Read Masaryk Station (John Russell) for Free Online

he’d expected—the horses’ breath should have told him as much—and he set out on his two-kilometre walk to work at a brisker pace than usual. He could have taken the U-Bahn, but Ströhm welcomed the exercise, and the chance each day to notice signs of the city’s revival. Some houses here, some offices there, a pothole filled in, a leaking water main repaired. This might be the American sector, but these days Germans ran the local town hall, Social Democrats and Communists in the main, and they were putting Berlin back together.
    He worked in the old Reichsbahn Head Office building on Hallesches Ufer which, considering its location so close to the Anhalter Station and goods yards, had suffered remarkably little from the bombing. What damage there was had been quickly repaired by their Soviet liberators, who still ran all of eastern Germany’s railways from the building, despite its location in the American sector. Ströhm, like most senior officials who had spent the war either underground or in a camp, had an office on the second floor, overlooking the Landwehrkanal and the elevated tracks running into Potsdamer Station. The third floor was home to the highest echelon of the railway administration, almost all of them comrades now returned from years of exile in Moscow.
    Ströhm had barely sat down when his secretary, a young comrade from Leipzig, put her head around the door and told him a Red Star meeting had just been called. As he took the stairs up to the Director’s office, Ströhm wondered what the Russians wanted this time. Red Star meetings were only open to Party members above a certain grade.
    The conference room was next door to the Director’s office, and most of Ströhm’s fellow deputies were already seated around the table. There was only one Russian present, Alexander Klementeyev,the so-called Sovcom Liaison Officer, whom everyone knew was MGB, or whatever it was they called themselves these days.
    The Director Arnold Marohn had the usual pained look on his face, a consequence, he had once told Ströhm, of eating and drinking like a Russian for six long years—his stomach had never recovered. Now, he outlined the reasons for the meeting, with occasional glances in Klementeyev’s direction, as if keen that no one present should be under any illusion as to who had really called it. But no one was, Ströhm thought; they all knew the score. The differences lay in how much they liked it.
    Orders had arrived from Karlshorst, the southeastern suburb where the Soviets had their headquarters, to make rail travel between Berlin and the Western zones significantly more difficult. Traffic on the only autobahn had already been seriously affected by the closure of the emergency stations earlier that week, and now it was the turn of the railways. More vehicles would be subject to inspection, more discovered to be unsafe. There would be fewer officials available to check papers, and their increased conscientiousness should guarantee longer queues and delays. And there was more—each department was asked to prepare a series of appropriately graded measures, with everything from minor inconvenience to a total cessation of traffic in mind.
    ‘Are these measures likely to be permanent?’ Uli Trenkel asked, not bothering to conceal his disapproval. Like Ströhm, he had spent the Nazi years in Germany, and they shared a jaundiced view of the Russians.
    Marohn looked at Klementeyev.
    ‘There are no plans to make them so,’ the Russian said carefully. ‘A little pressure, to see how the Americans and British react—that’s all we’re anticipating at the present.’ Klementeyev beamed at the assembled company. ‘Not too difficult, I’m sure.’
    Walking back to his office, Ströhm found himself wondering how the Western allies would react. So far, the messages had mostly been mixed, especially from the Americans. Their commander in Berlin, General Clay, seemed only too happy to pick up a gauntlet, but his