Stattin Station

Aces low

The noon press conference at the Foreign Ministry saw Paul Schmidt replace his underling von Stumm, and Russell's first glimpse of the fat young Prussian as he made his confident entrance was enough to tell him that something bad had happened. Schmidt wasted no time in telling the assembled press corps what that was: Rostov - 'the gateway to the Caucasus' - had fallen to the Wehrmacht. A collective sigh was audible, the appreciation of Germany's allies mingled with the scarcely-concealed despair of the supposed neutrals. For the Caucasus, as Schmidt delighted in explaining at length, contained enough oil to keep the panzers and Stukas in almost perpetual motion. It was, he said, a crucial step on the road to inevitable victory.

The allied journalists wanted more tales of triumph, but Schmidt was more interested in goading the neutrals. Perhaps the warmonger Roosevelt would think twice about dragging his countrymen into a war that few of them wanted; perhaps even Churchill might stop preening himself for a few hours, and acknowledge that Britain's position grew more hopeless by the day. Questioned about British claims that their new offensive in North Africa was going well, Schmidt offered a disdainful smile and a smug invitation to wait and see. One side was clearly kidding itself, and Russell had a sinking feeling it might be his own.

After the conference he walked up to the Adlon, expecting to find a message from Strohm confirming the arrival of Monday's train at Lodz. The lack of one was probably insignificant, but added to Russell's sense of frustration. Lying in bed the previous night it had suddenly occurred to him that Strohm, with his presumed KPD connections, might know what had happened to Zembski. But Russell had no way of contacting the man. He would have to wait for Strohm's next call, which added a somewhat sinister note - that the corollary of setting his own mind at rest was the dispatch of another trainload of Berlin's Jews into the dark unknown.

Effi met her older sister Zarah for lunch at Wertheim's, or Awags as it was now officially called. The restaurant was quite full, but the clientele had not been attracted by the quality of the food, which seemed noticeably worse than on their previous visit in October. The department store, as Zarah had already discovered, was in no better shape - half the cage-lifts were permanently out of order and there was absolutely nothing worth buying. Over the last year or so, Effi's relationship with her sister had become increasingly constrained. Once her son Lothar had started school Zarah had found herself with a lot of time on her hands, and little idea of how to use it in an increasingly austere Berlin. Her husband, Jens, seemed to spend most of his waking hours working at the Economic Ministry, and those that remained poring over his coin collection. He was almost always in a bad mood, which enraged Zarah. What did he have to be depressed about? - he had something worthwhile to do. And, whenever Effi tried to describe how she felt about making films for Goebbels' propaganda machine, she received short shrift from her older sister. What was Effi, a film star for heaven's sake, complaining about? She had a wonderful career and a man that she loved who spent time with her; how much better could it get?

Effi, for her part, felt bad that she could no longer confide in Zarah. Before the war they had told each other everything, had in fact been more honest with each other than they were with their respective partners. But all that had ended for Effi when she and Russell had decided on resistance. A safe-as-they-could-make-it kind of resistance, admittedly, but beyond anything that Zarah would understand or want to share. She had never been interested in politics, and Jens, though a decent husband and a doting father, was also a long-time Party member with an important job in the Nazi administrative machine. The things that kept Effi awake at nights were no longer things she could share with her sister, and these days their conversations revolved around less essential topics - Lothar's progress at school, their aging parents, the latest shortages, the movies that Zarah saw in her thrice-weekly trips to the cinema.

This particular meeting was no different. Lothar was loving school, their mother was already worrying about Christmas, the dentist down Zarah's street had started using aluminium for fillings. How was Jens? She hardly ever saw him, and when she did his mind was somewhere else. This war was having a terrible effect on family life.

Effi loved Zarah, but sometimes she wanted to shake her.

As he wiled away the hours in a Press Club armchair waiting for the Promi briefing, Russell overheard one of his colleagues offering long odds on them all still being around at Christmas. The man was probably right, he thought. If he was going to get presents for his son, then now was the time to do it. Christmas shopping, moreover, seemed a much better use of his time than listening to Goebbels gloat over the capture of Rostov.

In pre-war days Paul's favourite toyshop had been Schilling's on Friedrichstrasse, just beyond the station. Last time they had visited the spacious emporium - just before his son's birthday the previous March - the shelves had been almost empty, but Russell could think of nowhere better to try.

A tram got him there just before closing time, but he was soon wondering why the shop had bothered to open. The only items suitable for boys of Paul's age were cheaply-made board games with names like 'Bombs over England' and 'Panzers to Moscow.' The Third Reich might be short of most things, but cardboard was obviously plentiful.

Disappointed, Russell walked back under the bridge and climbed the stairs to the elevated platforms. With no toys, no meat and precious little alcohol, a merry Christmas seemed somewhat unlikely, although Goebbels' hacks had done their best to evoke the true Christmas spirit, re-writing 'Silent Night' as a paean to the Fuhrer. He would be standing guard over them all. He would have no time for fun.

The Stadtbahn train rattled in over the bridge, full of rush-hour passengers and smelling as bad as usual. Russell clung to a strap as it crossed and re-crossed the wintry-looking Spree, and wondered whether Effi would be there when he got home. Stepping out onto the platform at Zoo Station, the first thing he noticed was the sound of barking dogs.

There were two of them, both Alsatians, slavering and straining at their leashes. Two young Ordnungspolizei - Orpo, as they were universally known - were pulling on the other ends, and looking round nervously for further instruction. The leather coats were clearly in charge, and three of them were half dragging, half kicking, a young man out of the next carriage. One of the Gestapo men wrenched the youth's coat open, and a large number of leaflets cascaded down onto the platform.

Treason, Russell thought. Punishable, like so many things in the Third Reich, by death.

The youth was a head shorter than his captors, with tousled blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He looked like he belonged in a Grunewald academy for the sons of the privileged. He was no more than seventeen.

The train pulled out. Most of the alighting passengers had disappeared down the stairs, but some, like Russell, were finding it harder to tear themselves away. One leather coat tried an intimidatory stare, and several Reichsbahn officials made coaxing motions towards the exit, but all to little effect. Across the tracks, a large crowd of waiting passengers watched from the other local platform.

The young man shrugged himself free of the one man still holding him. In lunging to refasten his grip, the Gestapo man lost his footing and went down heavily on his back, evoking several cheers from the audience on the opposite platform.

This was too much to bear. As his colleague grabbed the boy, the leather coat pulled a gun from his coat pocket and crashed it into the side of the boy's face. Russell expected the young man to go down, but he was wrong. The boy staggered, but then hurled himself at his attacker, pulling him to the ground. After a second's hesitation, the other two leather coats joined the fray, kicking and punching like men possessed, while the Orpo men just stood there, unable to release their hysterical dogs for fear that they might shred the wrong victim.

Barely a minute or so later, the three Gestapo men were back on their feet, breathing heavily. The young man lay still on the ground, his glasses a few feet away. They looked broken, but just to make sure one of the leather coats ground them under his shoe.

There were no cheers now, only an accusing silence.

A Gestapo man said something to the Orpo officers, who both shrugged their shoulders at him. Russell guessed they had been asked to carry the victim down and were pointing out that someone had to hold the still-slavering dogs. Acting as bearers was obviously beneath the dignity of the Gestapo, who began scanning the platform for likely 'volunteers'.

The young man must have heard it before Russell, the sudden shift of his spread-eagled body anticipating the sounds of the approaching train by a few seconds. As Russell turned to look, it passed the end of the platform, the locomotive steaming furiously, the line of laden flatcars still snaking round the curve above Kantstrasse. Turning back, he found the youth already in motion, running, half stumbling, away from the screaming Gestapo.

Oh no, Russell thought.

The young man ran diagonally across the platform and launched himself into the face of the oncoming locomotive. A silent flurry of limbs, a splash of crimson, and he was gone.

The locomotive thundered by, the unknowing driver on the other side of the cab. The long line of flat-cars rattled through, their draped loads bound for the East and other, less accidental, encounters with death.

The platform was full of stunned faces. Even the dogs seemed shocked.

As the train cleared the platform, Russell found himself drawn to the edge. A headless body was lying between the rails about twenty metres on from where the youth had jumped. The head was nowhere to be seen.

The dogs were whining now, the three leather coats staring down at the mutilated corpse. Even they seemed subdued by the turn of events. Russell was probably imagining it, but their expressions seemed those of children, up early on a Christmas morning, who had just broken a much-anticipated toy.

He turned on his heel and made for the stairway. Half-way down he found one of the leaflets the youth had been distributing. 'In whose name?' was the headline; that of the German people, the text insisted, had been taken in vain.

Too true, Russell thought. But who gave a Fuhrer's fuck for the wishes of the German people?

Back home that evening, Russell listened as Effi recounted her depressing lunch with Zarah, and decided against making things worse by sharing his experience at Zoo Station. Thinking the BBC might raise their spirits, they risked a joint listening session, seats pulled up close beside the wireless. But for once the Oxbridge-vowelled spokesman sounded strangely unsure of himself. They scoured the German wavelengths for some cheerful music, but all they could find were variations of central European gloom. The idea of going out was swiftly abandoned when the rain began beating on the blacked-out windows.

'A day to forget,' Effi said, as they settled for an early night.

Which was easier said than done. As Russell lay there unable to sleep, the train thundered on in his mind.

Next morning at ten, they met Paul at the main entrance to the Friedrichstrasse Station. Since his fourteenth birthday that March, Russell's son had been allowed to navigate his own way across Berlin, and the novelty had obviously not worn off - he clattered down the stairs from the elevated platforms in his Hitlerjugend uniform, looking very pleased with himself. Noticing how happy his son was to see Effi, Russell congratulated himself on overcoming her objections to attending. 'Why would I want to stand in the rain for God knows how many hours just to watch some dead Nazi roll by on a flag-covered cart?' had been her first reaction to his suggestion.

The actual ceremony was a bigwigs-only affair - the Fuhrer had apparently arrived overnight from his eastern military headquarters - but thousands of Berliners were thronging the streets, heading for vantage points on the route of the procession. The rain had finally moved on, and the sky in the west showed definite signs of brightening. The wind remained brisk, lifting and shaking the legions of swastikas that flew at half-mast from poles, roofs and facades.

'I thought the Marschall Bridge,' Russell suggested to Paul.

'Good idea,' his son agreed, with the sort of smile that Effi imagined she used on Zarah. Perhaps her sister had a point about families and war.

They walked along the front of the station, crossed over the river, and continued down past the Electricity Works to the Marschall Bridge. A lot of people had had the same idea, but the three of them found a good vantage point on the downstream side, up against one of the parapets.

'The service should be over by now,' Russell said, looking at his watch. The crowd around them was growing by the minute - soldiers, sailors and airmen on leave, bureaucrats in suits and secretaries in high heels, lots of mothers with children, a large sprinkling of older men wearing their Great War medals.

'There are lots of people, aren't there?' Paul said. 'People must have known how good he was.'

'I'm sure they did,' Russell agreed.

He might just as well have disagreed, Effi thought, watching Paul's face. She understood what Russell had meant when he begged her to come. The boy did seem to be looking for a fight, although whether or not he was aware of it was another matter. 'I hear you've been getting yourself into trouble,' she said lightly.

He shrugged. 'Not really.'

'Well, I know how easy it is. I got arrested for making a joke, remember? And I've been really careful ever since.'

'I'll be careful.'

'Promise?' Russell asked playfully.

'Didn't I just say so?'

'Yes...'

'They're coming,' Effi said, hoping that Udet's funeral procession was indeed responsible for the signs of movement on the distant Wilhelmstrasse.

It was. A few moments later a snatch of music arrived on a momentary change of the wind; a few minutes more and the strains of the funeral march were clearly audible. It grew louder as the small object in the distance slowly grew into a gun-carriage with a swastika-draped coffin, flanked by an honour guard, followed by rank after rank of men in Luftwaffe uniform. As the carriage crossed onto the bridge, the hands in the crowd swept up in the familiar salute, Paul's among them. After only a moment's hesitation Effi followed suit, but Russell resisted. He was English, he told himself, and therefore excused.

His son thought differently. 'The England football team gave the salute,' he almost hissed at his father.

Russell raised his arm, feeling more foolish than for many a year. Paul gave him one last reproachful look, and turned back to the procession. Another famous pilot, Adolf Galland, was one of the honour guard, but Russell didn't recognise any of the others. On the other hand the fat man padding along behind the gun-carriage was easy to identify - the Reichsmarschall, resplendent in red-brown boots and gold-braided pale grey uniform. Goering was already breathing heavily, and Russell wondered whether he'd make it to the Invalidenfriedhof cemetery. He wasn't yet halfway.

The top-ranking Luftwaffe officers marched behind him, along with all those pilots who had won the Knight's Cross. 'There's Walter Oesau,' Paul whispered excitedly, more to himself than any audience. 'And Hans Hahn. And there's Gunther Lutzow! But where's Molders?'

Where was Germany's other famous ace? Russell wondered. His shoulder was beginning to ache, and now that the bigwigs had gone past most people were lowering theirs. Russell happily followed suit. But Paul held his aloft for several minutes more, waiting until the gun carriage had disappeared under the Stadtbahn bridge and the crowd had slowly begun to disperse.

By the time they'd had lunch and - at Paul's suggestion - revisited the stamp exhibition at the Central Library, it was time for Russell to head off for the afternoon press conference. Effi suggested to Paul that the two of them walk back across the Tiergarten to Zoo Station, and Russell stood for a few seconds on the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Unter den Linden watching them head off towards the park, hoping that she would come back with a clearer idea of what exactly was eating at his son.

The press conference was getting underway as the door guards checked his credentials, and he could already feel the triumphalist mood as he climbed the marble stairway to the main auditorium. Goebbels was holding forth in his usual manner, suave, persuasive, never far from a cynical smile. Taifun, the attack on Moscow, had apparently been resumed, and with startling success. Curtains parted with a theatrical flourish to reveal the latest positions, and the assembled journalists all leaned forward to make them out. A host of arrows were closing on the fortress towns of Klin, Istra and Tula, the lynchpins of Moscow's final ring of defences. According to the map the latest attacks had seen the Army advance a third of the remaining distance to the Soviet capital.

'In how many days?' someone wanted to know.

'Five,' was the reply, the implication clear - another ten and Moscow would be taken.

A stillness pervaded the room, and Goebbels' lips twitched in a knowing half-smile. Over the next ten minutes he answered questions calmly, wittily, with what seemed palpable frankness. What reason to lie or exaggerate, his smile seemed to say, when the truth was such good news?

Only once did the smile disappear. Like Paul, Ralph Morrison had noticed Werner Molders's absence from Udet's honour guard, and his request for an explanation was, Russell guessed, only intended as a minor spoke in Goebbels' free-running wheels. If so, he got more than he intended.

'An official announcement has not yet been released,' the Propaganda Minister said gravely, 'but Oberst Molders was killed earlier today in a flying accident. In Breslau, on his way to today's funeral. I have no other details at present.'

The room seemed stunned. Molders had been one of Nazi Germany's more acceptable heroes, and there was something ridiculously sad about dying on the way to someone else's funeral. Another dead man on his son's wall, Russell thought. Poor Paul.

Later that evening, Effi sat at a beautifully-laid dining table in the most exclusive district of Grunewald, sipping the best wine she had tasted in several months, listening to her host and a fellow dinner guest enthuse over the latest cinema attendance figures. As a celebrity of sorts, she had rarely lacked for such invitations, but in pre-war times she had politely refused ninety-five per cent of them, and took John with her when she chose to accept. Once the war began, however, she and John had realised how much secret information could be leeched from such gatherings of the rich and influential, and those percentages had been reversed. So, since his presence, as a foreigner and journalist, tended to inhibit her companions, she almost always went alone. Effi had no intention of selling her body for secrets, but flattery and flirting were something else again.

This particular evening, she had realised on meeting her fellow guests, was unlikely to provide anything more than a good meal. Her hosts were Max and Christiane Weinart, he a personal friend of Goebbels and leading shareholder in the Babelsberg studio, she an ex-starlet who had caught her future husband's attention in a film extolling the joys of physical exercise. The other five guests were the camera manufacturer Alfred Hoyer and his wife Anna, two hotshots from the Ministry of Propaganda named Stefan and Heinrich, and a blonde young actress whom she had never met, Ute Fahrian. Effi guessed that Weinart and the Hoyers were in their mid-fifties, Ute in her mid-twenties, and everyone else in or around their thirties. She hoped the food would make up for the conversation, which had turned to the growing problems of actually getting films made. Promi, conscious of rising attendances and the opportunity they represented, had set a target of a hundred a year, but this year, as last, it was unlikely to be met.

The first of several courses arrived, and over the next hour Effi concentrated on the food, speaking only when spoken to. There were vegetables other than potatoes to be eaten, and they hadn't been boiled or fried in chemicals. The meat, which tasted suspiciously like real beef, came with a richly succulent sauce. The bread wasn't battleship grey; the butter was a pale, unthreatening shade of yellow. Her fellow actress kept glancing wide-eyed round the table, as if she could hardly believe such food still existed, but the others clearly took such quality sustenance for granted. Most Berliners might be suffering from skin rashes, yellowing eyes, biliousness and appalling flatulence, but how would her fellow diners know that? They wouldn't be using the U-Bahn, their servants would be doing the shopping, and they'd all have their own private air raid shelters. As John had said the other evening - if the RAF ever worked out how to hit a military target, the war would pass the rich by.

Her anger, she realised, was in danger of spoiling her meal. She concentrated on the Black Forest gateau which had just been placed in front of her.

Still engrossed in the world of films, the men were now talking about the Die Grosse Liebe, and the political row it had unleashed. The movie starred Viktor Staal and Zarah Leander as a Luftwaffe pilot and the woman he meets and sleeps with while on leave. Some people at Promi had apparently considered this theme a little too daring for public consumption, and senior Luftwaffe figures had condemned Staal's character as reflecting dishonour on their service. Goering, on the other hand, had reportedly asked what else a Luftwaffe officer was supposed to do on leave. Weinart, Hoyer and the two Promi men could all see his point.

Stirring her small but wonderfully fragrant cup of black coffee, Effi decided to give them something real to play with. 'I've been asked to play a Jewess,' she announced at the first convenient moment, 'and I must admit to being torn.'

Ute Fahrian let out a heartfelt 'Oh', shook her blonde curls, and said: 'I'm glad I'll never have to face that problem!' Then, as if suddenly hearing her own words, she flushed deeply. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean...'

'Don't distress yourself, 'Effi said. 'I can hardly deny that, in outward appearance, I could pass for a Jewess.'

'Some Jewesses are very beautiful,' Alfred Hoyer said gallantly, raising an expression of faint surprise from Christiane Weinart.

'It is a dilemma,' Anna Hoyer said with the slightest of ironic smiles. She was brighter than she looked, Effi decided. And drinking more than she should.

'If we wish to make films that reflect real life in our country then we need Jewish characters,' Weinart insisted.

'And we can't have them played by real Jews,' his wife chipped in.

'Of course not,' Stefan agreed. 'If you decide to take the part,' he told Effi with a smile, 'then I suggest you give interviews explaining how hard it was for you, but how satisfying you found the experience. Emphasise how difficult it was for you, a German actress, to create a convincing Jew, but how necessary it is for the good of the Reich that the Jewish peril be realistically presented in films.'

'Yes, that sounds right,' Weinart agreed.

'Mmm,' Effi said.

'The people will admire you for your honesty,' Stephan went on, 'and thank you.'

Effi offered him a grateful smile. 'I think you may have solved my dilemma.'

'All in a day's work,' he said, giving her a slight bow. 'And it has been a wonderful day. Has everyone heard the latest news from the East?'

They had not.

'We are closing in on Moscow,' Heinrich explained. 'It should be all over in two weeks. Three at worst.'

Anna Hoyer laughed. 'Now let's not get carried away. We were told it was all over a month ago, and look what happened.'

'A mistake,' Heinrich admitted coldly, 'but an understandable one. If it hadn't been for a sudden change in the weather, it really would have been over.'

'What if the weather suddenly changes again?' Frau Hoyer wanted to know.

'That sounds perilously close to defeatism, my dear,' her husband interjected, with an apologetic look at the Promi men.

'I do think we need to be realistic,' Effi said, coming to her aid. 'Your wife is only pointing out how dangerous wishful thinking can be. And it would be terrible to suffer October's disappointment all over again.'

'I have a brother in the East,' Ute Fahrian revealed. 'He's only eighteen.'

So many of them are, Effi thought, remembering the rows of young faces in the Elisabeth Hospital.

After the press conference Russell joined most of his fellow correspondents in heading for the Press Club on Leipzigerplatz. Two black cars were parked in the rapidly darkening square, each with the traditional pair of leather-coated Gestapo officers occupying the front seats. They made no move to get out, but the expressions on their faces as they scanned the foreign journalists were almost absurdly hostile. Russell had a sudden memory of a pantomime that his parents had taken him to, somewhere in London's West End before the first war, and how much he had enjoyed hissing at the villains.

Upstairs, dinner was already being served. It was decent enough by current standards, but he toyed with the food, his mind on Paul and how much easier being a father had once seemed. An evening of reckless drinking beckoned, but he tore himself away, heading home on foot under a clear sky. It looked a great night for bombing, which probably meant that they wouldn't come.

The press conference had also depressed him. Had his feeling that the Germans had shot their bolt been over-optimistic? If Moscow and the Caucasus fell, and the Soviets were taken out of the equation, then Hitler's hold on the continent would surely be secure. Invading Britain might prove beyond him - he had given Churchill over a year to strengthen the island's defences - but invading Europe would be equally beyond his enemies. A stalemate would ensue, while each side raised new armies and developed new weapons and Hitler let his soul-dead acolytes loose on Europe's helpless: the Jews, the disabled, the Reds and the queers, anyone who deviated from Promi's ludicrous travesty of what a human being should be. Russell would get to stay with Effi and Paul, but only in the worst of futures.

He got home soon after eight. Effi would be hours yet, which gave him time to translate two technical articles from the American press which the Abwehr's Colonel Piekenbrock had given him a couple of weeks earlier. He mistranslated the occasional word when it suited him - and when the mistake was easily explainable - but usually there seemed no harm in giving the Abwehr what it wanted. These were not secrets he was dealing with.

He wasn't totally convinced that his translations were ever read. They might be commissioned, at least in part, to satisfy the German hunger for completeness, but Russell suspected that Canaris and his subordinates were simply thinking up something for him to do, something that would keep him on board, an asset-in-waiting for a situation that hadn't yet arisen. With any luck it never would, Russell thought, as he spread out the papers on the kitchen table.

An hour or so later, with one article finished and the kettle waiting to boil, he turned on the radio. The latest BBC news bulletin had just finished, so he turned the dial in search of Radio Berlin and found Patrick Sullivan's laconic voice in full flow, describing an imaginary Axis attack on the United States. The intention was to ridicule, and after a fashion it worked - U-boats carrying fleets of bombers, aircraft carriers fuelled on corn that could sail up America's rivers and navigate the Niagara Falls, a veritable 'Sixth Column'. But was Sullivan's heart really in it? It didn't sound like it to Russell, but perhaps he was reading too much into one chance remark.

He turned off the radio, made his tea and went back to work, one ear cocked for the sound of Effi's feet on the stairs.

She arrived home just before midnight, the self-satisfied purr of the studio limousine sounding unnaturally loud on the otherwise silent street. 'The food was wonderful, the company boring,' she told him, throwing her coat across the back of a chair. 'With one slight exception.' She told him about Anna Hoyer. 'I'm meeting more and more people like her - people who can see what's happening, but only ever say so when they're drunk. And they'd never dream of doing anything. It wouldn't even occur to them that they could.'

'Did you get anything out of Paul?' Russell asked.

'No, I'm afraid not. I tried, believe me, but he's not stupid. He knows that anything he says to me will get passed on to you. I told him he seemed really angry with you, and he simply denied it. More or less implied I was imagining things. He was very polite about it, of course. He just denies there's a problem.'

'Maybe I should talk to Ilse.'

'It won't help. He's punishing you - I don't think he knows what for. It's not for anything specific that you've done, I'm sure of that.'

'Is that good or bad?'

She smiled. 'Probably neither and both. Look, John, there's nothing you're doing that you could do any differently. And explaining yourself won't help - fourteen-year-olds aren't interested in motives, just in how things affect them.'

'So what can I do?'

'Nothing. Just be patient. You know he loves you.'

'Sometimes I... no, I do know, of course I do.'

'Come here.'

Enfolded in her arms, he suddenly felt on the verge of tears. Everything seemed to be cracking apart. Everything but him and her.

Later, lying awake and cradling her sleeping head, he found himself thinking about Zembski, and the thoughts that must have raced through the Silesian's mind as the Gestapo broke into his studio. He'd have known he was a dead man, and that the only decision left to him lay in the timing. Die now, and take some of the bastards with him, or in a few weeks' time, after enduring agonies of pain and betraying his comrades.

How many people could he give up himself, Russell wondered. He went through the list, arranging them in the sequence of betrayal. How many people in Germany had made such macabre calculations - hundreds? Thousands? Calculations that in all probability would be instantly forgotten in the panic of the moment.

But he would never give her up. Never.