Winter of the World

Then he made his way to the cheap restaurant that was his chosen rendezvous. As was his regular practice, he did not go in, but stood at a bus stop on the other side of the road and watched the entrance. He was confident he had shaken off any tail, but now he needed to make sure Werner had not been followed.

He was not sure that he would recognize Werner Franck, who had been a fourteen-year-old boy when Volodya had last seen him, and was now twenty. Werner felt the same, so they had agreed they would both carry today’s edition of the Berliner Morgenpost open to the sports page. Volodya read a preview of the new soccer season as he waited, glancing up every few seconds to look for Werner. Ever since being a schoolboy in Berlin, Volodya had followed the city’s top team, Hertha. He had often chanted: ‘Ha! Ho! He! Hertha B-S-C!’ He was interested in the team’s prospects, but anxiety spoiled his concentration, and he read the same report over and over again without taking anything in.

His two years in Spain had not boosted his career in the way he had hoped – rather the reverse. Volodya had uncovered numerous Nazi spies like Heinz Bauer among the German ‘volunteers’. But then the NKVD had used that as an excuse to arrest genuine volunteers who had merely expressed mild disagreement with the Communist line. Hundreds of idealistic young men had been tortured and killed in the NKVD’s prisons. At times it had seemed as if the Communists were more interested in fighting their anarchist allies than their Fascist enemies.

And all for nothing. Stalin’s policy was a catastrophic failure. The upshot was a right-wing dictatorship, the worst imaginable outcome for the Soviet Union. But the blame was put on those Russians who had been in Spain, even though they had faithfully carried out Kremlin instructions. Some of them had disappeared soon after returning to Moscow.

Volodya had gone home in fear after the fall of Madrid. He had found many changes. In 1937 and 1938 Stalin had purged the Red Army. Thousands of commanders had disappeared, including many of the residents of Government House where his parents lived. But previously neglected men such as Grigori Peshkov had been promoted to take the places of those purged, and Grigori’s career had a new impetus. He was in charge of the defence of Moscow against air raids, and was frantically busy. His enhanced status was probably the reason why Volodya was not among those scapegoated for the failure of Stalin’s Spanish policy.

The unpleasant Ilya Dvorkin had also somehow avoided punishment. He was back in Moscow and married to Volodya’s sister, Anya, much to Volodya’s regret. There was no accounting for women’s choices in such matters. She was already pregnant, and Volodya could not repress a nightmare image of her nursing a baby with the head of a rat.

After a brief leave, Volodya had been posted to Berlin, where he had to prove his worth all over again.

He looked up from his paper to see Werner walking along the street.

Werner had not changed much. He was a little taller and broader, but he had the same strawberry-blond hair falling over his forehead in a way girls had found irresistible, the same look of tolerant amusement in his blue eyes. He wore an elegant light-blue summer suit, and gold links glinted at his cuffs.

There was no one following him.

Volodya crossed the road and intercepted him before he reached the café. Werner smiled broadly, showing white teeth. ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you with that army haircut,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you, after all these years.’

He had not lost any of his warmth and charm, Volodya noted. ‘Let’s go inside.’

‘You don’t really want to go into that dump, do you?’ Werner said. ‘It will be full of plumbers eating sausages with mustard.’

‘I want to get off the street. Here we could be seen by anyone passing.’

‘There’s an alley three doors down.’

‘Good.’

They walked a short distance and turned into a narrow passage between a coal yard and a grocery store. ‘What have you been doing?’ Werner said.

‘Fighting the Fascists, just like you.’ Volodya considered whether to tell him more. ‘I was in Spain.’ It was no secret.

‘Where you had no more success than we did here in Germany.’

‘But it’s not over yet.’

‘Let me ask you something,’ Werner said, leaning against the wall. ‘If you thought Bolshevism was wicked, would you be a spy working against the Soviet Union?’

Volodya’s instinct was to say No, absolutely not! But before the words came out he realized how tactless that would be – for the prospect that revolted him was precisely what Werner was doing, betraying his country for the sake of a higher cause. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I think it must be very difficult for you to work against Germany, even though you hate the Nazis.’

‘You’re right,’ Werner said. ‘And what happens if war breaks out? Am I going to help you kill our soldiers and bomb our cities?’