The Haganah agent wasn’t pleased to see them, although he softened when Russell introduced himself. ‘You wrote about us,’ the man remembered. ‘Many American Jews gave us money after your story. Many farms were bought.’
The Arabs wouldn’t thank him, Russell thought. He introduced Druzhnykov, and let them agree to things in Yiddish. The Russian, it turned out, would be the last Jew leaving Europe via this escape line-now that the British had stepped aside, future travellers could take a regular boat.
Russell shook Druzhnykov’s hand and wished him well. As he walked back towards the town centre, he had that rarest of recent feelings-that his day had actually been worthwhile.
With no new defectors to engage him, Russell spent most of the following day working on his weekend travel plans. Aviano was on a branch line, one that joined the main line from Udine to Venice, but the two men on duty in the Trieste Station booking office weren’t prepared to guarantee any actual trains. One man was sure that the retreating Germans had pulled the bridges down after them, and very much doubted that all had been repaired yet, but his colleague seemed to remember their receiving a letter of notification stating that the line had been re-opened. He couldn’t find it though, despite emptying half a dozen drawers. The two men decided that Russell had little choice but to travel to the appropriate junction, where all would be revealed.
It sounded a less-than-reliable way to meet a plane, and the thought of a German woman and child alone on an Italian base rang all sorts of alarm bells. He would have to leave at least half a day early.
Or, it suddenly occurred to him, hire a car. There were such things in Trieste, and surely he could find an owner hungry for dollars. Whatever else he could say about his American employers-whether journalistic or governmental-they paid well.
Thirty-six hours and more than a dozen garages later, he found his vehicle-a maroon and cream Fiat 508 Balilla which had been abandoned on the waterfront two years earlier and brought in by the police. ‘They won’t let me sell it,’ the garage-owner lamented, ‘and they won’t come and take it away, so I hire it out when I can.’
After driving it up and down the waterfront, Russell decided it would do. After the usual haggle, he drove it carefully up to his hostel, and laboriously turned it around in the small piazza. It was a while since he’d driven.
When he came down from his room an hour or so later, the car’s roof had been taken down, and three of Marko’s daughters were sitting in it, looking for all the world like passengers awaiting their chauffeur. Which they were. ‘Please Mister English, take us for a ride,’ the one called Sasa asked him. ‘Yes, yes,’ her younger siblings chorused.
Some practice wouldn’t hurt. After going back in for their father’s permission, he drove them all down to the city centre, took the car up one side of the Grand Canal, across the square in front of the cathedral, and back down the other side to the waterfront. The girls were chattering non-stop in Serbo-Croat, and looked like they were enjoying themselves, so he took the coast road to Miramare Castle, turning the car in the space once used by tourist charabancs. It was a beautiful day, the deep-blue sea studded with boats of all types and sizes-warships, liners, freighters, and fishing craft. There were walkers on the beach, which had only just been swept of mines, and several swimmers braving the oily waters and heaven knew what else. Even with the warship, it looked like a world at peace.
Rosa sat by the window, looking down at the snow-covered Alps. The DC-3 seemed to be almost skimming across the peaks, which Effi found both exhilarating and scary. She wondered how Russell had managed to arrange it all, and hoped he hadn’t paid too high a price. Over the past ten years, as he’d once admitted, too many deals with various devils had looked worse in retrospect than they did at the time.
She looked at Rosa, still engrossed by the magnificent views. Not for the first time, she wondered if they’d done right by the girl, adopting her as their own. In material terms, Rosa now led a relatively privileged life, and no one else had offered to take her in. But the girl had also become entangled-how could she not? — in the web of political debts and threats that fate had woven around Effi and John.
One evening not so long ago, Effi had shared her misgivings with Zarah, who had given them no shrift at all. ‘She’s loved. That’s the only thing that matters. Particularly if you’ve been through what she’s been through.’
Effi hoped her sister was right. As she reached out a hand to stroke the girl’s hair, Rosa turned to face her. ‘Lothar told me the Alps are three kilometres high, but the Himalayas are almost three times that.’
‘Lothar likes numbers.’
‘He’s a boy,’ Rosa agreed, sounding almost sympathetic. ‘Is there snow on the tops all year round?’
‘I don’t know,’ Effi admitted.
‘Lothar will,’ Rosa prophesised.
‘I expect so.’
‘Will Papa be there to meet us?’
‘He’d better be,’ Effi said with a smile.
‘But what will we do if he isn’t?’
‘Whatever we need to. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Okay,’ Rosa agreed, turning back to the view.
Effi leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. She was looking forward to seeing Russell, and she was also glad to be away from Berlin. As so often in the past, a ‘rest’ between jobs was proving more demanding than work. The flat and its cleanliness had been neglected for weeks, all sorts of other matters were crying out for attention, and friends assumed she was permanently available. In the end, Effi had only just managed to get herself packed for the weekend.
She had heard from Lisa Sundgren-good news, or so it seemed. One of the illegal groups Lisa had mentioned had found out where her daughter was-in a small town not too far from Prague-and armed with this information, she was preparing another assault on the indifference of the local Czechoslovak diplomats. Effi hadn’t heard from Max Grelling, but maybe his services wouldn’t be required.
There was still no contract from RIAS, which might prove a blessing in disguise, because the previous day another, rather startling opportunity had presented itself. She’d almost not answered the knock, but curiosity had gotten the better of her, and with gun firmly clasped behind her back had opened the door to a handsome young American. His German was worse than her English, but as far as she could tell he was there representing the American director Gregory Sinfield, who was currently shooting a film in Berlin. And Sinfield wanted Effi for his next movie, which would commence shooting in Hollywood in approximately three months’ time. There was no title as yet, but there was a script for her to read, a script that seemed good, if the first ten pages were anything to go by. She hadn’t brought it with her, because she didn’t want their weekend spoilt by the possible prospect of another long parting.
Could she cope with that? Could John? Was a Hollywood film, no matter how good, worth the upheaval it would mean for them all?
Effi didn’t know, but her excitement at the prospect had certainly pushed other things from her mind. The previous day Eva Kempka had left a message asking Effi to call back, but they’d been airborne before she remembered. Effi hoped it was only a social call, and not some new discovery that Eva had made about Sonja Strehl’s unfortunate death.
Russell left Trieste soon after eight A.M., and drove across the bridge connecting Venice to the mainland not much more than two hours later. Having found a place to park the Balilla over the weekend, he took a water taxi down the Grand Canal in search of a hotel. Given the month, he was expecting crowds, but both waterways and streets were emptier than they had been in 1934 when he was there previously, the city seemingly stuck in post-war torpor. After looking at several hotel rooms, with hoteliers almost falling over themselves to offer a bargain, he settled for a three-room suite overlooking the Grand Canal, just south of the Rialto Bridge.