Masaryk Station (John Russell) (36 page)

Abakumov shrugged. ‘Such work is not pleasant, of course it isn’t. But needs must. The Soviet Union needs this uranium, for reasons that I’m sure you know. And we won’t tolerate this sabotage.’

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘Put a stop to it. How do you do it is your concern, but feel free to tell the comrades that if they won’t listen to you, they’ll have to listen to me. If we have to arrest every last one of them, and draft in replacements, then we will.’

They were, Ströhm realised, determined to get the uranium.

‘The chief troublemaker is a man named Pieck,’ Abakumov was saying. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Only by reputation. He was a resistance leader in this area.’

Abakumov wasn’t impressed. ‘That war is over. It’s time he realised that another struggle—one every bit as crucial—is now underway. We have one hundred-thousand workers in this area, all busy taking uranium from the ground, and we won’t have their efforts brought to nothing by a few cowardly railwaymen.’

Ströhm ignored the insult. ‘If you tell me where to find Pieck, I’ll go and talk to him now.’

‘Down by the station. The union offices are in the yard.’

Ströhm considered leaving his car outside the Russian HQ—if it didn’t impress them, it would certainly alienate Pieck—but what was the point in pretending? He was the Man from Berlin, come to scold them back into line.

Manfred Pieck was alone in his office. He was a man of around Ströhm’s own age, with a shock of dark brown hair and watchful grey eyes behind small spectacles. He listened patiently to Ströhm’s explanation of his presence, merely sighing with obvious frustration at a couple of points. ‘I saw you drive up,’ he said eventually. ‘If you’ll take us both out, I can show you what’s going on.’

‘All right.’

Once they were in the car, Pieck ran a hand along the leather dashboard. ‘Very nice,’ he said.

‘My boss in Berlin thought it might impress the Russians.’

‘You should have come in a tank.’

Pieck directed him through the town, and on to a small road which wound up a wooded hillside. After about ten minutes they suddenly emerged above another valley, and Pieck asked him to stop. At the bottom of the slope a small town straddled a fast-running stream, and in the fields further down hundreds of tents had been pitched on either side of a single railway line. ‘There’s a mine a little way up the valley,’ Pieck told him. ‘You can’t see it from here, but that’s where the miners live,’ he added, pointing at the tents. ‘Men and women.’

‘Are they locals?’

‘Not many of them. There were some volunteers to begin with, but that supply soon dried up. Most are prisoners of one sort or another—POWs brought back from Russia, youths from all over the Zone whom the Russians claim were Nazi werewolves. I tell you, with all the ones they’ve captured, it’s a miracle the Nazis lost.’

‘Did any of these people have any mining experience?’

‘Hardly a one. With predictable results. This year, in the Aue district, we’ve had more than two thousand deaths.’

‘Two thousand!’

‘I think that’s why they call Aue the “Gate of Tears”,’ Pieck said drily. ‘But accidents are only part of it. The working conditions are appalling—there’s not enough food, no sanitation, and that’s before you get to the problem of radiation. These people spend half their days either knee-deep in radioactive sludge or breathing in the dust. Do you know what radiation does to the body?’

‘I’m not a scientist.’

‘Neither am I, but I’ve talked to people at Chemnitz University. And I’ve seen the results with my own eyes—the skin lesions, the infections, all sorts of symptoms which can’t be explained any other way. The doctors around here are out of their depth, and they know it. The local hospitals are all full up, but the Soviets won’t let them move any patients on to other districts.’

Ströhm thought for a moment. ‘All of which is terrible,’ he said eventually. ‘But none of these people are your responsibility.’

Pieck gave him a look. ‘Strictly speaking, that’s true. So let’s drive on down, and I’ll show you what my men are doing.’

Just above the town the railway line ended in a pair of sidings. Between these, there was a narrow gauge line which came down from the mine. One trainload had just arrived, and a large crowd of railwaymen were shovelling ore from one group of wagons to the other in a dense cloud of yellowish dust. They all had cloth masks tied across their faces, but they might just as well have hung charms around their necks.

‘They’re working,’ Ströhm said stupidly.

‘For the moment. There were a few walk-outs at different sites last week, but we got everyone back, and then called meetings. The vote for a strike was almost unanimous.’

‘When?’

‘Monday.’

‘And what do you expect the Russians to do?’

‘Arrest the leaders. At the very least. Beyond that …’ Pieck shrugged. ‘You get to a point where that doesn’t matter.’

Ströhm knew the script, knew what he was supposed to say. But if he hadn’t yet reached Pieck’s point, he knew it wasn’t that far away. Those were workers filling their lungs with poison, at the strident behest of the one and only workers’ state, his and Pieck’s guiding star for all their adult lives. Workers that they were supposed to represent. Pieck was doing exactly that, and so who the hell was he speaking for?

‘I understand,’ was all Ströhm said. ‘I’ve been sent to tell you that the bigger picture’s all that matters, that the Russians will get their uranium one way or another, that all in all you might as well save your strength for battles you can win. Okay? If you’d like a well-honed excuse to change your mind and take the easy way out, there’s no shortage. There never is. And as a gesture of the people’s appreciation the leadership will probably give you a fucking car.’

Pieck looked at him, a smile creasing his mouth. ‘They gave it to you?’

‘God no, this is just a loan. But if you call off the strike …’

‘Not a chance.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I never liked cars.’

They parted almost friends, but Ströhm’s sense of well-being was fleeting. After dropping in on Abakumov, and ingenuously reporting that he’d done all he could, he continued on towards Chemnitz. It was early evening by the time he arrived, but the thought of driving home to Annaliese seemed infinitely preferable to hours spent shuffling doubts in a hotel room.

It wasn’t much better alone with his thoughts on the empty autobahn. Somewhere between Dresden and Lübben Ströhm became aware of tears streaming down his cheeks, and pulled the car on to the hard shoulder. The last time he’d cried like this he’d been twelve years old, and both his parents had just died in a Californian road accident. And that was the clue, he realised. That was the last time he’d felt such a crushing sense of loss.

Out at Wannsee the weather was poor, and Russell, Effi and Rosa spent most of Saturday cooped up in the hotel. Between venturing out for meals and one shower-drenched walk along the lakeshore, they read and listened to the wireless. The post-Goebbels range of music was something to be welcomed, although the lack of news reports was surprising; someone had apparently decided that Berliners already had a surfeit, and so had sent all the journalists home for the weekend. Effi utilised an hour of big band music to teach Rosa some basic dance steps, and with Hollywood in mind Russell gave the two of them a lesson in American English. ‘You’re
so
cute,’ they told each other, before collapsing in a fit of giggles.

The sun came out on Sunday morning, and they took to the water in a rented boat. Every few minutes an American plane would roar above their heads as it headed into Tempelhof, while a few miles to the north British planes were flying in and out of their airbase at Gatow. When Rosa asked why, Russell did his best to explain the situation, and saw its essential craziness reflected in her expression. He sometimes thought they should be more open with her about their own problems, but how did you tell an eleven-year-old that Daddy’s Russian friend might at that very moment be enduring torture at the hands of his Moscow employers?

That evening they were eating outside when another sharp and violent shower erupted, beating a thunderous tattoo on the roof of
the covered terrace and drawing a pulsating curtain of rain across the world beyond. Sitting there, Effi felt like she was a taking part in a scene from a film, and that if only the director would shout ‘cut’, someone would then switch the rain machine off.

Sacrificial wolf

M
onday morning Ströhm took Annaliese to work in the car. They had used it twice the previous day, once to visit her former boyfriend’s parents out in Spandau, and once for a ride around the city. Ströhm had felt a little uneasy, but they had paid for the petrol, and—as Annaliese said—what use was a parked car? As the better driver, she had done most of the driving, and this had given him ample opportunity to notice the facial reactions of the people they passed. Some had looked envious, some resentful, a few had simply smiled. It
was
a beautiful vehicle, after all.

Ströhm was behind the wheel that morning. ‘I could get used to this,’ she said, as they passed a crowded tram stop.

‘I’m sure we’ll have one eventually,’ he told her. ‘I expect every family will.’

She made a face. ‘I forgot to tell you—last week at the hospital one of the ambulance drivers told me about this, er, this painting, it’s on a wall in Link Strasse—you know where that is?’

‘It’s one of the streets off Potsdamerplatz.’

‘Yes. It’s in the American zone, but only a few hundred metres from the Russian, which I guess is why they chose it.’

‘Who? What is it?’

‘You must have played Monopoly?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, someone has painted the board on the wall of a
bombed-out house. It’s big. It must have taken him all night. Or her, I suppose.’

‘What for?’

‘Ah, there’s a twist. But I won’t spoil the surprise. You should drive past it on your way to work. Today, before the Russians get permission from the Americans to wipe it away.’

After dropping her at the hospital entrance, Ströhm did as she suggested. The giant monopoly board was too large to miss and exquisitely detailed, but for a moment he couldn’t see the point. And then he did—the three most expensive properties had new names. Unter den Linden had become Wall Strasse, where the KPD Central Committee had its headquarters, and Grunewald had turned into Bernicke, where the same institution had its luxurious rest home. Insel Schwanenwerder, the most expensive square of all, now bore the name Seehof, where the Party had just opened an even more exclusive resort for the use of Senior Members of the Central Secretariat.

Ströhm stared up at the wall, awed by the sheer amount of effort that he, she or they had put into making this oh-so-simple statement, knowing only too well that its life would be measured, at best, in days. He was indeed surprised to find it still there—if the higherups knew about it, a squad of cadres would have been sent to expunge it over the weekend, American permission or not. But surely some Party members must have seen it. A delicious possibility crossed Ströhm’s mind, that those comrades who had seen the painting had failed to report its existence. And that could only be because they felt the same way he did, that he wasn’t alone, with his doubts and sense of loss.

If Ströhm had had a camera, he’d have taken a picture, and sent it to the
Neue Zeitung
. Maybe someone already had.

He was still smiling when he reached his office, and found that
Marohn had asked for him. He went upstairs expecting criticism of his conduct in Aue, but his boss had other things on his mind. Did Ströhm know that General Sokolovsky, the head of the Soviet Military Administration, had written a letter to his Allied counterparts more or less claiming Soviet control over the whole of the city?

Ströhm said he hadn’t. ‘Has there been a reply?’

‘Not yet,’ Marohn conceded, ‘but maybe the Western allies really will leave. Then we can get back to running a railway.’ He was clearly in a good mood—‘at least you tried’ was all he said about the trip to Aue. The only time Ströhm felt disapproval was when he said he’d brought back the Horch.

‘No, you must keep it,’ Marohn told him.

‘But I don’t need a car,’ Ströhm protested.

‘It’s not a matter of need; it’s a token of respect for the position you hold. All cadres above a certain level are to be allocated personal vehicles, and refusing to accept one will be interpreted as dissent. Understood?’

Ströhm nodded.

On his way home he picked up a paper, but there was no news from Aue. The Soviets would keep this one quiet, he thought.

Annaliese knew him well enough not to be over-delighted with the car, simply noting that after the baby was born, they could take him or her out to the country. Ströhm just grunted—on the way home from work he’d been wondering how to get rid of it, but all he’d come up with was hiding the damn thing away in a garage and throwing out the key.

As he got off the train at Zoo Station, Russell wondered whether he should make an effort to disguise himself. Some workingman’s clothes perhaps, or a pair of spectacles. But he hadn’t, and it was too late now. He pulled his hat down another centimetre and walked on
towards Carmer Strasse.

Reaching the end five minutes later, he saw a couple of pedestrians and several parked cars, but neither of the former were loitering and all of the latter looked familiar. As he neared their building one of the neighbours emerged, saw him, and raised a hand in greeting before walking off in the other direction. If Beria’s men were lurking in the stairwell, they were well-concealed.

The stairwell was empty. He listened outside their door for a few moments, then rapped on it. No one answered, which seemed a good sign until he put himself in their position. Why would they?

He had tried to leave the new gun with Effi, but she had insisted he take it. ‘If they’re after us,’ she had said, ‘then they’ll be waiting for you.’

Well, were they? Russell took out the gun, turned the key, and pushed the door all the way open. There were no Russians on the sofa, and none in the bath. Everything looked exactly as they’d left it.