Rosa sighed. ‘I don’t know. They were excited. And happy. I like drawing happy people.’
Effi felt a growing sense of relief. ‘What they were doing,’ she said. ‘What Daddy and I do sometimes. It’s called sex. Or making love. There are lots of words for it.’
‘Fucking,’ Rosa suggested.
‘That’s one of them. But the important thing-one of the important things,’ Effi corrected herself, ‘is that most people like to be alone with each other when they’re doing it. It’s a private thing, just for the two of them. And they would be angry if someone drew them, or took a photograph. Do you understand?’
Rosa gave her a look. ‘I shouldn’t draw people fucking without asking them first.’
It seemed a reasonable summation, if not quite the one that Effi had hoped for.
Darkness had fallen when Strohm emerged from the Wedding U-Bahn station and crossed an eerily empty Muller Strasse. Road transport was still sparse in Berlin, particularly at this time of the day, when most transport was either public or military. At least the U-Bahn and S-Bahn were now running until late in the evening, and one of the latter’s trains pulled out of the station above him as he walked eastward along the badly damaged Lindower Strasse.
Harald Gebauer’s political office was in the old bankruptcy court building on Nettelbeck Platz, which bore the marks of both Allied bombing and Red Army shellfire, but unlike its neighbours still stood. ‘On the second floor,’ his old friend had told him on the telephone, somewhat unnecessarily-the ground floor was dark and empty, the sound of several voices coming from above. Strohm climbed the stairs to find a landing lined with chairs, three of them occupied by people waiting to see Gebauer.
When he put his head around the door to let Harald know he’d arrived, his friend raised ten fingers once, twice and-smiling and shrugging-a third time for luck. Strohm gave him a grin in return and went back out to a chair. He had known Gebauer as long as he had known anyone-they had gone on KPD youth marches together in the years before the Nazis seized power, and been members of the underground cells centred on the Stettin Station railway yards before and during the war. Since 1945, they had both held relatively important positions-Strohm in the central railway administration, Gebauer in the yards and on the Wedding District Council.
‘You look miserable,’ was Harald’s greeting forty minutes later, when the last local supplicant had disappeared down the stairs.
‘You don’t,’ Strohm told him. ‘Working every hour God sends must be good for you.’
Gebauer laughed. ‘No time to think,’ he agreed, ‘but let’s go and have a drink. I’m afraid I can only spare an hour-I’ve got paperwork here that has to be finished.’ He reached for the coat that was hanging on the back of his door, and fought his way into it. The elbows were in dire need of patching, Strohm noticed.
Downstairs at the door, they discovered it had started to rain.
‘Shit,’ Harald said with feeling. ‘My shoes leak,’ he added in explanation. ‘But what the hell.’ He led the way across the square and under the railway.
‘Are you still living on Liesen?’ Strohm asked.
‘I moved into the office. There’s an old army camp bed I can use. And it cuts down the journey to work,’ he added wryly.
‘What happened to your apartment?’
‘I let it go. There were so many families living in one room, and there I was living in three-I couldn’t justify it. And there were too many memories.’
Gebauer had lost his wife and children in an American bombing raid.
‘And, as you so rightly said,’ he continued, ‘I’m working every hour History sends. What do I need an apartment for?’
Rest, Strohm thought, but he didn’t say it. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked instead.
‘The Northener.’
‘It’s still open? I thought it had been flattened.’
‘It was. But look,’ Harald said as they turned a corner, pointing out a yellow light further down the street. ‘The wonders of reconstruction.’
It was a different building in all but name, boasting some of the old decorations. But not, Strohm noticed, the double-faced portrait which had hung on one wall, with Lenin on one side and Hitler on the other. That had presumably been taken by the Gestapo, after the raid that finally closed the bar down. Strohm had often imagined the moment when they realised that the picture was reversible, and confronted the problem of how to burn one side without harming the other.
In the old days, when most of the clientele were railwaymen, comrades, or both, finding a spot to stand had often been difficult, but tonight’s population was no more than twenty. It still made Strohm feel nostalgic though, and as Gebauer bought their beers, he found himself sifting through mostly fond memories. Life had been simpler in opposition.
Once they were seated he said as much to Gebauer, but his friend didn’t want to talk about the past. ‘Back then all we did was hide and hope; now the world is at our feet. This is a hard time, I know it is, but it’s a wonderful time as well.’ He saw the doubt in Strohm’s eyes. ‘Yes, yes, but look how well we are doing.’
‘We are?’ Strohm asked with a smile.
‘I believe so. How many are we-a few hundred, a thousand perhaps? Committed comrades, I mean. And few of us with a proper education-the Depression and the Nazis saw to that. And you remember how it was in 1945-all of us worried that we couldn’t do the job, that without the training we’d mess it all up. But we haven’t. We improvised, we learnt as we went along, and we’ve made it work. We had everything against us-even our Allies stealing half our industry-but we’ve made it work. And this is only the beginning. Anything’s possible.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘Of course.’
‘A German socialism.’
‘Eventually, yes. Oh it won’t happen overnight, but in time-why not?’
His conviction was catching. ‘Your job brings you closer to the people,’ Strohm admitted. ‘Mine … well, it’s the worst kind of politics, more about power than people.’ He shrugged. ‘And then there’s the Russians.’
‘The Russians are a pain the arse, but if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be here. We’d all be dead, most likely.
‘True.’ Strohm laughed. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘And you.’
They parted half an hour later, Gebauer shuffling wearily back towards his office, Strohm heading west for the U-Bahn. He didn’t have long to wait for a train, and as it thundered through the tunnels he sat in the almost empty carriage reflecting on the evening. He had known quite a few comrades like Harald, who thought personal life was a luxury, who wore leaky shoes and patched-up clothes, and never used an official car when walking was an option. Who were happy to live in material poverty while pursuing a richer life for all.
People like that had always been the heart and soul of the Party, and Strohm longed to believe that enough of them remained.
In Trieste it had been raining on and off for days, but the supply of defectors had dried up. The general tightening of borders was probably responsible for the shortage of genuine asylum seekers, and as for the fakes, well maybe the Soviets were waiting to see how Kuznakov fared before rolling a successor off the assembly line. Russell’s employers didn’t seem overly concerned-Dempsey and Farquhar had both taken the opportunity to visit Venice, and the local CIA contingent were busy celebrating their successful purchase of the Italian election. All of which left Russell free to pursue his story.
The business with Palychko had gone some way to confirming his major suspicions. There was always the chance that he was a one-off, but Russell doubted it-there were too many east Europeans with innocent blood on their hands who could help the Americans understand the Soviets. Other questions remained, though. Who was choosing whom to save-the intelligence people in Europe, or the government back home? And did the fact that Draganovic had an office in the Vatican mean the Pope himself had sanctioned the Rat Line? Given that the Catholic Church was still apologising for its shoddy performance in the war, a Nazi passport with a Papal signature would certainly win Russell a headline or too.