Masaryk Station (John Russell) (6 page)

Russell nodded his agreement, and asked Shchepkin if he’d heard of Maksym Palychko.

The Russian gave him a look. ‘What a name to drop on such a beautiful night.’

‘So who the hell was he? I know I’ve heard the name before, but I can’t remember where.’

‘He called himself a Ukrainian nationalist, and I expect he still does, even though most Ukrainians would be as happy to shoot him as I would. I don’t know exactly where he came from—somewhere in the western Ukraine—but as a young man he fought for the Whites in the Civil War, and in the ’20s he joined the group that became the OUN—the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists. They made no headway in the USSR, but they grew quite strong in Poland, and Palychko was one of the men who assassinated Pilsudski’s Interior Minister in, I can’t remember, was it 1934? He was caught, given the death penalty, but then reprieved—he was still in jail in Krakow when the Germans arrived. They released him, and he joined in the celebrations—several thousand Jews were tortured and murdered over the next few weeks. And he must have stood out, because the Nazis sent him to Gestapo school. When the Germans invaded us, the OUN went in with the
einsatzgruppen
, and did more than their share of the killing. They were expecting to be put in charge of Ukraine, but Hitler didn’t trust them that much, and those OUN leaders who complained were arrested. Not Palychko, though. He
managed to stay on good terms with the Germans, mostly by selling them information about us and his former friends. He put together a small army of his own, and waged a parallel war against our partisans. You’ve heard of Lidice, Oradour?

‘Villages the Nazis destroyed?’

‘Along with their inhabitants. Everyone has heard of them,’ Shchepkin added, a rare hint of bitterness in his voice. ‘But Olyka, Mlinov, Grushvitsy, and at least ten others … no one in the West knows about them, but they were all villages accused of helping our partisans, and then destroyed by Palychko and his men. The OUN tortured and raped whenever the mood took them, and they left no one alive.

‘When the Nazis retreated, Palychko went with them, and somehow managed to disappear, though half the world was looking for him. Until this moment I assumed the Americans would feel honour-bound to hand a man like that over.’

Russell winced. ‘They don’t. I’m one link of the chain passing him out of Europe.’

They walked on in silence for several seconds.

‘I can tell you where …’ Russell began.

‘Don’t,’ Shchepkin interjected. ‘I don’t trust myself, and we can’t risk it. We’ll have to let him go, at least for the moment. But you must be careful. The Americans are hopeless at keeping secrets, and word may be out.’

‘Oh good,’ Russell murmured. Crowell, he remembered, had assured him there was ‘nothing dangerous’ involved in this particular job.

A Walk into the Future

Effi arrived at the RIAS building on Winterfeldstrasse a few minutes early, which would have surprised most of her friends. She had taken the U-Bahn from Zoo, and her dress—one of her finest—had drawn several admiring glances on the train. ‘Why do you care what you look like,’ Rosa had asked with her usual maddening logic, ‘when it’s an audition for radio?’

Which was true enough, but the man conducting the audition—it was bound to be a man—wouldn’t be at the other end of a wireless connection.

His name was Alfred Henninger, and she assumed from his accent and fluency that he was an American of German descent. He was about forty, with short but untidy blond hair, and a habit of flexing his fingers as he spoke. ‘Have you done any radio?’ was his first question.

‘Never,’ Effi answered cheerfully.

‘But you’re willing?’

‘Eager, you might say. I really liked the outline and script you sent me.’

‘Oh, good. We have a name for it now: “The Islanders”. In a Soviet sea,’ he added in explanation.

‘I got it.’

‘Of course. I’m always spelling it out for the people back home—they don’t understand what it feels like here. Anyway … the part we
have in mind for you is the
portierfrau
, Frau Dorfner. It’s not the most glamorous role, of course …’

‘It’s the one I was hoping for,’ Effi told him truthfully. Trudi Dorfner was a character that most Berliners would instantly recognise, but the writer had managed much more than a stereotype.

‘Oh excellent. Well, let’s go through to the studio and have you do a reading.’

Ensconced in front of a microphone, Effi went through one scene, with Henninger voicing the other part.

‘Excellent,’ the producer said again once they were finished. ‘You, I mean, not me. We’ll be broadcasting live, of course. You’ll be okay with that?’

‘I’ve done a lot of theatre,’ Effi assured him. The hours might be a problem—she wanted to spend more time with Rosa, not less—but there was no point in worrying about things like that until there was a contract to sign.

It had all been a little too easy, she thought. After three years of dealing with DEFA and their Soviet backers, Henninger had seemed refreshingly straightforward. Famous last words, she told herself.

She was back home just in time for the DEFA studio car—asking it to pick her up at RIAS had seemed like tempting fate, and she’d resisted the temptation to say she’d make her own way. Journeys through the Soviet sector were normally safe, although women were still sometimes assaulted by drunken Red Army soldiers, and more lasting abductions were far from unknown. Before signing up for this film, Effi and the other Western-sector-based actors working on
Anna Hofmann
had insisted on being chauffeured to and fro, and the Russians, rather to everyone’s surprise, had conjured up a fleet of old government cars to do the ferrying. The one she was sitting in now had probably taken Goebbels on philandering expeditions.

They reached the new Weisensee studio complex just as the cast and
crew broke for lunch, and Effi spent the next hour in makeup, having the years added on. When the girl was finished, Effi smiled at herself in the mirror. This was how she had looked for long stretches of the war, when the world knew her as Erna von Freiwald, dressmaker and milliner. In those days she had applied the makeup herself.

She only had one scene to play that afternoon, but it seemed to take forever. It was with her supposed granddaughter, but the young actor playing the part just couldn’t get her lines right. The girl was nice enough, but not very talented, and Effi found herself wondering how she’d landed the part. A Party official’s daughter, or a Party official’s object of lust. She was growing as cynical as John.

She was just removing the last of her makeup when a DEFA secretary put her head around the dressing-room door, and told Effi that someone from the Soviet Propaganda Department wanted a word before she went home.

‘About what?’ she asked.

The woman shrugged. ‘He’s waiting in the manager’s office.’

‘All right. But don’t let the car leave without me.’ Effi had no idea what the Russian might want, but it was unlikely to be her autograph.

The official in question was one she hadn’t seen before, which made her doubt that he worked for the Propaganda Department—she had attended enough of their receptions over the past few years. He was a short and burly man, probably in his thirties, who quickly stood up as she entered the room, smiled as he offered his hand, and introduced himself as Victor Samoshenko.

‘So how can I help you?’ Effi asked, more abruptly than she intended.

He reached for a large envelope on the desk behind him. ‘This is the screenplay that you’ve been expecting.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’
A Walk into the Future
was stencilled on the cover. ‘Is there any reason why it wasn’t sent in the usual way?’

‘Only one. Please, take a seat. Comrade Tulpanov decided that a personal delivery would give someone—myself—the opportunity to stress how important we feel this film will be, and how important your own involvement will prove in making it a success.’

Effi gave him a sceptical look. ‘I’m flattered, of course. But there’s no shortage of good actors in Berlin, so I don’t quite understand why the Minister thinks I’m indispensable.’

Samoshenko’s smile didn’t waver. ‘I think you underestimate yourself, and your, shall we say, symbolic importance to many Berliners, as both a famous film star and a heroine of the resistance.’

Her acting skills, Effi noticed, were obviously neither here nor there. ‘I’m looking forward to reading it,’ she said non-committally, picking up the envelope.

‘There are also two copies of a contract,’ the Russian continued. ‘The suggested fee is of course open to negotiation, but we think it’s generous.’ He paused, while she took a look.

It was probably the most she’d ever been offered for a film, but then Goebbels had been notoriously stingy with actresses who wouldn’t sleep with him. ‘It is,’ she agreed.

‘Payable in American dollars,’ Samoshenko added, as if that would be the clincher.

‘I’ll start reading it tonight,’ she promised. If only to discover why the film, and her participation, seemed so vital to Tulpanov’s Ministry. She started to rise.

‘One more matter,’ Samoshenko said, as she gathered up her bag.

‘Yes?’

‘Your adopted daughter, Rosa.’

There was a way in which he accented the ‘adopted’ that sent a chill through Effi’s heart. ‘Yes?’ she said again, fighting to keep the fear from her voice.

‘She has extraordinary talent.’

‘She has.’ Rosa had been compulsively drawing people and scenes since Effi had inherited her, aged eight, in the past few weeks of the war. One drawing of a Red Army soldier playing with a German child had appeared in a Soviet magazine, and become an almost iconic image of the Soviet liberation. Not in Berlin, of course, where the Soviet-built Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was known as the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist, but almost everywhere else in the civilised world. Stalin’s government had even paid her one tranche of royalties.

‘A talent that can be hardly be nurtured in Berlin today,’ Samoshenko suggested. ‘In Moscow and Leningrad we have world-famous institutes of art which could really help her development.’

Effi could hardly believe it. ‘You’re asking us to send an eleven-year-old girl off alone to a foreign country? You must know what she’s been through.’

‘Yes, of course. And no, not alone. You would be expected to accompany her—we do make films at home, you know. And your husband, too. He’s an American journalist, I understand. I’m sure there are many American papers who would welcome a fully accredited Moscow correspondent.’

Effi didn’t know what to say. She decided to be diplomatic. ‘I appreciate the offer,’ she began. ‘And I know how wonderful Soviet education is, and the value your country puts on culture. Instinct tells me she’s still too young. But I will discuss it with my husband. He’s away at the moment, but when he comes back …’

‘Of course,’ Samoshenko interrupted, still smiling. He shook her hand again, and held the door open.

The car was still waiting outside, along with the chauffeur and three impatient colleagues.

‘What was that all about?’ one of the women asked Effi.

‘My daughter,’ she said, in a tone guaranteed to deter further
questions. As they drove back towards the centre of the city, she went through the conversation again in her head. There had been no threats, so why did she feel so threatened? Was it merely the thought of losing Rosa?

She told herself the whole business was more absurd than menacing. Was it possible that Tulpanov’s people didn’t know that the Berlin MGB considered John one of their own? How would they feel about the Propaganda Ministry relocating one of their people to Moscow, where the only people he could spy on was them?

No, she told herself, there was no need to worry. They needed John in Berlin, and he needed his wife and daughter with him.

That evening Effi fussed over Rosa more than usual, and received several bemused looks in return. But on the following morning she suffered a serious shock. With another afternoon start at the studio, she spent part of the morning cleaning the flat, and one of the items she tidied away was Rosa’s latest drawing book. Looking through it, Effi found several pictures of Rosa’s neighbourhood friends, most of them adolescents, three or four years older than her. Many subjects were smoking, which didn’t surprise Effi, but there were also bottles in evidence, which she doubted contained lemonade. And then there was a couple kissing, sweetly drawn. And then a girl with small pubescent breasts, sitting astride a naked boy.

‘Oh God,’ Effi said out loud.

She needed to talk to someone. Not Zarah.

She rang up Thomas, hoping he might be home. He was, and he had a couple of hours to spare before some meeting or other.

‘So what’s the emergency,’ he asked, when she let him in half an hour later.

She showed him the drawing book.

He went through the pictures one by one, shaking his head,
almost in wonder, at the one which had stopped Effi in her tracks. ‘Christ, she can draw,’ he said.

‘That’s hardly the point,’ she almost snapped.

‘No, of course not. I’m sorry. But what can I say? Where did you find this—had she hidden it?’

‘On the table.’

‘So she doesn’t think she’s doing anything wrong. She’s just drawing what she sees, like she always has.’

‘So the point is more what she’s seeing.’

‘Which comes down to the company she’s keeping.’

‘I can’t keep her locked up.’

‘No, of course not. I’m sorry, Effi—I have no answers. Other than talking to her, listening to her. Maybe she needs professional help—I don’t know. She’s troubled, but with her history it would be strange if she wasn’t. And these pictures … Well, they’re full of innocence. I don’t think you should worry too much.’

‘I suppose I should talk to her about sex. When did Hanna explain it all to Lotte?’

‘I seem to remember it was when she started to menstruate. She started young.’

Effi looked down at the table, shaking her head.

‘You could tell Rosa that you’d like to meet her friends, and ask her to bring them back here.’