It had been a wonderful couple of days. Lothar had been given a clean bill of mental heath; he and Paul had seen a match at Highbury, inspected the streamlined Coronation Scot at Euston, and walked past Bow Street Police Station, where the fictional Saint’s sparring partner Chief Inspector Teal had his office. In the bar of the Savoy, an idiot from the War Office had tried to persuade Russell that risking his life for His Majesty’s Government was the very least he could do.
And that was the other complicating factor, Russell thought, as he leaned his midriff against the railings and looked down at the swirling brown waters — his mostly unresolved relationships with the world’s leading intelligence agencies. Between 1939 and 1941 he had performed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, services for the Soviets, Americans, British and Germans. Getting into this world had been all too easy, extracting himself wholly beyond him. He had concentrated on surviving the war with a more or less functioning conscience, and just about succeeded. But there was no way of breaking the bond, no way to wipe the slate clean.
The Nazis at least were gone. He had worked for them under duress, and as far as he knew had never done anything actually helpful, but there was always the chance of accusations that only the dead could refute. The British had ignored him since 1939, the Americans since 1942, but Russell doubted whether their indifference would survive a return to Berlin. He was of no use to them in London, but his many contacts in the German capital — on both sides of the new political divide — would make him a valuable asset.
The Soviets, though, were the real danger. In May he had secured his family’s exit from Berlin and Germany by leading the NKVD to the cache of German atomic energy documents which he and the young Soviet physicist Varennikov had stolen from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Reasoning that the Soviets might be tempted to ensure his permanent silence on this matter, he had forcibly reminded them that he couldn’t tell the Americans anything without incriminating himself. The Soviets had probably already realised as much, and soon made it clear that they would use the threat of revelation to force Russell’s cooperation in whatever future ventures seemed appropriate.
It was an effective threat. Neither the Soviets nor Russell knew how the Americans would respond should the story of his theft of the atomic papers become public, but Russell had reason to fear the worst. Another wave of anti-communist hysteria was building in the US, and an American citizen putting family above country when it came to atomic secrets might well end up in the electric chair. At the absolute best, he would never get another job with an American — or British — newspaper.
And now the Soviets had come calling. What would they want this time? Whatever it was, it would probably involve a return to Berlin, and another separation from his son and Effi.
Paul was still in bad shape, but Russell suspected that there was little he could offer in the way of help, that the boy had to find his own road back. And there were signs, every now and then, that he was doing just that. It might be wishful thinking, but he thought his son would eventually work out how best to live with his past.
He was not so certain that he and Effi could survive another long separation. It had been wonderful finding her again, but once the joy of the first few days had passed they had struggled to re-establish the easy loving companionship that they had once taken for granted. It could be a great deal worse — the recently reunited couple upstairs came to mind — but something indefinable had gone missing. What it was, and why it had gone, were still a mystery. Was it just the length of the separation? Three and a half years was a long time, and their lives in that period had been so different: hers fraught with danger, his a relative cakewalk. Had Rosa come between them? Russell felt no resentment — he loved her as much as Effi did — but the girl might have shifted some balance in their relationship. Or was it something simpler, like their both being out of work, or the length of time that they’d been together?
He didn’t know, and neither, he guessed, did she. It was probably all those things, and a few more besides.
Maybe time would cure them, but somehow he doubted it. Looking out across the brown river, he felt more than a little scared for the future.
A light rain began to fall as Effi waited outside the school gates, and she gratefully unfurled the umbrella which Zarah had insisted she take. There had been smiles of recognition from a couple of other women, but frowns of disapproval from a couple more. Her being German had upset some in the beginning, and Effi had hoped that recounting her anti-Nazi exploits in the local paper might reduce any opprobrium which she — and by extension, Rosa — would have to cope with. But while some had probably been mollified, others seemed even more inclined to hold up their noses.
Looking round, she saw another new male face — as the term went by, more and more demobbed fathers were collecting their children. Effi wondered if Rosa had noticed, and thought that she probably had. The girl didn’t miss much.
There were other children whose fathers were not coming home, but most of them seemed to know it. Would it be easier for Rosa if she knew that her father was dead?
The young Jewish girl had arrived at the door to Effi’s Berlin apartment just weeks before the end of the war. Rosa and her mother Ursel had been hidden by an elderly gentile woman for several years, but first Ursel was killed by an American bomb, and then the woman fell seriously ill. The girl had been left with no one to look after her, and the Swede Erik Aslund, who ran the Jewish escape line that Effi worked for, had begged her to take Rosa in.
She never regretted saying yes — the girl, though obviously and deeply traumatised, was an absolute delight. And now that Effi was thirty-nine, the only child she was ever likely to have.
Effi had asked the girl about her father Otto, but all Rosa could remember was his leaving one day and not coming back. She had been about three, she thought, which would place the man’s disappearance sometime around 1941. He was most likely dead, but they couldn’t be sure. Up until June of that year, Jews had still been allowed to leave Germany, and even after that date, some had escaped. Of those that stayed, several thousand of the so-called U-boats had survived several years in hiding, mostly in Berlin. So there was more than a fleeting chance that Otto was still alive.
But if he was, no trace had yet been found. Effi had been round all the refugee agencies in London, and each had agreed to pester their Berlin offices, but so far to no avail. Private correspondence between Germany and the outside world was still not allowed, so there was nothing they could do themselves. When a returning British soldier had kindly dropped off a letter from his ex-wife’s brother Thomas, Russell had tried and failed to find a carrier for his reply. When the restrictions were lifted, Effi knew Thomas would conduct a thorough search for Otto, but in the meantime…
The school doors opened, and a host of children swept out to the gate, borne on a tide of laughter and chatter. Such a comforting sound, Effi thought, one of those things you never appreciated until it disappeared, as it had in Berlin during the final years of the war.
Rosa was walking with a blonde girl around her own age. Catching sight of Effi, she almost pulled the other girl across to introduce her. ‘This is Marusya,’ she said. ‘She’s from Russia.’
‘How do you do?’ Effi said carefully in English. She was leaning down to shake the girl’s hand when the mother bustled up and seized it instead. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she almost shouted, and tugged the girl away.
Effi stared after them, feeling more upset for Marusya than herself. Rosa, though, seemed unconcerned. ‘Marusya likes drawing too,’ she confided.
They started for home, sharing Zarah’s umbrella and taking the usual path across the foot of Parliament Hill. Rosa chatted happily about her day at school. If she was thinking about her father, she was keeping it to herself.