It was early afternoon when the telephone rang, and she almost pulled it off the wall in her eagerness to answer. ‘Effi Koenen?’ a male voice asked. It wasn’t Tulpanov, but the inflection was Russian.
She didn’t know whether to speak or not.
‘My name is Shchepkin,’ the man said in German. ‘I expect John Russell-your husband-has told you about me.’
‘He has.’
‘I’d like to talk to you. Perhaps we could meet in Savigny Platz, on one of the benches.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘I’m waiting for another call.’
‘From Comrade Tulpanov? That’s what I wish to see you about. You’re in no danger,’ he added.
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘I think so.’
She supposed that would have to do. And she was curious to finally meet the man who’d played such a crucial role in their lives over the past ten years.
As she walked towards him ten minutes later, he looked older than she’d imagined, with a rather drawn face and an unusually lean body. Or perhaps it was the white, slightly thinning hair-Effi remembered John had told her that he and Shchepkin were roughly the same age.
He rose with a smile to shake her hand, but the eyes seemed to be in another world. ‘So what do you have to tell me?’ she asked when they were both seated.
‘It was a stupid mistake. The two men coming to your flat, I mean. It won’t happen again.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ she said. And it was, but it begged an obvious question: ‘What did they think they were doing?’
‘I’m not altogether sure,’ Shchepkin admitted. ‘We’re being reorganised, and no one knows what anyone’s doing. As far as I can discover, one particular department came across your name in an investigation they’re running-something to do with the Sonja Strehl suicide …’
‘What?’
‘They wanted to question you about it.’
‘They didn’t tell me that. I thought I was being abducted.’
Shchepkin smiled, probably in sympathy, but she didn’t take it that way.
‘It wasn’t a wild assumption,’ she went on angrily. ‘Several people I know have disappeared over the past year.’
‘Yes of course,’ Shchepkin agreed. ‘If one side doesn’t grab them, the other will. It’s no excuse, of course, just the way it is. The point is, you have no need to worry. They simply wanted to question you about this actress’s death.’
‘But I don’t know anything about it!’
Shchepkin sighed. ‘I will tell them. It has already been made very clear to the Russian officer and his superiors that John Russell is one of our most important assets, and that kidnapping his wife is, as the Americans say, strictly off-limits. Strictly off-limits,’ he repeated, savouring the phrase.
‘And the German?’
‘Ah. One of our recent recruits, I’m afraid. An apprentice of sorts.’
‘God help Germany.’
‘God help us all,’ Shchepkin said wryly. ‘Have you heard from Russell lately?’
‘I had a letter yesterday. He’s still stuck in Trieste.’
‘He was in Belgrade last week,’ Shchepkin said. ‘I saw him a few weeks ago,’ he explained. ‘We need to get him back to Berlin.’
The ‘we’ was instructive. And on the walk back home Effi couldn’t help wondering what it said about her marriage when the MGB had a more up-to-date location for her husband than she did.
Shchepkin’s strange blend of strength and fragility hadn’t been what she expected. With all that sadness he appeared to be carrying around, she was amazed he could still muster the energy to pursue his dubious profession.
She had only been back a few minutes when another jeep pulled up outside the house. This one had American markings, and the man walking up to the door was wearing a US lieutenant’s uniform. Surely they hadn’t come back in disguise?
Effi held the gun behind her back as she answered the door, but there was no mistaking the nationality of the fresh-faced young man standing in front of her. ‘Madame Russell?’ he asked in a soft drawl, apparently confusing his languages. ‘I have some air tickets for you.’
Gerhard Strohm was lunching with Oscar Laue, a fellow-survivor from the Party’s underground organisation in the Stettin yards. Laue was much younger than he was, and had left the railways when the war ended. He was now working at the Party’s Economic Planning Institute.
‘You seem happier than last time I saw you,’ Laue remarked, as they waited for their order to arrive. The restaurant, just off Potsdamerplatz, had only opened the week before, but two of Strohm’s colleagues had already brought back good reports.
‘Yes,’ Strohm agreed, just as the food arrived. Several comrades had remarked on his newfound propensity to smile since hearing Annaliese’s news.
‘Things are about to get better, I think,’ Laue continued, mistaking the reason for his companion’s cheerful demeanour.
‘In what way?’ Strohm asked innocently. The food was more than a match for that served in the Party canteen.
‘Well, we’re headed for what the Americans call a showdown, aren’t we? A sort of Gunfight at the Berlin Corral.’
‘And that will improve matters?’
‘It will clarify the situation, and that’s what’s needed. We can’t go on like this. The Soviets’-here Laue glanced briefly over his shoulder, just to check that no one was listening-‘the Soviets like to see themselves as in loco parentis, but they’re really the children. I mean, Marx and Engels, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg-real thinkers. The Russians have had their moments, of course, but when it comes to sophisticated political thought, they’re the children, not us. Children who don’t know their own strength sometimes, and need careful handling.’
Like the dismantlers out at the repair shops, Strohm thought.
‘You handled that situation in Rummelsburg very well,’ Laue said, reading his mind.
‘I wasn’t proud of it,’ Strohm admitted.
‘Why ever not? From what I heard you averted a crisis. If there’s a bear in your house,’ Laue said, blithely switching metaphors, ‘you don’t make him angry. You give him what he wants, and make sure he knows where the door is.’
‘And what if he shows no sign of leaving?’
‘He will, believe me. We’re all comrades, aren’t we? Once the Western powers are forced out of Berlin, there’ll be no reason for the Russians to stay. That’s why I say the coming crisis will clear things up. The children will all go home, and leave us to fulfil our destiny. We Germans invented socialism, and we’ll have the last word. Don’t you agree?’
Strohm couldn’t help laughing. ‘A happy ending, eh?’
By noon on Tuesday even Dempsey was satisfied that Druzhnykov had coughed up all that he possibly could, and the question arose as to what should be done with him. Dempsey and Farquhar-Smith were agreed in believing the Russian unworthy of a $1,500 exit, and inclined instead to dump him at the train station with a one-way ticket to Venice and a few days’ worth of expenses in his pocket.
It felt to Russell like they were just throwing the young Russian back in the pool, and he told Dempsey so. He might evade the MGB piranhas, might even find himself a ship to Palestine, but as he spoke only Russian and Yiddish, it seemed a lot more likely that he’d end up in an Italian jail. Wasn’t there still a Haganah agent in Trieste, and weren’t Dempsey’s people in contact with him?
The American reluctantly agreed that they might be, and drove off in his jeep to find out. He returned two hours later with an address. ‘You can take him,’ he told Russell, ‘and if they say no, you can drop him off at the station.’
They all drove back down the hill. As Dempsey threaded the jeep through the narrow streets, Druzhnykov’s face seemed to reflect each new sight, alight with curiosity. The American let them out some way from the address, and drove off without even wishing the Russian good luck, but the latter didn’t look bothered. He followed Russell, clutching the carpet bag that someone had found for him, and which now contained a single change of underwear and the photograph of his now-dead family, which he’d carried through the war.