he needed one of those ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards that he’d mentioned to Shchepkin. When it came to the Czechoslovak police, he would just have to trust that these days they were playing by Soviet rules.

At the Rugen Island conference centre, the morning’s topic was ‘Material Incentives: For and Against.’ It was, Strohm thought, in many ways the crucial issue. Workers were accustomed to working for money, and deciding how hard or enthusiastically they would work according to how much they were paid, so the Party couldn’t hope to do away with material incentives in the short run. But if socialism was the goal, then a start had to be made in weaning the workers away from this way of thinking-seeds had to be sown. The question was how.

No satisfactory answers emerged, but the discussion itself was fruitful, perhaps even hopeful. Which was more than could be said for the afternoon session on ‘Central Planning and the Political Process’. This seminar made Strohm profoundly uneasy; the subheading could have been ‘Managing the People’. All in their own interest, of course. The Party always knew best, after all. It had the information, the statistics-it knew what was actually possible and what was reckless utopianism. The latter was an enduring curse-offering what couldn’t be delivered would, in the long run, lead to mass unhappiness and unrest.

The responsibility for such decisions could only be borne by the Party. An over-reliance on democratic procedures would open the door to a bourgeois resurgence, with all that that implied. The workers would again be seduced by the one big lie, that the free-for-all was fair to all, when in fact it was just a lottery, and a heavily rigged one at that.

No, they couldn’t go down that route. The Party would consult of course-no worker’s voice would go unheard-but since it alone spoke for all, it had to have the final say. There would have to be safeguards against abuses of power, but the power itself could not be questioned. Not yet.

It was a delicate balance that had to be struck and, not surprisingly, there was some disagreement as to how that should be accomplished, with some delegates arguing for more openness inside the Party, others less inclined to see the need. Strohm was in the former camp, and might have argued his case a trifle too forcibly, for that evening, after another sumptuous dinner, he was publicly taken to task by Hans Gerstein, one of the two Central Committee members who were attending the conference.

‘You people who spent the war at home,’ Gerstein began. ‘All very heroic, no doubt, but hardly a learning experience. While you were hiding from the Gestapo, those of us lucky enough to be in Moscow were learning how to run a country. Yet here you all are, looking down your noses at us!’

He was more than a little drunk, but Strohm could see he meant it. ‘Surely we can talk openly among ourselves?’

‘A naive point of view, Comrade Strohm. Any divisions weaken us. Unity is everything. We must accentuate what unites us, not what divides us.’

‘If we don’t talk things through in an open manner, how can we sure we have reached the right decisions?’

Gerstein snorted. ‘Are you no longer a Marxist-Leninist? The Party is the agency of history-its decisions have to be right.’

Strohm refused to be cowed. ‘I expect the Yugoslav Party leaders are saying much the same thing.’

Gerstein’s face turned an angry red. ‘It takes more than a few adventurers to forge a true communist party. What have these comrades ever done but kill honest German soldiers?’

Soon after six on Saturday evening a DEFA limousine arrived to take Effi and Thomas across town for the premiere of The Peacock’s Fan. With Russell away, Effi had been resigned to the lack of an escort, but when Thomas let slip that Hanna was away visiting her parents, she had successfully inveigled him into the role.

On the ride he seemed quieter than usual, and it suddenly occurred to her that he might be nervous about entering the Soviet sector.

He laughed at the suggestion. ‘God, no. The day I’m frightened to go anywhere in my own city is the day I’ll leave. What gave you that idea?’

‘You haven’t said a word since we left.’

‘Oh, I suppose I haven’t. I’m sorry. Just wretched politics-I’m beginning to regret ever standing for election.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘Why spoil the evening?’ He smiled. ‘You look fantastic, by the way.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, looking down at the low-cut burgundy dress. She had taken a lot of trouble, and for one particular reason-Tulpanov had said he would be there tonight. If she knew him, and she thought she did, then he was one who might be swayed by other things than reason.

Since Tuesday, barely an hour had gone by without her picturing Eva Kempka in a prison cell. But what could she actually do? She had telephoned everyone she could think of who might know Eva, but nobody had heard anything. She had called the police in all four sectors, and made a physical nuisance of herself at the three Western sector HQs. The only reason she hadn’t made her presence felt in the Soviet sector was a realisation that she wouldn’t help Eva by sharing her fate.

Tulpanov was the only high-ranking Soviet official with whom she was on speaking terms, and somehow or other she would make him listen. As she and Thomas were shown to their seats, she looked around for the Russian, but the rows at the front, the usual preserve of Soviet officials and guests, were still largely empty.

Surveying the scene, she had to admit that the cinema looked the part. It had been one of Berlin’s seediest in the 1930s, and the last time she’d walked down Neu Konig Strasse it hadn’t been much more than a shell. But the Russians had restored whatever grandeur it had once possessed, and added some more of their own besides. They might have given up on making better films than the Americans, but they could still out-do them when it came to glitter and pomp.

But where was the master showman? Effi was beginning to worry that Tulpanov wasn’t coming, when he suddenly appeared, striding down the aisle amidst a coterie of uniforms. As he took his seat in the front row the lights submissively dimmed.

Effi hadn’t yet seen a final cut, and the film was even better than she’d thought it would be. Watching its subtle interplay of ideas and emotions against an all too believable historical backdrop, she wondered what the officials three rows down were thinking. Could they not see the difference-the enormous difference-between this and A Walk into the Future?

When the credits rolled, Thomas turned and gave her a smile. ‘That was excellent,’ he said, like someone whose heart and mind had just been fed.

‘And how was I?’ Effi asked.

‘Oh, you’re always good.’

Tulpanov and coterie were already filing out to the lobby for the presentations. ‘Thomas,’ Effi said in a whisper. ‘I may be about to cause a bit of a stir. You might want to head straight for the limousine and wait for me there.’

Thomas shook his head. ‘What will you be making a stir about?’

‘That woman I told you about-the one who knew Sonja Strehl and thinks there was something suspicious about her death. Now she’s disappeared, and I’m going to ask Tulpanov if he knows anything about it.’

‘And why would I want to miss that?’

‘Thomas!’

‘They could hardly like me less than they do already, and they’re not going to start arresting people tonight, not after they’ve put on a show like this. But what exactly do you have in mind?’

‘I don’t know really. I was going to play it by ear.’

‘Okay, but in my experience the only way to talk to the Soviets is one-on-one, preferably with no one else in earshot. If you try and show them up in public they either get abusive or turn into hedgehogs-they certainly don’t listen.’

Which did sound sensible, Effi thought. And when the time came, and Tulpanov was standing in front of her, happily admiring her cleavage, she spoke accordingly. ‘Comrade, I need to talk to you again on a matter of some urgency. After you have finished here, in the manager’s office perhaps.’

He looked slightly nonplussed. ‘I thought we had sorted this out. I have another appointment.’

‘It’s either you or the newspapers,’ she told him.

That focused him. ‘Very well,’ he said, his voice suddenly colder.

Half an hour later, she found him and another Russian waiting for her in the office. The latter was hovering at Tulpanov’s shoulder like a teacher intent on keeping close watch on a potentially unruly pupil.

‘I wanted a private conversation,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘That will not be possible.’

‘All right. Did you know that the makeup artist on the film you just watched was kidnapped last weekend from her flat in the American sector?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Well she was. By two men who said they were policeman. One was German, the other probably Russian. From the description someone gave me they sound very much like the two who tried to arrest me. And I can find no record of her being taken to any police station in Berlin, in any sector. I will take the matter to the press, but because I respect you and all you have done for the arts in this city, I wanted to speak to you first, and see if you can shed any light on my friend’s disappearance.’

He said nothing for a few moments, as if carefully gauging his response. ‘We do not kidnap makeup artists,’ he said eventually. ‘Why on earth would we?

‘She was a friend of Sonja Strehl, and she’s been making enquiries into Sonja’s death-she doesn’t believe it was suicide, and the people she was harassing may have decided that giving her a scare would shut her up.’

While Tulpanov considered this, the other Soviet official just stared at Effi. He wasn’t looking at a woman, she though, just at a piece of meat.

‘I will look into this,’ Tulpanov said, with obvious reluctance. ‘In the meantime, I strongly advise you not to repeat these anti-Soviet accusations in public. And especially not to the Western press. As tonight’s film showed, you have done wonderful work for us-for DEFA, I mean-and I would hate to see such a mutually beneficial relationship come to an end. Let me look into it, before you do anything which can’t be undone.’

It was all she was going to get. She wanted to explode with anger, but that wouldn’t help Eva, so she thanked him for talking to her, and promised to hold fire until she heard from him again.

Tulpanov took her hand and kissed it. ‘I hope we shall meet again,’ he said, the stiffly spoken words starkly at odds with an almost fatherly look of warning. He would have made a good actor, she thought.

‘Any success?’ Thomas asked, once they were in the limousine.

‘Not really. He promised to investigate, but I got the feeling that he doesn’t have that sort of clout anymore, if he ever did. The man who was leaning over him on the other hand …’

‘MGB?’

‘I suppose so. Thomas, what else can I do?’

‘When’s John back?’

‘Sometime this week.’

‘His Soviet friends might be able to help.’

‘They might,’ Effi agreed, with more hope than conviction.

The final session of Strohm’s conference was concerned with Culture and Sport, two subjects which would normally have interested him. This time though, he gave them a miss, and went for a walk on the beach. A couple teaching their infant son to swim reminded him of his own impending fatherhood, and brought a smile to his face. At first he had wanted a boy, but over the past few days the idea of a daughter had become more appealing.

Cilly had been on his mind lately; Cilly, the first love of his life. The Gestapo might have hurled her to her death from a fourth-floor window, but she still lived on in his memory, and, through the influence she retained over him, still played her part in the world. Strohm wondered what she would think of their Party now, and how she would judge his own increasing uncertainty. She wouldn’t want him to walk away, to give up-that much he knew. But neither would she want him to lose touch with those gut feelings which had anchored their shared beliefs-the hatred of injustice, of a system in which the pleasures of the few were bought with the pain of the many.

Somewhere in all of this was a line he couldn’t cross without betraying her, without betraying himself. He still wasn’t yet clear where that line was, but he now had no doubt it existed. My Party, right or wrong, was no longer an option.

Russell’s train pulled into Prague’s Wilson Station-named after the US president who had sponsored Czechoslovak independence-soon after three on Friday afternoon. The Nazis had called it something else during the war, but he couldn’t remember what.

Both here and at the border crossing, the number of men in uniform had tripled since his last visit, and considering the swastikas hanging everywhere back then, that was some achievement. So far icy politeness was the worst he had suffered, but there was plenty of time. And it wasn’t the ones in uniform, he reminded himself, who constituted the real enemy. The Statni bezpecnost, or StB, had built itself a fearsome reputation when the post-war coalition was still in charge, and now that the communists were ruling alone, the gutter was presumably the limit.

It was a cool spring afternoon, the sun flitting between clouds. He walked across to Wenceslas Square, then down the wide Vaclavske Namesti to the Europa Hotel, already aware of being followed. When he’d stayed there in 1939 the desk clerk had been a male fan of Kafka’s; now it was a stick-thin woman who looked like she’d just eaten a lemon. But she agreed to his renewing his acquaintance with his old room, which overlooked the boulevard from the third floor. He had survived his previous stay there, which might be a good omen. With any luck he’d be in Berlin by Wednesday, back where at least a few people loved him.

After a bath he dressed and went back down in the lift, intent on seeking out a restaurant he remembered, but was accosted halfway across the lobby by a smartly dressed woman in her twenties, with short black hair and a catlike face.

‘John Russell?’ she asked, though he didn’t imagine she had any doubt. ‘My name is Petra Klima, from the Ministry of Culture. Could we talk for a few minutes?’ She gestured towards a couple of armchairs in the farthest corner of the lobby.

‘Of course,’ Russell said equably. Her English was excellent.

‘I know you have your schedule,’ she said, once they were seated, ‘and nothing has changed in the arrangements which the Ministry agreed with your magazine The Lampadary, so you have no reason to worry.’ She smiled. ‘Which is good.’

‘It is,’ Russell agreed, wondering exactly where this was going.

‘If there are any problems, or if you have any special needs, then call me on this number.’ She passed across a hand-cut piece of cardboard on which some figures had been scrawled.

‘Thank you.’

‘That is all I need to say. But for my own curiosity, I wonder if I could ask you a question about your magazine. The name-what does it mean?’

‘In the old Greek church a lampadary carried a flaming taper to light the way for his patriarch,’ Russell explained. This had been included in his CIA briefing sheet, along with other information about the Agency’s newly created-and paradoxically long-standing-arts journal.

‘I see,’ Klima said. ‘Whose idea was that-the owner’s?’

Which was seamless enough for a Hollywood script, Russell thought. ‘The Lampadary doesn’t have one,’ he told her, following his own. ‘It’s owned by a cooperative-a group of Americans who believe that art transcends politics, and can act as a unifying force.’

‘But how can art not be political?’ she wanted to know.

‘Mozart? Van Gogh?’

Klima looked doubtful. She probably thought despair at the condition of the Dutch proletariat had taken Vincent out to the cornfield. ‘Perhaps music and painting,’ she reluctantly conceded, ‘but poetry, literature?’

‘ “When a talk about trees is a crime, because it implies silence about so many horrors”,’ Russell quoted Brecht.

‘Yes, yes. That is what I mean.’

‘Well, these are the sort of questions I want to explore in my interviews,’ Russell told her. ‘How artists use their individual talents in the service of the community,’ he added glibly. ‘That’s what The Lampadary is all about.’

‘I shall look forward to reading it,’ she said, getting to her feet.

Which was more than he would, Russell thought, as he walked through the Old City in search of his restaurant. He found a building he thought he recognised, but the boards nailed across the ground-floor frontage offered no clue to its former use, and he had to settle for another establishment, a few metres farther along. This, like his hotel, seemed strangely empty, but it couldn’t be the menu to blame-Prague had suffered relatively little in the war, and if the dishes on offer at this restaurant were any guide, the economic situation was a lot better here than it was in Berlin or Vienna.

After eating, he ambled back to his hotel. The streets were subdued, as if Sunday had come a day early, and even with the window open, it was quiet enough for an early night.

He was up too early for a hotel breakfast, but a cafe was open just down the street. His first interview-with a female poet he’d never heard of-was scheduled for eleven A.M. at the Charles University, which he reckoned gave him enough time to visit the Soviet Embassy. A tram carried him north across the Stefanika Bridge, and a short walk down Pod Kastany brought him to the Embassy gates.

The preceding ten years-and Shchepkin’s patient tutoring over the past three-had vastly honed his skills when it came to dealing with Soviet officialdom, and he emerged only fifteen minutes later with the local MGB emergency number for Soviet agents in distress. After his tram dropped him at the eastern end of the Charles Bridge, he walked across the river and up the hill, arriving at the university with ten minutes to spare.

The poet, a woman in her fifties, was a delight. A lifelong communist with an apparently bottomless faith in human possibility, she had met and befriended several of the current government at university in the years following the First War. She cheerfully admitted that a few might succumb to megalomania, but insisted the others would sort them out. This, as she said with a laugh, wasn’t Poland; this was country with a long industrial history, and a politically conscious working class to prove it. As for the arts, there might be some temporary limits, but the eventual flowering would be more than worth it.

The conductor, whom he interviewed that afternoon in a well-appointed Old City apartment, was pleasant enough but far less interesting. His recent adherence to the Party, Russell quickly realised, had less to do with ideology than Soviet sponsorship of his chosen field. While the Nazis had belittled Smetana and Dvorak, the Soviets had presided over the post-war resurrection of these two Czechs in particular and classical music in general. The way this conductor talked, one could be forgiven for thinking that Stalin had personally driven a van-load of surplus violins all the way from Moscow.

Which, Russell supposed, was the point. Since classical music was, to most intents and purposes, politically neutral, the Soviets could pick up cultural brownie points from promoting it. And for people like this conductor, the future was set fair-as long as he kept any non-musical opinions to himself, he could expect a secure and privileged life. Russell didn’t like the man or his Habsburg furniture very much, but that was neither here nor there.

Walking back to the Europa, he wondered what Winterman and Co would do with these interviews. Just print them verbatim, he supposed. It would be good propaganda for the Soviets in the short run; but the CIA would be playing a long game, establishing the magazine’s reputation for political impartiality, so that when they eventually stuck in the knife, it would be that much more effective.

Sitting down to another excellent meal, Russell wondered how much easier his life would have been if he’d just done what he was told. Why hadn’t he? What had made him the pain in the arse that Winterman and others thought him? His father had been conventional to a fault, his mother more rebellious in spirit, although not when it really mattered. The First War had confirmed Russell’s belief that the status quo was a kind of freewheeling murderous cock-up that only served the rich, but he’d felt that since he was about fourteen. A born communist, except that when the time came, he had rejected the comrades as well.

What did it matter? He was who he was, approaching fifty with the same basic anger, a disgust that seemed to be deepening, and a lack of answers that was almost comical. The only trick, he suspected, was to look for love in the margins, but even they seemed narrower by the year.

Back in his room, he was preparing for bed when the softest of knocks sounded on his door.

A man was outside, middle-aged, with luxuriant iron-grey hair which flopped across his forehead. He was wearing what looked like two halves of different suits and a white shirt smeared with egg stains. He also had a finger raised to his lips.

Russell let the man in, and followed him into the bathroom. Once the tap was running, his visitor curtly offered the agreed password-‘spring is beautiful in Prague’-and introduced himself as Karel. He didn’t, however, have affidavits stuffed in his pockets. ‘They wouldn’t be safe in your room, and these days foreigners are often stopped and searched on the street, so we must hand them to you at the final moment. When do you leave?’

‘At six o’clock on Monday, from Wilson Station. The evening train to Vienna.’

‘Okay. You know where the National Museum is?’

‘Yes.’

‘There are two entrances, one at the top of the boulevard and a second on the far side, in the gardens. Get to the first at around three thirty P.M., check your suitcase as if you’re intent on touring the exhibits until it’s time to go to the station, then shake your shadow and leave by the back entrance. From that door you can see the end of Rimska Street, and there is a small cafe, with a dark-red awning, about fifty metres down. There’s no name outside, but should you need to ask, locals know it as the Galuska Cafe. Be there by five, and order a coffee. Within a few minutes a departing customer will offer you a newspaper that they’ve finished with, and the affidavits will be inside. Once you have them, go back to the museum, pick up your suitcase and shadow, and walk to the station. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

‘Good. And good luck.’ He gave Russell a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and headed for the outer door.

Russell reached to turn off the tap, then remembered he hadn’t yet brushed his teeth. ‘Some more cloak-and-dagger to look forward to,’ he told his reflection in the mirror.

Sunday morning was sunny, warm, and ideal for sightseeing, but Russell reluctantly decided that Lisa’s daughter Uschi had a prior claim on his time. Over breakfast he thought the matter through, and decided that there was no cause for subterfuge. The communist government had not, as far as he knew, introduced any new restrictions on the movements of foreigners, so a morning trip out to Kolin shouldn’t set any legal tripwires twanging. And unless the Czech Embassy in Berlin was keeping its business to itself, the authorities here in Prague would already know that Lisa Sundgren, the former Liesel Hausmann, was trying to track down her daughter Uschi. What could be more natural than her asking him to look up the girl while he was in the vicinity?

There seemed no reason why Uschi should suffer from the attention. The Czech authorities already knew who her parents were, and she couldn’t help the fact that her father had been a wealthy industrialist.

So he would go to Kolin that morning, and take his shadow along for the ride, because shaking him off would indeed look suspicious, and make him harder to ditch on Monday, when he really was doing something illicit.

His latest shadow-the third so far-was lurking in the lobby, as yet unaware of the journey in store. The Kolin trains went from Masaryk Station, which in the past he had always used on his trips to and from Berlin-it was here Giminich’s goons had intercepted him seven years earlier. The Nazis had called it the Hibernerbahnhof, but the original name had been restored in 1945. As he walked in through the gabled glass front of the terminus Russell wondered if the new government would change it again, now that it served as a reminder of the son’s suspicious demise.

There was a train to Kolin in twenty-five minutes. He bought a return ticket and took a seat on the concourse. His shadow, who had followed him into the booking office, and doubtless enquired as to where he was going, now strode across to one of the public phone booths, and peered out at Russell before dialling a number. After brief conversation, he re-emerged and took a seat of his own. Head Office had apparently sanctioned their jaunt to Kolin.

The forty-mile journey took almost two hours, the train squeaking to a halt at every conceivable platform, and a few other places beside. The booking office clerk at Kolin had never heard of Karlova Street, but one of the waiting passengers had-it was out on the other side of town, a fifteen-minute walk away. Once through the centre, he should follow the smell of the brewery.

His shadow had walked straight through to the forecourt, for reasons that now became clear-he’d been met by a local colleague in a Skoda Popular. They and their car now settled into Russell’s wake, purring along behind him at walking pace as he headed across town. Once through the centre, a group of boys playing football gave him further directions to Karlova Street, and soon he was walking down a line of workers’ cottages, looking for Number 17.

A woman in her fifties or sixties answered his knock.

‘Uschi Hausmann?’ he asked, knowing it couldn’t be her.

She shut the door without a word, but gently enough to suggest she might be back.

A young man re-opened it. There was an enamel red star in his jacket lapel, and he didn’t look particularly friendly, but to Russell’s relief he spoke passable Russian. ‘What’s your business with Uschi?’ he asked aggressively.

Russell explained that he had a message from her mother.

‘What message? Her mother abandoned her.’

‘The message is for her.’

He thought about that for a few seconds, then stepped aside for Russell to enter. A girl of about twenty was waiting in the front room, looking anxious. Her wavy blonde hair framed a strikingly beautiful face. She spoke German of course, but insisted on translating everything for the young man, whom she introduced as Ladislav. ‘I thought my mother was dead,’ was the first thing she said after Russell had explained his reason for being there. ‘Where has she been all these years?’

Russell explained as best he could.

‘So she’s in Berlin. Why didn’t she come herself?’

‘The authorities won’t give her a visa. You may not know it, but your government in Prague has been restricting travel in and out of the country over the past few months.’

The boy bristled at that. ‘It’s the Western governments who have been making things difficult. They send many spies-everyone knows it.’

‘Whoever’s to blame,’ Russell told Uschi, ‘your mother can’t get to you. So she is hoping that you can come to her. I’m sure the government wouldn’t stand in the way of a family reunion,’ he added, more for the young man’s benefit than because he really believed it.

Ladislav was shaking his head. ‘This is out of the question. We are getting married in a few weeks.’

‘Ah. I understand. Would you like to write to your mother?’ he asked Uschi. ‘I could take a letter back with me.’

She looked uncertain.

‘Ladislav said that you think she abandoned you,’ Russell said. ‘I have to tell you that she believes she saved you from the Gestapo by sending you off to the mountains, and that when they came for her, she had no choice but to run. That if she hadn’t abandoned you, you would be an orphan.’

‘It’s been so long.’

‘America is a long way away, and she had a baby to look after. You have a little sister.’

She said something to Ladislav in Czech, which Russell guessed was a plea for permission. When he nodded, she turned back to Russell, and said she would write the letter. Would he like some tea while he waited?

Now that the main matter was decided, Ladislav seemed to relax, and the two of them spent the next twenty minutes discussing Czechoslovakia’s future. The lad obviously cared for his country, fellow citizens and soon-to-be wife, but Russell wouldn’t have entered him in a political perspicacity contest. He kept his own fears for Czechoslovakia to himself, and hoped that in this one instance he would be proved wrong.

Eventually Uschi emerged, her letter written and sealed. ‘I hope my mother understands,’ she told Russell. ‘That I’m grown-up now, and my place is here. I’ve included a photograph of Ladislav and me, so that she’ll know.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be happy that you’re happy,’ Russell told her. ‘And I’m sure she’ll write back, now that she knows exactly where you are. And later, when things are a bit more settled, maybe she can visit you or you can visit her.’

‘America is a long way away,’ Ladislav insisted, but Russell could see the young man was drawn by the prospect. As he turned to leave, he remembered the Skoda outside. ‘I was followed when I came here,’ he told them, ‘and I expect they’ll follow me back again. But later, someone will want to ask you what we talked about. I just thought I’d warn you, so it’s not a surprise.’

Walking back to the station, the car twenty metres behind him, he thought about Lisa Sundgren. He’d never met her of course, but they shared one terrible thing-both had been forced to choose between leaving a child and almost certain death. He had never really hesitated, because both were forms of abandonment, and the former at least held hope of eventual reunion, but he was still acutely aware of what havoc his sudden departure had wreaked on Paul’s psyche.

And now, just like his own son, Lisa’s long-lost daughter was getting married, setting the distance between them in stone. From this point forth the best either could hope for were letters full of news and strangers’ names, pictures of grandchildren, and once-in-a-blue-moon visits.

The Soviet response to Effi’s challenge-or at least its first instalment-arrived on Monday morning. The top-grade ration card given to first-rank artists was being withdrawn, on the grounds that she was no longer actively pursuing her career in Berlin. Her rejection of the DEFA script proved as much.

This was annoying, but hardly shattering. With Russell’s multiple employers and Zarah’s American connection their extended family wasn’t short on privilege, economic or otherwise.

The second instalment, which appeared at Effi’s door that afternoon, was of another order altogether. The official from City Hall looked meek enough, but the message he brought was potentially devastating. Irregularities had been discovered in their adoption of Rosa, which was now to be reviewed. There were doubts as to whether sufficient diligence had been exerted in the search for Rosa’s real father, doubts as to whether a former star of the National Socialist film industry could be considered a suitable parent.

Effi treated the official with what seemed appropriate disdain, but dissolved into tears the moment the door closed behind him. It was all absurd, but what did right or reason have to do with it? They were playing their games to win, and they didn’t care how.

The film director Jaromir Cisar was short and wiry, with longish black hair and busy eyes. His Smichov apartment had a distinctly Bohemian air, which wasn’t that common in Gottwald’s Bohemia. Shelves and tables were crowded with exotic objets d’art, walls plastered with film stills. Some of the latter were doubtless from Cisar’s own films, but others Russell recognised-the dentist’s chair scene from Horse Feathers, Dietrich wreathed in smoke on the Shanghai Express, Arletty and a love-sick Jean-Louis Barrault in Les Enfants du Paradis.

Cisar was talkative enough, but Russell had the sense of someone calibrating his answers quite carefully. He was, he said, convinced that good films could be made in the current political climate, but the way he said it made you wonder whether they would be. ‘Let me put it this way-everyone knows that in capitalist countries commercial pressures distort the artistic process. Well, we have to admit it, so do political pressures in the new socialist countries. In both environments, artists have to make compromises that they don’t really want to make. And in both environments it’s possible to … I am looking for the right verb here, and the one that comes to mind is “smuggle”-so, it’s possible to smuggle good work past the distorters.’

‘So socialism offers no advantage to the artist?’

‘Oh, I didn’t say that. Under capitalism, the freedom to create is spurious, because it so rarely transcends the individual. Under socialism, the artist is invited, encouraged, to use his creativity for the society as a whole. Which means that in the more popular forms-like cinema-we can offer something more than shallow entertainment. There is a deeper purpose at work.’

The more Cisar talked, the more Russell wished he’d actually seen one of the man’s films. He remembered Effi being complimentary about one of them, and said as much to the director.

‘You are married to Effi Koenen! She is one my favourite German actors-some of her recent work with DEFA-well, it’s been superb. She always had a face made for the camera, but these days … Look,’ Cisar said, leaping up and striding across to the wall of pictures, ‘here she is in The Man I Shall Kill.’

And there she was, playing Greta Larstein. It wasn’t a still that Russell had seen before, and it felt strange finding it there, on a Prague apartment wall.

‘She doesn’t speak Czech by any chance?’

‘No.’

‘Well, maybe I will work in Berlin one day,’ he said, still looking at the photo. ‘What a face she has!’ He closed his eyes, as if picturing her in front of his camera.

As they said goodbye at the door, Cisar twice insisted that Russell pass on his respect and admiration for Effi’s recent work, and he loudly lamented the fact that any flowers he sent her would be dead before they reached Berlin.

Russell walked down to the river, pleased that someone Effi admired liked her so much in return. In the 1930s she had often seemed too good for the roles she was asked to play, but over the past few years most of the parts had given her talents full rein. At least one good thing had come out of their unfortunate Russian connections, he thought, as he walked out across the Legii Bridge. The Charles was divided by Strelecky Island at this point, and down to his left he could see the site of his first contact with the Resistance in the last month of peace, a bench now occupied by two old women. One day he would like to arrive in Prague with no clandestine meetings in prospect. Some hope.

Feeling hungry, Russell walked into the first decent-looking restaurant he found on Narodni. Anticipating a likely dearth of edible fare on his evening train, he ordered three courses and a bottle of expensive Moravian wine. The American taxpayers would have to fork up, which served them right for employing Winterman.

It was three P.M. by the time he got back to the Europa, which made packing and checking out a hurried affair, but the local clocks were only just striking the half-hour when he passed through the National Museum’s front entrance, the usual distance ahead of his StB shadow. After handing his suitcase in at the cloakroom, he leisurely sauntered on into the first gallery, abruptly changing pace the moment he was out of sight. His tail, having lost him, would have no choice but to stay with his luggage.

He found the back entrance without much trouble, lingered a while to make sure he had thrown off the shadow, then started down Rimska. He could already see the dark-red awning, a splash of colour in the grey stone street. Or perhaps, the thought crossed his mind, a red rag to a bull.

At least this treff, as the Soviets called such meetings, was in a public place. If the UDBA officers had shot him dead at Pograjac’s lonely Belgrade apartment, the rest of the world would have been none the wiser.

Only two of the tables were occupied, one by a middle-aged man in a suit, the other by a young woman in a blue summer dress. Both had folded newspapers in front of them.

As instructed, Russell ordered a cup of Viennese coffee. He still felt full from lunch, and one sip was sufficient to deter any more.

A shadow crossed his table, and the girl was standing over him, holding out the paper and saying something in Czech. The stress in her voice was palpable, but then she didn’t have an MGB help number.

‘Dekuji,’ he said with a smile, using up most of his Czech vocabulary.

She nodded abruptly and walked out through the open door.

He carefully opened the paper, making sure that anything falling out would land in his lap. An envelope did.

Knowing it was out of sight, he let it lie there while making a show of refolding the paper and examining its front page. He only recognised a few of the words, but the picture featured a smiling Klement Gottwald, surrounded by eager young children. After a few moments he held the paper up as if he was reading the bottom half, and slickly moved the envelope from lap to inside pocket.

It was time he got back to the museum. After digging out some coins for the tip, he headed for the street.

They were waiting on the pavement, two to the left and two to the right. He didn’t resist, but they insisted on frog-marching him to the paddy wagon and almost throwing him into the back. It was only when the door clanged shut that he realised the girl was there with him, tears already glistening on her cheeks. When he responded to her rapid-fire Czech with a shrug of incomprehension, she began to sob, and he took her in his arms.

The drive took fewer than five minutes, and they were separated on arrival in the cobbled courtyard. Russell was led down a flight of worn stone steps, past several cells of Thirty Years War vintage, and propelled through the empty door of the very last one. As he turned to protest, a fist rammed into his stomach, doubling him up and exposing the back of his neck to some sort of truncheon. This put him on his knees for a split second, before one boot tipped him over, and another took the wind from his chest. He was still laboriously trying to curl himself up when he heard the cell door slam.

After lying there for a few minutes, he painfully manoeuvred himself into a sitting position, up against the wall. He had no memory of their being taken, but watch, wallet and affidavits were gone. So too was his ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, the local MGB’s telephone number. He had taken the precaution of memorising it, but the recent assault had apparently scrambled his memory.

It was at least two hours before they came back for him. This time there was no violence, just more stone steps and cold efficiency. He reckoned the room he ended up in was on the third floor, but the lack of a window meant he couldn’t be sure. This lack was comforting, though-the Czechs were famous for their defenestrations.

The latest interrogator shared traits with several of his predecessors-a uniform pressed within an inch of its life, a fussy way with his hands, and a smugness quotient of around 200 percent. This one’s name was Colonel Hanzelka, and the only remaining question was whether or not he was also a sadist.

At least he spoke German. Russell wasted no time announcing his attachment to the MGB.

Hanzelka looked incredulous.

‘Telephone their Embassy,’ Russell told him. ‘Better still, call the number which is in the wallet your men took. It’s a direct line to the local MGB.’

The Colonel gave him one more look, then turned to a subordinate. Russell didn’t understand their interchange, but the subordinate’s subsequent exit boded well.

‘If you work for the MGB, why are you part of an American plot against this country?’ Hanzelka asked icily.

‘I don’t think the Soviets would thank me for telling you.’

‘The Soviets are our allies, not our masters, and this is not the Soviet Union. You would be well advised to remember that.’

Russell nodded. ‘As long as you’re happy keeping Moscow’s secrets, I’m happy to explain.’

That brought doubt to Hanzelka’s eyes, but he overrode it. ‘Please do.’

‘The Americans think I work for them. Occasionally I’m ordered to do something which strengthens their illusion.’

‘You are a double-agent?’ The Czech sounded surprised, though God only knew why.

‘Of course,’ Russell told him.

‘Well, well.’

The subordinate returned, and another exchange took place in Czech.

‘Comrade Rusikov is on his way,’ Hanzelka told Russell, who tried not to look too relieved. ‘Since we’re on the same side,’ the Colonel was saying, ‘you might as well tell me what you know about this operation.’

‘It looks like you know it all already.’

‘Most of it,’ Hanzelka conceded.

‘I was asked to collect some signed affidavits. Statements from people who witnessed Jan Masaryk’s murder.’

Hanzelka was smiling.

‘Fakes, I presume.’

‘How could they not be when Masaryk jumped?’

‘They were bait,’ Russell suggested.

‘Of course.’

They had probably rolled up half of Giminich’s organisation, Russell thought. Which felt strangely satisfying until he remembered the girl in the blue dress.

‘So, who was in charge of this operation?’ Hanzelka asked.

‘An Austrian named Volker Giminich.’

‘On his own?’

Russell was reluctant to name Winterman, who as far as he knew wasn’t a mass murderer. But neither did he want the Soviets to find out that he was keeping things from them. He opted for partial disclosure: ‘An American was in nominal charge, of course, but Giminich is running the show.’

‘He likes to do that,’ Hanzelka allowed.

‘You know him?’

‘He was based here during the war-one of Heydrich’s more zealous disciples.’

Russell wondered whether to reveal his own previous acquaintance with Giminich, and decided against it. His earlier visits to Czechoslovakia seemed like a can of worms best left unopened-he had no idea what had happened to the Czechs he had been involved with in 1939 and 1941, or whose side they might now be on. ‘The Americans have some strange allies,’ was all he said.

‘ “Strange” is not the word I would use to describe Volker Giminich.’

‘You know him better than I do,’ Russell said, realising it must be true. This Czech had a personal score to settle.

Rusikov’s arrival spared him the details. The MGB officer gave Hanzelka a warm handshake, and Russell something more perfunctory. For the next few minutes the conversation was conducted in Czech.

‘You will take the affidavits to Vienna as planned,’ Rusikov told Russell eventually.

He looked suitably surprised.

‘They won’t stand close scrutiny,’ Rusikov explained. ‘If the Americans publish them, we will have no trouble proving they are forgeries. People will assume one of two things, that the Americans forged them themselves, or that they were duped by their own supporters here in Prague.’

‘Okay, I’ll take them.’

‘You realise that Giminich must not know that any of his people have been arrested,’ Rusikov went on. ‘Some have already been turned, and we hope to entice him close to the border-so a snatch squad can bring him back here for trial.’

‘I understand,’ Russell said. And he did. Put Giminich in a Prague courtroom, and the new Czech authorities would be able to draw damning connections between Nazi war crimes, American spies, and the regime’s current domestic opponents. A real political bonanza.

The Soviets were so much better at this stuff than the Americans. If they had a cause worth fighting for they’d be damn near invincible.

‘You can still catch the night train,’ Hanzelka was telling him. ‘The lieutenant here’-he indicated the young man who had just arrived with Russell’s suitcase-‘;will take you to the station and make the arrangements.’

As they emerged on to Bartolomejska, where a car was waiting, Russell glanced back at the building. It seemed utterly anonymous; the grey walls and shuttered windows were a highly effective mask. Somewhere in the basement the girl in the blue dress would still be crying.

The lieutenant said nothing on their drive, but proved singularly efficient when it came to securing him a private sleeping compartment. Russell had concluded that he only spoke Czech, but at the carriage door the young man wished him ‘a safe journey, Comrade’, before striding almost jauntily back down the platform.

The train set off on time, its large locomotive convulsively blowing off steam. There was, Russell discovered, no restaurant or bar on board, so he spent the next fifteen minutes by an open window, enjoying the warm air on his face, gazing out at the dark countryside. Dark in more ways than one, he thought. He wouldn’t come this way again in a hurry.

Considering the terrible state of the track, sleep came quite easily, and when he finally woke they weren’t much more than an hour from Vienna. It was still only seven A.M. when he finished his breakfast in the Nordbahnhof buffet, so he took a taxi to Josefstadt, and sat enjoying the morning sunshine in a small park not far from the house on Florianigasse. He resisted the temptation to read the affidavits-if and when they blew up in Winterman’s face, he wanted the man to remember that the envelope had been sealed.

He knocked on the CIA’s door at nine A.M., and was surprised to find both Winterman and Giminich already at work. They were excited by the affidavits, and appreciative of his efforts, which at least made a change. They asked very few questions-their operation had gone according to plan, which was only to be expected. And no, there was nothing to detain him further. With the help of the duty officer downstairs he should be back in Berlin by evening.

As it turned out, that day’s flights were already full, but Russell was happy to spend another day in Vienna-his Rat Line story needed a few hours’ work, and it would be safer to send it on from there-Berlin’s channels of communication were less reliable and much less discreet. At the American Press Club he commandeered a typewriter, and spent most of the rest of the day turning his notes into a series of three articles that would, he hoped, embarrass the hell out of any institution with a moral compass. Whether the State Department and Vatican qualified as such was another matter.

After sending it all off to Solly Bernstein in London, Russell walked around to the Press Club. There he found an abandoned London Times, in which he learnt that the Nationalists had won the previous week’s election in South Africa. From earlier reports he knew that these were people who believed in keeping the country’s races apart, and apartheid was apparently the name of their creed, the Afrikaans for ‘separate development’. This was post-war progress, he thought-from Aryans murdering Jews to Aryans merely enslaving Negroes. And all in three short years!

After dinner in a local restaurant he walked over to the Central Exchange and purchased another illicit telephone call to Berlin. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he told Effi. ‘The flight from Frankfurt should reach Tempelhof around four, give or take an hour or so.’

Effi’s ‘thank God’ was a little too heartfelt.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing. Not yet, anyway. Someone turned up at the door and suggested that Rosa’s adoption might not be legal.’

‘Who? When?’

‘Yesterday. He said he was from City Hall, and he probably was, but the Russians must be behind it. Thinking it over, I feel sure they’re just trying it on, but at the time I felt almost hysterical.’

‘I can see why.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll come to the airport.’

She sounded calm enough, but Russell could hear the tension in her tone. Next morning, as his military flight droned its way across Bavaria, he found himself willing the pilot to step on the gas, as if some inner voice was warning him that their time was finally running out.