Silesian Station (2008) (31 page)

Shchepkin smirked, as if mere survival was a major accomplishment.

In his case it probably was, Russell thought.

'A walk in the park?' the Russian suggested, indicating the entrance to the Saxon Gardens at the side of the palace.

'Why not?'

They strolled in silence to the gateway, as if conversation in the open was forbidden. 'I don't suppose this is a chance encounter,' Russell said as they passed through.

'Well, yes and no. Our being in Warsaw at the same time is a matter of chance. But a meeting had already been decided on, and once one of our people at the Europejski had reported your arrival...'

'It must be fate,' Russell said wryly. 'So why do we need a meeting?'

'Ah, Moscow has decided that using the legation in Berlin smacks of amateurism, and they want to convince the Germans that they're taking your deliveries really seriously. So you and I will be meeting outside Germany on a regular basis - your new job offers ample justification for such trips.'

It did, but such an arrangement would involve Russell in carrying supposedly secret information across the German border. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth would be party to the arrangement, of course, but the border authorities would not be. Did that really matter? Or was he still sweating over the experience in March, when his last Soviet contact had planted incriminating material in his suitcase? 'Whatever happened to Comrade Borskaya?' he wondered out loud.

Shchepkin made a face. 'Ah, Irina. She was very keen. Her plot against you was all her own.'

'She
was
very keen?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'What happened?'

Shchepkin shrugged. 'She was found guilty of working for a foreign power. And I assume executed.'

Russell pictured her exasperated expression, and remembered her telling him he would have the satisfaction of supporting world socialism in the struggle against fascism. He wondered what she'd been thinking when they led her down the last corridor in the bowels of the Lyubyanka. That someone had made a mistake?

'You seem to have gotten yourself into something of a bind,' Shchepkin observed, as they passed a series of baroque statues symbolizing the human virtues. 'Blackmailed into working for the Gestapo, and turning to us for assistance.'

'Turning to you with a mutually beneficial suggestion,' Russell corrected him. 'And if Borskaya hadn't tried to betray me, the Nazis would never have known there was anything to blackmail me for.'

'True. How did you talk yourself out of that, by the way? Comrade Borskaya assumed it was dumb luck.'

It had been in part, but Russell was reluctant to admit as much. He told the Russian the whole story, up to and including the donation of his Soviet fee to a German official as a wedding present. 'I'm probably the only man who ever bribed his way in to Nazi Germany.'

'Not a pleasant epitaph,' Shchepkin muttered.

They stopped in the shade of an old water tower, the first one in Warsaw according to the accompanying plaque. It had been built by Marconi in 1850, when the city had still belonged to the Russia of the Tsars.

'The questions for your fake German spy are waiting in Moscow,' Shchepkin said casually, as if all Russell needed to do was nip round and collect them.

'Moscow? You don't expect me to spend days travelling there and back for a couple of pages? If the post's good enough for Heydrich, why isn't it good enough for Beria?'

Shchepkin grinned at that, but persevered. 'They also want to talk to you.'

'About what?'

'That's for them to tell you. But look, as a journalist you should be there in any case. That is where the decisions are being taken,' he went on, unconsciously repeating Connie Goldstein's line.

'A deal's coming? In the next few days?'

'Nothing is 100 per cent certain, you understand, but if you travel to Mos-cow I think I can guarantee you a - what do you call it in English? A scoop - that's the word. A scoop,' he repeated, enjoying the sound of it.

'He's really going to do it - sign a pact with the devil?'

Shchepkin sighed. 'It will buy us time. Though I agree it will be hard to explain.'

'Ah, go on. If you can get away with calling collectivization and five million dead an advance towards socialism, then a pact with the devil should be a piece of cake.'

Shchepkin stopped and looked at him, a strange look on his face. 'You know, I never realized before just how angry you are.'

'Aren't you? When we met in 1924...is this where you hoped we would be fifteen years later?'

'No, of course not. But this is where we are. A dream that hasn't come true is not necessarily dead. And there are many comrades still willing to die for ours.'

'Yes, but...'

'You remember Fritz Lohr, the sailor you met in Kiel?'

'I never knew his name.'

'He died without telling them yours. He jumped out of a third floor window at the Gestapo headquarters in Hamburg.'

Russell was shocked. At the sudden intrusion of death, at the horrible realization that his own life had been hanging by a torturer's thread, and he hadn't even known it. 'When?' he asked.

'In May, I think. Perhaps early June.'

Russell could see the man's face, his utter belief in what he was fighting for. And his companion, the prostitute Geli, with her dark-ringed eyes and cynical smile. What had happened to her?

'And this woman in Berlin,' Shchepkin continued relentlessly. 'Sarah Grostein. She seems willing to risk her life for the cause.'

'She is,' Russell agreed. Almost too willing.

'What is she like?'

'Clever. Determined. Resourceful. And she feels she has nothing to lose. An ideal agent.'

'And you like her,' Shchepkin said.

It was not a question, but Russell answered it anyway. 'Yes, I do.'

They had reached the side of a small lake. A tall fountain was spraying water into the air, crafting rainbows.

'Let me speak as a friend,' Shchepkin said. 'I understand why you find it hard to trust us, but hear me anyway. When we talked in Danzig and Krakow I asked if you planned to take sides in the coming war. Do you remember your answer?'

Russell did. 'I said not if I could help it.'

'Exactly. But you have changed in the last eight months, and maybe your answer has too.'

Russell smiled at him, and gestured him to a nearby seat. 'Perhaps it has,' he admitted. 'There's a man in Breslau,' he continued after they had both sat down. 'His name is Josef Mohlmann, and he's the Reichsbahn Deputy-Director of Operations for South-eastern Germany. I don't know his home address, but it shouldn't be difficult to find out. He was an SPD member, and he thinks it was a mistake to fight the communists rather than the Nazis. He's recently lost his wife, he's lonely, and he drinks too much. I think he's in a position to give you advance warning of any invasion, and I think he will if you approach him in the right way.'

Shchepkin was staring intently at him, his lower lip glistening slightly. 'How did you meet this man?'

'By accident,' Russell lied. This didn't seem the moment to explain his connections to American intelligence. 'I could be wrong about him, but I don't think so.'

Shchepkin massaged his chin with the fingers of his left hand. 'Perhaps you could approach him?'

'No, it needs to be a fellow German. One who'll convince him that betrayal is the only way to save their country.'

Shchepkin thought about this. 'You are right,' he said at last. He turned to face Russell. 'So can I persuade you to visit Moscow?'

Russell held his gaze. 'Let me ask you something. As a friend. Can you guarantee my safety? That I won't be arrested and shipped off to Siberia for thwarting Comrade Borskaya's little plot?'

'Of course. For one thing, you are a well-known journalist. For another, you are useful to us, and have just proved as much. Why would anyone wish to send you to Siberia?'

It fell somewhat short of a guarantee, but it made sense. Of a sort. And Moscow did seem like the place for an East European correspondent to be at this moment in history. Russell sighed at the thought of another endless train journey. 'All right,' he said. 'Since you asked so nicely.'

Shchepkin delved into his inside pocket and brought out some papers. 'Your ticket and your visa. The train leaves at two.'

As it rumbled across the Vistula Bridge, Russell stretched out in his first class compartment and went back over the conversation, wondering at the skill with which Shchepkin had manipulated him. The sort-of-apology for Borskaya's betrayal - regrettable, of course, but these things happened, and one could hardly criticise over-enthusiasm, particularly when the person responsible had just been shot. The touch of flattery - encouraging him to relate his own resourcefulness at the Czech border. And the tugs at his conscience provided by the dead Fritz Lohr and the living Sarah Grostein, made more compelling by what sounded - and perhaps even was - a genuine plea for help. There had even been an appeal to his journalistic greed - the 'scoop' in Moscow dangled in front of him like a big fresh carrot.

And, Russell realized, there had been no hint of a threat. Which, contrarily, felt much more threatening. Shchepkin was a master, no doubt about it.

The train made good time across the plains and low hills of eastern Poland. Here too the fields were bursting with grain, but there were no signs of urgency in the harvesting, no gangs of students or soldiers helping the farmers. Reckoning the food would be better on this side of the border, Russell ate an early dinner, and was just sipping the last of his coffee when the train emerged from a stretch of forest and eased past a huge sign bearing the slogan 'Workers of the World Unite'. Behind it a wide swathe of cleared land stretched towards a barbed wire barrier lined with watchtowers. Beyond that, the Soviet border authorities at Niegoreoje were waiting to check each visitor's credentials.

Russell's passport and visa were given the most cursory of glances, almost, he joked to himself, as if they were expecting him. A first class sleeper compartment was waiting for him in the Soviet train, complete with beautifully starched sheets and a bar of Parisian soap - the sort of accoutrements that any member of the Romanov family would have taken for granted. Russell hoped there was no one he knew on the train.

Darkness fell as his fellow-passengers queued to enter the workers' state, and it was almost nine by the time the train got underway. This was usual, his coach attendant assured him - they would only be the usual two hours late reaching Moscow. Russell considered a drink in the restaurant car, but decided his body was in more need of sleep.

The bed was surprisingly comfortable, but anxieties over Effi kept him awake. Once he had realized he wouldn't be back by Friday, he'd been afraid she would try something on her own. Another attempt at following Eyebrows perhaps, or something more dangerous which he hadn't even thought of. Before leaving Warsaw he had tried to wire her, but all communications with Berlin had been cut, and he'd been forced to send a message via his London agent Solly Bernstein. The man had never taken a holiday as long as Russell knew him, but there was always a first time. 'Please, Effi ,' he murmured. 'Be sensible.'

It was almost ten in the morning when the train rolled into Moscow's Byelorusskaya Station, and Russell emerged into the stifling heat of the Soviet capital. He was looking forward to a first ride on Moscow's famous new Metro, but a uniformed NKVD driver was waiting for him at the platform entrance, eyes shifting to and fro between the arriving passengers and the photograph he held in one hand.

'Citizen Russell?' he asked politely, using the non-Party form of address.

'Yes.'

'Come with me please,' he said, with the precision of someone who'd learnt the phrase in the last hour or so.

The sleek black car that was waiting outside looked custom-made for American gangsters, with its thick glass windows and wide running boards. His chauffeur opened the back door, but Russell mimed his wish to sit up front. He hadn't been in Moscow since 1924 and he wanted a good view of what Stalin had done with it. 'Which hotel are we going to?' he asked, but got no answer.

He tried again five minutes later, when it became obvious that they were driving out of the city rather than into it, and eventually teased out a reply.

'Festival Aviation,' the man told him, taking both hands of the wheel to mime an aeroplane in flight. 'Tushino,' he added definitively.

Russell was more interested in a bath than an aerial pageant, but explaining this to his companion proved impossible. Not, he suspected, that it would make any difference if he could. If the NKVD had decided he needed to watch aeroplanes, then that was what he'd be doing.

They drove for about twenty minutes through Moscow's north-western suburbs. The architecture was uninspiring, the streets almost empty of people, and the only other vehicles on the road seemed to be lorries. Part of the drabness, Russell realized, was the complete absence of advertising hoardings. But only part. The Party had obviously legislated for only two colours of paint in the latest five year-plan.

After passing a line of giant hangars, they stopped at gates in a high wire fence and the driver showed his documentation to the waiting guards. A dim roar in the distance swelled with astonishing speed, and well over a hundred bombers appeared in the windscreen, flying across their line of sight in close formation, no more than four hundred metres from the ground.

His companion made an enthusiastic noise, and gestured towards the disappearing bombers with obvious admiration.

It was just like home, Russell thought.

The aerodrome building was flanked with what looked like temporary grandstands. The driver drew up behind the one on the right, said 'Come with me please,' again, and led Russell around to the front. 'Foreign press,' his guide said, pointing to a particular section of seats. Not that Russell needed the help. His fellow hacks were easy to pick out - less conservatively dressed, less interested in the proceedings, and smoking cigarettes which didn't jettison all their tobacco if held in anything other than a horizontal plane.