Stattin Station

A broken egg

First thing Monday morning, Russell took the elevated U-Bahn towards Silesian Gate on his way to visit Ilse's brother Thomas. His mood remained dark, and the panoramic spread of hospital trains stabled side by side in the yards outside Anhalter Station did nothing to lighten it. He wondered how Thomas, who took this train to work each day, and whose son Joachim was fighting in the East, coped with this daily reminder of all too possible loss.

The previous day he and Effi had tried to leave the war behind and enjoy a normal pre-war Sunday. The effort had been a dismal failure. The outdoor cafe where they had once shared breakfast and newspapers had been closed, the tables folded away and the terrace littered with shrapnel. The Tiergarten was sunny for once, but it was impossible to ignore the wretched monstrosity of a flak tower, which seemed to loom above them whichever way they turned. Those of their favourite restaurants which remained open displayed menus that repelled rather than enticed, and Thomas and his family, whom they often visited on Sunday afternoons, had selfishly refused to answer their telephone. Thomas, Russell eventually remembered, had said something about visiting his wife's family in Leipzig. A last-ditch tour of the cinemas on the Ku'damm hadn't helped - everything on offer from Joey's dream factory seemed designed to depress them even further. Defeated, they had eaten badly at a restaurant full of dull-eyed soldiers on leave, and gone home to the BBC's unwelcome admission that the situation in North Africa was 'still confused.'

Russell wondered what Paul Schmidt would make of the situation at the noon press conference. He had never yet heard a Nazi official admit to confusion.

He walked from the Silesian Gate U-Bahn station to the Schade factory, crossing the Landwehrkanal as a long flotilla of coal barges passed under the bridge, heading for the Spree. Turning into the factory gates, the sight of the familiar black saloons brought him to an abrupt halt. What were the Gestapo doing here? After wondering for a moment whether his arrival would make matters worse, he decided that Thomas might need some moral support.

Both cars were empty of people, but a toy wooden fortress sat somewhat incongruously on the back seat of the second. Even the Gestapo had children.

Russell walked in through the front entrance and turned left into the outer office, where two of the visitors were chatting to the young woman whom they thought was the book keeper. Russell knew better - her name was Erna, and she was one of Thomas's many nieces, recently apprenticed to the family business. The actual bookkeeper, Ali Blumenthal, would have disappeared through the door leading to the printing rooms the moment the cars appeared in her window. By this time Ali would be wearing a star-adorned overall and wielding a broom. Jews were not allowed to do clerical work.

'Who are you?' rapped out one of the men. 'And what do you want?' 'I'm the owner's brother-in-law,' Russell said. This didn't seem the moment to admit that he was no longer married to Thomas's sister.

'Well you'll have to take your turn. Sit there.'

Russell did as he was told, straining his ears to hear the conversation taking place in the inner office above the usual clatter of the presses. Thomas seemed to be doing most of the talking. 'I have explained all this to Groening,' he said with exaggerated patience. 'I cannot fill my government orders if you people keep threatening to decimate my workforce. If I were to lose all the people on this list I dread to think what my output would shrink to.'

A softer voice interjected, one that Russell could not quite decipher. The one word he recognised was juden, and only because it was repeated several times.

'That's nonsense,' Thomas replied, raising his voice a little. 'The Jews I employ are treated as they should be. They have separate toilets and washrooms, and they work the sort of hours which such people should work. You and I could argue for hours about how these particular Jews managed to make themselves essential to the running of this business, but that would not make the slightest difference to the fact that they are. Once the war is won, and I am not up to my ears in urgent government contracts, I will happily take them down to the station and load them on a train for the East myself. But until that day comes...'

The Gestapo man was not convinced. The Reichsminister had decreed that Berlin should become judenfrei, and the process was now underway. It was irreversible. If one factory owner was granted exemptions, they would all want them, and nothing would be achieved. Herr Schade would simply have to find other workers. He would have no trouble getting hold of Russian prisoners, and they could learn anything that Jews could learn.

'If you persist with this nonsense,' Thomas told him, 'I shall have to take the matter up with Gruppenfuhrer Wohlauf.'

This name induced a few moments' silence, and even pricked the ears of the two Gestapo men in the outer office. When their superior in the next room resumed talking it was in a quieter, more conciliatory tone. Russell was impressed. He knew that Thomas had been deliberately widening his circle of influential acquaintances, but Wohlauf was one of Heydrich's proteges, and hardly a name to be taken in vain.

Two Gestapo officers emerged, the older one thin with glasses and a pale angry face, the younger one plumpish and harassed-looking. The former gave Russell a passing glare, and half paused in his stride, as if the need for a scapegoat had been both recognised and deferred in a few split seconds. All four of them passed out through the door, and seconds later the engines of their two cars burst into simultaneous life.

Russell walked into the inner office, and found Thomas at the window, a fist massaging his left temple.

'Wohlauf?' Russell asked with mock incredulity.

Thomas gave him a wry smile. 'Would you believe I had dinner with him and his wife last week? Lotte is in the same Bund Deutscher Madel group as his older daughter, and she found out a few months ago that Papa has a passion for sailing. I eventually dug up a mutual acquaintance and engineered a chance meeting. We may be going up to Rugen Island together in the spring.'

'The sacrifices we make.'

'He's not such a bad chap really. Well, he is; but for a Gruppenfuhrer in the SD he doesn't come across too badly. There's none of the usual obsession with Jews - he seems to despise all races more or less equally.' 'Will he play ball if you need him to?'

'God knows. I hope I don't have to ask.'

'What was it about this time?'

'A list of our Jewish workers for deportation. You know some of them live on the premises? Eleven single men, all over fifty. They were thrown out of their apartments in Wedding and Moabit so we put up some bunks in one of the old storehouses. Nothing special, I'm afraid - I have to keep convincing the Gestapo that I hate the Jews as much as I need them. Anyway, some bright spark down at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse dug up some regulation forbidding Jews from staying overnight at their workplaces, and decided it was a good excuse for putting my lot on the next train.'

'But you've saved them?'

'For the moment. Untangling all the relevant red tape will take me the rest of the morning, but it should be okay. For my eleven, that is. All it really means is that eleven others will be chosen in their place.'

There was no reply to that.

'Is this just a social call?' Thomas asked.

'Yes. We tried to ring you yesterday before I remembered that you were away. How are Hanna's family?'

'Good.'

'No news from Joachim?'

'Nothing for weeks,' Thomas said breezily. 'Look, John, I've got to deal with this business. Why don't we have lunch - how about Wednesday? The Russischer Hof, like we used to. One o'clock.'

'Make it one-thirty. And don't bring along any Gruppenfuhrers.'

'Everyone needs a Gruppenfuhrer, John.'

Seeing Thomas almost always lifted Russell's spirits, and watching the Gestapo sweep out in a collective temper-tantrum had lifted them higher than usual. And despite sitting for the better part of an hour on a hard wooden seat in a tram that probably pre-dated Bismarck, he still felt like smiling when he reached Wilhelmstrasse.

Dr Schmidt soon brought him back to earth. Klin had fallen, Ribbentrop's spokesman announced with a repulsive smirk, and the map behind him, though less crowded with sweeping arrows than Promi's version, showed how important that might be. The left wing of the German forces closing on Moscow would soon be due north of the city, and poised to sweep around behind it. Another 'biggest encirclement battle of all time' seemed on the cards.

The main business of the day, to which Schmidt turned with some reluctance, was the conference to renew the Anti-Comintern Pact. It was due to begin on the following day, and delegations from all the allies, both willing and reluctant, would be arriving today or tomorrow morning. The official renewal ceremony was tomorrow afternoon, and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop would be making the keynote speech on Wednesday. This would also be broadcast on the radio and printed in full in the newspapers.

'The word "ubiquitous" springs to mind,' Ralph Morrison whispered to Russell.

'Not to mention "unavoidable".'

The Fuhrer, Schmidt continued, would be arriving on Thursday for important consultations with the various presidents and prime ministers.

'He's only just left,' an American further down the table muttered.

Schmidt glared at the guilty party, and concluded with the announcement of a special European postage stamp, released to celebrate the continent's new-found unity.

'United in despair,' Morrison said as he got up. 'You know it's Thanksgiving on Thursday. I wish to Christ I was back in the States.'

Russell was still staring at the map, and the red dot marked Klin. 'They might still do it, you know,' he said quietly. 'And God help us if they do.'

After the press conference was over, he avoided the Press Club, settling for a bowl of potato soup in one of the Potsdam Station buffets. Lately, he was finding the company of his fellow journalists harder and harder to stomach, probably because he saw his own cynical impotence reflected in theirs. What was he going to send off today? Anything resembling the truth was verboten, and he, like his colleagues, had turned into as much of a propagandist as Dr Goebbels, cherry-picking whichever publishable stories suited his own agenda. He liked to think he was pursuing a deeper truth, but in the here and now it was all about manipulation. Would the American people be more likely to support intervention if the Russians looked close to defeat, or if it looked as if the Germans had been stopped? He wasn't at all sure. In fact, he suspected that at this particular moment it didn't matter a damn what story he filed.

His next stop was the Abwehr building on Tirpitz Ufer. He was simply hoping to drop off the translations, but Colonel Piekenbrock, catching sight of Russell through his open office door, beckoned him in. 'Good,' he said. 'Saved me the trouble of sending for you. The Admiral wants to see you.'

'What for?' Russell asked with some irritation. He didn't like the idea of being 'sent for', and it was hard to imagine such an invitation boding well.

'You will hear that from him,' Piekenbrock said calmly, picking up the internal phone. 'Let me see if he's back from lunch.'

He wasn't, and Russell was left to cool his heels in one of the conference rooms. The windows overlooked the canal, where another long chain of coal barges was chugging slowly westward. Unless of course it was the same one going round in circles, intent on convincing Berliners that fuel supplies for the winter were plentiful.

Perhaps the Admiral wanted to thank him for his services, and wish him well in American exile.

Perhaps Hitler had a mistress named Sarah Finkelstein.

Russell reminded himself of his golden rule, that official requests should never be met with a definite yes or no.

It was almost three o'clock when an aide came to fetch him. The ancient lifts were out of order, so they walked up three flights to the top floor, where Canaris had his spacious office. He was sitting behind a huge desk, but got up to shake Russell's hand, gesturing him towards one end of the large black leather sofa. After Russell had refused the offer of a cigarette from a carved wooden box, Canaris sat down on the other end.

He looked older than his fifty-four years, his face lined by a sailor's long exposure to the sun. He also had a way of glancing sideways at those he addressed which was slightly unnerving. Russell's first impression of the Admiral, from their only previous meeting, had been of a man who knew a lot more than he actually understood, and who wasn't particularly sharp on the uptake. But Canaris had kept Heydrich and his rival Sicherheitsdienst at bay for almost seven years, which if nothing else suggested a certain talent for bureaucratic in-fighting.

'Herr Russell, we are pleased with your work for us. Your liaison work with the Americans, that is. I'm sure your translations are also excellent, but they do not concern me.'

Russell nodded his appreciation of the compliments.

'Now, it seems very likely that Japan is about to expand its operations in the Pacific. Exactly how and where we do not know, but it's hard to think of any meaningful Japanese move which the United States will not regard as a casus belli. And if America is drawn into a war with Japan, I am certain that Roosevelt will see to it that war is also declared on Germany.' He paused for a second, inviting Russell to comment.

'I can't argue with that,' Russell agreed.

'So your time in Germany is coming to an end?'

'So it would seem.'

'Well, I have a proposition for you. I would like you to consider continuing with the work you've been doing - that is, acting as a liaison between the Abwehr and the United States government.'

'But there will be no American government presence in Berlin.'

'Of course not. You will have to leave Germany. But I do want to stress how important your role might be. There are many Germans who would welcome an understanding with the Western powers that allows them to continue the war in the East. You must remember the Fuhrer's offer of peace to Great Britain last summer. It was genuinely meant, I assure you.'

'So where?' Russell wanted to know.

'Switzerland is the obvious choice - easy access for both us and the Americans. You will have to leave your current job, and set yourself up as an independent - I believe "freelance" is the English word. Zurich would be best, but Basle or Berne if you insist. We will pay all your living expenses, and...'

'But that...'

'And of course we would ensure that your friend Fraulein Koenen was allowed to visit you on a regular basis.'

Russell was suddenly lost for words.

'This would be a secret arrangement,' the Admiral went on. 'It would be vital to ensure that other intelligence services - even other German services - were unaware of your role.'

Like the Sicherheitsdienst, Russell thought. Them and them alone, in all likelihood. Which was one good reason for saying no. Looking like a well-paid German stooge was another, but if the Americans also offered financial support he could claim independence. And not to be separated from Effi for however many years the war went on - that had to go in the yes column. He might even be able to get her out on a permanent basis - the Nazis would still have her family as hostages to her good behaviour. 'When would this happen?' he asked.

'Two weeks, maybe three.' Canaris shifted in his seat, as if his back was giving him trouble. 'First, I would appreciate your help in another matter.' Russell's face must have betrayed him.

'There is no need for concern. This only involves a trip to Prague and the delivery of a message. Much the same task as you performed in Copenhagen a year or so ago.'

'I was already going to Copenhagen. And the message was for my own government. Is that the case this time?'

'No, it is not. This message will be in code, and I cannot divulge its contents. I can assure you that it has no bearing on the outcome of the war. You will not be compromising any loyalty you might feel to England or America.'

'But why me?' asked Russell. 'And who's the message for?'

'His name is Johann Grashof,' Canaris said, ignoring the first question. 'He runs the Abwehr office in Prague responsible for Hungary and the Balkans. A good and honourable man,' he added, surprising Russell. 'I have known him for many years.'

'You haven't explained why I've been chosen.'

'Because I believe I can trust you in this matter,' Canaris said. 'Your status as an outsider raises you above the fray, so to speak. You understand?'

Russell thought he did. This was a message that Canaris, for reasons unknown, could not trust to any of his own agents. Which was hardly encouraging. Russell asked the obvious question: 'Is the Swiss arrangement contingent on my delivering this message?'

Canaris looked away, but his words were equally direct: 'Yes, I'm afraid it is. We will fly you there and back,' he added, as if Russell's main objection to the mission might be the number of hours he would have to spend on a train. 'With any luck you'll be back within twenty-four hours.'

'Have you a date in mind?'

'A week today. December the first.'

Russell considered for a moment. 'Would there be any chance of my son visiting me in Switzerland?'

'I don't see why not.'

'It's a tempting offer,' Russell admitted. 'Can I have a few days to think it over?'

'Not too many. I need an answer by Wednesday.'

They shook hands again, and Canaris himself took Russell to the top of the stairs. He descended slowly, wondering what to do. The prize seemed great, the level of risk, for all of Canaris's blandishments, essentially unknown.

Outside the building, he turned left along the canal. What risks could there be? What could a message from the chief of German Military Intelligence to one of his officers contain that might threaten its bearer? Details of a plot to assassinate Hitler? Unlikely. Details of a scheme to undermine Heydrich? More likely, particularly since the destination was Prague, now the capital of Heydrich's own little fiefdom.

It wasn't somewhere Russell wanted to go. His last trip to the old Czech capital had seen him fleeing down alleys with the local Gestapo in close pursuit, suspected by the local resistance, and forced to depart the city with what seemed like undignified haste. Prague might be beautiful, but over the last few weeks Heydrich's crackdown had reportedly turned it into the most dangerous city in occupied Europe. If there were corpses swinging on the Charles Bridge lamp-posts, Russell wouldn't be at all surprised.

But - and it was a big but - when Canaris had offered him the chance of seeing Effi on a regular basis, he had suddenly realised how afraid he was of the alternative, of a separation that might last years, or even decades. Avoiding that fate was surely worth a few risks.

Shooting for GPU began on the following Monday, so Effi had stayed at home that day, studying an early draft of the script for Betrayal which Marssolek had sent her. It was depressing in the extreme, and seemed - as Russell had suspected it would be - almost immune to interpretation. The thought of it even being made filled her with anger, as did the realisation that most of her fellow actresses would play the part exactly as the makers intended.

Was she being over-sensitive? Surely most of her fellow countrymen would see through this evil nonsense as easily as she did. Her friends would find the storyline laughable. But then her memory slipped back to the conversation with Annaliese Huiskes in her hospital office, and the hundreds of Jews being shot by ordinary German men in Russia. Those men must have found the demonisation of the Jews believable, or they wouldn't be able to act the way they did. And movies must have played a part, however small, in that process, in making such terrible crimes not only possible but almost, it seemed, a matter of routine. The cost might come later, chorusing 'I can't do it anymore' in a Berlin hospital ward with your fellow criminals, but by then it was too late for everyone, murderers and victims alike.

She couldn't do this film, Effi realised. And she couldn't explain her refusal on the grounds that it would harm her career. She would have to tell Marssolek the truth, or something very like it. If they stopped offering her parts, then so be it. She would rather get a job on the trams than play Goebbels' idea of a Jewess.

When Russell got home he found Effi on the sofa and their living room littered with paper aeroplanes. 'You were right,' she said. 'This particular script was not susceptible to a human interpretation.'

'But it makes good paper aeroplanes?'

'Excellent paper aeroplanes.'

'Don't they want it back?'

'I shall say I left it on a tram. What can they do?'

Russell lifted her bare feet and sat down with them in his lap. 'I've had an offer,' he said. 'We've had an offer,' he corrected himself. He explained the arrangement that Canaris had in mind, and was pleased to see the gleam of hope in Effi's eyes.

'That would be wonderful,' she said. 'I love Switzerland.'

'You may have to actually visit me, you know.'

'All right. But I learnt to ski there when I was sixteen, and I've never been back.'

'Well you can teach me.'

'There's a catch, isn't there?' she asked, suddenly serious.

'Only a small one.' He told her about the planned trip to Prague.

'John, you mustn't do it,' was the instinctual response.

'Why not?'

'Remember what happened the last time.'

'Yes, but...'

'I have a bad feeling about this, John.'

'I have a bad feeling about not seeing you for years.'

'Yes, of course, so do I...'

'Is it anything more than a bad feeling?' he asked. 'Is there something obvious I've missed? As far as I can see, all Canaris wants is for me to put a letter in someone else's hand. And I can't think of any reason why he should want to set me up. If...'

'Are you sure?'

'As sure as I can be. And if some enemy of Canaris's - which I suppose means the SD - if they catch me with the letter, it'll be sealed and in code. I'm just the postman. An innocent dupe.'

She gave him a reproachful look. 'That's not how the SD will see it, and you know it as well as I do.'

'Perhaps. But I'm also a foreign journalist, and someone they believe has done them a few favours in the past. I almost got a medal a couple of years ago. And if the worst came to the worst, I could always offer to work for them against Canaris. They could join the ranks of my visitors in Swiss exile.'

'And then what?'

'Play it by ear.' Russell shrugged. 'What else do I ever do?'

'I'm not convinced,' said Effi.

'Neither am I,' Russell admitted, 'but I think I'm going to risk it. Canaris chose the right reward.'

The following morning he decided on another day's consideration before delivering his answer. Maybe something would turn up, and push him one way or the other. He had, he realised, become another soldier in Berlin's growing army of Micawbers.

The Foreign Ministry press conference followed the recent pattern, only this time it was Solnechnogorsk that had fallen, twenty kilometres on from Klin, and only sixty from the Kremlin. Russell tried to find comfort in the unspoken - but obvious - fact that Tula, defending the southern approaches, had clearly not succumbed to the German onslaught. At least one of the pincers was not converging.

That afternoon the Ministry held a lavish reception for the foreign conference delegates, all of whom had now arrived. The foreign press was not allowed in, so Russell and his colleagues retreated to the Adlon bar, hoping to waylay the delegates en route to their rooms. It proved a successful ploy. Gestapo eavesdroppers were out in force, but as one of the Finns rudely remarked, few of them could speak German properly, let alone a foreign language. The delegates happily shared their thoughts with their own country's correspondents, while the latter, in a rare display of solidarity, happily shared what they'd heard with all of their colleagues. Ribbentrop's new Europe was not, it seemed, wholly united. The Hungarians were not speaking to the Romanians, the Slovaks or the Bulgarians - there were even rumours that a duel with pistols had been arranged for the following sunrise between Hungarian and Romanian colonels. This proved false, unlike the ongoing spat between Italy and Croatia, and the Italian delegation's outrage at being given similar ranking to the Spanish. No one had understood a word the Chinese or Japanese had said, and everyone thought Ribbentrop was an overbearing idiot. Most sensational of all, one Danish delegate revealed that anti-government - and anti-occupation - riots were taking place in Copenhagen at that very moment.

It was almost like old times in the Adlon bar, albeit with two major differences - the quality of the alcohol and the depressing fact that nothing they heard would ever see a front page.

Around seven, Russell realised he had time to pick up Effi at the hospital. He walked down Hermann-Goering-Strasse - or 'Meyerstrasse' as many Berliners now called it, following Goering's boast that they could call him Meyer if a single British bomb dropped on the capital - and around an eerily empty Potsdamer Platz, once the German equivalent of Times Square. Reaching the Elisabeth Hospital, he had trouble finding the military wing, but eventually found Effi sitting in a ward office with a small and tired-looking blonde in nurse's uniform. Both were drinking what looked like pink schnapps, Effi looking decidedly shaken.

She introduced Russell to Annaliese Huiskes, who offered him a drink.

He declined, admitting he'd already had enough for one evening.

They chatted for a few minutes, until Annaliese was called away. 'Take her home,' the nurse told Russell. 'She's had a bad evening.'

'It wasn't any worse than it usually is,' Effi told him as they walked to the tram stop. 'I've usually managed to let it all go by the time I get home. There's just so much of it, so many stories, so much anguish. One boy tonight, he kept on and on about this friend who'd been killed, and how it had been his fault. I told him I couldn't see why he should blame himself, and he just lost his temper - I thought he was going to hit me. He really needed it to be his fault, and I just hadn't realised...'

They had reached the tram stop, and Effi burrowed into Russell's arms, her shoulders shaking with grief. He stroked her hair, and thanked the blackout for their near-invisibility. In a very similar situation before the war, two middle-aged women had practically demanded her autograph.

She wiped her eyes and kissed him. 'Just another day at the office.'

The tram, when it finally arrived, was less crowded than usual. An elderly gentleman offered his seat to Effi, but she refused it with a smile. There were several middle-aged men in Arbeitsfront uniforms - shop stewards in the Nazi-controlled unions - standing close to the doors and talking with what seemed drunken abandon. Men to avoid, Russell thought, just as he caught sight of the two young women huddled in a dark corner, wearing yellow stars. It was only a few minutes from their curfew, and judging by the frequency with which the older one consulted her watch she was aware of that fact.

One last look, a word in her younger friend's ear, and the two of them sidled toward the doors as the tram approached the stop outside the closed Ka-de-We department store. The younger girl, Russell noticed, was carrying something rolled up in a piece of cloth. As she neared the door one of the uniformed men - a stereotypical Party man if Russell ever saw one, with his red piggish face and overflowing stomach - deliberately bumped her with an ample hip, causing her to stumble. A raw egg fell out of the cloth and broke on the floor.

The girl stared at the mess, resisting the tug of her older companion, heartbreak written all over her face. The man responsible yanked off her headscarf and thrust it at her: 'Now clear it up, you Jew bitch.'

'Where did a Jew get hold of an egg?' someone else asked indignantly. The doors had now closed, and the tram was in motion.

So was Effi, pushing her way past other passengers to place herself between the Jewish girls and their tormentor. 'You made her drop it, you clean it up,' she told him in cold, calm voice. 'People like you make me ashamed to be a German,' she heard herself add.

His contorted face looked almost fiendish in the dim yellow light. 'Mind your own fucking business,' he shouted. 'Who the fuck do you think you are? You look like a fucking Jew yourself.' He flicked out a hand, making contact with her left breast. 'Where's your fucking badge?'

'Back off, you bastard,' Russell said, giving the man a solid shove in the chest. He had no doubt that he could knock this one down, but the other three might prove more of a problem. 'What's the matter with you? Is this your idea of a good time - bullying women?'

'They're Jews, for fuck's sake,' the man shouted, as if that rendered all other considerations null and void.

'So fucking what?' Russell shouted back.

Effi had rarely seen him so angry. The tram, she noticed, had almost come to a halt. 'Go,' she told the Jewish girls, and they needed no second bidding. The elder one pulled the doors open, and they both tumbled down to the street and out into the darkness.

Russell and the Arbeitsfront official were still eyeball to eyeball, glued in place by their mutual loathing. 'John, let's go,' Effi said peremptorily, holding the door with one hand and tugging at his sleeve with the other.

It broke the spell. Russell beamed at the still-raging face in front of him, and turned to follow her. Stepping off, he heard a woman's voice inside the tram say, 'I'm sure that was Effi Koenen.'