Effi put down the letter, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Rosa missed her. And she missed Rosa.
She walked to the window and looked out at the desolate garden. Over the last few years she’d grown happier with her own company, but today she felt the need of someone to talk to. Which was unfortunate. Thomas had left the previous day for his family Christmas in the country, and Annaliese was out in Spandau visiting Gerd’s parents. Even Frau Niebel and her daughter had gone to relations, and the house felt almost deserted.
She wanted John back, but still hadn’t heard a word. She hated not knowing where or how he was. When work had taken him away in the old days, there’d always been the telephone, but the occupying powers were still denying Germans any communications with the outside world. What was the point of that?
Russell’s train terminated at Kopenick, the Berlin suburb where the Soviets had their military HQ, soon after seven that evening. The journey from Breslau had taken twenty-four hours, roughly four times the pre-war average, but he wasn’t complaining. He had lost count of the number of motionless trains they had passed, either standing in stations or stabled in remote refuge sidings. Some had been surrounded by milling people, others just standing there, with all the appearance of being empty. And, in at least one case, only the appearance. Stopping alongside one line of cattle cars, Russell and his fellow passengers had heard frantic hammering and harrowing cries for release. The Russian thespians had looked appalled.
Had Torsten and the children been travelling in one of those trains? He had no way of knowing.
The Kopenick Station buffet was full of Russians, and appropriately stocked. After eating his first decent meal for twenty-four hours, Russell searched in a vain for a working telephone, then boarded the next train into the city.
It was almost ten when he reached Dahlem-Dorf. As he walked north through the mostly empty streets he felt a growing sense of anxiety about Effi. Anything could have happened in the last two weeks, and no one would have been able to reach him. When she opened the door, he let out an almost explosive sigh of relief.
They held each other for a long time.
‘Is Esther here?’ was the first thing he asked.
‘Yes, but I think she’s gone to bed. Why? What have you found out?’
He took her into the kitchen, shut the door behind them, and told her everything he’d discovered in Breslau. ‘I’ll tell her in the morning,’ he decided. ‘There’s no point waking her now.’
‘No,’ Effi agreed. She was wondering, as Russell had, how Esther and Leon would take the news. ‘But how did you end up in Breslau?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were going to Italy.’
‘I did.’ As Effi made them tea he took her through his journey — the meetings with Slaney and Mizrachi in Vienna, and with Otto 3 and Albert Wiesner in Pontebba; welcoming Nachod and unfriendly Breslau. The only thing he omitted was the encounter with Hirth and his son. That could wait.
‘So Torsten and the children are somewhere between Breslau and here?’
‘Probably. And the chances are good they’ll pass through Berlin. I’ll leave messages at all the reception centres tomorrow. But how are you? And where’s Thomas?’
‘He’s gone to spend Christmas with Hanna and Lotte. And I’ve had some adventures of my own.’
‘The flat?’
‘Oh that. Yes, and you’ll never guess who I ran into at the Schmargendorf Housing Office.’ She told him about Jens. ‘But that wasn’t the adventure. Annaliese asked me for help — she had to collect some medicines from some black marketeers. I took your gun,’ she added, seeing the look on his face.
Should that make him feel better or worse, he wondered. He considered admonishing her for taking such risks, but knew he’d be wasting his breath.
Effi described the meeting in Teltow, her recognising the man in the lorry, and the American invasion of her Babelsberg dressing room. She explained the connections she had made, and their confirmation during her and Thomas’s Saturday night visit to the Honey Trap.
‘Thomas went to the Honey Trap?’
‘Only after I begged. He frowned a lot.’
‘I’ll bet he did.’
‘You know, this has been our month for renewing acquaintances — Jens, Albert, that Gestapo officer. And I renewed another one on your behalf — your photographer friend Zembski.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘Yes, I saw him at his office.’
‘By chance?’
‘No, didn’t I say? I thought it would be a good idea to get some pictures of Geruschke and his employees, ones we could show around. So I went to see him, and he recommended this boy — well, he’s about seventeen, I should think.’
Russell knew he shouldn’t be surprised, but he was anyway. ‘Have you had time to do any filming?’ he asked.
‘We’re nearly finished. I have to go in on Monday — they’re having us work on Christmas Eve, would you believe? — but then not again until Thursday. Dufring’s hoping to have it all wrapped up by the New Year, and then — I’ve decided — I’m going to England. To fetch Rosa,’ she added, seeing the look on his face. ‘And I think Zarah and Lothar will be coming back with us.’ She told Russell what her sister had said in the letter.
‘And Paul?’
‘She didn’t say. But what do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘About what I’ve been telling you. About Geruschke.’
‘I’ve hardly had time to take it all in. It seems like we’re in with a chance of getting something on the bastard, but only at the risk of enraging the Americans.’
‘Do we care what they think?
‘I’m afraid we have to.’ His and Shchepkin’s future — in fact all of their futures — depended on it.
‘So we just forget about him?’
‘Of course not. We can still nail him, but we have to make damn sure we don’t take the credit.’
Next morning was sunny and cold. Esther was on her way out when Russell caught up with her; he asked her to wait while he grabbed his own coat, and the two of them talked in the garden. She didn’t cry when he told her that her daughter was dead, just lowered her head with the air of someone acknowledging an obvious truth.
‘But there’s good news too,’ he told her.
Her look suggested he’d taken leave of his senses.
He told her about the children, about Torsten Resch, about the happiness Miriam had apparently known. He avoided the matter of the boy’s parentage — he wanted to talk to Torsten before spelling out what he feared. ‘The children’s names are Leon and Esther,’ he added, and that did bring tears to her eyes.
‘Where are they?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. They left Breslau about ten days ago, heading west. Today I’ll start checking the stations. We’ll find them.’
‘Will you come to the hospital and tell all this to Leon? And if Effi could come as well — she always seems to perk him up.’
Russell smiled. ‘Of course.’
An hour later the three of them were gathered around Leon Rosenfeld’s bed. He seemed better than he had a fortnight ago, and took the tidings of Miriam’s death almost as stoically as his wife had done. By contrast, the news that he had grandchildren almost had him leaping from his bed. If no one had been there to restrain him, he would soon have been scouring eastern Germany and Poland for his namesake.
After a quarter of an hour, Russell and Effi said their goodbyes. On their way out, it occurred to Russell that Erich Luders might still be in the hospital, and a query at reception elicited directions to another ward. They found him sitting up in bed.