Masaryk Station (John Russell) (11 page)

It was only when the girl was fast asleep that Effi finally opened the letter from John. Written on the previous Tuesday, it was disappointingly short, and said little of what he’d been doing. There were touches of the usual self-deprecating humour—it couldn’t have been written by anyone else—but there was something not quite right about it. About him. He wasn’t in a good place, Effi thought. He needed to come home. They both needed him to.

Russell stood in the shadows of the covered porch, staring at Kozniku’s darkened office. It was a depressingly clear night, stars twinkling in the overhead corridor of sky, an out of sight moon washing the roofs across the street with milky light.

It was almost midnight. In the last quarter-hour two prowling cats had stopped to check him out, offered plaintive meows, before padding away across the cobblestones, but the only signs of human life had been the dousing of bedroom lights.

Earlier that day Russell had visited the office, and told the voluptuous Luciana that he urgently needed to see Signor Kozniku. As he had hoped, she’d told him her boss was still away, and would be for several more days. Russell had looked suitably chagrined, vowed to return, and taken his leave.

Luciana had presumably left at the usual hour, and by this time was probably enjoying a post-coital cigarette with Artucci. Russell had a fleeting mental picture of them, and wished he hadn’t.

What was the matter with him?

It had been a bad week. He had spent most of it pursuing leads
that went nowhere, asking questions of people who had no answers, no matter how emphatically they claimed they had. He had spent far too many hours sitting in the Piazza del Unità, being shat on by pigeons and watching the wretched little locomotive clank up and down the promenade with its trio of wagons. And he had endured another lengthy briefing from Youklis on his imminent trip to Belgrade. They had someone they wanted him to contact—one of Mihajlović’s former favourites, no less—with an eye to recruitment. When Russell had suggested that a man like that would be under surveillance, the CIA man had actually looked surprised, as if something so utterly obvious hadn’t occurred to him. He had swiftly recovered himself. The potential gain was worth the potential risk, Youklis had decided out loud, as if the man he was risking was somewhere out of earshot. And when Russell had pointed that out, all he’d received were a smirk and a shrug that translated as ‘you’re expendable’.

Well, fuck them, he thought. He would go to Belgrade, and maybe—maybe—take a careful look at the man in question, but all other bets were off. And so here he was, loitering outside Kozniku’s office with felonious intent, knowing full well that such action would piss the Americans off no end.

It was foolish, and he knew it, but like Shchepkin had said, journalists and spies had the same objectives. So why not use the same sleazy methods, particularly on scum like Kozniku?

He took a deep breath, and hurried across the street. Forcing the front door was out of the question, but there was another entrance off the ginnel which burrowed between Kozniku’s building and its neighbour. Here, where the shadows were deepest, he hoped to find a way in.

The door was locked, and seemed more than a match for his shoulder. There were no windows overlooking the passage, so he risked using his flashlight, first on the keyhole and then on the foot
of the door. The news was good in both cases—the key was in the lock, and the gap beneath the door looked big enough to take it. He took the folded newspaper from his inside pocket, flattened it out, and slid it through the gap. A gentle prod with the two-inch nail he had brought with him pushed the key out on to the paper, which he carefully drew back out. He couldn’t remember which detective novel had introduced him and his school friends to this trick, but in the thirty years since it was the first time he’d performed it.

He unlocked the door, slipped through, and re-locked it from the inside. It was pitch dark within, and after wasting a few seconds hoping his eyes would adjust, he resorted to the flashlight. The door in front of him was, he assumed, the one he’d noticed behind Kozniku’s left shoulder during their meeting. This was also locked, but the same tricked worked its magic. Kozniku’s office was windowless, but there was enough light seeping in through the glass panels of the connecting door for him to see his way. This door wasn’t locked, so he walked across Luciana’s office to check that the outer one was.

‘Okay,’ he murmured to himself, stepping back into Kozniku’s inner sanctum. He hesitated for a moment over whether or not he should shut the connecting door—leaving it open would give him warning of unexpected arrivals, while shutting it would make it less likely that anyone would notice his use of the flashlight. Close it, he decided—who would turn up at this time of night?

First the desk, he told himself. Then the cabinets. He had no idea what he was looking for, but hoped he would know if he saw it. The man’s absence had been too good an opportunity to miss.

Russell tried to leave each drawer as he found it, which wasn’t that difficult—Kozniku had everything arranged just so. A sudden burst of laughter in the street gave him a jolt, but also reassured him; the interior wall were clearly thin enough to prevent his being caught in the act.

Two minutes later, he heard more voices—it was like Piccadilly Circus out there. He was just thinking that they seemed surprisingly close when he picked up the sound of a turning key. A few seconds later, the light went on in Luciana’s office, and spilled through the windows of the connecting door.

Russell froze. If anyone opened that, at least he’d be standing behind it, but that was the best he could say. For the moment at least, no one in the next room seemed inclined to do so—in fact they seemed more concerned with trying to understand each other. There seemed to be three of them: Luciana, who sounded annoyed to be there, and two males, who sounded annoyed with her. They were all trying to speak English, and mostly failing in the attempt. The men had Balkan accents, and Russell recognised Serbo-Croat when they spoke to each other. Oh great, he thought. He’d spent half that morning listening to a British journalist recount, with wholly reprehensible glee, some of the worst atrocities carried out by the Ustashe. And here he was, at their mercy. Why the hell hadn’t he brought his gun with him?

Time to leave, he told himself. And quietly as a mouse. He was just about to make his move toward the back door when the connecting door swung open, and someone seemed to exhale only inches from his head. A switch clicked, flooding the office with light, but before he had time to raise a fist it clicked again, restoring the relative darkness. He heard his own sigh of relief, but by then the men were talking again.

Russell took another deep breath and tiptoed across Kozniku’s carpet to the other door. Thanking fate he hadn’t locked it, he eased the door wide enough to slip through, and was just congratulating himself on making no noise when the key fell out of the lock, and struck the corridor tiles with a loud ringing sound.

‘Pažnja!’
one male voice exclaimed, and the connecting door crashed open.

Russell’s hand was already on the outside door. After almost falling through it, he accelerated down the ginnel, conscious of someone shouting, and reached the entrance just as a silhouette filled it. His momentum threw the man backwards, away from Russell’s flailing fist, and into the street. The man’s gun clattered away across the wet cobbles, and rebounded from the opposite kerb with a sharp crack.

By this time Russell was ten metres down the street, running for his life. He was just thinking that they wouldn’t risk advertise their presence by opening fire, when the first bullet ricocheted down the narrow street, striking sparks on both walls.

He swerved right down a partly-stepped passageway, almost slipping on the wet stone treads, and forced himself to slow his pace just a little. The passageway was longer than he remembered, and another bullet went singing past him just as he gained the street beyond. But no lights went on around him—the neighbourhood was taking as little notice of the odd gunshot as he himself had been doing these past two months.

He heard his pursuer cry out, but didn’t stop to find out why. There was silence for several seconds, which suggested he might have fallen, but the footsteps pursuing him soon resumed, albeit further behind. Russell raced down the long and winding street, grateful to its architect for denying the possibility of a direct shot. Another stepped passageway offered itself, and he flung himself down it, still only one slip away from disaster. It opened into a small piazza, where a group of men were sitting out under a café awning, playing cards. He couldn’t remember feeling so pleased to see other human beings.

A couple of gaudily made-up women gave him enquiring looks. He smiled, shook his head and hurried on across the piazza, pausing at the top of another street for a quick look back. On the far side of the square a man appeared at the bottom of the steps, one hand held behind his back, and took in the possible audience. One glance in
Russell’s direction, and he withdrew back up the stairway, feet finally passing from sight.

Russell turned and walked on down toward the distant bay, still breathing heavily, and cursing his own stupidity. If the man had been a better shot, or hadn’t slipped on the steps … It was all very well risking your life for something worthwhile, but to take such a chance on a childish whim? To get away with a young man’s prank, in Trieste or anywhere else, he needed a young man’s legs.

Effi had just kissed Rosa goodnight when there was a knock at the apartment door. It was almost ten, which seemed late for a visit, so she raised her voice to ask who it was as she tried to recall where Russell had put their gun.

‘You knew me as Liesel,’ a woman said clearly.

Effi opened the door, trying to remember someone of that name. Seeing the dark, petite, well-dressed woman in her late thirties who stood on the threshold, her first reaction was almost panicky—had some unknown relation of Rosa come to claim her? But then she recognised the face. Liesel had been one of the Jewish fugitives whom she and Ali had harboured for a night or two while Erik Aslund arranged their escape to Sweden. One of the more self-possessed, Effi remembered, a woman who had known enough to be terrified, but who was damned if she was going to give in to it. Like all the others, she had come and gone without leaving a physical trace, but Effi remembered liking her more than many.

‘I’m Lisa now,’ the woman said after Effi had invited her in. ‘Lisa Sundgren. I live in America, in Minneapolis.’

‘My geography’s terrible,’ Effi said, reaching for the kettle.

‘I had no idea where it was either,’ Lisa admitted. ‘It’s in the middle. They call it the Midwest but it’s closer to the east coast.’

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘I came to thank you.’

‘You didn’t come all this way to do that.’

‘Well, no. I’ve come back for my daughter.’

Effi took out the cups. ‘I didn’t know you had one.’

‘I have two now, but Anna is back home with her father, and my mother-in-law. Uschi was the one I left behind five years ago.’ She sighed. ‘This is a strange question, but back then, how much did you know about me?’

‘Nothing,’ Effi said, filling the teapot. ‘We were only ever given first names—which for all we knew were false—and instructions on where and when to pass people on. It was safer that way.’

‘Well, my name then was Liesel Hausmann. I was from the Sudetenland, which was part of Czechoslovakia until 1938, when the Nazis took over. I’m Jewish of course, but my husband Werner was a Christian, and we were well off. He owned a factory in Reichenberg—the Czechs call it Liberec now—and though the Nazis brought their anti-Jewish laws with them, my husband thought Uschi and I would be safe. And we were for several years, until he interceded on behalf of my brother’s family, who had all just been arrested. In case things went badly, he wanted Uschi and me to go off with our maid, whose family lived in a remote mountain village. But I insisted on staying by his side, and Uschi went on her own—she was sixteen by then, and we thought she’d be all right.’

Lisa took the offered cup of tea, and placed it on the table beside her. ‘And then my husband was arrested. I heard nothing for several days, and then an old friend from the local police called to tell me that he was dead, that I was about to be arrested, and that I should flee if I could. So I packed a bag and walked to the station and somehow reached Berlin, where we still had friends. And they knew someone who knew someone else, and that’s how I ended up staying with you in that house, and finally escaping to Sweden.
Which is where I met my second husband. He had a wartime job at the American Embassy in Stockholm, and when he went back I went with him.

‘That was four years ago. We got married, and I had another child, but I always intended coming back for Uschi. If my mother-in-law hadn’t been ill for most of last year I’d have come over then, despite my husband’s objections. He didn’t—still doesn’t—like the idea of me being over here alone, but he knew he’d have no peace until he agreed.’

‘Have you had any news of Uschi?’

‘None. Once the war was over, we called the Czechoslovak Embassy in Washington, and they promised to investigate. When weeks went by and we didn’t hear anything, we tried again, and they made the same promises. The same thing kept happening, and there was no way we could tell whether they were having a hard time finding her or just fobbing us off. I had no real address, you see, only the name of the village, but even so I can’t believe they really tried. And by the time I finally decided that I had to come over myself, the communists had taken over. I’m an American citizen now, and I’ve been told that no visas are being issued to Westerners in the foreseeable future, so there doesn’t seem any way to get in. And as far as I can tell the communists aren’t letting anyone out. It seems my only hope of getting Uschi out is to smuggle her across the border.’ She smiled. ‘And that’s my other reason for looking you up.’

‘My smuggling credentials? I’m afraid they were only good for a particular time and place.’