The abductors were silent for a minute.
“Let’s make for Hamburg,” said Yefim. “We’ll hand Rogov in there and work out what to do after that. In any case, we can’t take these kids into the envoy’s office. There’ll be no end of fuss.”
Trying to appear casual, Tata put out a hand to touch the lock on the door.
The car was traveling down an elegant street lined with tall buildings adorned with balconies and sculptures. All around, car horns sounded, and bicycle bells rang. Street merchants were selling newspapers, balloons and—oranges!
Suddenly, their road was blocked by a column of demonstrators. They were dressed in what looked like army uniforms: battered peaked caps and military trousers and belted tunics. The demonstrators kept clenching their fists and raising their right arms to the regular beat of a drum.
“Rot Front!” their cries echoed over the street.
“Oh my god! That’s the Union of Red Combatants!” Tata whispered. “The military division of the German Communist Party!”
The demonstrators had come to a stop, and it was impossible for cars to pass. The driver with the gold teeth stuck his head out of the window to see how long they would have to wait.
“Damn it all!” he cursed. “It looks like we’re stuck.”
At that moment, Tata tugged at the chrome door handle, and she and Kitty tumbled out onto the pavement.
“Run!” shouted Tata.
“Hey, stop!” yelled the driver. “Get back here this minute!”
He set off after them at a run, but the girls had already dashed ahead through the lines of demonstrators and soon outstripped him.
“We left Daddy behind!” Kitty kept sobbing, but Tata pulled her relentlessly through the crowds.
Breathless and tear-stained, they stopped before a strange building that looked like some ancient temple.
All around, Tata saw men and women dressed up to the nines looking like profiteers. All the signs were in German, and Tata couldn’t understand a word, even though she had learned German at school for several years.
Everything here was foreign and unfamiliar. A barrel organ grinder stood on the pavement, singing something in a nasal voice. Two soldiers in silly looking helmets were buying sausages from a street vendor. The only thing that reminded Tata of home was the pigeons fussing about in the gutter. But they were pecking at white bread! Who would toss away anything so delicious?
Kitty had not stopped wailing.
“Please try not to make so much noise!” Tata implored her.
She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the note that Uncle Klim had given her. He had told her that this address was a safe place for them. But where was it? And how would they get there? They were surrounded by Germans and could not even ask anyone the way.
An old man with whiskers carrying a bucket and a roll of paper under his arm went up to one of the advertising columns and began to paste up a poster decorated with a red star and the inscription “Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands.” Tata knew what those words meant: “The Communist Party of Germany.”
At last, there was somebody they could trust—a member of the working classes! She ran up to him.
“Kamerade… I… Ich habe, haus… Oh, I don’t know how to say it in German!”
“Please, speak Russian,” said the old man with a smile.
Tata was alarmed. What if the old man was a traitor, like Sergei? But he seemed to have a kind face.
“Dear Mister, are you a Communist?”
The man squinted up at the poster with the star. “Good heavens, no! But I’ll put anything up if they pay me for it. I have a family to feed.”
Another White Russian émigré, thought Tata desperately. An unprincipled degenerate from a previous era.
She dithered for a moment, unsure what to do, but then decided to show him the piece of paper with the address. “How do we get to this house?” she asked.
The old man took a pair of spectacles from his pocket, perched them on his nose, and read the address.
“You need to take the metro,” he said.
“What metro? Where is it?” Tata said in alarm. “We’re lost. We’ve only just arrived in the city, and we don’t know anything.”
The old man grabbed his bucket and motioned them to follow him through the doors of the temple-like building.
“Here—this is the metro,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you the way.”
They went inside, and Tata stopped, struck dumb by amazement. Sunlight poured through the glass roof of the metro station. The tiled walls were hung with panels bearing advertisements for cabarets and sports equipment. And there were kiosks along the walls, selling all manner of goods.
The old man helped Tata to buy a ticket and explained to her where to go and how to know when to get off.
“Thank you!” said Tata and led Kitty down the stairs.
It was hard to believe this was all really happening to her. Only yesterday, she had been sitting in a cupboard bemoaning her unhappy fate, and today, here she was with Kitty, roaming about the metro beneath the city of Berlin. And all alone without any adults!
The girls emerged onto the dimly lit platform and sat down on a bench.
The old man must have been a Communist after all, thought Tata. A White Russian sympathizer would never have helped out strangers as he had. It was just that Tata was a stranger, so he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her. After all, in Berlin, there were any number of children of aristocratic émigrés, not to mention young fascists.
A train came roaring by, and Tata and Kitty clapped their hands over their ears. A group of schoolgirls standing nearby burst out laughing and began whispering and looking in their direction.
“I want my daddy!” sobbed Kitty.
Tata squeezed her hand. “Don’t be a scaredy-cat! You and I are brave Pioneers.”
They got onto the train and traveled for a long time, counting off the stops as the old man had told them.
Suddenly, the train came out over the ground, and the whole car was flooded with sunlight. On they went, between unfamiliar German buildings, parks, and stores until at last, they stopped at the station at the end of the line—Tilplatz.
Tata and Kitty stepped out onto the open platform and looked around them.
“This way!” declared Tata, pointing to a group of apartment blocks painted in different colors. “We’ll ask someone. Even if we can’t understand what they say, they can point us in the right direction.”
Seibert received two telegrams from Mr. Reich, one after the other. In one, Oscar promised Seibert that he would bring the money on Tuesday. In the other, he apologized and asked if he could postpone their meeting to the following day at five o’clock.
On Wednesday morning, Seibert sat down at his typewriter and began to write a lengthy article on labor camps in the USSR. He had decided that if he did not get the money from Oscar today, tomorrow he would send his piece to the press.
The article turned out well. Seibert wished he could show it off to Nina, but unfortunately, she could not appreciate the elegance of his German prose.
Several days earlier, she had received a telegram from Magda that had hinted at Klim’s arrest. Ever since, Nina had been going out to Charlottenberg every morning. She had told Seibert she was looking for work, but he had his doubts. In his opinion, this young lady was capable of just about anything. Perhaps she was trying to find desperate White Russians to help her in some plan to cross the Soviet border and put a bomb under the Lubyanka?
It was eleven o’clock, and Seibert was feeling in need of a little sustenance. As it happened, there was an excellent restaurant just around the corner that sold fried sausage and cabbage cooked with apple.