‘Then next time we’ll come in the morning,’ Effi promised, getting to her feet. ‘Are you coming back with us?’
‘No, I’ll stay a while longer. Thank you for coming.’
The two of them walked back through the wards. At the end of the second Effi noticed a vaguely familiar face. ‘Were you working here in 1941?’ she asked the nurse in question, an unusually plump woman with short brown hair.
‘I feel like I’ve been here since the First War,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘I had a friend who worked here — Annaliese Huiskes. I wondered…’
‘She’s still here. She came back, that is. About two months ago, I think. I saw her earlier — she’s on duty this evening.’
It took them five minutes to find the relevant ward, where another joyous reunion took place. Russell smiled at the patients’ gawping faces as the two women did a jig in the aisle.
Annaliese was wearing a sister’s uniform now. ‘I see you found him,’ she said, eyeing Russell over Effi’s shoulder.
‘I’m not so easy to shake off,’ Russell said, giving her a kiss on each cheek.
Annaliese just stared at them, a big grin on her face. Her blonde hair was longer than Effi remembered, and tied back with a red ribbon. ‘Go wait in the office,’ Annaliese said, ‘I’ll be along in a minute.’
She was back in two. ‘No booze, I’m afraid,’ she told Effi. ‘I’m being good.’
They sat and talked for almost an hour. Effi told Annaliese all about England and Rosa, and the nurse told her what had happened after their nocturnal parting in April. Annaliese had reached her late husband’s parents in Spandau, and they had hidden her in their cellar for several weeks while the Russians raped the neighbourhood’s women. She had then set out across country, hoping for better from the Western Allies, but had ended up in an American camp at Rheinberg. ‘It was more terrible than you could imagine, but I’ll tell you about that another time. I have to do my rounds in a few minutes, and I’d like to show John something before you go.’
‘Me?’ Russell asked, surprised.
‘You’re still a journalist, aren’t you?’
‘I sometimes think so.’
‘Yes he is,’ Effi said, cuffing him round the head.
After finding a nurse to cover for her, Annaliese led them through two large wards to a third, where all the beds were occupied by thin-faced children. Two immediately asked for water, which Annaliese went to fetch. Around twenty pairs of eyes stared dully at Russell and Effi.
‘They’re all diabetic,’ the returning Annaliese explained, ‘and we don’t have enough insulin.’
‘Why not?’ Russell asked, though the answer wasn’t hard to guess.
‘The only suppliers are Grosschieber — the big-time black marketeers — and they make sure that supplies are tight. When they do release some, they invite all the hospitals to bid on them, to maximise the price. They do the same with penicillin, and the VD drugs, Pyrimal and Salvarsan. The staff dip into their own pockets, but it’s not enough. There was a twelve-year-old in that bed there’ — she pointed to the one lying empty — ‘but she died this afternoon. When she arrived ten days ago there was nothing wrong with her that an insulin injection wouldn’t fix.’
‘Where did it come from before?’ Russell asked.
‘There were two labs in Berlin, but both were bombed out. We did get some from Leipzig for a while, but the supply dried up — we don’t know why. One doctor went down there on his day off with some money we’d collected, but he never came back. And no, he wasn’t the sort to steal it.’ She looked at Russell. ‘This would be a story worth telling, don’t you think?’
‘It would,’ he agreed.
It would, he thought, as they walk back through the wards. Trouble was, he’d had the same thought looking at Leon. And watching the dazed refugees tumbling out of their train at Lehrter Station. The victims were different, but there was only one story, and it wasn’t the one he wanted to write. He had spent enough time with sadness and evil, and to what useful end? Any fool could shout ‘never again’, but he might as well change his name to Canute. It would happen again. Somewhere, sometime in the not too distant future. Most people were incapable of looking beyond themselves selves and those they loved — the camp on the other side of the hill was never their business. There was nothing new or surprising about children dying for someone else’s greed. As the seventeen-year-old Albert Wiesner had told him six years earlier, the only mystery in this world was kindness.
Effi was asking Annaliese when they could meet again.
‘I get Saturday afternoon and Sunday off. I usually go out to see Gerd’s parents on Saturday, but if the weather’s nice on Sunday we could go for a walk in the Grunewald.’
They agreed to rendezvous at Thomas’s house.
‘And think about that story,’ Annaliese told Russell. ‘Anyone here will talk to you.’
‘I will,’ Russell told her.
Effi said nothing until they were back outside. ‘You didn’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘I’m not. It’s terrible, of course it is. But it won’t be news to anyone in Berlin, or anywhere in Germany.’
‘What about England and America?’
‘No editor would buy it. He’ll know his readers, and they won’t care about Germans killing Germans.’
‘How long do you think we’ve been back?’ Russell asked as he shaved the next morning.
Effi was still cocooned in their blankets. ‘Oh I don’t know. It feels like weeks.’
‘This time last week we were on our way to Victoria,’ he told her.
‘I don’t believe it!’ She sat up against the headboard. ‘Your friend Shchepkin — do you think he’d check out the Shanghai Otto for us?’
‘He might, if I ask him nicely.’
‘The Soviets must keep records of people who travel across their country. And we’d know for certain that he went.’
‘True. I’ll ask him when I see him, but that won’t be till next Friday.’
‘Oh… So what about Shanghai? If he did go, how can we find out if he’s still there?’
Russell rinsed his face in the bowl. ‘I’ll ask Dallin. The Americans must have a consulate there.’
‘Your spymaster friends are coming in handy.’
Russell shook his head. ‘Don’t joke about it.’
‘All right. So where are you off to this morning?’
‘The Soviet sector. I’ll try and see a couple of the men on Shchepkin’s list.’
‘What do you say to them? I’m running a survey for Stalin?’ Russell laughed. ‘Something like that.’
‘No, seriously.’
‘I’ll tell them I’m writing an article on reconstruction, and talking to those most responsible. Off the record, of course — no names or direct quotes. If they say yes — and most people do love talking about themselves and what they’re doing — then I’ll ask how they’re getting on, what problems they’re having, that sort of thing.’
‘Problems like the Russians taking half their zone back to Russia?’
‘A failure to mention that could be construed as loyalty. And vice versa, of course. You get the idea. I make up the details as I go along.’ He checked his jacket pockets for pen, paper and cigarette currency. ‘Are you going out?’
‘Yes, Kuhnert left a message — there’s a rehearsal at eleven. And this afternoon I thought I’d go over to Lehrter Station, and see if I can find Lucie. She was going to look out the arrival lists.’
‘I could meet you there,’ Russell said. The arrival he’d witnessed at the station was still fresh in his mind.
‘Where?’ Effi asked. ‘It’s probably a sea of rubble.’
‘No, it’s mostly cleared. The clock’s still there — we can meet under that. Say four o’clock?’
A couple of broken-down trams and another unexploded bomb in the tunnels stretched Russell’s journey to almost four times its pre-war duration, but both intended interviewees proved willing to see him without a prior appointment. Kurt Junghaus, a harassed-looking man with prematurely grey hair and a chubby face that ill-suited his skinny figure, worked for the recently-established Propaganda and Censorship Department at the KPD’s new Wallstrasse headquarters. The job itself suggested a high degree of trust, and Russell found no reason to doubt him, at least in the short term. If disillusion ever came it would be complete, but this was a man who wanted to believe, and Russell had no qualms about stressing his loyalty.