Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘They don’t send the Gestapo to check your passport.’

Stefan took the same tram through the suburbs of Danzig that Hannah had taken. He walked through the same gardens to the cathedral. It had been impossible to sleep. He had lain in the bedroom at the Danziger Hof, staring out of the window, waiting for the dawn. The idea that Hannah was in danger had become real in Ireland, but not as real as it was here. He knew a lot more about her now. He understood her sudden departure before Christmas. There had been a part of her she kept shut away; he had sensed that. He thought it had all been personal, but at least he knew it was about something else now. And for anyone who had grown up in Ireland in the last twenty years, none of it was so remarkable. When he was child, it was all around him. Guns were smuggled and money was collected and people were hidden in barns and attics. As a boy, while his father was still a policeman in Dublin, he could sense which of his friends’ fathers were Volunteers and Sinn Feiners and IRA men. David Gillespie tried hard to keep his family outside what was happening, but Stefan knew instinctively what it was good not to see and even better not to talk about. What Hannah Rosen was doing in Palestine didn’t feel so far away. But if he had thought Robert Briscoe was exaggerating the danger, to put pressure on him to help, he didn’t think so now. He knew Germany would feel very different from the place he’d visited as a child. He’d read enough after all. But it was much more. The hours at Tempelhof had unsettled him. There was danger, directionless perhaps, but there all around him, hanging in the air. And it was here too in Danzig. He felt its breath as Arthur Greiser welcomed him to the Free City.

A Mass was ending at the cathedral when he arrived. The sun was shining. There were people everywhere. Through the open doors of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin he heard the organ. He recognised a Bach Chorale. His mother used to play it on the piano at Kilranelagh. ‘Es ist das Heil uns kommen her.’ It is salvation brings us here. He walked slowly through the crowd, taking his bearings. He had already decided that the less attention he drew to himself the better. It wouldn’t take him long to find the priest, but he would rely on his own resources; he wouldn’t walk in and leave his calling card. There was no question now; Hannah was missing. All he knew was that she had set off to find Father Francis Byrne at the cathedral in Oliva. That was where he had to start.

As he looked through the crowd towards the cathedral doors he was suddenly staring at someone he knew. He recognised him immediately. The face was thinner. There wasn’t the same sense of immaculate, careful dress. If anything he looked scruffy. But Stefan hadn’t forgotten the man who had smiled at him so contemptuously in the hallway of the house in Merrion Square. He hadn’t seen him since the day he arrested him, but the image was fixed in his head. It was Hugo Keller. And as he stared, he was aware that Keller would almost certainly recognise him. He stepped back into the shadow of a tree. People were standing in groups, talking. Keller seemed to be waiting for someone. The Austrian turned back towards the cathedral; a priest was coming out. And as the two men met, Stefan had no doubt who Keller had been waiting for. He had never seen the priest before, but he was there now; thirty-five perhaps, not very tall, with fair hair just starting to recede. Stefan couldn’t begin to explain what the abortionist was doing here with Father Francis Byrne, but he knew he needed to be careful. He knew Danzig was a place where anything that couldn’t be explained was probably dangerous.

The mass-goers were drifting away from the cathedral square. Keller and Byrne walked towards the gardens, deep in conversation. The priest was agitated. He didn’t speak loudly, but Stefan could feel he was holding his voice in check, along with his emotions. The two men were close to him now. He turned his back and walked in the opposite direction. Then he stopped abruptly and looked round, across the square and through the trees. They were heading for the park. There were other people going that way too, back to Oliva and Zoppot and the trams into the city. Stefan waited. Once the two men were in the park the trees would be thick enough to hide him. He would be able to follow them without being seen. He wouldn’t approach them together. He still needed to start with Father Byrne. As he watched their backs ahead of him he could see that they had stopped talking now. It was not a happy silence. They were both angry, but as the conversation resumed Stefan could tell that it was Hugo Keller who was controlling it.

The priest and the abortionist emerged on to the main road through Oliva. Stefan stayed back among the trees at the park gates. He watched them approach the tram stop. A Number 2 tram was pulling up, heading back into Danzig. He was unsure what to do. If he got on the tram Keller might see him. He stepped out on to the road uncertainly. He might have to risk it. At the tram stop Byrne took an envelope from his pocket. He thrust it furiously into Keller’s hand, then spun round and walked rapidly away towards Zoppot. Keller watched him go, a satisfied smile on his face. He put the envelope in his pocket. And as the doors of the tram opened he got on.

Stefan didn’t want to lose Keller after all this. He knew the Austrian’s presence here was no coincidence, but he had to follow one or the other. And it still had to be the priest. It was the priest Hannah had come to see. He was the one who had sent Susan Field to Merrion Square. And he would know where to find Hugo Keller again, that was obvious. Stefan let the tram pull away, then crossed over behind it and followed Byrne. The priest was still agitated, maybe even more agitated now. He was walking fast, but there was no purpose in it. There was something about the way he moved that told Stefan he wasn’t going anywhere in particular, however fast he might be moving. He was just walking because he didn’t want to stand still.

It was a long walk too. The pace slowed a little but the priest kept going, as if the only thing in his mind was keeping his back to the cathedral. Eventually they were walking down a steep hill towards the seafront at Zoppot, towards the spa buildings and the cafes and the hotels. It was only when he reached the sea that Francis Byrne stopped, quite suddenly, because there was no further to go. A railing separated the promenade from the beach, and beyond that there was only the Bay of Danzig and the Baltic Sea.

Trying to get his bearings, Stefan focused on the high red roofs of the Hotel Casino, the biggest building along the busy promenade; it was directly behind the priest. He recognised it from the brochure he had picked up in his room at the Danziger Hof. It was where Arthur Greiser had recommended he went when the artistic treasures of Danzig palled. ‘Afternoon tea-dances, roulette and baccarat; the largest and most elegant hotel in Eastern Europe. Have you ever sat on a bar stool and watched the sun rise over the sea? You can enjoy such a spectacle in the Casino Bar, the prettiest cocktail bar in Europe.’ Stefan couldn’t imagine many hotel guests sitting in the bar all night waiting for the sun to rise, but the Senate President would probably have been up for it. All around there were holidaymakers now, cheerfully braving the cold wind that blew in off the sea. It had been warm in the sheltered cathedral square, but on the front the wind still bit hard in April.

Francis Byrne stood for a moment, gazing down at the sweep of white sand and grey water. Immediately below him a group of children, laughing and squabbling, were building a sandcastle. He turned away and continued along the promenade to the wide wooden pier that stretched out into the calm Baltic waters. It wasn’t so busy here. Couples walked slowly, arm in arm; children ran; old men stood at regular intervals with fishing rods. The priest stopped to light a cigarette. Stefan was close to him now. Francis Byrne’s hands were shaking as he cupped them round a match; twice a match went out. Stefan watched. Agitation was good. People talked when they were agitated and they didn’t think about what they were saying. Stefan took the lighter from his pocket and held it up to Byrne’s face, blocking the sea breeze with his back so that the priest could finally light the cigarette.