‘Why?’
‘The post can’t be trusted, and the fewer people who know about this the better. I’ll be in Warsaw when you pick it up…’
‘What?’
‘Yes, I have to distance myself from this. Which will help you too — if they don’t suspect me, they won’t suspect you.’
That made a vague sort of sense, but…
‘Look, you must collect the stuff on Friday, just before dark would be best. The drop-off is a shop at Roland Ufer 17. There’s an overhead railway station just up the road. If you arrange to meet Hadleigh at the British Press Club you can take a train and hand the stuff over. As simple as that. And we’ll be rid of Nemedin, which should save both our lives.’
Put like that…
‘You’ll do it?’
‘I suppose so. How did you get hold of his personnel file?’
‘I still have a few friends from the old days, most of them clinging on with their fingertips, just like me. We help each other when we can.’
‘So what can go wrong?’ Russell asked.
Shchepkin shrugged. ‘There’s always a risk, but we really have no choice. Take a good look around before you go in.’
‘That doesn’t really answer my question.’
‘What could go wrong is your getting caught with the material, in which case we’ll both be finished. But there’s no reason why you should be. No one will know the material’s missing until the next day.’
Russell gave him a suspicious look. ‘If you’re away in Warsaw, someone else has to be involved.’
‘Of course, but you wouldn’t expect me to give you a name. You wouldn’t recognise it. And it wouldn’t help you if you did.’
Russell sighed. As usual with Shchepkin, he felt as though he’d been led deep into a maze, and left to wonder where he was. Taking ‘a good look around’ was all very well, but the same thought had probably occurred to the fool who commanded the Light Brigade. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But anything remotely suspicious, and I’m going home empty-handed. All right?’
‘Of course,’ Shchepkin said, sounding ever so slightly relieved. ‘Now I have something for you. The Jew you wanted traced.’
‘Otto Pappenheim.’
‘Yes. He did receive a transit visa, and he did cross the new border between Germany and the Soviet Union.’
‘Ah.’
‘On June 21st, 1941.’
‘The day before the invasion.’
‘Exactly. His train was stopped at Baranovichi — eastward movements were halted so all available lines could be used to reinforce the frontier. And that’s the last official trace of him. There’s certainly no record of him reaching Moscow, or travelling on the Trans-Siberian. Either he was caught up in the early fighting, or he found refuge in one of the local Jewish communities. And you know what happened to them.’
Russell did. ‘Could you find out his age?’
‘Yes, I forgot. He was born in 1914, in Berlin. His documents claimed he was single, but many applicants lied about that. As much to themselves as to us.’
Russell grunted his agreement. If this was Rosa’s father — and the age seemed about right — then a guilty lie was possible. But the chances of tracking him down seemed almost non-existent — if this Otto wasn’t buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in western Russia, he could be more or less anywhere. If the man ever came back in search of his family, then he might well find them, but as things stood they would never find him. ‘Thanks for that,’ he told Shchepkin. As they got up to leave he remembered his original purpose. ‘So why was Haferkamp killed?’ he asked.
Shchepkin looked at him for a moment, then managed a wry smile. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Rumour says it was an accident — that some young idiot hit him once too often, and his superiors decided that a suicide was less likely to upset the German comrades. Then again, maybe someone thought they needed upsetting, and had him killed for that reason. I don’t know.’
‘So it wasn’t just my report.’
‘No,’ Shchepkin said tiredly, as if he found Russell’s concern to apportion personal responsibility more than a little exasperating. ‘Your report didn’t tell them anything new. Not about Haferkamp anyway. Now I must be off. If all goes well, we’ll meet again in a fortnight.’
He strode off, briefly raising one arm in farewell. ‘If all goes well,’ Russell murmured to himself. He could imagine the riposte on his gravestone: ‘If all had gone well, he wouldn’t be here.’
But Friday was a long way off, and the Soviets far from his only problem. He had to come up with a plan for dealing with Geruschke, look out for Torsten and the children, and get his story off to Solly. He still hadn’t fixed on an angle for the latter, and talking to Isendahl might jolt his thoughts into some sort of order. He could then find a cafe to write in, prior to joining Effi at Ali’s.
He spent the long walk to Friedrichshain marshalling his thoughts, and was pleased to find Isendahl at home. His German friend was eager to hear how Russell had fared with the Haganah, and they ended up talking for over two hours about the options open to Europe’s Jewish survivors, and the seriously mixed blessings that each seemed to offer. Neither man took to the idea of Israel, but both saw the need, and thought it inevitable. So what mattered was what kind of Israel — a racially exclusive state run by soldiers and rabbis, or an heir to European Jewry’s socialist traditions that might, one day, share the land with the Arabs on more or less equal terms. Isendahl of course favoured the latter, but he wasn’t hopeful.
‘I was thinking about those options you listed,’ he told Russell. ‘And I asked myself: where would I — a German-Jewish socialist — feel most at home? And guess what answer I came up with? Not a Soviet-run Germany, not a Jewish Palestine, not the United States. It’s almost the ultimate paradox — the place I know I’ll feel most at home is a born-again bourgeois Germany. The same one that took such pleasure in murdering both socialists and Jews.’
Russell smiled, and found himself thinking of Albert Wiesner. He claimed to be a socialist, but his socialism didn’t stretch to accommodating Arabs within the new state’s borders. And when forced to choose between socialism and Israel, Russell had no doubt which way Albert would jump. The Nazis had given him his politics, and he would pass them on. There was still a price to pay.
But what was the alternative? Back in 1918 Russell had looked forward to a world in which anti-Semitism and other equally obnoxious prejudices would become increasingly unsustainable, but the Nazis had put paid to that dream, probably for at least another century. The old Jewish life in Germany and eastern Europe was gone for ever, and with it the hopes of a secular assimilation. It was Israel or the States, and Russell was inclined to favour the latter. It seemed better that the Americans profit from Europe’s failings, than that the Arabs pay for them.
Not that it mattered what he thought. And he would not condemn those, like Albert, who thought differently. Or at least not yet.
Russell remembered something that Albert had said about the Nokmim, that he didn’t agree with what they were doing, but would probably applaud their successes. He asked Isendahl whether they or the Ghosts of Treblinka had made the news in his absence.
‘Only indirectly,’ Wilhelm told him. He rummaged round for a newspaper, and pointed out an article. A man had been found dead in Neukolln, soon after a Jew identified him as an Auschwitz guard.
‘Why wasn’t he arrested?’ Russell asked.
‘Who knows? The Soviets may have had a use for him.’
‘You think it was the Ghosts?’
‘They left their mark on him. A Star of David cut into his forearm, where the Nazis used to tattoo their Jewish prisoners.’
‘Wonderful,’ Russell said drily.
‘It is in a way. And dreadful too. Do you know that line by Yeats: “a terrible beauty is born”?’
‘Uh-huh. High drama’s addictive stuff, but right now I’d settle for a few years of peace and contrition.’
‘Wrong place, wrong time.’
‘Probably.’
Isendahl was improving with age, Russell thought, as he walked back down Neue Konigstrasse in search of a cafe. He’d noticed a letter with US Army postal markings on the man’s desk, so maybe Freya was in touch, or even coming back.