At least he spoke German. Russell wasted no time announcing his attachment to the MGB.
Hanzelka looked incredulous.
‘Telephone their Embassy,’ Russell told him. ‘Better still, call the number which is in the wallet your men took. It’s a direct line to the local MGB.’
The Colonel gave him one more look, then turned to a subordinate. Russell didn’t understand their interchange, but the subordinate’s subsequent exit boded well.
‘If you work for the MGB, why are you part of an American plot against this country?’ Hanzelka asked icily.
‘I don’t think the Soviets would thank me for telling you.’
‘The Soviets are our allies, not our masters, and this is not the Soviet Union. You would be well advised to remember that.’
Russell nodded. ‘As long as you’re happy keeping Moscow’s secrets, I’m happy to explain.’
That brought doubt to Hanzelka’s eyes, but he overrode it. ‘Please do.’
‘The Americans think I work for them. Occasionally I’m ordered to do something which strengthens their illusion.’
‘You are a double-agent?’ The Czech sounded surprised, though God only knew why.
‘Of course,’ Russell told him.
‘Well, well.’
The subordinate returned, and another exchange took place in Czech.
‘Comrade Rusikov is on his way,’ Hanzelka told Russell, who tried not to look too relieved. ‘Since we’re on the same side,’ the Colonel was saying, ‘you might as well tell me what you know about this operation.’
‘It looks like you know it all already.’
‘Most of it,’ Hanzelka conceded.
‘I was asked to collect some signed affidavits. Statements from people who witnessed Jan Masaryk’s murder.’
Hanzelka was smiling.
‘Fakes, I presume.’
‘How could they not be when Masaryk jumped?’
‘They were bait,’ Russell suggested.
‘Of course.’
They had probably rolled up half of Giminich’s organisation, Russell thought. Which felt strangely satisfying until he remembered the girl in the blue dress.
‘So, who was in charge of this operation?’ Hanzelka asked.
‘An Austrian named Volker Giminich.’
‘On his own?’
Russell was reluctant to name Winterman, who as far as he knew wasn’t a mass murderer. But neither did he want the Soviets to find out that he was keeping things from them. He opted for partial disclosure: ‘An American was in nominal charge, of course, but Giminich is running the show.’
‘He likes to do that,’ Hanzelka allowed.
‘You know him?’
‘He was based here during the war-one of Heydrich’s more zealous disciples.’
Russell wondered whether to reveal his own previous acquaintance with Giminich, and decided against it. His earlier visits to Czechoslovakia seemed like a can of worms best left unopened-he had no idea what had happened to the Czechs he had been involved with in 1939 and 1941, or whose side they might now be on. ‘The Americans have some strange allies,’ was all he said.
‘ “Strange” is not the word I would use to describe Volker Giminich.’
‘You know him better than I do,’ Russell said, realising it must be true. This Czech had a personal score to settle.
Rusikov’s arrival spared him the details. The MGB officer gave Hanzelka a warm handshake, and Russell something more perfunctory. For the next few minutes the conversation was conducted in Czech.
‘You will take the affidavits to Vienna as planned,’ Rusikov told Russell eventually.
He looked suitably surprised.
‘They won’t stand close scrutiny,’ Rusikov explained. ‘If the Americans publish them, we will have no trouble proving they are forgeries. People will assume one of two things, that the Americans forged them themselves, or that they were duped by their own supporters here in Prague.’
‘Okay, I’ll take them.’
‘You realise that Giminich must not know that any of his people have been arrested,’ Rusikov went on. ‘Some have already been turned, and we hope to entice him close to the border-so a snatch squad can bring him back here for trial.’
‘I understand,’ Russell said. And he did. Put Giminich in a Prague courtroom, and the new Czech authorities would be able to draw damning connections between Nazi war crimes, American spies, and the regime’s current domestic opponents. A real political bonanza.
The Soviets were so much better at this stuff than the Americans. If they had a cause worth fighting for they’d be damn near invincible.
‘You can still catch the night train,’ Hanzelka was telling him. ‘The lieutenant here’-he indicated the young man who had just arrived with Russell’s suitcase-‘;will take you to the station and make the arrangements.’
As they emerged on to Bartolomejska, where a car was waiting, Russell glanced back at the building. It seemed utterly anonymous; the grey walls and shuttered windows were a highly effective mask. Somewhere in the basement the girl in the blue dress would still be crying.
The lieutenant said nothing on their drive, but proved singularly efficient when it came to securing him a private sleeping compartment. Russell had concluded that he only spoke Czech, but at the carriage door the young man wished him ‘a safe journey, Comrade’, before striding almost jauntily back down the platform.
The train set off on time, its large locomotive convulsively blowing off steam. There was, Russell discovered, no restaurant or bar on board, so he spent the next fifteen minutes by an open window, enjoying the warm air on his face, gazing out at the dark countryside. Dark in more ways than one, he thought. He wouldn’t come this way again in a hurry.
Considering the terrible state of the track, sleep came quite easily, and when he finally woke they weren’t much more than an hour from Vienna. It was still only seven A.M. when he finished his breakfast in the Nordbahnhof buffet, so he took a taxi to Josefstadt, and sat enjoying the morning sunshine in a small park not far from the house on Florianigasse. He resisted the temptation to read the affidavits-if and when they blew up in Winterman’s face, he wanted the man to remember that the envelope had been sealed.
He knocked on the CIA’s door at nine A.M., and was surprised to find both Winterman and Giminich already at work. They were excited by the affidavits, and appreciative of his efforts, which at least made a change. They asked very few questions-their operation had gone according to plan, which was only to be expected. And no, there was nothing to detain him further. With the help of the duty officer downstairs he should be back in Berlin by evening.
As it turned out, that day’s flights were already full, but Russell was happy to spend another day in Vienna-his Rat Line story needed a few hours’ work, and it would be safer to send it on from there-Berlin’s channels of communication were less reliable and much less discreet. At the American Press Club he commandeered a typewriter, and spent most of the rest of the day turning his notes into a series of three articles that would, he hoped, embarrass the hell out of any institution with a moral compass. Whether the State Department and Vatican qualified as such was another matter.
After sending it all off to Solly Bernstein in London, Russell walked around to the Press Club. There he found an abandoned London Times, in which he learnt that the Nationalists had won the previous week’s election in South Africa. From earlier reports he knew that these were people who believed in keeping the country’s races apart, and apartheid was apparently the name of their creed, the Afrikaans for ‘separate development’. This was post-war progress, he thought-from Aryans murdering Jews to Aryans merely enslaving Negroes. And all in three short years!
After dinner in a local restaurant he walked over to the Central Exchange and purchased another illicit telephone call to Berlin. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he told Effi. ‘The flight from Frankfurt should reach Tempelhof around four, give or take an hour or so.’