Russell hated lying to Effi , but why give her reason to worry?
There were messages waiting for him at Neuenburger Strasse, including one from Kuzorra. Miriam Rosenfeld had indeed been seen at Silesian Station, and a man had been seen with her. Kuzorra was continuing with his enquires until Russell told him otherwise. He hoped they could meet when Russell returned from Prague.
There was a congratulatory wire from Ed Cummins, who had liked the ARP piece, and postcards from the two Wiesner girls and his agent in London, Solly Bernstein. All three had been sampling the delights of the English seaside resort, the Wiesners at Margate, Solly at Southend. Messages from outside the cage, Russell thought. But nothing from inside. Nothing from Sarah Grostein.
Realizing that three days had passed since his talk with Gorodnikov, he reluctantly called the SD contact number. After identifying himself, he reported that the Soviets had taken him on, and were happy to accept any intelligence he could offer them.
The duty officer read his words back to him, and signed off with a crisp 'Heil Hitler!'
Russell phoned Thomas with Kuzorra's news, and then drove up to Wilhelmstrasse. The two press briefings he attended that morning could and probably should have been given by chimpanzees. At the Adlon over lunch the general feeling among the foreign correspondents was that the sooner Hitler returned to Berlin the better. Nazi Germany on the prowl was scary, disgusting or both, but at least it made good copy. Nazi Germany at rest was literally too dull for words.
At eight that evening Russell's train pulled out of Anhalter Station. The last time he'd made this journey he'd been carrying a probable death sentence in a false-bottomed suitcase, and looking back he still had difficulty believing he could have taken such a risk. Today's journey, by contrast, seemed almost blissfully safe. He gazed out at the Saxon countryside for a couple of hours, stretched his limbs on the platform at Dresden, and took a nightcap in the dining car as the mountains loomed in the late evening dusk. The sleeping car attendant took his documents, thanked him profusely for the five-mark tip, and showed him to his first class bed. He lay there listening to the rattle of the wheels, enjoying the softness of the mattress. A change was as good as a rest, he thought. Even a change of cages.
The Ostrava Freight
Russell's train pulled in to Masaryk Station soon after seven in the morning. Or what had been Masaryk Station - the nameboards had been removed and not, as yet, replaced with something more suitable. In all other respects, the concourse looked much the same. There were no German soldiers on display, no leather-coated myrmidons. Russell walked out through the gabled glass facade and turned left. At the far end of a shadowed Hybernska Street the famous Powder Gate basked in the morning sunlight.
He headed down Dlazdena Street towards the centre of the New Town. The side streets, he noticed, all bore bilingual signs in Czech and German, save for Jerusalem Street, which had no sign at all. The large synagogue halfway down was still standing, which seemed a good omen. He would have to visit it before he left.
Jindoisska Street was festooned with swastikas of varying sizes, the largest reserved for the central post office. Something else was different too, but he only realized what it was when a large sign told him that 'Prague is now driving on the right'. In more ways than one, he thought.
Reaching the long sloping boulevard that the Czechs, for reasons best known to themselves, called Wenceslas Square, he turned left. The Hotel Europa was a hundred metres up the hill, a uniformed bellboy doing what looked like a tapdance on the pavement outside.
A French friend had recommended the Alcron Hotel on the dubious grounds that the Gestapo kept a large suite of rooms there, and that, in consequence, the hotel's telephone lines were less likely to be monitored. Since Russell had no intention of using a hotel telephone for anything more than ordering breakfast he felt able to forego the delight of swapping small-talk in the lifts with the local boys in black. He had, moreover, always wanted to stay at the Europa, an art nouveau masterpiece from the old Habsburg Empire days. The Habsburg civil service might have been less than successful at running a modern state and economy, but few ruling classes had been more single-minded when it came to indulging themselves. And given the choice, who would turn their back on a hotel facade crowned with gilded nymphs?
The bellboy tapped his foot one last time for luck and took Russell's bag. The receptionist was half-asleep, but managed to find Russell's reservation and key. A gilded lift took him and the bellboy up three floors, and a red-carpeted corridor brought them to a lovely high-ceilinged room at the front of the hotel. Russell handed over the few small coins he'd had since March, and asked if the hotel changed money. Yes, the boy said from the doorway, but the Thomas Cook on Na Poikopi offered a better rate. So much for loyalty.
Russell's appointment at the American legation was for ten o'clock, which gave him a couple of hours. He could walk to the Little Quarter, he thought. Through the Old Town and over the Charles Bridge. But first, breakfast. He could see from his window that most of the cafes on the Square were open for business, and sitting outside seemed preferable to the hotel restaurant, no matter how ornate the decoration.
A kiosk at the nearest intersection had a selection of Czech titles, yesterday's Beobachter, and a Daily Express from the previous Friday. He bought the latter, settled himself in the nearest cafe, and explored the world as seen from England over coffee and strudel. There was a society wedding in Mayfair, a thirty stone man crammed into the back of a Ford Prefect, and a spread of sepia photographs from the Indian Mutiny. The new League season was about to begin, and the paper's football correspondent was tipping Wolverhampton Wanderers to win the First Division title.
The cafe slowly filled around him, and the trams seemed to clank across the nearby intersection with increasing frequency. A trio of German officers walked by, slapping gloves against their thighs with alarming appropriateness, and Russell examined the faces of the Czechs they passed. Expressions of disdain, mostly. A touch of fear. No liking or love, that was certain.
He paid for his breakfast and walked down to Na Poikopi. Thomas Cook was next door to the Deutsches Haus, which was advertising a German Culture Week with several giant posters of aryan composers. The exchange desk was opening as Russell arrived, and the young Czech woman's demeanour switched from sullen hostility to warm friendliness the moment he showed his American passport.
'Journalist,' she murmured in English, reading it under occupation.
'Yes,' Russell agreed.
'You write about my country?'
'Yes.'
'And the Germans?'
'Yes.'
'That is good,' she said, as if the subject admitted of only one viewpoint.
The subject probably did, Russell thought, as he crossed Na Poikopi and took the nearest of the narrow streets burrowing into the Old Town. There were fewer people than he expected, and the main square was almost empty. Russell circled it slowly, reminding himself how beautiful the surrounding wall of buildings was, and trying to ignore the Culture Week posters that hung from many of the first floor windowsills. He discovered he was ten minutes too late for the hourly procession of apostles in the Town Hall clock.
The winding Karlova Street brought him to the river. Two bored-looking German soldiers stood sentry by the Bridge Tower, but the only traffic on the bridge was a single horse-drawn cart piled high with school desks. Above the far bank, the Little Quarter and its crowning castle rose to meet the blue sky.