‘None,’ she said. ‘Either the Russians are biding their time or they’ve decided the Americans won’t be scared into leaving.’
‘Which does Gerhard think?’
‘That they can’t make their minds up. He doesn’t believe they have a plan. He thinks they just react to whatever their enemies do. So as long as no one provokes them, they’ll be reasonable.’
‘Why should the Americans provoke them?’
Annaliese shrugged. ‘God only knows. I just wish they’d all go home.’
Russell played the innocent over the next twenty-four hours, as the local police, under the none-too-subtle supervision of the Allied authorities, carried out their investigation. Two visits from Dempsey kept him informed of their progress in concocting a politically acceptable narrative. The bomb had apparently been planted by ‘remnants of the Ustashe’, as part of an ongoing cycle of revenge attacks that went back at least to the war and probably a thousand years further. If Skerlic hadn’t been a philosopher in this life, Russell thought sourly, he would surely be one in the next.
‘He must have been a spy,’ the hosteller kept saying, loading the three-letter word with enough contempt to sink one of the cruisers out in the harbour. One of the surviving daughters had lost an eye, the other had two badly broken legs, but they would both live. The building, on closer inspection, was less badly damaged than might have been expected. Russell’s old room needed reconstruction, but those around it hadn’t been that badly damaged. None of the guests had had to leave.
On Wednesday afternoon, a car came to take Russell up to the villa, where Youklis and Dempsey were both waiting on the pine-scented terrace. ‘It was Croat Krizari,’ Youklis told him. ‘And they were definitely after you. Would you like to tell us why?’
Anticipating the question hadn’t provided Russell with a satisfactory answer. He couldn’t admit to shopping Croat ‘freedom fighters’ or writing an expose of the Rat Line without bringing the wrath of his American employers down on his head. ‘Beats me,’ he said, with all the insouciance he could muster. ‘All I can think is that it must have been the fucking Ukrainians-either friends of Palychko who think I sold him out, or enemies angry that I tried to help him.’
‘It was Croats,’ Youklis insisted. Dempsey was saying nothing, just looking disappointed, as if Russell had let the side down by becoming a target.
‘What have I done to offend them?’
‘That’s what we want you to tell us,’ Youklis persisted.
Russell shrugged. ‘I can’t. Unless I’ve trodden on some toes without realising it. I have talked to victims of the Ustashe …’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘The same reason we held the Nuremberg Trials, so that war crimes won’t be forgotten. I’m a journalist, remember?’
‘So you keep telling me. I don’t suppose you’ve been playing around with a woman named Luciana Fratelli?’
‘What? Who’s she?’
‘Monsignor Kozniku’s secretary.’
‘Her? No, not my type. Why do you ask?’
‘Her body was found floating in the docks on Sunday evening. And Dempsey here had the mad idea that her boyfriend discovered the two of you were playing around behind his back, and decided to kill you both.’
‘Brilliant theory,’ Russell noted sarcastically. ‘She’s an Italian, not a Croat.’
‘She works for a Croat organisation,’ Dempsey insisted.
‘And I’ve only ever met her once,’ Russell went on, ignoring him. ‘When I collected Palychko’s papers.’ He guessed that the Croats, seeking the betrayer of their comrades, and knowing that she had access to the names, had tortured the truth out of her. He didn’t ask Youklis what state the body was in.
‘Right,’ Youklis was saying. ‘And there’s no other Croat woman you’ve been fucking, no Croats you owe money to?’
‘No and no. Maybe they really were after the Serb.’
‘Not according to our informants.’ Youklis sighed with apparent frustration. ‘But whatever you’ve done to piss them off-and I don’t for a goddamned minute think you’ve told us all you know-you’ve made yourself a target. And we can’t carry on babysitting you until they get bored and go home.’
‘I wasn’t aware that you had been.’
‘You know what I mean. You’re no use to us here anymore. We’re sending you back to Berlin.’
‘Well, I won’t object.’
‘I didn’t think so. But on your way home, there’s a job that needs doing.’
His punishment, Russell thought, or was he just being paranoid? ‘Where this time?
‘Prague.’
‘And what’s the job?’
‘You’ll be briefed in Vienna.’ Youklis extracted a sheet of paper and an envelope from his briefcase. ‘That man at that address, he’s expecting you sometime tomorrow. Your ticket’s in the envelope.’
Russell’s first thought was that he would miss Sasa’s funeral, after promising her parents he’d be there. His second was that denying him even that modicum of atonement was strangely fitting. Killers shouldn’t turn up at a victim’s funeral.
Youklis, bizarrely, was holding out a hand in farewell. Russell shook it, marvelling at the hypocrisy. The American disliked and distrusted him, and had cheerfully risked Russell’s life in Belgrade without a moment’s compunction, but no one could fault his manners.
After Dempsey had dropped Russell off downtown, he started for home intending to pack, and then realised he couldn’t cope with any more of Marko’s grief at this particular moment. Instead, he ate a final dinner at his favourite restaurant, and then sat out in the Piazza dell Unita, watching the sunset until the darkness was almost complete. Walking back up the hill he stopped at a public telephone to ring Artucci’s two contact numbers, but no one answered at either. The Italian was long gone, Russell guessed-either communing with the fishes, or halfway to Sicily.
He approached the ravaged hostel with caution, but no one was lurking in the piazza’s shadows with murderous intent. Two of Sasa’s younger siblings were sitting on the stairs, their bodies listless, their faces full of dull resentment. As well they might be, he thought, shutting the door to his room, but taking the faces in with him. He should be glad to be alive, he thought, but that feeling was beyond him.
Wednesday morning brought rain and a letter from Eva Kempka. Effi had twice tried to call her on the previous day, but each time the phone had kept ringing. That and a line in the letter-‘i know it’s ridiculous, but I think I’m being watched’-convinced her a visit to Kreuzberg was in order.
Eva lived opposite an infants’ school, just around the corner from Russell’s pre-war home on Neuenburger Strasse. Block residents had been forbidden to open their windows when the heating was on, and sometimes Russell’s top-floor flat had grown so hot that they’d stretched out naked on his bed with a pair of borrowed film-set fans blowing right at them. The portierfrau Frau Heidegger had always called her John’s ‘fiancee’, and assuming she’d survived the war, would doubtless be pleased to hear of their marriage.
Eva’s flat was on the second floor. There was no response to Effi’s first knock, nor to a louder second. The view through the keyhole was limited, and offered no clues to the tenant’s whereabouts. After finding that everyone else was out on that floor, she went down to the basement in search of the portierfrau.
The woman in question was around fifty, unusually fat for post-war Berlin, and disinclined to be helpful, particularly when she found out who Effi was looking for. ‘Frau Kempka has been arrested,’ she stated, almost triumphantly.
‘What for?’ Effi asked.
‘I don’t exactly know, but I’m sure we could both make a good guess. Your kind can hardly …’
‘My kind?’
‘You know what I mean. It’s still illegal, you know, despite everything that’s happened.’
If the woman hadn’t been so fat, Effi thought, she’d be one of those people painting 88 on high walls and bridges-88 for HH or Heil Hitler. ‘I am not a lesbian,’ she told the portierfrau, adding a note of indignation for effect.