Silesian Station

A Leap in the Light

Thursday began well. The sun was already streaming through the curtains when they woke, and long sleepy love-making seemed to dissolve any lingering distance between them. They shared a bath, took turns drying each other, and found themselves back on the rumpled bed. A second immersion in the tub exhausted the supply of dry towels.

They drove down to the Ku'damm for breakfast and sat outside with large cups of milky coffee, watching fellow Berliners on their way to work. 'You'll need a dress suit,' Effi said. 'For the premiere,' she added in explanation.

'I'll hire one. And that reminds me - I've got presents for you at home.'

Her eyes lit up. 'You'll bring them over?'

'I will.'

Effi looked at her watch. 'I told Zarah I'd see her this morning.'

'Then we'd better get going,' Russell said, signalling the waiter.

During the drive out to Grunewald he told her about Miriam, and his hiring of Kuzorra on Thomas's behalf. She listened but said nothing, just stared out of the window at the shops lining the Ku'damm. When Russell realized she was crying he pulled over and took her in his arms.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It sounds like a story with such a sad ending.'

Outside Zarah's house she kissed him a loving goodbye, and he watched the front door close behind the two sisters before moving off. Russell had woken in the middle of the night, full of fear that Effi would leave him, that she wouldn't risk her life on his ability to satisfy the SD. Here now, in the bright light of a summer morning, the notion seemed risible, but traces of the fear still lingered.

He drove back into town, stopping for petrol at the garage halfway up Ku'damm. According to Jack Slaney, the special permits required by travellers to the Czech Protectorate were only available from the Ministry of Economics building on Wilhelmstrasse, and needed further ratification from the Gestapo. A long morning's work, Russell guessed.

The Ministry office concerned did not open for business until ten-thirty. Russell read the Beobachter over a second coffee at Kempinski's and arrived at the permits desk a few seconds early. The bureaucrat behind it checked his watch, raised his eyes, and asked Russell why he intended visiting the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

'I'm a journalist,' Russell said, passing over his Ministry of Propaganda press credentials. 'I want to see how the Czechs are enjoying their liberation.'

The bureaucrat suppressed a smile. 'You're entitled to a permit of course, but I should warn you that the Gestapo are unlikely to ratify it. The border is tightly closed,' he added, with unnecessary relish. 'When do you wish to go?'

'Monday week,' Russell told him. 'The 31st.'

The man took one printed green card from the small stack on his desk, filled in the dates by hand, and signed it. 'You must take this to the Alex. Room 512.'

Russell drove across town, parked his car in the street beside the Stadtbahn station, and walked across Alexanderplatz. The bell-towered slab of a building which housed most of Berlin's Kripo detectives and several Gestapo departments was situated on the far side, the relevant entrance on Dircksen Strasse.

Room 512 was on the fifth floor. The Gestapo duty officer hardly glanced at the green card. 'Come back in a week,' he said dismissively.

Russell smiled at him. 'If there should be a problem, please contact Hauptsturmfuhrer Ritschel at Prinz Albrecht-Strasse or Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth of the Sicherheitsdienst at 102 Wilhelmstrasse. I'm sure one of them will be able to help.'

'Ah,' the man said. 'Let me write those names down.'

Russell retraced his path to the outside world, pausing only to wash his hands at one of the green washbasins which dotted the corridors. A ritual cleansing perhaps.

The heat was still rising but a few clouds had gathered, almost apologetically, in the western sky. Resisting the temptation to eat an early lunch at Gerhardt's he drove across town, left the Hanomag in the Adlon parking lot, and walked the short distance back along Unter den Linden to No.7, where the former palace of Princess Amelia, Frederick the Great's youngest and reputedly favourite sister, now housed the Soviet Embassy.

Russell rang the bell and glanced around, half-expecting a posse of men in leather coats propping up linden trees, all reading their newspapers upside down. There were none. The door was opened by a thin-lipped Slav in a grey suit. He was holding the last few millimetres of a cigarette between thumb and forefinger.

'Visa?' Russell said in Russian.

'Come,' the man said, looking beyond him for an unlikely queue. He took Russell's press identification and passport, gestured towards the open door of a waiting room, and strode off towards the rear of the building, his shoes rapping on the marble floor.

There was an obvious couple in the waiting room, Jews by the look of them, in their mid to late thirties. Russell wished them good morning and sat down in what proved a surprisingly comfortable chair.

'You are here for a visa?' the man asked.

'Yes,' Russell said, surprised by the directness of the question. 'I'm a journalist,' he added, 'an American journalist.'

'You are not German?'

'No, but I've lived here for many years.'

Silence followed, as if the two Jews were trying to work out why anyone foreign would choose to live in Germany. They were middle-class Jews, Russell noticed. The young man's clothes showed signs of serious wear and repair, but they would have been expensive when he bought them.

'Do you know anything about the situation in Shanghai?' the woman asked him suddenly.

'Not really. A lot of German Jews have emigrated there over the last six months. I believe the Gestapo chartered several ships.'

'They did. My cousins went on one, but we have heard nothing since.'

'That doesn't mean anything,' her husband interjected. 'You know what the post is like here - imagine what's it like in an occupied country like China.' He turned to Russell. 'We are here for transit visas,' he explained.

'I still think...' his wife began, but saw no point in completing the thought out loud. 'But what are they all doing in Shanghai?' she asked her husband. 'What will we do?'

'Survive,' he said tersely.

'So you say. We could survive in Palestine.'

Her husband made a disparaging noise. 'Palestine is just a big farm. Shanghai is a city. And if we don't like it we can go on to Australia or America.'

'With what?'

'We shall earn. We always have. Until Hitler came along and said we couldn't.'

'That's all very...' She stopped as footsteps sounded in the hall.

The grey suit appeared in the doorway, a newly-lit cigarette in one hand. 'Joseph and Anna Handler? This way.'

Russell was left to examine his surroundings. The Embassy seemed remarkably silent, as if most of the staff were off on holiday. Or off on a purge. The waiting room contained framed portraits of both Lenin and Stalin, gazing severely at each other from opposite walls. He thought through what he intended to say one more time, and hoped he wasn't guilty of over-confidence. He had got away with playing both ends against the middle in March, but he knew he'd been lucky as well as clever. The penalties for failure would be even worse this time, because Effi would also have to pay them. He might be shot as a spy, might escape with deportation. She would go to Ravensbruck.

The smoker returned about fifteen minutes later, and led Russell down a corridor to an office overlooking the central courtyard. A youngish woman with short curly hair and glasses sat behind the only desk, filing her finger-nails. After a minute or so she held them up to the window, examined them from every conceivable angle, and lowered them again.

'Do you speak Russian?' she asked Russell in that language.

'Only a little.'

'English?'

'I am American.'

'Yes I see.' She picked up the passport.

'I am not here for a visa,' Russell said. 'I need to see your highest-ranking intelligence officer - NKVD or GRU, it doesn't matter.'

She just looked at him.

'I am a friend of the Soviet Union,' Russell said, exaggerating somewhat. 'I'm here to offer my services.'

'Wait there,' she said, taking his passport and press credentials and leaving the room. She was wearing bright red carpet slippers, Russell noticed.

A few seconds later the smoker took up position in the doorway. Russell's smile elicited nothing more than a faint curl of the lip. It seemed distressingly likely that the object distorting his suit pocket was a gun.

Several minutes went by before the woman returned. A single sentence of Russian to the smoker, and he gestured Russell to follow. They climbed a wide marble staircase lined with poster-size photographs of factories and dams, and walked around the balustraded gallery. The furthest door led into a spacious office, high-ceilinged with a huge glass chandelier and two tall windows over-looking the Unter den Linden. A man in a dark grey suit, round-faced and balding, stood waiting in the middle of the room.

'Mr Russell? Please take a seat. We can speak in English, yes?' He chose an armchair for himself. 'Thank you, Sasha,' he said to the smoker, who left, closing the door behind him. 'So, you offer us your services?'

'And not for the first time,' Russell said.

'No? Please tell me. I know nothing of you.'

'May I know your name?'

'Konstantin Gorodnikov. I am trade attache here at the embassy. With other responsibilities, of course.'

After sketching in his communist past, Russell told the Russian about the series of articles he had written for Pravda earlier that year, and the oral reports on conditions in Germany that had accompanied them. 'My initial contact was Yevgeny Shchepkin - he never told me which service he worked for - but someone took his place at our third meeting, a woman named Irina Borskaya...'

'Wait a moment,' Gorodnikov said. He walked over to his desk, took a sheet of paper from the pile beside the typewriter, and selected a pen from those in the tray. A quick search for something to rest the paper on turned up a dog-eared copy of a popular German film magazine. Fully equipped, the Russian reoccupied his chair. 'Please continue.'

Russell did so. 'Comrade Borskaya never told me exactly who she worked for, either. She asked me to bring some documents out of Germany, and I agreed to do so on condition that her people helped a friend of mine across the border into Czechoslovakia. We both kept our parts of the bargain, but then she asked me to do something else. And when I refused, she planted some incriminating papers on me and tipped off the Gestapo.

'All this happened earlier this year. The Germans were not sure that I'd actually done anything illegal, but they knew I'd been in contact with your people over the articles and they suspected that there was more. Then, while I was in America this month, they arrested my girlfriend Effi for telling a bad joke about Hitler. When I got back last Monday the SD gave me a choice - work for them or Effi would be sent to a concentration camp. When I asked what they wanted me to do, they said I was to reestablish contact with you people and offer you intelligence. The idea being, of course, that they would be giving me false intelligence to pass on. So here I am. Obviously I have no desire to help the Nazis, or I wouldn't be telling you all this.'

Gorodnikov had written copious notes throughout this exposition, only pausing to sweep an imaginary speck of dust from his trousers when Russell mentioned Borskaya's attempted betrayal. 'That is very crystal clear,' he said, once it was plain the other had finished. 'You have skill for organising information.'

'That's my job,' Russell said dryly.

'Yes, I think so. And crystal clear means little without truth. I have no way to know how true this story is, here, now, but there can be later checking - I think you know that. So, let us say your story is true.'

'It is.'

'So. First question. If our person tries to have Gestapo arrest you, I think you will be very angry with Soviets. So why you want to help us? Why not just do what Gestapo want, and then you and your lady friend will be safe?'

'As I said, I don't like them. That's the first thing. I'm not crazy about you lot either, but if I'm forced to make a choice then there's no real contest. The Soviet Union might turn into something good - miracles can happen. Nazi Germany is something else. Nothing good grows out of scum. Do you understand?'

'You are anti-Nazi. That is good, but not surprise. Many people are anti-Nazi. Many Germans.'

'True, but they're not all being asked to help the bastards.'

Gorodnikov smiled for the first time.

'And they're not all willing to work for you,' Russell went on.

'How you work for us?'

'Well, I'll be bringing you false information that you know is false. Someone should be able to work something out from that.'

'Yes, but...'

'Look, I don't want any misunderstandings here. I'm not saying that I'm willing to die for the Soviet Union. Or anyone else for that matter. I'm willing to take some risks, but not those sort of risks. I won't take any more secrets across borders for you, but I'm ready to do some courier work inside Germany. And I'll pass on all the useful information which I come across as a journalist - I have good contacts here, and in London.'

'And you'll do this because the Nazis are scum?'

'And for one other thing.'

'Ah.'

'I want an escape route for myself and my girlfriend. I want you and your people to guarantee us a way out of Germany if we need one. I don't think that's unreasonable - I mean, it must make sense for you to keep your people out of the bastards' clutches. I know you can do it, and after the trick Com-rade Borskaya tried to play on me I think you owe me that much.'

'Mm.' Gorodnikov scribbled another couple of lines. 'All right, Mister Russell. I will send this information to Moscow. They will decide.'

'How long?' Russell asked, hoping the Russian would say a couple of months.

'Oh not long. One week. Two maybe. Say you come again next Friday. Yes?'

'Right,' Russell agreed without enthusiasm. The Americans, the Germans, and now the Russians. Thank God the British had given up on him.

The embassy door closed swiftly behind him, as if pleased to be rid of his presence. It wasn't personal, Russell guessed. Just that sense of carefree bonhomie which Soviet establishments exuded the world over.

He walked up to Friedrichstrasse, had another coffee at the Cafe Kranzler, and telephoned the number Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth had given him. The voice at the other end recognized Russell's name, which was hardly surprising but disconcerting nevertheless. He gave a brief run-down of his first meeting at the Soviet Embassy, and listened as the message was laboriously repeated back to him.

'That is all,' the voice said, as if expecting applause.

If only it was, Russell thought.

He walked back down Unter den Linden to the car, retrieved the Berlin street map from the glove compartment and spread it across the wheel. His next port of call, he discovered, was out beyond Friedrichshain.

His route took him past the end of the street in which the Wiesners had ended their Berlin days. There were more than a few obviously Jewish faces to be seen, but fewer stalls selling furniture and knick-knacks than there had been six months ago. Perhaps they had all been sold. Perhaps some new regulation forbade it.

He eventually reached the address he'd been given - a boarding house in a quiet cul-de-sac that had seen better days. The landlady, a thin middle-aged woman with a young woman's hairstyle, looked Russell up and down, and apparently decided that he was worthy of assistance.

The Isendahls were gone, she said. At the end of May, as far as she could remember. And yes, Freya had received letters from America. She had always given the stamps to the boy next door who collected them. Her husband had said they would send her a forwarding address, but they hadn't. And to be perfectly honest she'd been glad to see the back of them. They were always having friends round, lots of them, and no, they weren't noisy, but there was something about them...

'Were they Jews?' Russell asked innocently.

'Certainly not. That's not allowed, is it? It certainly shouldn't be.'

'Of course not,' Russell agreed. Clearly the woman had no idea that Wilhelm Isendahl was Jewish. 'What did her husband look like?' he asked.

'Oh, nice looking. Blond hair, tall, very charming when he wants to be.'

Russell gave the woman a card with his telephone number. 'If they do send a forwarding address, could you ring me? I'll reimburse any expenses, of course.'

He drove back into the city, wondering whether he should carry on looking. The friends might be innocent, but they seemed more likely to be comrades, and he had no desire to open doors that were best left shut. He would think about it. Maybe ask Kuzorra's advice.

After lunching at Wertheim he rang Effi from the bank of booths by the Leipziger Strasse exit. There was no answer. A quick stop-over at the Adlon offered reassurance that no major news was breaking - the sundry journalists gathered at the bar were wondering how they could wheedle invitations to one of Goering's hunting extravaganzas.

Back on Leipziger Strasse he collected the last available dress suit in his size from Lehmann Dress Hire. On the last occasion he'd used this particular shop it had been trading under the name Finkelstein.

He tried Effi again when he got back to Neuenburger Strasse, but there was still no answer. He told himself not to worry - she had said she was going shopping, after all. She might still be with Zarah. And he couldn't afford to spend his days wondering what she was up to and worrying whether she was all right. That wasn't who they were.

There was still no sign of Frau Heidegger's sister, but she had stirred herself sufficiently to attach an official notice to the inside of the front door. A city-wide Air Raid Protection exercise was being held on the following Wednesday, and all citizens were obliged to cooperate fully with the relevant authorities. Reading through the small print Russell discovered that a complete black-out would be in operation. Selected buildings would be 'bombed', the resulting 'victims' removed by medical teams.

Where to, Russell wondered. Imaginary hospitals? It might make a good story, though. Frau Heidegger would be in her element.

He collected Effi's presents from upstairs and drove across town to her flat. He half-expected that she'd still be out, but they arrived together, she in a cab full of her purchases. Helping her carry these up, he forgot his own pile of parcels. She looked exhausted, but barely a minute had passed when she sprung back up from the sofa and insisted on their walking down to the Ku'damm for dinner. Russell had a brief memory of himself more than twenty years earlier. On his two home leaves from the trenches he had been utterly unable to sit still.

Over dinner she described her day in fearsome detail - the morning with Zarah, lunch with a make-up artist friend who was also working on More Than Brothers, a shopping spree in the Ka-De-We on Tauenzien-Strasse. She'd even managed a session with the street astrologer she consulted every month or so.

'She told me the next few weeks were a good time for grasping opportunities,' Effi told him. "Aren't they all?" I asked her. "Some more than others," she said. I paid three marks for that.'

Russell shook his head. He was never sure how seriously Effi took her astrological adviser.

Back at the flat he remembered her presents, and went to collect them from the car. She loved them all - the soft leather driving gloves from Macy's, the Billie Holiday records which he'd half-expected customs would confiscate, the French perfume she'd originally discovered on their second trip to Paris, the deep crimson dress from Bergdorf Goodman. The latter looked every bit as good on her as Russell had imagined it would.

'I'll wear it tomorrow,' she said, thanking him with a kiss.

Friday evening's premiere was at the Universum, the modernist cinema half-way up the Ku'damm. The stars of the film, along with their escorts, were supposed to arrive between six forty-five and seven, the stars of the Party in the following fifteen minutes. 'This is one time we can't afford to be late,' Effi told Russell the next morning. 'So please be back here by five.'

Getting a lecture from Effi on punctuality was like taking dietary advice from Goering, but he let it go. 'I'll be here. But how are we getting there? A cab?'

'No, no. The studio are sending a car. It'll be here at six-thirty.'

'Right. So what are you doing today?'

'Hairdresser and manicurist this morning. And learning this,' she added, holding up the More Than Brothers script. 'I was hoping you could test me on Sunday.'

'Love to.' She seemed more like her old self, he thought, as he eased the Hanomag out onto the street. Or was she just putting up a better front? He thought about the talk they had planned for the weekend, and wondered just how much it was safe to tell her.

He was intending to do some background reading that morning, but events conspired against him. A major story was breaking, according to the British colleagues who frequented the Cafe Kranzler, and Russell joined the rest of the foreign press corps in pursuit of the pieces. According to 'reliable sources', one Robert Hudson, Secretary of the Department of Overseas Trade in London, had buttonholed the German delegate Herman Wohlthat at - of all things - a recently-opened Whaling Conference, and made him a series of unofficial offers. According to Wohlthat, whose swift report home was now being disseminated through the Berlin rumour mill, Hudson had offered him joint rule of the former German colonies and British economic assistance in return for German disarmament. None of this was in the public sphere as yet, but it soon would be.

First things first, Russell told himself, and called an old contact in the Foreign Ministry. Was it true? he asked. Off the record, yes. Hudson had made the offers all right, but no one in Berlin had any idea what official sanction, if any, he'd had for making them. The smart money in Ribbentrop's entourage was that the man had been drunk.

Possibly, Russell thought, as he headed for the central post office. He'd have put his money on Hudson being just one more defective product of the public schools, with all the confidence in the world and none of the judgement. They seemed drawn to Whitehall's fl ame like dim moths, and particularly to those departments dealing with the wicked outside world.

At the post office he wired a contact in London who was likely to know the score, and hurried down the Wilhelmstrasse for that morning's briefing. The spokesman, an alarmingly thin young man with a swastika-emblazoned tie, refused to answer any questions about 'The Hudson Affair', and looked increasingly annoyed by the foreign press corps' protracted refusal to take no for an answer. Finally getting his own way, he triumphantly produced a statement from the Hungarian Foreign Minister condemning the recent publication of an anti-German book in Budapest. The book in question, as one of the American journalists delighted in repeating, warned of German designs towards Hungary and claimed that Germany was bound to lose a European War. How had the German government pressured the Hungarian government into making this statement?, the journalist wanted to know.

The spokesman sighed, as if the question was beneath contempt. He had some statistics for them, he said, flourishing a piece of paper to prove it. In the previous June the United States had exported $3.4 million worth of arms to Britain in June and $2.5 million worth to France. Germany, by contrast, had received a shipment of ammunition worth $18. He raised indignant eyes to his audience, at least half of whom were rolling with laughter.

'Another day in Looneyland,' Slaney observed as they walked out.

Russell went back to the post office to see if his wire had been answered. It had - Hudson had indeed been freelancing.

And with what looked like catastrophic results, Russell told himself. The Germans might realize that no such offers were really on the table, but they might also be left with the sneaking suspicion that the British still hungered for a way out of their obligations to Poland. As for the Soviets, they'd probably take Hudson's indiscretions as confirmation of what they already suspected, that the British were much more interested in doing a deal with Nazi Germany than in doing a deal with them. 'And so to war,' he murmured to himself.

He had enough for a short commentary piece, he thought, something they could use alongside the agency reports if the story took off. He sequestered a corner table at the Adlon Bar to write it out, then headed back to the post office to wire it off. By then it was almost four o'clock. He turned the Hanomag for home.

The studio car was on time, but Effi was not. Russell treated himself and the harassed-looking driver to a small measure of the Bourbon he had brought back from America, and was gratified by the appreciative smile he received in return. 'That's good,' the young man said, just as Effi emerged looking suitably ravishing. Her dark hair fell past her face in sweeping waves, her brown eyes glowed, the clinging red dress was beautifully set off by a lace scarf in deepest violet. She had found a shade of lipstick which perfectly matched the dress.

The young driver let out an involuntary sigh of appreciation. For reasons best known to itself, Russell's mind conjured up the image of Effi in her Gestapo cell, rising from the floor in desperate monochrome. It seemed weeks ago, but it wasn't.

The Universum was at Ku'damm 153, only a few minutes away. A hundred metres short of the cinema they joined a slow-moving queue of cars waiting to unload their celebrity passengers. On the other side of the road a few hundred watchers were held behind temporary barriers by a handful of schutzpolizei.

The long-departed Bauhaus architect Eric Mendelssohn had designed the building, which was one of Russell's favourite Berlin landmarks. On the outside, it looked as if someone had sliced the superstructure off an ocean liner, swung the bridge round ninety degrees, and dropped the whole lot beside the Ku'damm. UNIVERSUM was spelt out in huge, solid letters along the semi-circular prow; a fifty-foot poster above the doors advertised the film currently showing. This particular poster - which featured a futuristic Prussian Army galloping madly along beneath the title Liberation - seemed almost as avant garde as the cinema. Effi Koenen was one of the four names listed below the two stars.

They climbed from the car, Effi drawing appreciative murmurs from the crowd. Russell could imagine the asides: what on earth does she see in him?

Once inside, they were hurried to their seats. The auditorium was virtually full, but three rows in the centre had been reserved for the celebrity guests. The actors and actresses chatted among themselves, apparently oblivious to the unconcealed interest of everyone else.

The Reichsminister for Propaganda arrived about ten minutes later. His wife was expensively dressed but, in Russell's admittedly biased opinion, looked somewhat frumpy. The rest of Goebbels' retinue seemed to have been chosen on grounds of size - the seven dwarves came to mind, though they all seemed too pleased with themselves to be Grumpy. Goebbels acknowledged the rest of the audience with a cavalier wave of the hand, then sat looking round at the sweeping, modernistic lines of the auditorium. There was an almost bemused look on his face, as if he was wondering how a Jew could have designed something so gorgeous.

The film let the cinema down, of course. It was standard Third Reich ho-kum, with the usual tried and trusted ingredients - a misunderstood genius whose iron will saves his people, male underlings who find their true purpose by abandoning mere reason, women who reach beyond kitchen, church and children at their peril. The setting - a much-used one in recent years - was the Prussian War of Liberation against Napoleon.

Christina Bergner, sitting three seats along from Russell, played the tragic heroine. As Countess Marianne, the wife of an imprisoned Prussian general, she goes to plead her husband's case with the French occupation commander and, somewhat predictably, falls in love with him. Effi plays her friend, her confidante and - when the Countess finally sacrifices love, life and everything else for the Fatherland - her teary exculpator. She looked rather good in eighteenth century costume, Russell thought.

She looked good in the red dress too. Goebbels seemed to hold her hand for rather too long as he greeted the cast in the huge foyer. Russell, stationed in the background with the other escorts, found himself praying that Effi would restrain herself, but he needn't have worried. She smiled prettily throughout, and only he seemed to notice how tightly she was holding herself.

'He tried to proposition me,' she hissed a few minutes later. 'With his wife a metre away,' she added angrily.

'I shouldn't take it personally,' Russell said. 'I don't think he can help himself. What did he actually say?'

'Oh, how much prettier I was in modern clothes. How he'd admired my performance in Mother. How he'd like to hear my thoughts on how German cinema was progressing.'

'I don't suppose he knows you've been a recent guest of the Gestapo.'

'Maybe not, but I wouldn't bet on it. I think he expects me to jump at his offer. As if he knows I could do with the protection.'

They moved outside, where some of the Party luminaries were still waiting for their own transport. As they stood there, Russell noticed a woman standing a few metres away. She was fairly tall, about his height, with elaborately coiffured brown hair framing a rather stark face. Her companion, a high-ranking SS officer in uniform, was talking to one of Effi's male co-stars, and she was looking around with the air of someone who could hardly believe where she was. Their glances met for a moment, and her face was suddenly familiar. Where had he seen her before? And then he remembered - it had been at the Wiesners' flat, on the night he had gone to tell Eva that her husband was dead. This woman had answered the door. Curly hair she'd had then. What was her name? He turned to look at her again, and found she was looking straight at him. Before he could say or do anything she gave him an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

He turned away. Sarah Grostein was her name. A Jew, he'd assumed at their first meeting, though she didn't look like one. What the hell was a friend of the Wiesners', Jewish or not, doing on the arms of an SS Gruppenfuhrer? It was an interesting question, but not, he suspected, one that he'd ever know the answer to.

Once they were home he told Effi what had happened, expecting her to share his surprise.

'I'm beginning to think that Berlin is full of people leading double lives,' was all she said.

Delightfully languorous Saturday mornings, Russell reminded himself on waking, were one of the perks freelancers received in exchange for their miserable income. Hired hacks, on the other hand, had to keep up with the news, which these days barely slowed on Sundays, let alone Saturdays. He got up, took a bath and brought a sleepy Effi a cup of coffee in bed. She was seeing Zarah for lunch - her sister was eager to hear about the premiere - and thought it better to save a joint outing with Paul for the following weekend. Russell headed downtown to see how the German government was dealing with the Hudson story.

It wasn't, was the short answer. In Britain the News Chronicle had blazed the story across its front page - 'Hudson's Howler' they called it - but there was no Propaganda Ministry press briefing scheduled until Monday morning. Hitler had, as usual, dropped everything for the Bayreuth Festival, and while the cat was away the mice were sleeping in. The German papers had nothing to say about Hudson, and were in surprisingly pacific mood. The more-than-suspicious disappearance of a German customs officer in Danzig - shots were heard minutes after he 'strayed' across the frontier - only warranted the adjective 'regrettable'. The ongoing national convention of the 'Strength Through Joy' organization was turning into 'a festival of joy and peace' according to its official convenor, the loathsome Robert Ley. Foreigners, on the other hand, were prone to unreasoning belligerence, as Ley's description of the recent Bastille Day celebrations in France - 'an atmosphere of warmongering, nervousness and hysteria' - showed only too clearly.

Russell had something to eat at the Zoo Station buffet and drove out to Grunewald to pick up Paul. Ilse asked after Effi , and was obviously curious to know why she had been released. Russell told his ex-wife that it had all been a mistake, that the Gestapo had advised them against mentioning either the release or the original arrest. He thought he could trust Ilse, but he was determined not to compromise her in any way. Paul's safety - not to mention her own - might depend on it.

Over the last couple of years his son had often chosen the Funkturm for their Saturday outings, and on this particular occasion he almost insisted. Revisiting Berlin's version of the Eiffel Tower, Russell came to realize as the afternoon wore on, was an integral part of Paul's coming home. The splendid Funkturm represented a Germany the boy could be proud of, a Germany, moreover, which he could share with his English father. Standing on the viewing platform, staring out in the direction of his beloved Hertha's Gesundbrunnen stadium, was a way for Paul to hold his world together.

His son was all over the place, Russell realized. Though quick to defend his country against any slight, he was still revelling in the wonders of the very different world across the Atlantic. As Paul looked out across Berlin, Russell knew that the boy was also seeing Manhattan. 'You were right about the hot dogs,' he told him. 'I had one at Gerhardt's the other day. They are the best.'

They walked round to the other side. The Havelsee shone piercing blue in the afternoon sunshine, and Russell was just thinking how peaceful Berlin looked from 125 metres up when the swelling whine of police sirens punctured the illusion. Paul raced back to the east-facing windows to see what was happening. 'They're down here!' he shouted.

Russell was walking across to join him when a voice over the loudspeaker announced that the tower was being evacuated. 'Move to the lifts in an orderly manner,' the voice instructed. 'There is no cause for alarm.'

Russell felt a sliver of panic. 'Are there any fire engines?' he asked his son, joining him at the window.

'No, just police.' A lorry drew up as they watched, and a troop of uniformed Ordnungspolizei climbed out. There was no sign of smoke.

'Let's get to the lift.'

There were only three others on the viewing platform, a couple and their young daughter. The man looked worried, and grew more so when a lift took several minutes to arrive. 'It's all right,' he kept telling his wife and daughter, who seemed much less concerned than he did.

The lift dropped smoothly down to the restaurant level, fifty metres above the ground. More people were waiting here, enough to make a real squeeze for the final descent. As they poured in, Russell could see more Orpo uniforms in the restaurant itself. Several children were crying, one wailing that she hadn't finished her Coca Cola. 'It's some Jew on the roof,' a man said angrily.

They reached ground level. More vehicles had arrived - half the Berlin police force seemed to be there - and the ground around the tower was littered with leaflets. A rhythmic banging sound came from above.

'Keep moving,' an Orpo officer insisted, and Russell realized they were being shepherded towards the nearby S-bahn station. 'My car's over there,' he told the man, pointing the Hanomag out. It was the only one left in the parking lot.

'All right. But leave that where it is,' the officer added, as Russell bent to pick up a leaflet. He shifted his gun slightly to reinforce the order.

'Whatever you say,' Russell agreed, putting a protective arm around Paul's shoulder and pulling him away.

'There's someone up there,' Paul said quietly. Looking up, Russell could see the lone figure on the restaurant roof. They were too far away to see the face, but there was an impression of smart clothes, as if the man had dressed up for the occasion.

The banging suddenly stopped, and several more figures appeared on the roof. As they moved towards their quarry he simply stepped off the edge, falling soundlessly to the concrete below.

Russell cradled Paul in his arms.

'Fuck off out of here!' the Orpo officer shouted.

They walked on to the car, got in, and drove out of the parking lot. Russell headed west, crossing the S-bahn at Heerstrasse and turning south into the forest. A kilometre in he pulled the car up and turned to his son, wondering what to say.

Much to Russell's surprise, Paul pulled a crumpled leaflet from his pocket. They read it together.

The headline was 'A LIFE WORTH NOTHING?'; the text beneath explained why the man had jumped. His Jewish wife had been working as a nurse at Wedding's Augusta Hospital for almost twenty years when she was forced out by the Nazis. Earlier this year she had been hit by a tram on Invalidenstrasse, taken to the same hospital, and refused treatment. In the hour it took to reach a Jewish-run clinic in Friedrichshain she had bled to death.

'Do you think it's true?' Paul asked, his voice quavering slightly.

'I can't see any reason for the man to lie,' Russell said.

'But why?' There were tears in his eyes now.

'Why are people cruel? I don't know. I like to think it's because they don't know any better.' Russell looked at his watch - he was supposed to have Paul home in a few minutes. He put a hand on his son's shoulder. 'That was a terrible thing to see. But the man did what he wanted to do. And at least he's not in pain anymore.'

'Perhaps he's with his wife again,' Paul said hesitantly, as if he was trying the idea out.

'Let's hope so.'

'Well, if there's a God I think He must treat everyone the same, don't you?'

Russell couldn't help but smile - his son never ceased to amaze him. 'I think it's time I took you back,' he said, putting the car in gear.

Ten minutes later they were turning into Paul's street. 'Will you tell Mama?' the boy asked.

'If you want me to.'

'Yes, please,' Paul said.

The moment they were inside, he rushed off up the stairs.

Russell explained what they'd seen to Ilse.

'Oh God,' she said, looking up the stairs. 'Is he all right?'

Russell shrugged. 'I don't know. It was a shock.'

'And he's always loved going to the Funkturm.' Ilse glanced upward again. 'I'd better make sure he's all right.'

Back in his car, Russell felt a wholly unreasonable anger. Why couldn't the man have jumped off some other high building - the Shellhaus or the Borsig Locomotive Works? Why did he have to spoil the one place Russell shared with his son?

Returning to Effi's flat, Russell was greeted by the rare smell of cooking. 'I thought we could stay in this evening, and you could test me on the script,' she called out from the kitchen. 'It's only macaroni and ham.' She seemed in good spirits - almost too good. He decided against telling her about his and Paul's afternoon.

The food was better than he expected, and so was the evening. Effi's mastery of the atrocious script proved near-perfect, so they set about improving it. There was a lot of unintentional comedy in the original, and the storyline seemed made for farce. Their new version featured a squad of storm troopers who mistakenly beat themselves up in an air raid rehearsal black-out, and ended with the two war-bound brothers fighting over a grenade and blowing each other up in the process. At one point Effi was laughing so much that tears were running down her cheeks.

Russell found himself wondering whether Hitler ever gave himself up to a giggling fit.

'Where are we going for our talk tomorrow?' Effi asked as they got ready for bed.

'I don't know. How about the Harz Mountains?' Russell had begun to think that she'd abandoned the idea, and felt mixed emotions at finding she had not. He didn't know how she would react to the things he had to tell her.

'That's a long way,' she said.

'A couple of hours in the car. If we leave early we can be there by eleven.'

'All right,' she said. 'The mountains it is.'

They got up late, and Russell rang the house in Grunewald while Effi was in the bath. Paul seemed fine, according to Ilse: no nightmares, and he was out in the garden with his football. She was keeping an eye on him, though.

The drive to the mountains took almost three hours, and it was past noon when Russell and Effi reached the summer resort of Ilfeld. It was another hot day, and hikers were queuing to fill their water-bottles at the inn's out-door tap. While Effi stood in line Russell researched their options. The most popular ascent was that of the Burgberg, which boasted a picturesque ruined castle, but already seemed crowded with groups of Hitlerjugend and Bund Deutscher Madel. Of the other four suggested climbs, the Eichenberg seemed the least strenuous and least frequented.

They encountered two descending pairs of elderly hikers in the first ten minutes, then had the hill to themselves. The path wound upwards through the pines, offering increasingly dramatic vistas of the plain below. It was around one-thirty when they reached an ideal spot for lunch - a hillside clearing with a single picnic table overlooking the valley below. Effi unwrapped their chicken rolls, while Russell opened the bottle of Mosel and poured a couple of inches into each of the tin mugs. 'To us,' he said, clunking his mug against hers. 'To us,' she agreed.

They ate their rolls in silent harmony, staring out at the view. There was a good breeze this far up the mountain, and the heat was not oppressive.

'When they came to arrest me,' Effi said matter-of-factly, as if they were continuing a conversation already started, 'they rapped on the door really softly. I thought I'd imagined it until they did it again. But when I opened the door they just pushed me backwards into the room and closed it behind them. I thought they were going to rape me.

'But they didn't. They just told me to get some shoes on and come with them. Once I was ready they told me not to speak until we reached their car.' She grimaced. 'And now we know why. They didn't want the neighbours to know.'

She looked down at her feet and then up again. 'They told me nothing. They took me to a room in the basement where an old hag watched me change into that grey outfit, and then they took me to the cell. I had a bucket of water to wash with. No soap. I had another bucket to pee in. They emptied that twice a day. I was never questioned, never told why I was there.

'It doesn't sound bad, does it? I wasn't hurt. I didn't go hungry or thirsty. The thing was - they would come for other people at all times of the day and night. You'd hear the bootsteps, the bolts pulling back, the door swinging open, the shouts. Some people would start talking really quickly, some would sob. A few screamed. And then they'd disappear. An hour or so later the boots would be back, the door would slam. But you couldn't hear the prisoner anymore. You could just imagine whoever it was being shoved back into the cell, barely conscious. And every time the boots come back you think it's for you, and you're so, so, so relieved that it's someone else whimpering out there.

'And I thought - if I get out of here I can't forget this. And I haven't. I'm sitting here looking at this beautiful countryside and I'm thinking about those people in those cells who are dreading the sound of those boots. And that's just one building. There are all the concentration camps - more than twenty of them, someone told me.'

'I know,' Russell said. He had never seen her like this.

'We have to fight these people,' she said, turning to face him.

He felt shocked, and knew he shouldn't.

'I have to fight them,' she corrected herself. 'I don't really know how, but I can't go on living here and doing nothing.'

'You were right the first time,' Russell said, taking her hand. 'We're in this together.'

She squeezed his hand. 'So how do we start?'

With a leap in the dark, Russell thought. Or, given what they knew of the possible consequences, a leap in the light. 'A good question,' he said. 'There are some things I need to tell you,' he added, almost apologetically.

'I thought there must be.'

He smiled. 'First off, I'm sort of working for American intelligence.'

'Sort of?'

'They think I'm working for them, and I am, but it wasn't completely voluntary. I think I might have volunteered anyway, but they made it pretty clear that I'd only get the American passport if I agreed.'

'What...what do they want you to do?'

'They've given me a list of people. Most in Germany, but a few in Poland. Anti-Nazi people.'

'How did they hear about them?'

'From others who emigrated. I'm supposed to check them out, make contact if it seems advisable, find out where their loyalties lie. It's all rather vague, because they don't really know what they're doing. Basically, they've just woken up to the fact that a European war is coming, and that they have no ears and eyes anywhere on the continent.'

Effi looked thoughtful. 'I'm not doubting your journalistic abilities, my darling, but is this why you were given your new job?'

'The thought did occur to me, but I don't think so.' He shrugged. 'In practical terms, it doesn't make much difference one way or the other.'

'I see what you mean. So you're going to start checking these people out.'

'Slowly. And very carefully.'

'Good. All right. So that's what the Americans wanted for the passport. What did the SD want for me?'

'Not much. Yet. They may have big plans for the future, but the first thing they wanted me to do was re-enlist with the Soviets. The Sicherheitsdienst think they can use me as a conduit for false intelligence.'

'You've seen the Soviets already?'

'On Thursday. I told them I've been forced to work for the Germans and that the information I'll be giving them is a bunch of hooey. The ironic thing is - I was going to make contact with them anyway.'

'After last time?'

'Needs must. Effi, I'm all for fighting the good fight, but I'd really like us to survive these bastards. If the worst happens, and one or both of us ends up on the run from the Gestapo, the only people who could get us out of Germany are the comrades. They've had organized escape routes across the French and Belgian and Czech borders since the late 20s - it was them who got Albert Wiesner out. So I did a deal with myself - I'd work for the Americans, but only once I had our escape hatch arranged.'

'And the Soviets have agreed?'

'Not yet, but I think they will.'

'But what can you offer them?'

'Depends what they ask for. I could argue that I'm already doing them one service by telling them the German information is false.'

'Won't they want more than that?'

Russell shrugged. 'Who knows? It's all getting a bit surreal. Did you ever read Alice in Wonderland?'

'When I was a child. Zarah used to have nightmares about the Queen of Hearts.'

'No wonder she married Jens.'

Effi laughed. 'Poor Zarah.' She held out her empty mug. 'Is there any more wine?'

He poured them both a generous measure, and they sat for a while in silence, sipping from the mugs and staring out at the landscape.

'John,' she said eventually, 'I want to help you however I can, but that's not all I want to do. You and I, well, we move in different worlds, don't we? The people I know...I have to do what I can in my world. I'm going to start talking to people - carefully, of course. There are thousands of people - millions for all I know - who think the Nazis are a cruel joke. I'm going...I don't know, you'll probably think I'm an idiot, but I've asked Lili Rohde to teach me more about make-up. I've told her it's because I'm getting older, and there aren't many parts for older women and I need to think about my future, but that's not the real reason. Make-up - disguise, really - seems like something that might come in useful in lots of ways.' She looked at him warily, as if expecting ridicule.

'It could,' he agreed.

Reassured, she went on. 'And I've been thinking about something else. We don't want to keep secrets from each other, but I think we may have to keep some. I was thinking that we could talk about what we were doing without using the right names. That way...'

'I understand,' Russell said. He had expected one of two reactions from Effi - either one of her trademark rants or a rueful decision to play it safe. He had not expected a simple statement of intent, let alone a cool appraisal of risk. He had underestimated her, and fear had been the reason. This new Effi was living proof that things had changed, and he was scared. For both of them.

'I was never interested in politics,' she said, 'and I'm still not really. You have to be for something in politics, you have to have some idea of a different world which is better than the one you've got. I just know what I'm against. Killing children because they're handicapped in some way. Locking up any-one who publicly disagrees with them. Torturing them. And all this violence against the Jews. It's just wrong. All of it.' She turned to him, angry tears welling in her eyes. 'I'm right, aren't I?'

'I'm afraid you are.'