‘No, she didn’t,’ Effi confirmed. ‘And neither did your father. As long as they lived, they would never have done that.’
Stefan Utermann
It was almost one in the morning when Russell was jerked from a doze by the loud and angry rumble of his train on the Sava bridge outside Belgrade. He had left Trieste at seven that morning, looking forward to the three-hundred-mile journey, but a tortoise-like crawl up from the coast had been followed by lengthy waits at Ljubljana and Zagreb, and the long descent of the Sava valley had felt a whole lot longer when the restaurant car inexplicably closed some six hours short of the capital.
As he walked out of the terminus, the sight of a dozen hotels settled the battle between hunger and tiredness. He tried three before he found a conscious night clerk, and happily accepted a key without first checking the room. As far as he could see, no fleas were jumping for joy on the yellow sheets, and the sash window sprang open with only a modest application of brute force. Within a few minutes Russell was fast asleep.
He was woken by the sun streaming in through the curtainless windows, and lay there thanking the stars that nothing had bitten him during the night. He felt like a bath, but one look at the shared facilities down the corridor persuaded him to wait. After getting dressed he made his way down the rickety stairs, paid the exorbitant bill, and ventured out into the city. The sky was mostly blue, the air already warm for that time of the morning. The square in front of the station was busy, and the number of salesmen offering wares seemed high for a communist country. Maybe Tito’s Yugoslavia really was different, the way Strohm kept hoping it was.
On his last and only other visit to Belgrade two years earlier Russell had stayed at the Majestic, which had seemed more than adequate. He thought he remembered the way from the station, but the first landmark he recognised was the Royal Palace, which had been rebuilt since his last visit, though presumably not for royalty. A uniformed man loitering outside gave him a suspicious look, but then provided directions amenably enough.
It looked as if Belgrade was doing better than Berlin when it came to reconstruction-in 1946 every street had seemed full of gaps, but now they were few and far between. And the people seemed younger than they did in Berlin or Trieste, although why that should be he had no idea-among the Allied countries, only the Soviet Union had lost a higher proportion of its population.
He found the Majestic in its small corner square, and happily spent Uncle Sam’s money on a suite at the front with a bath. His rooms were clean and almost over-furnished, the water wonderfully hot. After consigning his travelling clothes to the laundry service, he went out in search of breakfast, zigzagging north towards the Marketplatz and a particular cafe he remembered. It was on the second zig that he realised he was being followed. A man in his thirties, in a grey suit, white shirt and black trilby.
The cafe was still there, with tables outside for the taking. After sitting there for a minute or so, he casually scanned the square, and found his shadow apparently reading a paper outside another establishment. The coffee, when it came, was surprising good, the ham and eggs quite excellent. And the general atmosphere seemed surprisingly relaxed, less gloomy than Berlin, less surreal than Trieste.
After paying his check, he walked on towards the Kalemegdan, whose surrounding gardens offered a pleasant spot for reflection, and found the seat he had sat in two years earlier, in the shadow of the stone citadel, high above the confluence of the Sava and Danube. Then all but one bridge had been down, but another two had since been restored, and, like the two rivers, were busy with traffic.
Then, as now, he had come as a journalist, but this time appearances were more deceptive. These days the Yugoslavs would suspect any visiting pressman of working for an intelligence service, whether full-time or part-time hardly mattered. And since it was the Americans who had persuaded the Yugoslavs to let him in, the latter would assume that Washington employed him in some form or other. Which of course they did.
The Americans, as Youklis had explained at their last convivial rendezvous, wanted to know how things were going between Tito and Stalin. Were they about to fall out, or had they done so already? If and when they did, Youklis and friends presumably had no intention of supporting one group of communists against another. They would just dump as much oil on troubled waters as they could.
All of which was straightforward enough for a journalist of Russell’s experience. The American’s other request was likely to be more problematic, because Youklis didn’t seem to know that much about the man he wanted Russell to contact. Zoran Pograjac had fought with Mihajlovic’s Cetniks and survived-as Mihajlovic had not-a post-war charge of collaborating with the Germans. He had apparently kept his head down since, but Russell found it hard to believe that someone with a history like Pograjac’s wasn’t being watched by the communist authorities.
The Soviets had been more reasonable in their requests. They simply hoped that Russell’s American backing would encourage the more anti-Soviet Yugoslavs to open up in private about their future plans. At their meeting in Trieste-convened in a small square beneath an unlikely statue of Aphrodite-Comrade Serov had presented Russell with a list of those they wanted him to interview. All but one were possible traitors to the working class. The exception-Vukasin Nedic-was a friend of the Soviet Union, but he was being closely watched by the Yugoslav authorities. Russell should insist on interviewing Nedic, and if the Yugoslavs tried to refuse, he should say that he could only write his article if given access to all the different points of view. ‘They will be keen,’ Serov assured him.
When they eventually met, Russell’s use of the phrase ‘the weather’s been unusual today’ would tell Nedic that he could be trusted. Russell would then be given an up-to-the-minute estimate of the current situation, and the list that Nedic was compiling of those Yugoslav communists who could still be relied upon to see things from an internationalist perspective.
‘Don’t you have an Embassy in Belgrade?’ Russell had asked the Russian.
‘Of course,’ Serov had replied. ‘But we never interfere in a fraternal party’s internal affairs.’
Well, Russell would go and see Nedic if the Yugoslavs let him, hear what he had to say, and make damn sure he didn’t get caught with a list of would-be traitors, either by destroying it straight away, or voluntarily handing it in to the authorities. Hearing Shchepkin’s disappointed ‘tsk’ was much less painful than quarrying marble on Naked Island.
Mihajlovic’s man needed treating with even more circumspection. The Soviets expected to be disappointed-the whole bloody world was against them, and they were used to it-but the Americans took it all as a personal affront. If he wanted to see Berlin anytime soon, he would have to make an effort, or at least give a decent impression. But oh so carefully. If Pograjac wasn’t just a CIC fantasy, if he really was a bona fide opponent of the regime, then consorting with him was asking for trouble. Russell could still remember the defendants at the Moscow show trials falling over themselves to admit contacts with foreign agents. ‘Shoot the mad dogs!’ had been Prosecutor Vyshinsky’s catch phrase.
He glanced across at his shadow, who was gazing out at the river. The man turned his head, as if conscious he was being watched, and when Russell gave him a big smile, managed a wry one in return. A small triumph for humanity.
A young couple walked past deep in conversation, reminding him that he didn’t speak the local lingo. A significant handicap in this sort of work. He couldn’t even read the damn newspaper-for all he knew, the two parties had resolved all their differences while he was on his train, and Tito and Stalin were busy composing love letters to each other. He needed to talk to someone-there had to be some foreign journalists in Belgrade who spoke one of his languages. In 1946 the Majestic had been full of them.