David Downing - Masaryk Station

‘To the comrades in Belgrade,’ Strohm murmured, raising his glass to the star-filled sky.

It was raining again on Tuesday morning. Russell had anticipated another solo trip into town, but Effi and Rosa, having exhausted the possibilities of all those things they’d brought to entertain themselves, refused to live in exile any longer. ‘We’ll go to Zarah’s,’ Effi told him. ‘And if Shchepkin rings with good news then we can just walk home.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘I don’t know. Let’s worry about that when it happens.’

Russell wasn’t convinced, but there was no changing her mind. After they got off the train he accompanied them to the end of Zarah’s street, and then approached Carmer Strasse with the same caution, and the same result, as before.

Only this time the telephone rang, and it was Shchepkin who spoke when Russell picked up. ‘Remember your daughter’s namesake?’ he asked. ‘Where we remembered her? Five o’clock.’

The line clicked off.

No mention of success, but maybe Russell was supposed to infer that from the Russian’s survival. The only other explanation he could think of was that Shchepkin had shrunk from confronting Beria, and that they were all back to square one.

He would know soon enough.

A cafe on Ku’damm offered refuge for an hour so, and then Russell started working his way westwards through the streets north of the elevated Stadtbahn. Shchepkin hadn’t stressed the importance of not being followed, but he hadn’t needed to, as finding the two of them together in one place would now be the stuff of Beria’s dreams. Russell was already convinced that no one was shadowing him, but he used the Elisabeth Hospital to make sure, using the main entrance and then leaving by a back service door which Annaliese had shown him and Effi the previous year. The street outside ended by the Landwehrkanal.

Reaching it, he sat down on a convenient bench. The waterway was devoid of traffic, a victim no doubt of the Soviet blockade, and despite the early evening sun, walkers were almost as sparse. The towpaths on either side of the canal had always been a favourite spot for exercising Berlin’s dogs, but the latter’s population had hardly begun to recover from the ravages of the war.

The city’s cats had fared slightly better, and one mangy specimen emerged from a nearby bombsite and rubbed itself against his legs, meowing piteously.

The spot where Rosa Luxemburg’s corpse had been fished from the water was a few hundred metres to his right, close to the bridge that carried Potsdamer Strasse over the canal. It was at least two years since he and Shchepkin had last met there, and Russell idly wondered how differently the Russian Revolution might have developed had she survived the Spartacus Rising. No other figure in European Marxism had possessed the moral and intellectual stature that might have given Lenin pause.

It was a minute to five. He rose from the seat and walked on, the cat following for a few metres, before abruptly giving up on him, and scampering off across the cobbles.

Shchepkin was waiting on a bench near the bridge, his white hair hidden under his hat. It occurred to Russell that they were only a stone’s throw from the Soviet sector. ‘Well?’ he asked, sitting down.

‘He accepted our terms,’ Shchepkin said calmly, with only a hint of a smile.

As Russell let his breath out, he realised how much he’d expected the worst.

‘Irina and Tasha are in a hotel on Konig Strasse,’ the Russian went on. ‘Tomorrow morning the three of us will hands ourselves over to the Americans. I shall tell them that the Soviets finally realised that you and I were working against them, offer myself as a defector, and demand asylum for my wife and daughter as the price of telling them all that I know. You will tell the Americans that since the Soviets have finally rumbled us, your usefulness has to be over, and you’re submitting your resignation. And once you’ve convinced them that you won’t reveal any of their secrets, they’ll have to let you go.’

‘It sounds good,’ Russell said. In fact the sense of relief was so overpowering that he began to doubt it. Had Beria really caved in so completely? Were they safe again? Was he finally off the hook?

Searching for a flaw, he found one. And with sinking heart wondered how they-and particularly Shchepkin-could have missed it. ‘Look, as things stand he kills one of us and the other releases the film. But if he captures us both at the same moment, then neither of us will know what’s happened until it’s too late. Okay, we have him for now, but in the long run, surely it won’t be beyond him to coordinate two kidnappings. No matter where we go, we’ll be looking over our shoulders.’

Shchepkin smiled briefly. ‘There’s one thing you don’t know,’ he said. ‘There is no long run for me. I shall be dead in a few weeks.’

‘What?’

‘The doctors tell me my heart is giving out. Broken, perhaps,’ Shchepkin added with a wry smile.

Russell felt a mixture of emotions, of which sadness was the strongest.

‘But I’ve put the film beyond their reach, and I shall be in American custody. I will tell them Beria wants me dead-not why, of course-and they will protect me as long as I keep telling them things. And believe me, I will talk and talk.’

His pauses for breath, Russell realised, were not for dramatic purposes.

‘Beria will have no reason to threaten you, because he believed me when I told him that you don’t know where I’ve hidden it.’

‘I hope so.’

‘One more thing. The moment I’m safe with the Americans, you must destroy your copy of the film. It kept me alive in Moscow, but after tomorrow it will serve no purpose. On the contrary, if Beria’s enemies ever learned of its existence …’

‘His enemies?’

‘The Americans, the GRU, he even has enemies in the Politburo. If any of them found out about the film, and forced you to reveal its location; or if someone stumbled across it by accident in its hiding place, then Beria would consider we had broken our side of the bargain, and God only knows what he’d do. So better to get rid of it. My copy is enough to keep you safe.’

‘I’ll see that it’s destroyed. But your wife and daughter-do they know you’re dying?’

‘I think Irina guesses, but she hasn’t said anything.’

‘How will they survive in the West without you?’

‘I don’t know. They will have no money, but at least they’ll be safe. Natasha is a bright girl.’

‘I know, I’ve met her.’

‘So you have. Of course, if you can help them in any way I would appreciate it.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I don’t think they’ll miss me,’ Shchepkin said, surprising Russell. Personal emotions didn’t usually come up in their conversations. ‘These past few days I’ve realised-we’re strangers to each other. I feel like I’m standing outside their house and watching them through the window. I love them, of course, but more in memory than anything else. And love should be more than an echo.’ He glanced at Russell. ‘But now I’m getting morbid, and you and I have work to do. For three years now we’ve been feeding the Americans a diet of truths, half-truths, and outright lies, and now they’ll expect to be told which is which. Unless we intend to be completely honest with them-which I, for one, do not-there are some comrades, for example, whom I won’t betray-then we need to agree our version of events.’

‘That could take a week,’ Russell observed.

‘I told Irina I’d be back in three hours.’

For the next two, as the sun slowly sank towards the distant rooftops, and the American planes droned across the sky beyond the canal, they trawled their joint career, discussing those American and Soviet agents they had betrayed and those they had not, agreeing which names they would offer up and which they wouldn’t, going over which nuggets of information they could happily divulge and which would be safer to keep to themselves. As a rough guiding principle, they agreed to protect those on either side who actually believed in their cause, and give up those who were only interested in advancing their careers.