Silesian Station (2008) (14 page)

There was an autobahn to Stettin, but Russell decided to give the Hanomag a rest. Erna Kliemann probably lived in one of the city's less salubrious districts, where cars and their occupants tended to be conspicuous. And the train would be just as quick.

He arrived in Stettin soon after five. After obtaining directions for Lastadie, he walked up the west bank of the wide Oder to catch a tram across the Hansa Bridge. A five minute ride brought him to Grosse Lastadie, the dockland suburb's main street, where a helpful old woman pointed him in the direction of the junction with Schwangstrasse. No.14 was fifty metres down, a house with three storeys of living space above a small workers' restaurant and a tobacconist. The former was already closed for the day, and the proprietor of the latter was busy locking up. The entrance to the rooms above lay between them.

It was the sort of area the Nazi authorities liked to visit in strength, but Russell carefully scanned the surrounding windows, and ostentatiously examined the piece of paper he had inscribed with her address and a made-up name, before heading across the street and in through the open front doors. The smell in the stairwell, an unhappy blend of boiled cabbage and tobacco, pursued him upwards, growing stronger with each flight of creaking treads. Room 7 was right at the top, and a small piece of paper bearing a neatly-in-scribed 'E. Kliemann' was pinned beside the door. There was no answer to his knock.

A second, louder knock brought no response from inside, but the door behind him opened to reveal a young boy in his school uniform. 'Erna's not back yet,' the boy announced.

'Do you know when she will be?' Russell asked.

'She goes to her sister most days. She's usually back by eight o'clock.'

It wasn't much gone six - he'd have to come back. 'Thank you,' Russell said. 'I'll try again later.'

'You are most welcome,' the boy told him.

Back on Schwangstrasse Russell noticed an open bar on the opposite side. The evening trade hadn't yet arrived, and the only two customers were sat at the back, half-hidden in a cloud of pipe-smoke. Russell ordered the only food on the menu - a sausage casserole - took a beer back to a window seat, and began his vigil.

Two hours dragged by. He was beginning to think he must have missed her when a young woman in a blue frock walked slowly by on the opposite pavement. She had straight dark hair cut to the shoulder, was small, slim and obviously pregnant. Russell watched her turn in through the open front doors.

He waited a couple of minutes, then followed her in. Responding to his knock, she pulled the door back a few inches, and placed a careworn face in the gap.

'Erna Kliemann?' Russell asked.

'Yes,' she admitted, gazing past his shoulder to check he was alone.

'I've come about Bernhard Neumaier.'

Her body seemed to sag. 'He's dead, isn't he?'

'I'm afraid he is.'

She closed her eyes, fingers tightening on the edge of the door.

'Can I come in?'

The eyes re-opened, bleak and hostile. 'What for?' she asked. 'Who are you?'

'I have something for you. From his friends.'

'Why should I believe that?'

'If I was the enemy, I wouldn't be asking.'

She gave him a searching look, then widened the aperture to let him in.

Russell stepped inside. The room was right under the roof, with a sloping ceiling and a small dormer window. It was sparsely furnished, with just a bed, a single upright chair and a wide shelf for the wash bowl.

She closed the door and turned to face him. 'He died last Saturday, didn't he? I felt it.'

'I don't know when he was killed,' Russell lied. It seemed kinder to leave her believing in some special psychic connection. And who knew? - maybe some part of Neumaier had died on the Saturday.

'It was Saturday,' she reiterated, sitting down on the bed and holding her belly with one hand.

She had a pretty face beneath all the weariness and grief, Russell realized. And she couldn't be much more than eighteen.

'How did he die?' she asked.

'We think he was shot,' Russell said, taking the upright chair. There was no need for her to know that Neumaier had died under torture.

She looked at the floor for several moments, rocking gently to and fro, hands clasped against her swollen belly.

Russell asked if she'd known that Neumaier was a communist.

'Of course.' She raised her head. 'Bernhard believed in the Soviet Union. And the International.'

The recitation sounded almost defensive, but he could see that the words were important to her. Her man had died for something worthwhile, something noble. The solace of any religion, Russell thought cynically.

'Bernhard told his contact that you were having his child. He asked the Party to look out for you if anything happened to him.'

A large tear rolled down one cheek. The first of a stream.

He handed her the envelope, and watched her examine its contents.

'There's hundreds of Reichsmarks here,' she whispered.

'For you and the child.'

She lowered herself to her knees and pulled a battered suitcase out from under the bed. 'It was his,' she explained, clicking it open. 'There are only his clothes and this,' she added, handing Russell a small notebook. The tears were still flowing. 'He was going to pass this on at his next treff.'

It was full of small, neat writing in black ink. Timetables, tonnages, names of ships. At first glance it looked like a detailed breakdown of the cross-Baltic trade in Swedish iron ore. That trade was certainly vital to the German war machine, but Russell had no way of knowing if the information in the note-book was secret or valuable.

He didn't want to know. 'This could get you arrested,' he said, holding it out to her. 'You should burn it.'

She stared at him, surprise sliding into disgust. 'He died for that,' she almost hissed.

'Then post it anonymously to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin,' Russell suggested.

She angrily shook her head. 'Bernhard said that anything with that address was intercepted and opened. That's why he was waiting for the courier. Now you must take it.' She wiped her face with the back of her hands and glared at him.

Russell realized she wasn't going to take no for an answer. And he could always get rid of the damn notebook himself - she would never know. 'All right,' he told her, slipping it into his inside pocket. 'I'll see that the Party gets it.'

'He said it was really important,' she insisted, determined that Russell should acknowledge the same.

'Then it probably is,' he agreed, getting to his feet. 'I wish you luck,' he added, opening the door to let himself out. It sounded ludicrously inadequate, but what else was there to say? He could hear her begin to sob as he started down the stairs.

Back on Grosse Lastadie he stood at the tram stop, checking his watch and feeling somewhat exposed. It was only half-past eight on a Friday evening, and not even fully dark, but there were few people on the street and hardly any traffic. Lastadie seemed devoid of taxis, and the infrequent trams were all headed in the wrong direction. Half an hour into waiting, it was clear that walking would have been the wiser choice.

When an inbound tram finally arrived it was full of boisterous young sailors from the naval base. Russell fought his way off on the far side of the Hansa Bridge, checked his watch one last time, and gave up on the idea of catching the last train. He would have to get a hotel room. But first... He walked out onto the bridge, intent on dropping Neumaier's notebook into the Oder, and stared down at the shining black waters for what must have been more than a minute. He couldn't do it. She was right - her lover had sacrificed his life for this. Not directly perhaps, but in some essential way. Russell stood at the parapet, notebook in hand, knowing he owed the man more than this. Knowing he owed himself more than this. And cursing the knowledge.

He put it back in his pocket and started walking. His last and only other night in Stettin had been spent at the luxurious Preussenhof Hotel, and he felt in need of further cosseting. When he reached that establishment ten minutes later the bar was doing a roaring trade, and he allowed himself a couple of confidence-boosting schnapps before heading up to his room. Unfortunately, the sight of two probable Gestapo men in the lobby - both of whom watched him all the way to the lift - undid all the alcohol's good work. Russell let himself into his third floor room, double-locked the door, and frantically wondered how he could conceal the notebook from unwelcome visitors.

There was nowhere to hide it, but the ensuite toilet - a Preussenhof luxury extra - offered the option of instant disposal. Russell sat down on his and took out the notebook. After numbering all the pages Neumaier had used, he carefully tore them out, and placed the loose pile on the side of the adjacent wash-basin. If the Gestapo came to call he would flush the incriminating evidence away.

He dropped a few blank pages into the bowl to test the efficacy of the flush. The pages disappeared. And didn't come back.

He left the toilet light on, stripped off his clothes and got into bed. Having nothing to read, he turned off the bedside lamp, closed his eyes, and tried to lull himself to sleep with happy memories. It seemed to take forever, but he was finally drifting off when a sudden noise in the corridor outside jerked him wide awake again. What was it? He could hear people whispering, and someone was trying to turn the door knob, trying to get in.

He leapt naked from the bed, rushed into the toilet, and took up position beside the open bowl, notebook pages in one hand, flush in the other. In the corridor outside a sudden bout of giggling was followed by a loud squeal of pleasure.

Russell caught a glimpse of himself in the wash basin mirror, and wished that he hadn't.

There were no more sudden alarms, but sleep worthy of the name proved elusive, and by five-thirty he was fully awake. Waiting for the early shifts to populate the street below, he debated the pros and cons of posting the pages to himself at a convenient Poste Restante. He couldn't send them to the main office in Berlin, because that was where he had used McKinley's name to pick up the envelope in February; but there were other offices, and this time there would be nothing false about his documentation. Using his own name, on the other hand, would carry its own perils. Who knew how closely Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth was watching him? Did alarm bells go off at the Haupt-Post when an item of mail arrived bearing his name?

He wouldn't use the mail. A two-hour train journey, a ten-minute drive to the Unter den Linden, a short and easily explainable visit to the Soviet Em-bassy. Nothing to it.

But where to put the loose pages? His jacket-pocket was the obvious place, but that was where he carried his identity papers and journalistic accreditation, and he had a nightmare vision of himself at an unexpected checkpoint, spilling everything out together. In his shoes, he decided. He divided the pages into two piles, folded each in half, and stuffed them in. Once the shoes were on his feet, he could hardly feel the difference. He only hoped the sweat of another hot day wouldn't render the pages illegible.

He left the room just before seven, and took a tram to the station. There was a fast train to Berlin in twenty-five minutes, a semi-fast in forty. The former took an hour less, but the latter gave him the option of getting off at Gesundbrunnen in north Berlin, which seemed a safer bet than Stettin Station, where checks on travellers were much more likely. He sat over a coffee wondering which class of ticket offered the greatest security - the perceived respectability of first, the anonymity of third, or the no man's land of second. He opted for a first class ticket on the semi-fast and sat with another coffee, this time scanning the concourse and platform gates for men in leather coats. There were none.

His train pulled out on time, and despite the coffees he soon found his eyelids drooping with fatigue. One moment he was listening to the wheels rattling beneath him, and then someone was shouting outside his window. 'Alles aussteigen!' 'Everyone off !'

The train was standing at a small country station - Kasekow, according to the board. Away to his left, he could see two cars and a lorry drawn up in the goods yard. A group of Brownshirts with semi-automatic weapons were walking down the neighboring tracks.

Russell's stomach went into free-fall.

'Alles aussteigen!' the voice shouted again.

Russell stepped down onto the platform. There were about sixty people on the four-coach train, and almost all of them were men of working age. Most seemed exasperated by the likely prospect of a long delay, but some seemed buoyed by the diversion, casting delighted glances hither and thither, like visitors to a movie set. At the head of the train the elderly locomotive was audibly sighing at the interruption to its progress.

A table had been planted under the platform canopy, and two men in civilian clothes were sat behind it. Gestapo, no doubt. Another man - probably their superior - was standing with his back to the building, calmly smoking a cigarette.

'All passengers line up!' someone else shouted. 'Have your identity papers ready!'

A line formed, stretching down the platform from the table to the rear of the train. There were only four people behind Russell, an elderly couple and two cheerful young men in Wehrmacht uniforms.

Looking round, Russell realized that the whole station area was surrounded by a loose cordon of storm troopers. Several more Brownshirts were noisily working their way through the train, presumably in search of possible stowaways.

The line moved slowly forward. Edging sideways for a view of the table, Russell saw that the seated officers were doing more than simply checking papers. Pockets were being emptied, bags searched. And, as Russell watched, the man being questioned knelt down to undo his shoelaces and remove his shoes.

A cold wash of panic coursed through Russell's brain. What could he do? He cast around for hope, but there were no obvious gaps in the ring of storm troopers, and the nearest trees were two hundred metres away.