Silesian Station (2008) (33 page)
The official Soviet news agency Tass removed any lingering doubts on the following morning: Foreign Minister Ribbentrop would be arriving 'in the next few days' to sign a non-aggression pact. Russell and a fellow American journalist ran two members of the British negotiating team to ground in their hotel lift, and were blithely informed that the Anglo-French negotiations with the Soviets were still ongoing. Wishful thinking or blind idiocy, the two journalists asked each other in the foyer, before realizing it didn't matter.
So why stay in Moscow? Russell asked himself. It was bad enough sharing the same continent with Ribbentrop, let alone the same city. All the agencies would carry the official details of the signing - he'd be better off in Warsaw, seeing how the Poles reacted. Nearer to Berlin and home as well.
He wrote and sent off his story, and took the Metro up to Byelorusskaya Station to reserve a sleeper on the afternoon train. Back at the Metropole he noticed Connie Goldstein in a secluded corner of the bar.
'You made it,' Goldstein said.
'I've been here since Friday. And now I'm heading back to Warsaw. The phrase "all over but the shouting" seems applicable.'
'Yes, I suppose it is.' Goldstein capped his pen, closed the notebook he'd been writing in, and smiled up at him. 'Have you got an hour or so? I'd like to show you something.'
'Sure. What is it?'
'Wait and see.'
Goldstein led him outside and hailed one of the waiting 'taxis'. 'Khodynka airfield,' he told the NKVD driver in Russian.
Russell half-expected an argument - the taxis were usually reluctant to take foreign journalists beyond the invisible boundaries of the government district - but the driver made no objection. As they sped up an eerily empty Gorky Street, Goldstein chattered happily about returning to the States, and a new grandchild born earlier that year.
The trip to Khodynka only took twenty minutes, and Russell was astonished by what greeted them: the buildings of the small airfield, along with all available poles and stretches of fencing, were hung or emblazoned with swastikas. Either the Nazi flag had figured in the last five year-plan or every seam-stress in Moscow had been up all night stitching the damn things together.
'He's arriving tomorrow,' Goldstein said.
Russell didn't reply. He was dumbstruck by the sea of swastikas. Playing for time was one thing - communists the world over had come to accept the Bolsheviks' insistence that some degree of realpolitik was necessary to the survival of the workers' state. But this went way beyond any judicious trimming of sails. This felt more like self-abasement, more like gratuitous over-compensation. Like Judas turning up at the crucifixion and insisting on having his picture taken. Ribbentrop's ego would probably explode.
'This is where Nicholas II's coronation was held in 1884,' Goldstein observed. 'They didn't make enough souvenir mugs, and fourteen hundred people were trampled to death in the stampede.'
'Wonderful,' Russell muttered. 'Just wonderful.'
The journey back to Warsaw was slower than the journey out. The train clanked to halt after halt, occasionally at a barely-lit platform, most times in the middle of a seemingly endless plain. When dawn broke they were still on the Soviet side of the border, and the only breakfast came courtesy of a few enterprising peasant women, who approached the train at one of its interminable stops with scraps of bread and a few raw carrots. It was almost ten in the morning when their train rolled out of the Soviet Union through the gap in the barbed wire, and almost noon before their Polish train left the border station. It was faster than its Russian equivalent, but not by much, and the sun was low on the western horizon by the time it reached Warsaw.
Russell made sure that trains were still running into Germany, checked into a cheap hotel opposite the station, and took a taxi to the Europejski. Finding no fellow-journalists, he moved on to the Bristol, where several foreign correspondents were lined up at the bar. There had been no official announcement of a pact, he was told, but Ribbentrop had arrived in Moscow that morning, and everyone knew that an agreement was about to be signed.
There was one Pole in the party, an English-speaking journalist with one of the local dailies. He had obviously been drinking for a while, which both explained his belligerent attitude and facilitated its expression. 'The sooner the better,' he said, thumping his palm on the polished bar. 'While we still have allies,' he added pointedly, marching an accusative gaze down the row of English faces.
Out on the street Russell saw other Polish faces brimming with a similar bravado, the facial equivalent of the cavalry he had seen in Pidsulski Square. But there were also eyes dulled by resignation, or seemingly stunned that the moment had finally arrived. The Poles he spoke to in English had only one question - would England and France live up to their obligations? Yes, Russell told them, though part of him hoped the answer was no. If sacrificing Poland would keep his son out of a European war, he'd do it in a heartbeat. The trouble was, it wouldn't.
His hotel was quieter than expected, his bed more comfortable, but he still slept badly, hovering most of the night between waking and dreaming, fragments of his own war flickering harmlessly out of reach, like a silent movie through a curtain of gauze. He woke with the smell of the trenches in his nostrils and the old familiar feeling that this was the day he would die.
As he walked up Nowy OEwiat towards Pidsulski Square he scanned the faces of passers-by, and thought he saw something approaching relief. The Pact had been announced, he guessed, both in Moscow and here on the radio. The die was cast.
The Foreign Office Press Department spokesman confirmed as much. He added little of a specific nature, but resolutely refused to accept that Polish intransigence was in any way to blame for the country's new vulnerability. Germany and Russia had always been Poland's enemies, he insisted, and always would be. Poland would fight them both if she had to, hopefully in the company of her Western allies.
Back on the square, Russell felt a sudden overwhelming need to be home, and had to dissuade himself from taking an immediate cab to hotel and station. There was a train mid-afternoon, he told himself - time to write and wire off his piece. There was no need to hurry.
He wrote his impressions of Warsaw on the brink, and walked down to the Post Office. There was no wire traffic out through Germany, but the elderly clerk was aggressively confident of the route via Copenhagen. He and his fellow Poles were not surrounded, he seemed to be saying. The rest of the world was still within reach.
Russell checked out of his hotel, bought his ticket and lunched in the station restaurant. The concourse seemed unusually busy, with lots of children chasing each other around piles of luggage, but there was no hint of panic, despite the headlines announcing the Pact in the lunchtime editions. There was a photograph of Ribbentrop arriving at Khodynka, beaming for the Soviet cameras.
Russell's train failed to leave on time, raising fears that it might be cancelled, but the French wagons-lits eventually jerked into motion. He wondered how many more trips they would be taking across Europe, and where they would be stranded when the frontiers slammed shut.
A
fter Russell's train had stood for more than ten minutes in Berlin's Alexanderplatz Station, a voice over the loudspeakers announced that it would proceed no further. Those passengers travelling to a stop in western Berlin were invited to take the next train from the neighbouring Stadtbahn platform, and Russell seized the opportunity to call Effi from a public telephone.
'I knew it was you,' she said.
'I'll see you in about half an hour.'
'Wonderful.'
He replaced the receiver, surprised at the enormity of his relief. Someone in his subconscious had been more worried than he cared to admit.
He climbed up to the Stadtbahn platform, and stood watching for the lights of a westbound train. It was almost eleven, but the air was still warm and humid, with no hint of a breeze. The sky through the canopy opening was black and starless.
The train was almost empty, and Russell picked up an abandoned evening newspaper from one of the seats. 'German Farmhouses in Flames' the head-line screamed, above the all-too-familiar litany of grievances real, imagined and invented. He looked at the names of the villages and wondered whether their inhabitants knew of their new-found status as victims of the 'Polish archmadness'.
'It looks serious this time,' a man sitting opposite said, with a nod in the direction of the newspaper.
'Yes,' Russell agreed.
'But at least the Fuhrer is back in Berlin,' the man added hopefully.
Whoopee, Russell thought to himself.
The streets between Zoo Station and Effi's flat were empty, her porch mercifully devoid of loitering SD agents. She met him at the door with the sort of sweet, soft embrace that made going away worthwhile, and pulled him into the living room. 'Thank God you're back,' she said.
'Well...'
'Because it has to be tomorrow.'
Russell sunk into the sofa. 'What does?'
'Eyebrows, of course. There's going to be a war, isn't there?'
'Well...'
'So this could be our last chance. Things will change once the war begins.'
'True. But he may not come tomorrow.'
'He did last Friday.'
'What have...'
'I went to see. I didn't do anything. I got your message from Solly Bern-stein, but I just had to see. Don't worry, I was in disguise. I'm getting really good at the make-up. All he'd have seen was a fifty year-old spinster, but he didn't even look at me.'
'He didn't pick anyone up?'
'I don't know. I only stayed a few minutes because I was afraid I might do something stupid if he did. I should have stayed.'
'I'm glad you didn't.'
'I'm glad you're glad, but you do agree - tomorrow could be our last chance?'
'Yes, of course, but he may not pick anyone up tomorrow.'
'Oh yes he will. Me.'
'No, absolutely not. I knew you'd think of this eventually, but it won't work. Believe me, I've thought about it too. But follow it through. If you offer yourself as bait, and let him drive you off in his car, what happens then? I can follow, but if I get too close he'll spot me, and if I don't I might lose you. And if we're incredibly lucky, and neither of those things happens, we're still left with a problem when we get wherever it is we're going. I could probably deal with Eyebrows - assuming he doesn't pull a gun, that is - but the chances are there'll be others. I can't see any way of making it work.'
She smiled at him. 'I can.'
Next morning he took the NKVD papers from his suitcase, kissed a half-awake Effi goodbye, and walked down to Zoo Station. He'd half-expected a thorough search at the Polish border, and the need for another emergency phone call to Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth, but his suitcase hadn't even been opened. The border authorities had been far too busy strip-searching a large family of Poles returning to their German home.
He called the SD number from the station, and rather to his surprise was put straight through to the Hauptsturmfuhrer. When Russell suggested a lunchtime treff in the Tiergarten, an exasperated Hirth told him to leave the papers in reception at 102 Wilhelmstrasse and hung up. Russell replaced the receiver, wondering what had happened. Had the Nazi-Soviet Pact rendered his supposed intelligence irrelevant, or had Hirth and Co. drawn the conclusion that caution was no longer necessary? Did he care? Chances were he would find out eventually, and probably wish he hadn't.
The garden in front of the SD building was full of roses in bloom, all much too fragrant for their owners. Russell presented his Russian envelope to the usual blonde receptionist, feeling more like a postman than an agent. She put it to one side, and went back to her reading as if he'd already gone.
Out on Wilhelmstrasse he became aware of activity on the roofs - soldiers, for the most part. A coup? he asked himself, without any real conviction. War, more likely. Thin gun barrels were also silhouetted against the blue sky - for all the much-trumpeted prowess of the Luftwaffe the regime obviously shared Frau Heidegger's fear of air attacks. The street was full of people hurrying to and fro, almost feverishly it seemed, and the Wertheim at the intersection with Leipziger Strasse was unusually crowded, the faces of emerging women full of grim satisfaction at a job accomplished. The German hausfrau was stocking up.
He walked on up the long canyon of grey blocks, past Goering's Air Ministry, the Reichsbahn building, Hitler's appalling new Chancellery. According to the man on the train he should be in there now, making the world a safer place for Germans. Of course, if the rumours of a nocturnal lifestyle were true, he was probably still in bed. Russell wondered what his dreams were like, whether his sleeping face was younger, more innocent. The stuff you never found in history books. The important stuff.
The Adlon Bar presented a stark contrast to the bustle outside. Slaney was sitting at his usual table, picking pastry crumbs off his tie, but the only other visible journalists were two of Mussolini's pet scribes.
'They're gone,' Slaney announced in response to Russell's bemused look. 'The Brits and French, that is. They all took trains to Denmark last night.' He lifted a large ring of keys from the table and let it drop. 'I've been left seven cars to look after.'
'Just the journalists?' Russell asked.
'Everyone but the diplomats.'
Russell sat down. 'It's coming that quickly?'
Slaney shrugged. 'Tomorrow, it looks like.
'Christ.' It was possible, he realized, to both expect an event and be surprised when it actually happened.
'The only question is whether Hitler will waste any time trying to buy off you Brits and the French. But I don't think it'll make any difference, one way or the other. He needs a war. It's the only way he can get the last one out of his system.'
Russell said nothing. He needed to talk to Paul, he realized. The schools were still out - he might be at home.
Ilse answered. 'He's out playing football with Franz and a few other friends,' she told him. 'You could try later.'
'No, I'll be seeing him tomorrow. Ilse,' he began, not sure what to say, 'Ilse, things are not looking good. Does Paul have any real idea of what's coming, what it's going to be like?'
There was a brief silence at the other end. 'Who knows?' she said eventually. 'He says all the right things. But do any of us know, really? Matthias says the people who went through the last war will all make the mistake of expecting the same, and those that didn't won't have a clue.'
It always galled him to admit it, but Matthias was probably right. He said so.
'Why don't you ask Paul tomorrow?' Ilse suggested.
'I will. We may be at war by then.'
He hung up, took his leave of Slaney, and took a tram south to Hallesches Tor. The Hanomag was still in the courtyard, its roof devoid of obvious foot-marks, and an anxious Frau Heidegger was at her usual post. She greeted him with a big smile, which made him feel good - he hadn't expected that she would hold his British ancestry against him, but you never knew.
She was, however, keen to learn the prospective enemy's intentions. 'It all seemed so clear yesterday,' she said, reaching for the dreaded coffee pot. 'Everyone thought the Pact would sort everything out. The English and the French would realize that they couldn't help the Poles, and the Poles would have to come to their senses and there'd be no need for a war. But nothing seems to have changed,' she lamented. 'The English and French won't give up their guarantee. I don't suppose they can now. It was so stupid of them to give one in the first place...'
Russell took a sip of coffee and wished he hadn't.
'When it comes down to it,' Frau Heidegger went on, 'does it really matter who owns Danzig or the Corridor? It's been twenty years and this is the first we've heard about Germans being killed in the Corridor. If they are then I suppose we have to do something about it, but it doesn't seem worth another war. Let's hope another conference can sort it out. By the way, don't forget there's another air raid rehearsal next Wednesday - Beiersdorfer will want to know if you'll be here.'
It was a timely visit from another portierfrau that set Russell free. He picked up a few clothes from his apartment - his entire wardrobe was moving across town, piece by piece - and headed back to the city centre in the Hanomag.
He and Slaney had only just finished lunch when two pieces of news filtered through to the waiting journalists in the Adlon Bar - the British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson had gone to see the Fuhrer and, rather more significantly, all telephone and telegraphic contacts between Germany and the outside world had been cut. As one wag put it, if Henderson and Hitler emerged naked onto the Wilhelmstrasse and danced a waltz together, there was no way of telling the world.
Russell hung around, keen to know how the meeting turned out, but the Embassy refused to release a statement, let alone answer questions, and the pointlessness of remaining became increasingly obvious. That and the danger of drinking too much ahead of their appointment with Eyebrows.
He arrived home to a transformed Effi - he had to look at her twice to make sure it was her. She had, as she'd implied, become a veritable mistress of disguise. The basics had not been changed - she was still a slim, dark-haired, reasonably young and attractive woman - but everything else had been subtly shifted. Her hair seemed thicker, her eyes darker, her nose slightly larger. She looked more like a stereotypical Jewess, he thought, which was presumably the intention.
She was dressed differently too. Neatly, but austerely. Everything about her wardrobe was slightly old-fashioned, as if the world had ended in 1933. As indeed it had, in so many ways, for Germany's Jews.
And when she got up and walked around there was an awkward defensiveness in the way she moved that bore no relation to Effi's natural grace. It was uncanny. He had seen every film she had made, but never before had he realized just how good she was.
'And now for you,' she said.
They arrived at Silesian Station an hour ahead of the train's scheduled arrival time. There was no sign of Drehsen's Mercedes in its usual spot, and no sign of the man himself on the concourse. Effi took the suitcase and hurried up the steps to the platform, leaving Russell to check that the train was running and on time. It was.
He bought a newspaper and took up position opposite the taxi rank, leaning up against the stone wall of the station. The human traffic slowly thinned as the rush hour drew to a close, the majority of faces more drawn and anxious than a Friday evening usually warranted. Most Berliners, he guessed, were going home to turn on their radios, hoping not to hear martial music and warnings of an 'important announcement'.
Fifty minutes went by with no sign of the Mercedes. Time was running out. Russell walked back into the concourse and there the man was, standing in the middle of the open space, facing the steps to the platform. Where the hell had he parked his car?
Russell hurried back out. It wasn't on the station forecourt, so where? He strode briskly down the side of the station to Koppen-Strasse, which ran under the elevated tracks at the western end. Nothing. He hesitated, looked at his watch. He only had five minutes.
A train rumbled across in the right direction, steam bellowing into the early evening sky. Too early for the Breslau train, he told himself. Another headed the same way as he walked under the bridges, this one with the reassuring hum of a Stadtbahn electric. Turning the corner he saw a short line of cars parked alongside the far side of the station. The last was a Mercedes Cabriolet, but it carried the wrong number.
Russell started running. The station side seemed to stretch forever, and he had a painful stitch in his side by the time he reached its end. Turning into Frucht-Strasse, which ran eastwards under the tracks, he saw the car. It was parked on the far corner, in - as Russell ruefully realized - the very next place that Drehsen would have tried if his usual spot had been occupied.
He was out of time, and a train was steaming into the station above him, thundering over the bridge. As he reached the car a couple of girls, prostitutes probably, walked across the end of the street, the click of their heels amplified by the iron ceiling. He stopped for a second, as if searching his pockets for cigarettes, and caught sight of a man with a moustache and slicked-back hair in the black window of a defunct shop. It was himself.
The girls gone, he took another look round, crouched down, and stabbed the driver's side front tyre with the awl Effi had purchased that morning. There was a commendably violent hiss, and the tyre began deflating. From his other pocket he drew a small package of newspaper, gingerly removed the sharp piece of bottle glass it contained, and placed it just behind the wounded tyre. The temptation to disable the spare tyre as well, and make absolutely sure, was almost overwhelming, but he knew that would look too suspicious.
He ran down the southern side of the station, paused outside the entrance to regain his breath, and slipped back into the covered concourse through the stream of exiting passengers. Drehsen was standing in the same spot, his eyes now fixed on Effi . She was standing beside her suitcase some thirty metres away, a few paces from the bottom of the steps, anxiously scanning the concourse for her imaginary welcomer. She looked both lost and slightly angry, as if she was about to burst into tears.