He had done more than survive the war in hiding-many had done that-he had been instrumental in helping hundreds of others to escape abroad. An apprentice draughtsman at a Bauhaus design centre before the Nazis rendered such employment illegal, he had taken a long cool look into the future, and taught himself a skill that he knew would be much in demand-forgery. For every ten German Jews now living in exile, Effi reckoned one had an original Grelling framed and hung on a living-room wall. She and Ali had met him on several occasions during the war, picking up a new set of papers when Aslund, for some reason or other, could not. Effi had liked Grelling instantly, and he had taken more than a liking to the much younger Ali. After the war, when Effi had told him of Ali’s marriage and emigration, he had looked heartbroken for at least ten seconds.
He had told her and Russell that he was living on Ku’damm, across from a bombed-out restaurant that they all remembered, and the day after meeting with Lisa, it didn’t take Effi long to find his apartment. He seemed pleased to see her, and insisted on making them Turkish coffee, something she loved but hadn’t tasted in almost ten years. Considering the ruins visible through his back window, all but one of the rooms were beautifully furnished, the exception being crammed with fully loaded tea chests.
‘Are you leaving?’ she asked.
‘I’m off to Palestine. But not for a few months yet.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘a straight question-are you still forging papers?’
‘Did the Fuhrer have a foreskin? But I thought you’d gone back to acting.’
‘I have. An old friend needs some help.’
‘Don’t they always? But I have to tell you, my charity work is over. Forgery is my business now. You know the one thing that Jews going to Palestine have in common?’
Effi was tempted to say ‘no foreskin’, but that was only the men.
‘Nothing, that’s what. I plan to arrive a rich man. The rest can have their kibbutzim-I’ll have a palatial villa halfway up the Via Dolorosa, where I can charge the Christian tourists for a drink of water. That’ll teach them to accuse us of murdering Jesus.’
Effi couldn’t help laughing.
‘So what papers does your friend need?’
‘Czechoslovakian documents. Travel permits, exit visas, that sort of thing. We don’t have anything to copy yet. Do you have anything like that?’
‘I could probably lay my hands on them. How urgent is this?’
‘It isn’t, not at the moment. But if you can start nosing around, I’ll happily give you an advance. In dollars,’ she added, taking a small wad out of her bag.
‘I’m tempted,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t take money from you.’ He thought for a moment, and then reached out a thumb and finger to snag a couple of bills. ‘Okay, maybe a little for expenses.’
It was Monday evening before Russell got home to his hostel in Trieste, only to find he no longer had the same room. Marko, remembering his original request for one at the back, had taken the opportunity of a long-time guest’s departure, and Russell’s coincidental absence, to shift him and his few possessions. The arrival of a well-to-do fellow-Serb-a former professor of philosophy at Belgrade University, Marko informed Russell with pride-had been purely coincidental.
Russell was too tired to argue. The room turned out to be smaller, but it boasted a small balcony overlooking a sloping overgrown garden and the rising hillside beyond. And it was quieter. He stood there for a few minutes, enjoying the warm night air, glad not to be in Belgrade.
Several men had enquired after him during his time away. ‘Suspicious people,’ Marko had added, which didn’t narrow things down that much when it came to Russell’s roster of local acquaintances. They hadn’t been English or American, and the Marko’s rough descriptions didn’t match Shchepkin or Artucci. The Croats from Kozniku’s office came to mind, but Russell was hoping that they were the men he’d shopped to the Yugoslavs. Luciana would presumably know, and he was tempted to go straight to her. But that would piss off Artucci, who for all his amateur theatrics was proving surprisingly useful. So it looked as if another tryst at the deli would be required. It sounded like a New York City romance.
The bed seemed lumpier in his new room, but Russell still managed nine hours’ sleep. After a bath, he gathered his notes together and ambled down to the San Marco, stopping at one point to sniff the sea and briefly bask in the morning sunshine. Two rolls, two coffees, and he was ready for business.
He had roughed out his newspaper article on the train back from Belgrade, and the report for Youklis would merely be an expanded version of that. It took him an hour or so to write it out, but he felt in no hurry to hand it over, or indeed to see Youklis at all. Instead he ordered another coffee, and carried it outside. On a table nearby two Russian Jews were discussing Friday’s end to the British Mandate in Palestine, and how the battle would go thereafter. Towards a Jewish victory, Russell assumed. He wondered where the British would send the newly idle troops. These days the Empire was like a body erupting in boils, so they were probably spoilt for choice.
A shadow crossed his table, and Buzz Dempsey sank into the chair beside him. ‘So this is the place where all the artists hang out,’ he drawled, shielding his eyes against the glare to look inside the cafe. ‘They don’t all look like faggots,’ he admitted. ‘How’s the coffee?’
‘They make it weak for the artists,’ Russell told him.
‘Yeah? Well we haven’t got time anyway. Youklis wants to see you.’
‘You’re delivering his messages now?’
Dempsey looked offended. ‘We need you, too. We’ve got another Russian defector.’
This one, as the American explained on their ride up to the villa, had turned himself in to British border guards the previous evening. He was only a lieutenant, but he seemed intelligent.
But first there was Youklis to deal with. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ was the shaven-headed CIA man’s first question.
‘In Belgrade, remember?’
‘You’ve been back almost twenty-four hours.’
‘More like twelve. And I’ve been writing my report,’ he added, passing it across.
Youklis read it through slowly, interspersing grunts of contempt with exasperated sighs. ‘So Pograjac is out of the game,’ he said, looking up and sounding almost surprised.
‘One way or another,’ Russell agreed. ‘He’s no use to you any more.’
‘Don’t you mean “us”?’
‘I work for the CIC.’
‘We’re all in this together, you know.’
‘So I’m told. Usually when people use that phrase they actually mean the opposite.’
Youklis ignored that. ‘This guy Nedic-why the hell did he give you a list of Yugoslav commies who want to cosy up to the Soviets?’
‘Because he thought I was working for the Soviets,’ Russell explained patiently.
‘And why did he think that?’
‘Because I told him so.’
‘And where’s the list?’
‘The Yugoslavs took it. But they don’t have the code number, so it won’t mean anything to them.’
‘And we don’t have the list, so the code number’s useless.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You could have made a copy.’
‘They would have found it, and that would have made them suspicious. And according to Nedic, it was published in Red Star last year, so all you need to do is find the right issue.’
Youklis thought about that for a moment, and decided there wasn’t any point. ‘I can’t see what use we could make of a list like that if we had it. Commies against commies,’ he muttered, a hint of wonder in his voice.
In Youklis’s world it was Us or Them. Stalin doubtless felt the same.
‘You didn’t come back with much, did you?’ the American concluded.
‘On the contrary. You now have a good idea of what’s happening between Belgrade and Moscow, and you’ve found out that you need a replacement for Pograjac.’