Masaryk Station (John Russell) (35 page)

For all that, he felt reluctant to leave. He couldn’t shake the thought that he might have been watched, that someone had seen him bury something, and was only waiting out there in the dark for the chance to dig it up. He knew it was crazy, but there it was. And as he sat there, Russell remembered Mordechai Kohn, the death camp escapee he had interviewed a year or so after the war. Mordechai’s survival tip was to imagine how things might pan out, like a novelist unfolding a plot in his mind, and then take what steps seemed appropriate to help himself and hinder his enemy. ‘A simple example,’ he told Russell, ‘you imagine people coming to arrest you. What will you do when they knock on your door? Well, the first thing you do is head for a back window. And if it’s already open, that will save you precious seconds. So you go and open the window now,
before
they knock on your door.’

Sitting against the tree in the rapidly-darkening forest, Russell tried to follow the young Jew’s advice. He imagined what might happen, and what he could do about it. One thing came to mind.

It became apparent next morning that their days of waiting were also likely to decide the fate of the city. The morning papers bore out Shchepkin’s predictions of the previous day, and later that morning an RIAS news reporter announced that General Clay had rejected
‘in toto
Soviet claims to the city of Berlin’. This was followed up
midafternoon by the much-anticipated news that the Western currency reform would be extended to include Berlin. Details would be broadcast at eight that evening.

Like most of the city’s inhabitants, Russell, Effi, and Rosa tuned in to hear them. From midnight on Friday, the old Reichsmarks could be exchanged for new Deutschmarks, on a one-to-one basis for the first sixty, and at a rapidly declining rate thereafter.

‘The shops will be packed for the next two days,’ Effi said.

‘Those that are open.’

The three of them went down to Ku’damm to see what was happening, and found the pavements jammed with people trying to spend their Reichsmarks on goods or extravagant dining. But most of the shops had shut early, and several restaurants had already altered their menus, offering only food that would spoil, and hoarding the rest until the change had been made.

‘Have we got any bills to pay?’ Russell asked Effi on the way home. ‘Because now’s the time to pay them.’

Next morning they woke to a steady drizzle, and the news that the Soviets had closed the road and railways between the Western Zones and Berlin. Some people, though, were already fighting back. KPD demonstrators had been thwarted the previous evening when they’d to break up a City Assembly meeting, and the latter had then decided by a large majority to allow competition between the new Western currency and its Soviet counterpart.

Another hour, and RIAS was reporting sporadic power failures in all three Western sectors of the city. Asked to explain these interruptions in the electricity supply, a Soviet spokesmen claimed serious ‘technical difficulties’ were affecting one of the generating stations in their sector.

Soon after that, Thomas phoned. There was going to be a mass meeting at the Hertha stadium that afternoon—Russell was
welcome to a lift if he wanted to come. He did. An hour or so later, when Thomas arrived at the door, the American garrison commander Frank Howley was spitting defiance on the wireless. After promising Berliners that the American people wouldn’t let them starve, he warned the Soviets not to trespass in his sector. ‘We are ready for you—and if the day comes, believe me, many a comrade will go across the golden Volga.’

‘The Chinese curse,’ Thomas said, as they both walked down to the car, ‘to live in interesting times.’

To Russell’s surprise, the Plumpe stadium was packed to capacity, something it had never quite managed in all his and Paul’s years of watching Hertha. It had been a day of ominous portents, but the mood among the crowd was unmistakably upbeat. Hardship might be in prospect, but so was real change, and after the past five years that was a deal that most Berliners were more than willing to make. As Ernst Reuter, the main speaker, explained: It was about systems, not money—while the latter could conceivably be integrated, the former could not. The choice was between a Soviet Berlin and a divided Berlin—there was no third option.

Russell knew he was right, but still felt saddened at the thought of his home being sundered in two.

For Thomas, though, the glass was half-f. ‘Bastards have been running our Berlin for fifteen years. Better to get half of it back than none.’

Gerhard Ströhm couldn’t remember a morning when he’d felt less inclined to go to work. He had arrived home the previous evening to a long tirade from Annaliese about conditions at the hospital; the electricity supply cuts, which everyone was quite rightly blaming on the Soviets, had necessitated a reduction in surgery hours. What sort of people, she raged, used the sick as a weapon to blackmail their enemies?

Ströhm had had no answer for her then, and walking to work had none for himself. He still found it hard to believe that the Soviets intended starving the city into submission, still hoped that it was all a big bluff in extremely bad taste. As if to remind him of what was at stake, yet another American C-47 roared in across the rooftops a few streets behind him on its approach to Tempelhof. If it was a bluff, it looked as if the Allies were preparing to call it.

He didn’t think the morning could get any worse, but he was wrong. A note calling him upstairs was waiting on his desk, and Ströhm knew he was in trouble when Marohn mentioned ‘the business’ at Rummelsburg. ‘You did well there,’ his boss told him. ‘So now that a similar problem has arisen again, well, the people upstairs are hoping you can repeat the trick.’

Ströhm didn’t like the suggestion that he’d ‘tricked’ the workers at the railway repair shops—and, by implication, had ‘tricked’ Utermann into taking his own life—but he let it go. Worse seemed likely to follow, and Marohn was only the messenger, and so Ströhm simply nodded his acquiescence, and waited for the explanation.

The ‘similar problem’ had arisen in Aue, a small town in Saxony. Railways workers there were refusing to load ore from Wismut’s uranium mines, and the Soviet authorities were hoping that their German comrades could straighten the situation out. If not, they would have to take ‘administrative measures’.

‘Why are the workers refusing?’ Ströhm asked.

‘You’ll have to ask Manfred Pieck—he’s the local union leader.’

‘No relation to Wilhelm, I assume.’ Wilhelm Pieck was second only to Ulbricht in the KPD hierarchy.

‘No, but he is a Party veteran. Joined in 1926. He ran the underground in Chemnitz during the war.’

Another Utermann, Ströhm thought, his heart sinking at the prospect.

‘I’ve arranged a car for you,’ Marohn was saying, as if that might make the job palatable. ‘With a chauffeur, of course.’

‘I can drive myself,’ Ströhm retorted. ‘But why don’t I just take a train? If I arrive like visiting royalty no one’ll listen to me.’

‘The Soviets will, and that’s the point. They’ll only treat you as an equal if you look like one.’

Ströhm knew when he was beaten. ‘All right. But I will drive myself.’

Which was easier said than done, of course. He had learned to drive at university almost twenty years earlier, but had hardly been behind a steering wheel since. People said you never forgot, but his first few miles in the shiny Horch 851 were a painful lesson in remembering. The watching faces on the pavement, he noticed, seemed universally contemptuous, though whether of his driving or his privileged status he couldn’t be sure.

According to Marohn, the autobahn would ‘whisk’ him all the way to Chemnitz, but his boss obviously hadn’t been down it recently. There were pot holes everywhere, and huge cracks in the concrete hosting columns of swaying weeds. On the bright side, it was virtually empty, and after a while Ströhm began to enjoy himself, slaloming south across the crumbling surface. He loved trains, and the chance they gave you to sit by the window and watch the world go by; but there was something just as liberating about sitting alone in a car, controlling your own direction and speed. An illusion of independence perhaps, but an intoxicating one nonetheless.

Soon after six P.M. Ströhm reached Chemnitz, where Marohn had suggested he spend the night. He found the local Party office easily enough, and was given a room reserved for official guests in the nearby hotel. The owner was too sycophantic for words, but both dinner and room were more than adequate. After eating he went upstairs, and read until his eyelids began to droop. As he drifted into
sleep, he wondered what the next day would bring, what challenge to his conscience awaited him in Aue.

Russell woke with a start on Saturday morning, not knowing where he was. He’d been walking down a snow-covered street, with shadows lurking in every doorway, but here was Effi making gentle snuffling noises in her sleep.

Shchepkin should be in Moscow, he thought. He would probably be seeing Beria that day. Russell didn’t need to imagine the rage on the Georgian’s face when he heard what Shchepkin had to tell him—he’d seen it in the film.

From now until Tuesday, these were the dangerous days. Shchepkin would tell Beria that if he wasn’t back in Berlin by then, Russell would make his copy available to the Americans. And as Shchepkin had said, the sensible thing for Beria to do was accept the deal on offer, and for him to get used to the idea that at least one other recording of him committing murder was hidden out of reach. But would Beria be able to do this? Or would he hold on to Shchepkin, and gamble on scooping Russell up by Tuesday? In that case Beria would assume that once everyone was safely ensconced in the Lyubyanka, eliciting the location of the films would not present too great a problem. And in this he was certainly right.

Russell slipped out of bed, walked across to the window, and lifted the edge of the curtain. Since he wasn’t expecting to see anything, the car standing by the opposite kerb a little way down the street came as something of a shock. Especially as there didn’t appear to be anyone in it.

Were they already in the house, coming up the stairs?

He walked quickly through to the other room, checked that the bolts were drawn on the apartment door, and put his ear to the wood. If there was anyone out there, they were very quiet.

He went back to take another look at the car, only to find it was gone. A false alarm, he thought, but as someone wise once said, a false alarm was only a real one waiting to happen.

He woke Effi. ‘You know we talked about going away for the weekend? Well, I think we should.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’

‘Nothing yet. But it’s the safe thing to do.’

‘Okay, but where?’

‘You remember that hotel on Havelsee we stayed at, back when we were young?’

‘The one we never left. The bed we never left.’

‘That one.’

‘I can’t imagine it’s still there.’

‘The bed or the hotel?’

‘The hotel.’

‘It is. I called them yesterday, and they said they had some rooms. As long as we paid in dollars.’

‘Okay, so when do we leave?’

‘The sooner the better.’

Effi went in to wake Rosa, and found her getting dressed. ‘Sweetheart, we’re all going away for the weekend.’

Rosa’s face lit up. ‘Where to?’

‘The Havelsee. There’s a hotel we know. So pack up your drawing stuff and a book to read.’

She went back to Russell. ‘We have to tell Zarah. And Thomas.’

‘Tell them what?’

‘I don’t know. Something. If Beria’s people do come looking for us, the first places they’ll try when they draw a blank here are Zarah’s and Thomas’s. We have to give them some kind of warning.’

‘You’re right,’ Russell agreed reluctantly. ‘But don’t scare the life out of Zarah, or we’ll never get away.’

‘So what do I tell her? It’s okay to worry, but not too much?’

Russell grinned. ‘Just tell her that’s there probably nothing to worry about, but to keep her eyes open, just in case. And tell her not to let any strangers into the flat.’

They made the calls. Zarah, as predicted, was upset, and angry at Effi for making her so. Thomas was his usual stoic self: ‘If I understand you right, you’re not going to tell me where you’re going, and you don’t want me to tell anyone else.’

Fifteen minutes later they were carrying their bags down the stairs. If they’d forgotten something crucial, at least it wasn’t the gun that Russell had bought in Wedding the previous day, as that was in his pocket.

The street outside was blissfully empty, the walk to the station free of alarms, false or otherwise. But Rosa knew there was something up. ‘This feels like an adventure,’ she said as they climbed the stairs to the platform.

Aue was an hour’s drive southwest from Chemnitz, but Ströhm had only been going ten minutes when the first checkpoint appeared. There were no signs to say so, but he was clearly passing into territory the Soviets considered their own. After his credentials had been examined with almost painful thoroughness, he was given explicit instructions on where to report in Aue, and strongly warned against leaving his present road for any reason at all. As he drove on through the pleasant Saxon hills, the Erzegebirge looming on the southern horizon, Ströhm wondered what terrible secrets might lurk down the various turnings.

Aue sat in the mouth of a valley, a much smaller town than Chemnitz, but with more sense of bustle. At the Soviet Military Administration office on the town’s main street, the MGB officer that Marohn had mentioned—a Major Abakumov—was waiting for
him. The Russian greeted him politely enough, but he was clearly impatient.

‘So what exactly is the problem?’ Ströhm asked.

‘You do not know?!’

‘Not the details, no,’ Ströhm said calmly.

‘The problem is that your railwaymen have been making difficulties. And they are now threatening a strike!’

‘Why?’

‘They say that working with uranium is too dangerous, that some men have developed serious illnesses because of their proximity to the ore.’

‘Are they right?’