Free Potsdam Station by David Downing

looking for last-ditch ways of saving their own skins.
    Watching Rosa interact with the other children in the shelter, Effi was reassured by the child’s obvious reticence. She wouldn’t be giving herself away – her mother had taught her well.
    Later, lying awake upstairs with the sleeping girl’s arm possessively draped around her, Effi found herself wondering how many millions of children would enter the coming peace as orphans.
     
    Russell’s Monday morning visit to the NKVD headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street was long and fruitless. His arrival caused consternation, his request for Shchepkin’s address a look of such incredulity that it almost made him laugh out loud. The young officer stood there mute for several seconds, torn between a transparent desire to send him packing, and an equally obvious fear that doing so would render him personally liable for any other outrageous acts that Russell might commit in the temple of socialism. After ordering him to take a seat, he disappeared in search of help.
    He returned five minutes later with a senior officer, a much older man with a prominent scar on one side of his neck, who coldly asked what Russell wanted.
    He repeated his story. He had attended the Fifth Conference of the Party in 1924 as a fraternal delegate, and made friends with a young Russian, Yevgeny Shchepkin. Since his job as a journalist had brought him back to Moscow, he was hoping to renew their acquaintance. But, unfortunately, he had lost his old friend’s address.
    ‘And why have you come here?’ the officer asked.
    ‘I met Yevgeny again in Stockholm in early 1942, and he told me he worked for State Security. These are the State Security offices, are they not?’
    The NKVD officer gave Russell a long look, as if trying to determine what he was dealing with – an idiot or something more threatening. He then spent five minutes examining the passport and papers which Russell had voluntarily submitted to his first questioner. ‘I hope this is not some journalist’s scheme to make trouble,’ he said eventually. ‘I find it hard to believe that you expected us to tell you the address of a security officer.’
    ‘I did not expect it. I just hoped. And I have no wish to make trouble.’
    ‘Perhaps. In any case, there is no one of that name working for this organisation. I think you have been misinformed.’
    ‘Then I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ Russell said, extending a hand for his passport.
    After a moment’s hesitation, the officer handed it back. ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.
    ‘The Metropol.’
    ‘It is a good hotel, yes?’
    ‘Very good.’
    ‘Enjoy your stay, Mr Russell.’
    He nodded, and walked back out onto a sunlit Dzerzhinsky Street. A mistake, he thought. Entering the monster’s lair was always a bad idea, especially when the monster was as paranoid as this one. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t been followed since his first visit to the American Embassy, but he was willing to bet that a fresh human shadow would be soon be waiting at the Metropol.
    So why go back? He altered course, turning left down the side of the Bolshoi Theatre and eventually finding a street which led him through to Red Square. As on his last visit, the vast expanse was almost empty. A few lone Russians were hurrying across, and a party of middle-aged men were conversing in Polish as they gawped up at Stalin’s windows. The next government in Warsaw, Russell guessed.
    He walked on past St Basil’s and down to the river. Leaning on the parapet above the sluggish-looking water, he wondered how else he could search for Shchepkin. What had made him think that the NKVD man lived in Moscow? Had he just assumed it? No, he hadn’t. He remembered Shchepkin telling him so, if not in so many words. In Stockholm, the Russian had taken him out in the embassy car – a minion had done the actual driving – and walked him round the city’s Northern Cemetery. Standing in front of Alfred Nobel’s