Uli Trenkel worked in a new Soviet-sponsored planning office further down the street, a long stone’s throw from the Spree. The glasses perched halfway down his sharp nose gave him the air of an intellectual, but the rough-skinned hands told a different story — this man had probably worked in one of Berlin’s war industries. He seemed much more relaxed when it came to technical issues than he did with politics, and where the latter was concerned Russell guessed he would follow the path of least resistance. He wouldn’t be any trouble to the Soviets or their KPD friends.
After talking to him, Russell sat in the building’s canteen with a mug of tea. There was no sign here of different grades, and the overwhelming impression was of energy and enthusiasm, of people enjoying their chance to start again. On the other hand, the two interviews he had conducted that afternoon, with men he assumed were important to the Soviets, hadn’t exactly left him feeling excited about the future.
He was just getting up to leave when three Soviet officers entered, all wearing the light blue shoulder tabs of the NKVD. One of them was Nemedin.
The sight of Russell induced a slight hesitation in the Georgian’s stride but no overt sign of recognition. Russell wondered whether Nemedin and his colleagues had noticed the change in atmosphere that accompanied their entrance, a sense of deflation rather than fear, as if the joy had all been sucked away.
He had to decide about Strohm, Russell thought, as he stood on the pavement outside. At least he had a week before his next meeting with Shchepkin. Maybe Effi’s solution was best after all — he would simply make something up, give Strohm enough doubts to make him credible, but not enough to cause him problems.
On impulse, he walked the final few metres down to the river. Away to his right the Jannowitz Bridge lay broken in the water, and beyond it, to the south and east, a few surviving buildings stuck out like broken teeth against the blue sky. This area between the Old City and Silesian Station had taken a dreadful hammering.
There was only half an hour before he was due to meet Effi. Rather than trust to public transport, he set off at a brisk pace, heading up Breite Strasse towards the sad wreckage of the Schloss, silently mouthing what lines he could remember of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. He expected more of the same beyond, but the Lustgarten proved a scene of transformation. On one side a tank was being towed away by Russian horses, on the other, beneath the pocked northern facade of the Schloss, Soviet soldiers and German civilians were erecting three carousels. It was the last day of November, Russell realised — Christmas was less than four weeks away.
The Soviets had obviously sanctioned the Christmas fair, and Russell felt almost sorry for the image that popped into his head — of Soviet Santa Clauses dropping down German chimneys and stealing the presents left under the trees.
As on the previous occasion, his arrival at Lehrter Station coincided with that of a refugee train. This one had old carriages as well as cattle cars, but the people emerging onto the platform looked every bit as lost. Maybe the wind was blowing in a different direction, because this time he could smell the human waste.
What was the number he’d read in that English paper? Was it six million dispossessed Germans on the move? Or seven? How many trains would that involve? And how many passengers would be carried off on boards or stretchers, bound for hospital or the waiting graves down the road?
He aimed for the main terminal building, forcing his way through the anxious crowd. ‘Is this Berlin?’ one man asked him, as if he couldn’t believe it possible. A woman in once-expensive clothes asked directions to the Bristol Hotel, and stood there open-mouthed when he said it no longer existed. When a couple asked him for money, he gave them four cigarettes, knowing that would buy them a meal. But they looked more annoyed than grateful, as if they thought he was trying to cheat them.
Inside the old booking hall things seemed less frantic. He was early, but Effi was already standing under the clock, which the war had stopped at half-past twelve.
‘I’ve already seen Lucie,’ she said. ‘She’s been through what records there are, and there’s no Otto Pappenheim. No Miriam Rosenfeld either.’
‘She’s busy, I take it,’ Russell said, as a single woman’s wail rose and fell in the tumult outside.
‘They’re saints, these people,’ Effi said. ‘And what am I doing? Acting…’
‘Not that they’ll let you,’ Russell ventured in mitigation.
‘Oh, I haven’t told you yet. The Americans have apparently decided that I’m safe to let out. Maybe your talk with the colonel did the trick.’
‘Good. You said this film needed making.’
‘I did. But when I see what’s happening here… well, I can’t see these people queuing up outside a cinema, can you?
‘But that…’
‘I know,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’m feeling useless, John. Ever since we got here.’
He opened his mouth to disagree, but thought better of it. He understood where the feeling came from, although ‘useless’ was not the word he would have chosen for himself. Frustrated, perhaps, or uncertain. Lost, even. And the strange thing was, it had almost come as a shock. Who would have thought that peace would prove more difficult than the war? The diminished danger of a violent death was certainly to be welcomed, but what else had peace brought in its train? Chaos, hunger, and corrupted ideals. Ivan the Rapist and GI Joe the Profiteer.
‘We need cheering up,’ he decided. ‘How about an evening at the Honey Trap? Irma said she’d get us in.’
When they entered the nightclub that evening, Russell hardly recognised the place. The lighting was dimmer than before, just a few chandeliers with most of the bulbs removed, and the white tablecloths shone like dull spotlights within each circle of patrons. Tuesday’s bare brick walls were now festooned with posters from Berlin’s pre-Nazi past, along with large portraits of Churchill, Truman and Stalin.
The place was more than full, and they were lucky to be passing a table as a couple stood up to leave. They had barely sat down when a waiter whisked away the empty glasses and demanded to know their order. A bottle of red wine set them back seven cigarettes, the waiter providing change for their pack from a tin case he carried in his inside pocket. The wine proved weak and slightly sour.
Russell and Effi gave their fellow revellers the once over. The male clientele seemed exclusively foreign, and mostly uniformed. The nightclub was in the British Sector, but that hadn’t deterred the Americans and Russians, who were both present in large numbers. The Americans were mostly officers or NCOs, but the Russians ranged from general to private, all bedecked in medals and wearing several visible wristwatches. For the moment at least, the room seemed almost awash with international goodwill.
Almost all of the females were German, and most of them were young. There were many low-cut tops and short skirts on display, but the fashions seemed dated to Effi, as if the girls had been raiding their mothers’ wardrobes. How many were ‘real’ prostitutes, how many girls just trying to get by? Or did that distinction no longer apply? She could see three girls happily chattering away as male hands fondled their breasts.
Up on stage a small orchestra of middle-aged men was offering a lively mixture of jazz and popular music. They’d been playing ‘In the Mood’ when Effi and Russell arrived, but the subsequent tunes had all been around since pre-Nazis days, when these musicians had presumably learnt them. Three couples were dancing on the small floor, two gyrating wildly, the third locked together with almost ferocious insistence.