Lehrter Station (37 page)

It was, Effi decided, ‘almost like a real Christmas’.

Christmas morning drew them to the Ku’damm, in hope of reprising their own pre-war ritual of coffee, cakes and a stroll in the wintry park. Rather to Russell’s surprise, they did find an open café, its tables set out on the snowy sidewalk, the smell of real coffee strong in the air. The price was black-market steep, but the coffee seemed more than worth it, a suitable present for each to be giving the other. They sat outside and took their time, smiling at passers-by and imagining the boulevard re-built.
When a British jeep drove by garlanded in silver tinsel the patrons all clapped, causing the corporal next to the driver to stand up and bow.

The sound of a tram squealing its way round the truncated Memorial Church reminded Effi of what they had planned. ‘So, Schulstrasse?’ she asked.

‘I suppose so. It doesn’t feel very Christmassy.’

‘Neither does sitting at home with no heat.’

‘True. Well, let’s hope we can get there.’

They walked down to Zoo Station, where both the Stadtbahn and U-Bahn were running some sort of service. The outdoor option seemed preferable, and not just to them – the high-level platforms were crowded with families, most of whom seemed in high spirits. A lot got off when they did, probably bound for the funfair in the Lustgarten. They walked down to the U-Bahn platform, where a train stood waiting to carry them northward. ‘It’s always like this for royalty,’ Russell noted.

They reached the Jewish Hospital around one o’clock, and the crowded canteen seemed like a good place to start. With only the one set of photographs, they worked their way from table to table, trying to disarm what suspicions they encountered, as prepared as they could be for signs of anguish.

Effi’s Gestapo officer was recognised almost straight away, first by one young man, and then by several women. All agreed his surname was Mechnig, and one of the women thought his first name was Ulrich. He had worked at the Columbiahaus ‘wild concentration camp’ before the war, and later at the Alex. He had no particular reputation as a sadist, but then the competition had been fierce.

An hour or so later, five other faces had been recognised. Russell noted the names on the backs of the photographs, along with the details of witnesses willing to testify.

Which was good, but less than they’d hoped for, and as they made their way out Effi insisted on interrupting a football kick-about in the ambulance bay. It was the third boy – a wary-eyed lad of around sixteen – who lingered over the picture of Geruschke. It
is
him,’ he whispered
eventually, and Effi thought for a moment that the boy was going to cry. But instead the eyes turned to stone. ‘Standartenführer Fehse,’ he said, and abruptly handed that picture back.

‘Are you certain?’ Effi asked, and received a pitying look. ‘Where do you know him from?’

‘He was in charge of the detention centre in Leipzig. He sent us to Auschwitz.’

‘Who?’

‘My mother, my father, my sisters. They all died.’

‘How did you survive?’ Effi asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘I was a good worker.’

‘What can you tell us about Fehse?’

‘He was one of the worst. In Leipzig he took bribes to let people go – money, daughters, whatever they had – but later we found out that he’d just moved the girls to another building. They still ended up on the train.’ The boy resumed his perusal of the pictures. ‘And Fehse enjoyed watching beatings,’ he added as an afterthought.

Two more men were picked out. The first he thought was named Schönhöft, the second he couldn’t remember. Both had been jailers in Leipzig.

‘Would you testify against these people?’ Russell asked.

‘Not in a German court.’

‘An American one?’

‘Perhaps.’

Russell asked the boy for his name.

‘Daniel Eisenberg. But you’d better hurry – I plan to be in Palestine soon. We all do.’

‘Did you mean it – about going to the Americans with what we’ve found out?’ Effi asked Russell as they walked up Vogelsangstrasse. ‘They’ve already warned us both to leave the man alone. Or are you hoping they don’t know who he really is?’

‘I’d be amazed if they didn’t. And to answer your question, I really don’t know. We have to tell someone, and maybe we can find some Americans who do want to listen. But first I think we might pay your Gestapo man a visit. We need more information, and we have his address. If we offer Herr Mechnig some money and a head start, he might tell us more about Geruschke’s – Fehse’s – operation. And particularly about the American that young Horst took the picture of. I’d like to know more about him before I go to Dallin. Or whoever it is we go to.’

‘I don’t like the idea of letting Mechnig go,’ Effi protested. She could still see the boy on the U-Bahn platform.

‘We won’t,’ Russell said. ‘We’ll take a leaf out of Fehse’s book, and promise him something we have no intention of delivering.’

Effi thought about that. ‘Okay,’ she said eventually. ‘He lives not far from Jens – we could walk over there this evening.’

‘And wish him a Happy Christmas,’ Russell added, as he opened Thomas’s front gate.

In the event, Herr Mechnig had to wait. One of the residents had left a short note by the telephone: ‘Message from Lucie – they’ve arrived.’

‘Yes!’ Russell exclaimed, clenching a fist in celebration. He re-read the message just to make sure. The ‘they’ was encouraging, though hardly definitive.

Effi already had the front door open. It was dark when they reached Kronprinzenallee again, and the buses had vanished with the light. After waiting almost an hour, Russell remembered the lot full of Press Club jeeps on nearby Argentinischeallee. They were used for taking visiting journalists on tours of the Berlin ruins, but such jaunts seemed unlikely on Christmas evening. And surely no one could object to one being used for the odd rescue mission.

The sergeant in charge was unimpressed by this argument, but proved susceptible to others – Effi’s smile, an extortionate hire price in cigarettes, and Russell’s surrender of his press accreditation as security. The deal done, he insisted on loaning Russell a US Army greatcoat and cap, ‘just in case’.

Effi wanted to drive, but had to admit that might look suspicious, and once Russell got the hang of the gear-shift they made good progress through the dark and mostly empty streets. After all the frustrations of the last fortnight, moving through Berlin at this sort of speed seemed nothing short of miraculous. There were lights through windows and shell-holes, and the occasional sounds of Christmas revelry in the distance. As they drove past a roofless church in Moabit the bells began to toll, adding their own mournful commentary to the sea of broken homes.

The area around Lehrter Station was as crowded as the city was empty. Russell pulled the jeep up alongside others bearing the UNRRA initials, and was careful to take the key. Several trains stood in the station, and all seemed recent arrivals – the platforms were swarming with people, most turning this way and that for some notion of where to go. Other, earlier arrivals had given up wondering, and transformed the concourse into a field of small encampments, groups of prone bodies surrounded by suitcase perimeters. In one cordoned-off area stretchers were laid out in rows, some bodies twitching, others worryingly still. The strong smell of human waste hung in the air, and one line of cattle cars was being rinsed out by a chain of bucket carriers.

The only thing missing was noise. Apart from the tired hiss of engines and the odd cry of alarm, the crowd seemed subdued to the point of submission. They had reached Berlin and the safety of the newly shrunken Fatherland, but at the cost of their homes and most of their possessions. And now their lives had shrunk to this – a few square metres of concrete under a bomb-mangled roof.

They found Lucie bandaging a young boy’s leg. ‘They’re in one of the offices,’ she told them. ‘Wait a few seconds and I’ll take you.’

She tore and knotted the ends, smiled at the child and got to her feet. The child gazed back with empty eyes, then threw both arms around his mother’s neck and tried to hide his face.

They worked their way along the crowded platform to an office near the end. Opening the door, Russell saw Torsten sitting on the opposite
bench, his one arm securing the baby girl on his lap. He looked twenty years older than the young man Russell had met in 1939.

The girl had fair hair and Torsten’s mouth and nose. The boy beside them had dark hair and the eyes from Miriam’s photograph. He was about five, and looked like he hadn’t slept for a week.

‘Herr Russell,’ Torsten said tiredly. It was almost a question.

‘Do you remember me?’ Russell asked.

‘Of course.’ He took a deep breath, as if trawling for energy. ‘You came to Breslau looking for Miriam.’

Russell introduced Effi.

‘And these must be Leon and Esther,’ she said.

Torsten looked confused. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I saw Frau Höschle in Breslau,’ Russell told him. ‘She told me you where you’d gone.’

‘Why? Why were you looking for me?’

‘That’s a long story, and I think you need rest and food first. Effi and I are living in the same house as Miriam’s mother…’

‘She’s alive?’ he asked, clearly astonished.

‘And her father too, though he’s in hospital. We’d like to take you home to Esther.’

‘That’s her name,’ the boy said, pointing at his sister.

Torsten managed the faintest of smiles. ‘That sounds like heaven.’

When Russell and Effi went out the next morning, the others were all still asleep. They had given up Thomas’s bedroom to Torsten and the children, and colonised the one normally occupied by the Niebels. The mother would doubtless be livid when she found out, but Russell had unearthed a ready-made riposte while shamelessly rummaging through their possessions – a signed photograph of the
Reichsmarschal
, lovingly wrapped in velvet.

The Nazis lived on in so many ways, he thought, as he and Effi climbed aboard the unreturned jeep: in the devastation they had invited, in the
judenfrei
Germany which seemed irreversible; in bastards like Ulrich
Mechnig, whom the two of them were about to visit.

Russell glanced across at Effi, who gave him a joyous smile. In prewar times her presence on such an outing would have crippled him with anxiety, but no longer. She had as much experience of dicing with danger as he had, perhaps even more. The thought crossed his mind that all their involuntary adventures of the last few years might have made them better people, but another thought running behind it suggested that the obverse was also true. Like travel, struggles with survival both broadened and narrowed the mind.

The address that Horst and his ‘irregulars’ had supplied was a corner house close to the Ringbahn. The street seemed relatively intact, the three boys who came to inspect the jeep almost healthy-looking. Russell promised them a cigarette each to mind the vehicle, and walked up the steps with Effi. The front door was hanging from one twisted hinge; they clambered through the opening and climbed the stairs to Apartment 4.

‘I’ll let you do the talking,’ Effi told him.

‘Okay,’ Russell said, taking the gun from his pocket and rapping sharply on the door. ‘You just look menacing.’

They heard footsteps inside, then a male voice demanding to know who it was.

‘Housing Office,’ Russell improvised.

‘Come back another time.’

‘If you make me come back, I’ll have to report you.’

‘Oh, what the…’ Two bolts were thrown back, the door swung open, and Mechnig came into view. He was surprised to see Effi’s face, alarmed by the gun in Russell’s hand.

Russell prodded him back into the apartment, and heard Effi close the door behind them. A girl was sitting on a threadbare couch, a blanket wrapped around her, but otherwise seemingly naked. She looked about fourteen.

‘Your daughter?’ Russell asked sarcastically, drawing a short laugh from the girl. ‘Go and get dressed,’ he told her.

‘I’ll go with her,’ Effi said, and followed her into the adjoining bedroom. 
The girl tossed the blanket aside and started putting her clothes on. She was all skin and bones, with bruises across her barely discernible breasts. Once dressed she took a pack of cigarettes from the row on the shelf and gave Effi a questioning look.

‘Take them all,’ Effi suggested, and the girl needed no second bidding.

In the living room Russell had ordered Mechnig onto the couch. ‘Who do you Americans think you are?’ he said sullenly, seemingly confused by Russell’s greatcoat and hat.

It seemed churlish to disabuse him. ‘What name are you using here?’ Russell asked.

‘My name is Meissner, Oskar Meissner, not that it is any of your business.’

‘Your name is Ulrich Mechnig. SS Sturmscharführer Mechnig of the Berlin Gestapo. Or did you rise higher than that?’

Mechnig stared coldly back at him.

‘You’re a dead man,’ Russell said mildly.

‘You can’t touch me. Not with the friends I’ve got.’

‘Fehse and the others? They’re finished. And I can not only touch you, I can shoot you here and now. I doubt anyone would come to investigate, but even if they did, I can’t see them caring that much. The camps are full of scum like you, waiting for their trials. And their hangings.’

Mechnig opened his mouth to say something, but was distracted by the return of the women.

‘I might have known,’ the girl said, looking at him. She had obviously overheard their conversation. ‘And I won’t say anything,’ she promised Russell on her way to the door. ‘What a great companion you must be,’ Russell observed after she’d left. ‘But back to business. I want all you know about Fehse.’

‘Or what?’

‘Good question. Let me give you some options. If you won’t talk, we’ll drive you straight into the Russian sector, and hand you over to some NKVD friends of mine, along with your real identity, your false papers, and witness statements from several Jews who remember you all too well.
My friend here saw you kill a young boy on a U-Bahn platform and is more than willing to testify against you, should they ever bother with a trial. I think it’s more likely that the Russians will just put you out with the rubbish.