As she saw him to the door, she hugged him and said sadly,

  ‘These aren’t the easiest of times to be living through, are they?’

  23.

  Once upon a time, the whole wide world had been at his feet, but for years now, Alyosha had been under the feet of the world. He was sick and tired of being treated so shabbily, and he felt more and more strongly that Captain Malinowski was taking advantage of him. Ludwika sympathised with him, and put her arms around his neck and kissed him twice – once on his lips and once on the tip of his nose. Every time he stood this close to her, his skin danced. He had never been so happy. He had never been so unhappy.

  Time was running out, and the decision had to be made.

  ‘I don’t want to work for the Captain anymore. He doesn’t give a damn about me, not really, I’m just his messenger boy. Why should I feel any loyalty to him? He should do his own dirty work.’

  A few days previously, Alyosha had driven to Frankfurt Tor, in the east of the city, as instructed by Captain Malinowski, and parked under the tower. When the audience spilled out of the small theatre just adjacent after the performance, two men in grey suits slipped into the back of the car. They told him to drive them down Thaerstrasse, round Baltenplatz, and carry on until they reached Landsberger Chaussee. A voice from the back suggested he park in the shadow of a tall wall. He extinguished the lights of the motor car and heard the back doors opening and shutting.

  He waited in the silence for almost three-quarters of an hour. When they got back into the car, they were out of breath, and told him to drop them off at the Hauptbahnhof. They also gave him a roll of film, and told him to deliver it to the Captain.

  Alyosha later made some discreet enquiries, and found out that the factory making tanks for the army that Hitler was re-arming was situated on Landsberger Chaussee. It didn’t take a genius to work out that they were taking photographs of the tank designs.

  ‘If I was caught,’ he told Ludwika, ‘how could I deny that I was a spy?’ She stroked his hair lovingly. ‘I’m not happy.’

  She told him she could understand.

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Whatever’s going on, it has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You’ll have to talk to Przemek.’

  Captain Malinowski was dressing for dinner, when Alyosha arrived to see him. His butler was fastening his cuff-links and arranging his silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He barely glanced at Alyosha, beyond throwing him a quick look in the mirror as he combed his hair. As Alyosha stood there, the light in the bathroom was extinguished and the mute girl from the villa in Wannsee walked into the room, stopping for a moment to give Alyosha a blank look. She crossed over to the bed, picked up a pair of silk stockings, and rolled them up her legs. She didn’t speak a word, and the Captain didn’t acknowledge her presence. Alyosha couldn’t stop himself from watching her as she fixed her garters in place.

  It was only when he said ‘I’m leaving’ that Captain Malinowski put down his comb and turned to look at him properly. He lifted his glass from the drinks trolley, and rolled it slowly between his palms.

  ‘When do you mean to do that?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Am I to understand why?’

  ‘I think you know why.’

  Nevertheless, he expanded by saying he wished to be master of his own fate. Captain Malinowski looked unconcerned and a little impatient, as though he were trying to hold a conversation with a child who had lost his ball and was sulking at the end of the garden.

  ‘Every man should want to be the master of his own fate. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a good impulse.’

  The butler brought the decanter over and refilled his glass.

  ‘This isn’t a sly way of asking for more wages, I hope?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t be one to play tricks like that with me,’ he said, sipping his Armagnac. ‘Why, then?’

  ‘You always said you wanted me to speak out, not to mince my words,’ Alyosha said, ‘Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I don’t want to do your dirty work for you any more.’

  ‘There we are, then, there’s nothing for it but to say our goodbyes.’

  Alyosha held out his hand, but Captain Malinowski had already turned away.

  24.

  After Kai-Olaf fled for Paris, Margarita found it hard to make ends meet, as they had both been living on his wages from the bakery, so she decided to let the second bedroom in the apartment. It was the last thing she wanted, but under the circumstances, she had no choice – if she couldn’t pay her rent, she would be evicted. A young couple with a baby took the room. Julius was unemployed, and relied on the dole. Thankfully, the baby didn’t cry much – she would hear him mewling in the middle of the night every now and again, but he always quietened once his mother put him to the breast.

  She gave them the bigger room that she and Kai-Olaf had slept in, and moved her things to the smaller room which they had used as a study. They kept out of each other’s way as much as possible, but living with a baby brought all sorts of conflicting feelings in Margarita to the surface. Usually, she felt sure she had done the right thing in aborting, but sometimes, she felt it was the worst thing ever.

  She still hadn’t summoned the nerve to go back and ask about her passport. She longed to hear more from Kai-Olaf, and to be able to share his news with the rest of the IKD, but messages from Paris were sporadic, as they had to be passed along a network of couriers. When one of them was caught, tortured, and sent to Dachau, there was a long silence until they could be sure the rest of them had not been identified. She never knew when the next message would come. Even then, much had to be left unsaid, to protect the membership of the IKD. Even in the part written in invisible ink, real names were never used, only the codenames they all had.

  In the meantime, Vicky had come to her again, asking for her help. Firstly, she wanted to establish a link between the IKD, the KPD, and the most progressive elements within the SPD, with the intention of creating a united front against the Nazis. Secondly, she wanted to see Alyosha. Was it possible for Margarita to arrange a meeting?

  25.

  Above the doors of some of the bars and dancing halls, the neon lights still winked, but the Kurfürstendamm was virtually deserted, aside from a few late birds making for home. Alyosha rang the bell twice, and the door clicked open. He walked along the corridor and through a kitchen of bright white tiles, to reach the large room with the wooden dance floor. The place smelled of sweat and spilt alcohol. The stub of a cigar still smouldered in an ashtray, and several wine bottles in their raffia baskets remained uncleared on some of the tables.

  Two young men and an older woman were on their knees, busily cyclostyling leaflets. They worked intently and silently, pressing the leaflets flat between two boards and smoothing them with rubber rollers. The title was Die Rote Fahne.

  ‘She’s through there,’ said one of the young men, barely lifting his head from his work.

  Vicky’s skin was sickly, her eyes bloodshot, and dark roots were creeping through her blonde hair. She was deep in discussion with two comrades, and it was obvious from their demeanour that they were all dispirited.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  When she hugged him, her breath smelled of drink. Alyosha asked her directly what she wanted him to do.

  ‘Deliver copies of Die Rote Fahne. You’re the only person I know who drives a motor car.’

  He told her that he no longer worked for Captain Malinowski.

  She frowned. ‘Are you telling the truth?’

  ‘What reason would I have to lie?’

  He suddenly felt very sorry for her. ‘Why are you still doing this Vicky? It’s so dangerous. Wouldn’t it be safer for you to leave for Moscow?’

  ‘And let those Nazi scum have the upper hand?’ Her old spirit flickered into life, ‘There are powerful articles in this edition.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  Vicky smiled, and sat to light a cigarette and reflect for a moment. This was nothing new for her, she told him, she’d been in a similar situation after Kapp’s putsch, back in 1920, when the streets were filled with murder and mayhem. She had lived in constant fear through that, too, living from hand to mouth, sleeping somewhere different every night.

  ‘Will you help us?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  She asked why.

  ‘I’m not prepared to risk my life for a cause I don’t believe in. While I live, I’ll oppose communism. You’re trying your best to impose a moral order on everybody. You say your Marxist ethic is relevant to everybody, everywhere under the sun. But I just don’t see how that can be.’

  ‘What do you see in its place then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think there are any laws within history, just layers of reality – zigzagging sometime, inside-out at other times, and all jumbled up.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. That every one of us, in my experience, at least, undervalues the role of chance.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘That any meaning someone discovers in his own life is something that’s unique to him.’

  ‘So what is the meaning in your life?’

  He paused for a moment. ‘I don’t know for sure… Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Of course you don’t! And you never will. The truth about an individual’s life is outside himself, in other people or ideas or situations. Those are the things that shape the reality you live in. That’s where the meaning of your life lies. In order to understand yourself, you have to understand everything else as well, by analysing the processes which work through history. That is the only reality. That is the only truth.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.’

  Vicky looked at him longingly. ‘I miss sleeping with you, Alexei.’

  She placed the back of her hand tenderly on his cheek.

  26.

  In mid-October, hundreds of Berliners made their way to Pesotskistrasse, to gather under the swastikas, which seemed to hang from every window. A brass band gave them a brash welcome, and on the erected platform stood two rows of the SA, Bruno Volkmann among them. Oberführer Krieger introduced the main speaker, Dr Goebbels, who pulled the cord to uncover the plaque which had been placed high on the wall.

  Vlasich Pesotski

  Er fiel für Deutschland

  As he picked his way through the crowds, Alyosha became aware of a shadow at his shoulder. It was Paul, now clean-shaven and with a little more flesh on him than before, though his cheeks were as bloodless as ever under his brown peaked hat. They looked at each other for a second or two, then Paul looked furtively around him before muttering that he had to see her.

  ‘Who?’

  Vicky’s name was almost drowned by the notes blaring out from the band.

  ‘Will you tell her?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is anymore.’

  Paul sniffed sceptically. ‘But you know how to get hold of her. This is important. There are things I have to tell her. Important things. Things she needs to know.’

  ‘On my honour, I don’t know how to contact her.’

  ‘But you can ask around?’ The SA’s man stared him in the face challengingly. ‘Can’t you?’

  Alyosha was torn. He couldn’t decide if Paul had become a Nazi through and through, or whether the anguish he seemed to be expressing was genuine.

  ‘I’m not what you think I am,’ Paul said earnestly.

  The band stopped playing and the crowd whistled and applauded.

  ‘Vicky has to understand that. My loyalties are still with the working class.’

  ‘Where’s your mouse?’ asked Alyosha.

  ‘Rosa died.’

  27.

  Margarita had long since put any thoughts of a wage packet behind her, when her circumstances changed for the better. One afternoon, she bumped in to a girl who used to work in another section at Aznefttrust, as she was pushing her baby in his pram outside the KaDeWe. She told Margarita she’d heard there was a job going, and if she didn’t have the baby, she would have gone for it herself. Margarita duly applied, and was invited for interview at the Soviet Union’s Department of Trade in Berlin. She was called back the next day for a second interview, and was told at the end of it that the job was hers.

  In her desperation for work – any sort of work – she had buried any misgivings, but as she sat at her desk on her first morning, all sorts of doubts came into her head. Had she stepped into the lion’s den? Was working here inadvisable, as she was still an important contact point between the IKP members in Berlin and the Paris office? Had she taken leave of her senses, in fact?

  ‘Hitler or not, trade is still important. Though we don’t know how long they’ll let us stay of course,’ her boss, Anton Kovrin, told her. ‘The 1926 agreement between our two countries is still in force, so Russia has every right to trade here, though they’ve imposed the requirement that we don’t employ any Germans. Of course, you know that, it’s the reason why Aznefttrust had to shut.’

  Doubts or not, Margarita was very thankful to be earning again. The Department of Trade was housed in a substantial building, a small, square mansion, with grounds, surrounded by tall walls, and two handsome gates of decorative cast iron, where a young man checked their credentials every morning before letting them through. All the members of staff were given identity cards.

  For the first three weeks, Margarita shared the office with two other women – both ardent Stalinists – typing and translating letters. One, who was the same age as Larissa, had two children, and her husband had been arrested. She showed his picture to Margarita, who thought he looked familiar, though she didn’t say so. There was no knowing when, or if, he would be released. He’d already spent the last five months in Dachau.

  Margarita’s experience of working in a bank came in useful, and she was soon transferred to the Finance Department to work for Anton Kovrin.

  A regular visitor from Paris was Stanislav Markovich Feldman.

  28.

  Margarita had just put on her coat, ready to leave for work, when her tenant told her that the post had arrived, and there was a letter from the Gestapo for her. She took the letter and left the apartment without opening it. After shutting the door behind her, she stood at the head of the stairs and stared at the letter, pulling her coat around her as if to protect her heart. She opened the envelope and squinted in the poor light at the black type, and had to look again, as the few words swam before her eyes. It was a bald instruction to make herself available for interview at the time noted. Her mind raced. She must get out of Berlin for Paris, Amsterdam, Norway, anywhere at all, it didn’t matter, just as long as the German border was behind her. She shouldn’t catch the tram to work, shouldn’t go back to the apartment either, ever again. Who could she turn to? She considered what members of the IKP might be able to help her. But was it fair to even ask? Wouldn’t she be putting them in danger, too? She knew she was already in a desperate position. She had heard enough about the Gestapo’s methods to doubt that she would be able to withstand interrogation. But why the letter? Why not pick her up and arrest her as they usually did, given that they knew where she lived? It was very odd.

  Her nerves were so jangled that she couldn’t think straight. She stopped at a café on Nollendorfplatz, and ordered a coffee. She was aware of a painful and insistent throbbing between her temples. She tried to steady her thoughts, but her headache was a distraction. Why hadn’t the Gestapo just arrested her? Why send that letter? It made absolutely no sense at all. There was some stratagem at work here, but what? If only she could talk to Kai-Olaf, ask his advice. She missed him more than ever. He would have been able to think things out logically, and find a way out of her predicament. She sipped her coffee, but it tasted bitter.

  29.

  Alyosha felt like a free man now that he was no longer at Captain Malinowski’s beck and call, and he walked with a lighter step. Life went on as before, though he was now a kept man. Ludwika even hired a car, and they took trips out of the city into the countryside. They had started to discuss their future together, but Alyosha still felt that Ludwika only half belonged to him. She spent some of her time with her own people without him, reporting that Baroness Kosub, Colonel Flezar and the rest of the Poles were becoming increasingly anxious about Adolf Hitler’s intentions. The Soviet Union might well have reason to be wary, but Poland, as ever, was like a small child squeezed in a bed between two greedy men. If another war broke out, who knew what the fate of her mother country would be. Poland’s fate was Europe’s fate, as Talleyrand had told Metternich at the Congress of Vienna. Since the Treaty of Versailles, the bone of contention between Germany and Poland was the Danzig corridor, Upper Silesia, Teschen, East Galicia and Vilna. Hitler was eager to claim all this land back, and he was set on punishing Poland for claiming them in the first place.

  Prophesising the future of Europe was the last thing on Alyosha’s mind. The only thing of importance to him was a future where two became one: he wanted them to start a new life together in Paris.

  ‘And Amelia, remember.’

  ‘Of course, Amelia too.’

  In the torpor of the night, with the taste of her flesh still on his tongue, and the noise of the SA wolves drifting in from the street, he would stroke Ludwika’s back, cup her breasts, pull her closer, the sweat in the small of her back damp against his stomach. He’d kiss the nape of her neck, whisper endearments in her ear, and she would mumble something under her breath – something he didn’t catch, but which would comfort him nevertheless.