Potsdam Station (42 page)

Someone was calling his name. ‘It’s me. Your Dad. Are you okay?’

‘Dad?’ He couldn’t believe it.

Russell put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. On his way to the standpipe for the second time that day, he’d been lucky enough to see the SS officer before the SS officer saw him, and had witnessed the whole scene from a corner fifty metres up the road. Unarmed, he had watched aghast as the executions took place, and only realised at the last moment that the lone soldier was his son. ‘It’s me. Are you okay?’

Paul had no idea what the answer to that was. ‘He killed my friend, Dad,’ was all that came to mind.

‘You knew one of those men?’

‘No, no. Not today. He killed my friend Werner. Two days ago, or three. Werner was only fourteen, and he hanged him as a deserter.’ Paul started to cry and Russell cradled him in his arms, or at least tried to. His son was now taller than he was.

‘We’ll go to Effi’s building,’ he told Paul. ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk, but I have to get some water first.’ He had left his containers further up the street, but those that belonged to the dead men were still sitting on the pavement, so he simply collected those and waited for his turn at the tap. Paul stood off to one side, staring blankly into the distance.

Water collected, they each took two containers and started up the street. But they’d hardly gone a hundred metres when two Panthers rumbled across the intersection with Bismarck Strasse, a surprisingly neat formation of troops following in their wake.
Hitlerjugend
, to judge by their size.

Another followed. They stopped and waited for the danger to pass, but eventually another tank slewed round the corner and headed towards them. Russell led Paul off into a side street, looking for somewhere to hide for a while. There was a small enclosed courtyard a little way down, with a full complement of surrounding walls, and they took up refuge inside, straining their ears for approaching men or armour.

Russell knew he should talk to his silent son, but couldn’t think where to begin. With what had just happened? With his mother’s death? What could he say that wouldn’t rub salt in wound after wound? Just what he felt, perhaps. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

Paul stared back at him, a solitary tear running down one cheek. ‘Yes,’ he said, the ghost of a smile forming on his lips.

‘It heals,’ Russell heard himself say, just as footsteps sounded in the street outside. A moment later a man put his head round the corner of the courtyard entrance. He was wearing a leather jacket and baggy trousers tucked into high felt boots. A star adorned the front of his hat.

Seeing the two of them sitting against the wall, he cal ed out to his comrades and ran quickly forward, rifle at the ready. Russell and Paul raised their hands high, and got to their feet. By this time two others had arrived. Both were wearing around a dozen wrist watches on the outside of their sleeves.

‘Comrade, I need to talk to your commanding officer,’ Russell told the soldier in his own language. How long had his father spoken Russian, Paul wondered.

The soldier looked surprised, but only for a second. ‘Come,’ he ordered, swinging his rifle in the requested direction.

They were hustled down the street. In a courtyard further down a Red Army sergeant with pale blue eyes was studying a street map in the front seat of an American jeep. He looked up with a bored expression.

‘Comrade, I have been working for the Soviet Union,’ Russell told him. ‘I have credentials from the NKVD inside my jacket. Will you look at them please?’

The eyes were more interested now, but also suspicious. ‘Give them to me.’

Russell handed over Nikoladze’s letter and watched the man read it. At that rate
War and Peace
would take the rest of his life.

‘Get in the jeep,’ the sergeant told him.

Russell stood his ground. ‘This is my son,’ he told the Russian.

‘This says nothing about a son,’ the sergeant said, waving the letter. ‘And he is a German soldier.’

‘Yes, but he is my son.’

‘Then you will meet again. Your son is prisoner. Don’t worry – he will not be shot. We are not like Germans.’

‘Please, don’t separate us,’ Russell pleaded.

‘Get in the jeep,’ the sergeant reiterated, a hand on his holstered pistol.

‘I’ll be all right, Dad,’ Paul managed to say.

Russell climbed in beside the driver, and another man climbed in behind them. ‘I’ll find you,’ Russell shouted above the revving engine, and was almost thrown from his seat as the jeep swung out of the courtyard. Looking back, he had a final glimpse of Paul standing among his captors, his face bereft of expression.

The jeep roared down Kant Strasse, where only a few wary-looking Soviet infantry were in evidence. As far as Russell could see the Russians were advancing eastward up this street while German troops headed west along the parallel Bismarck Strasse, like dogs chasing each other’s tails. The Soviets would eventually win through of course, but they might, for the moment, have over-extended themselves in this particular sector. It was hard to tell. It might take them days to reach Effi’s building. Or only hours.

He prayed she would be all right.

He prayed that Paul would be all right. He had believed the Russian’s promise not to shoot his son, but front-line troops were one thing – they tended to respect their opposite numbers – the men behind them something else. And there was always the chance that Paul would run into someone who was aching for revenge. At best he would end up in a poorly provisioned prison camp, with no prospect of an early release. The Soviets were slow at the best of times, and looking after German POWS would be nowhere on their list of priorities.

Russell found it hard to blame them. If he was Stalin, he’d probably keep his German prisoners until they’d rebuilt every last home and factory.

But the thought of another long separation was almost unbearable. On the last occasion he’d seen his son, Russell had left a fourteen-year-old boy to complete a U-Bahn journey on his own, and worried that something might go wrong. Today he had watched him stride up to an SS officer and shoot the man dead. How many shocks and blows had it taken to get from one to the other? Shocks and blows that a father might have managed to soften or deflect.

But first he had to get him back. The jeep passed over the Ringbahn at Witzleben, and turned onto Messedamm. The loop at the northern end of the Avus Speedway had been turned into a military camp, two T-34s rumbling out as they headed in; others were refuelling from a horse-drawn petrol tanker. The driver parked the jeep in front of an obvious command vehicle and disappeared inside. Russell tried unsuccessfully to make small-talk with the man behind him. This soldier had several watches on one arm, and seemed intent on listening to each one in turn, as if anxious that one might have stopped.

Russell looked around. The mingled smells of manure and petrol made the makeshift camp seem like a cross between a farm and a garage, and he smiled at the thought that such an army had beaten Hitler’s.

The driver reappeared, along with a sour-looking major who now had charge of Nikoladze’s letter. He gave Russell a long cold stare, and the letter back to the driver. ‘Take him to the new HQ,’ Russell thought he said.

They set off again, heading south through Schmargendorf. The driver seemed happy with life, whistling as he drove, but disinclined to conversation. It was probably the letter, Russell thought. Any sort of associa-tion with the NKVD – as ally or victim – was inclined to inhibit normal interaction.

Now they were driving through conquered Berlin, through districts where the war was effectively over. Soviet troops were much in evidence, gathered round canteen carts or impromptu fires, feeding their animals or repairing vehicles. One soldier wobbled by on a captured bicycle, then delighted his comrades by falling off.

There were more Germans out in the open, and some at least were mingling with their conquerors. They saw several burial parties, but an enormous number of corpses still lay uncollected on the streets. As they drove through Steglitz a woman screamed in a house nearby, and the soldier in the back said something that Russell didn’t catch. The driver laughed.

It was a long ride, and one that impressed on Russell just how much of Berlin was in ruins. The building near Tempelhof which proved his final destination stood alone in a field of rubble, with all the pride of a lone survivor. Signs proclaimed it the headquarters of the new Soviet administration.

This time Russell was taken inside, and left in an office still decorated with ‘Strength Through Joy’ cruise posters. After about ten minutes a tall, handsome Russian with prematurely grey hair appeared. He was wearing a regular lieutenant-colonel’s uniform, but the insignia told Russell he was a political commissar.

‘Explain,’ the Russian ordered, placing Nikoladze’s letter on the table between them.

‘I can only tell you so much,’ Russell told him with feigned regret. ‘I arrived in Berlin ten days ago, as part of an NKVD team. I can’t tell you the purpose of our mission without compromising state security. I suggest you contact Colonel Nikoladze, because I am forbidden to discuss this matter with anyone else.’

‘Where are the other members of your team?’

‘They are dead.’

‘What happened to them?

‘I can only discuss this with Colonel Nikoladze,’ Russell said apologetically.

The commissar gave him a long angry look, sighed, and got back to his feet.

‘I have a request,’ Russell said.

‘Yes?’

‘My wife is in Berlin, in the Charlottenburg area. She has been involved in resistance work, here in the city. Once her area has been secured, would it be possible to arrange some sort of protection?’

‘It might be,’ the Russian said, as he opened the door to leave. ‘Why don’t you take the matter up with Colonel Nikoladze?’

It was only when Effi caught sight of the two elderly men who’d accompanied Russell on his water-gathering expedition that she realised he hadn’t come back. The two returnees were already fending off criticism for returning with empty saucepans, and it took her a while to make sense of their story. An SS officer had apparently executed two deserters whom he found in the standpipe queue, and had then been shot by another soldier. Russell had rushed from their hiding place to intervene, but they had beaten a hasty retreat. They had no idea what had happened after that, although one man seemed pretty sure that no more shots had been fired.

Effi asked herself what could have happened. Had the soldier taken Russell away? That didn’t seem very likely. But what other explanation could there be? – he wouldn’t just take off without telling her.

As afternoon turned to evening with no sign of him, her anxiety grew more acute, and when time came for sleep, it proved mostly elusive. She lay beside Rosa, warmed and somewhat comforted by the sleeping child, but plagued by the thought that she had lost him again. When dawn came she volunteered herself for water collection, determined to gather what clues she could at the site of his disappearance.

Approaching the standpipe with two other women, she braced herself for the worst. But there were only three bodies neatly laid out by the side of the street – a red-headed SS Obersturmführer and two men in civilian clothes, all shot. There was no sign of Russell, and no one in that morning’s queue who had witnessed the previous day’s excitement. Effi thought about waiting for others to arrive, but the sounds of battle seemed closer than ever, and she had to get back to Rosa before the Russians arrived. With heavy heart, she filled the pans with water and slowly made her way up Grolman Strasse.

On Bismarck Strasse, German soldiers were falling back in the direction of the Tiergarten, their hold apparently broken. A succession of muffled booms only confused her for a moment – a battle was raging in the U-Bahn tunnels that ran under the street.

The Russians would be there soon, and perhaps it was better that Russell would not be there to greet them. His letter might have provided protection, but then again it might not. And if the Russians really were intent on rape, she was glad he wouldn’t be there. He wouldn’t be able to stop them, but he could certainly get himself killed.

On that Sunday morning Paul woke with the scent of lilac in his nostrils. One of several thousand prisoners corralled in a wired-off section of south-east Berlin’s Treptower Park, he had staked out a space to sleep beside the blossoming bushes on the previous evening. They smelt of spring, of new beginnings.

The night had been cold, the ground hard, but he’d slept long and well. The sense of relief he’d felt on arrival seemed just as strong that morning – his war was over. There were no more choices to make, everything was out of his hands. If the Russians decided to kill him there was nothing he could do to stop them. In the meantime he would lie there and smell the lilac.

He had arrived at the makeshift camp just before dark. Ivan had been good to him overall. A few unnecessary shoves, but that was nothing. One guard had even offered him a cigarette, and he’d put it behind his ear, the way Gerhart used to. After queuing for ages, his name, rank and number had been taken down by a Russian with an extravagant beard, and then he’d been placed in the teeming pen. The food was terrible, but not much worse than he was used to. He had no injuries, so the lack of medical facilities didn’t affect him personally. Captured German medics were doing the best they could with what little the Russians had given them.