The address in question housed new education and welfare departments, and Strohm’s office was part of the former. He was surprised and pleased to see Russell, and begged him to wait while he dealt with a delegation of angry teachers. Russell watched Strohm listen to their complaints — of which a lack of electricity and fresh water were only the most serious — and was impressed by his response. He neither played down the problems nor apologised for those that were clearly beyond his control, and he didn’t fob them off with promises he might not be able to keep. Just the sort of politician the country needed, Russell thought.
He had noticed a busy canteen on the ground floor, but once the teachers were gone, Strohm suggested they go out for lunch — he knew a good cafe nearby. It was on August Strasse, and reminded Russell of the workers’ cafe Strohm had frequented when he worked at Stettin Station. The long room was full of steam and conversation, the food basic but surprisingly plentiful.
‘So, what have you been doing these last six months?’ Strohm asked him. ‘I heard that you found your girlfriend.’
Russell skimmed through his recent life, something he seemed to be doing several times a day. ‘I never asked you in April,’ he said, ‘but what happened to the comrades who helped us escape in 1941? The Ottings and Ernst and Andreas. And the comrades at Stettin Station whose names I never knew.’
Strohm grimaced. ‘The Ottings were murdered by the Gestapo, and so were the two men who sent you to Stettin. I have no knowledge of the other two. Do you know their surnames?’
‘No.’
Strohm shrugged. ‘I’ll try and find out, but I can’t promise anything. The Poles are in Stettin now…’
‘I know.’
‘But someone you knew came back from the dead.’
‘Who?’
‘Miroslav Zembski.’
‘The Fat Silesian!’ Russell said delightedly. He remembered telling Strohm about Zembski in 1941, and his reasons for believing the photographer dead.
‘The camps had a way of thinning people out — you probably wouldn’t recognise him now.’
‘Is he working as a photographer?’ Zembski had been a well-respected freelance in the 1930s until a brawl at Goering’s country lodge cost him his official accreditation. After that he had run a camera shop and studio in Neukolln, while working undercover for the Comintern.
‘He works for the Party newspaper. At the office on Klosterstrasse. I was talking to him a couple of months ago, and he seemed to remember you fondly.’
‘I’ll go and see him when I get the chance.’ He felt buoyed by Zembski’s survival, though overall it was much as he’d feared. At least four people had died to get him out of Germany. There was only one thing he could do for them — refuse to betray the comrades they had left behind. Comrades like Strohm. He asked him how things were going.
Strohm sighed, which was not a good sign. ‘Some things are going well,’ he said after a pause. He looked at Russell. ‘This is off the record?’
‘This is between friends.’
‘Okay. Well, first the good news. Most of the Soviet administrators in Berlin know what they’re doing. Someone said that the Western Allies sent their worst people here and the Soviets sent their best, and that seems about right. It may not look like it, but they made a big difference before the others arrived, and they’re still making one in this sector. And they’re absolutely determined that we should enjoy their theatre and cinema and poetry and God knows what else. I was hoping for bread but not expecting circuses — they brought both.’
‘And the future?’ Russell prompted.
‘Well, there’s some good news in that regard. I don’t know how much you know about changes in Party policy, but one of the key debates has been about what sort of socialism we want to build in Germany, whether we want to replicate the Soviet system or develop a distinctive German model. And that debate is still going on. It hasn’t been shut down, not yet anyway.’
‘You think the Soviets will shut it down.’
‘I don’t know. To be honest, I’m more worried about the KPD leadership that returned from Moscow — Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck, and all the rest of them. They have their own ideas how things should go, and they’re not good listeners. They may be following Soviet orders, or just being who they are — it’s hard to tell — but if it comes to a choice between their own comrades and Moscow, I can’t see them backing the comrades.’ He took a quick look around, as if to make sure that no one was listening. ‘Look, the Russian soldiers behaved atrociously when they first arrived — the number of rapes was appalling. The situation has improved, but there are still new cases almost every day. And then there’s the reparations policy. I understand the reasons — why shouldn’t they take our machines and factories to replace what our armies destroyed? — but they’re cutting the ground from under our feet. They have to behave like comrades, apologise for their troops’ behaviour, and let us stand on our own. The German people will never vote for us if they think we’re creatures of the Russians.’
‘But Ulbricht, Pieck and the others don’t agree?’
‘When Party members tried to raise the question of rapes, Ulbricht told them that the matter was not for discussion. When others insisted that the law on abortion should be changed for rape victims, he told them that was out the question, and that he regarded the matter as closed.’
‘And the comrades accepted that?’
‘They were angry, but yes, discipline prevailed.’
‘Perhaps the Austrian election results will give the Russians — and Ulbricht — second thoughts.’
‘Perhaps, but I doubt it. It pains me to say it, but these comrades — the ones who came back from Moscow — are not the men I remember. I had to visit the new Party building on Wallstrasse yesterday, and when I went for lunch I discovered that there were four categories of ticket for meals in the dining hall.’
‘All for Party members?’
‘Oh yes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ulbricht and his friends are living in luxury villas out in Niederschonhausen. The whole complex is fenced off and guarded by the NKVD. And anyone who questions the arrangement — as I foolishly did at one meeting last month — is accused of “starry-eyed idealism”.’
There was no humour in Russell’s laugh. This presumably was what Nemedin wanted to hear.
‘But we’ve only just begun,’ Strohm added. ‘If the merger with the SPD goes through, then Ulbricht’s group may find themselves in a minority, and the Soviet may realise that an independent communist Germany is their best bet.’
‘It’s possible,’ Russell said, without really believing it. Stalin didn’t seem like a fan of other people’s independence.
After taking Rosa in during the final days of the war, Effi had gone along with the seven-year-old’s insistence — inherited, no doubt, from her fugitive mother — that their true histories should remain a secret until after the war was over. In the days and weeks that followed their escape from Berlin and Germany she had tried to make up for lost time, and find out all she could about her ward’s past, but Rosa had spent the second half of her life hidden with her mother in Frau Borchers’ garden shed, and all she could remember of the neighbourhood was a nearby railway line. She could summon up a few memories of the years before their voluntary incarceration, but none that offered any indication of where the family had lived before Otto’s disappearance. And the girl had no idea what, if anything, her father had done for a living. It was probably something manual, Effi thought; by the time of Rosa’s birth anything clerical or professional had been forbidden. But before that… well, for all she knew, Otto Pappenheim had been a doctor like Russell’s old friend Felix Wiesner.
In 1933 rich and middle-class Jews had lived all over Berlin, but as the Nazi persecution gathered pace most had either left the country or moved into those working-class areas of eastern Berlin where their poorer brethren resided. Friedrichshain had always had a sizable Jewish population, and Effi was not surprised to find that two of the women on Ali’s list were now living there. Nor, walking up Neue Konigstrasse from Alexanderplatz, was she surprised to see walls and other impromptu notice boards covered with messages from Jews seeking Jews. Some, frayed and faded, had clearly been up for months, and most, Effi knew, would go unanswered — the men and women sought had long since fed the Nazi ovens. Every hundred metres or so she pinned up one of theirs — ‘Information sought concerning Otto Pappenheim, (wife of Ursel and father of Rosa) and Miriam Rosenfeld (daughter of Leon and Esther). Contact Thomas Schade at Vogelsangstrasse 27, or telephone Dahlem 367.’