Potsdam Station

No longer a road leading home

April 28 – May 2

It had been light for about an hour, and already the city centre was taking a frightful hammering. As Russell and two other men from the shelter worked their way down Grolman Strasse in search of a working standpipe, the sky to their left seemed choked with Soviet planes, the rise and fall of whining shells overlapping each other like a gramophone nee-dle stuck in mid-symphony. In the centre of it all, the Zoo Bunker Gun Tower loomed above the ruined city, giving and taking fire, half cloaked in drifting smoke.

Paul was inside it.

Russell remembered what Effi had said about the boy seeming overwhelmed. He couldn’t think of a better word to describe his own feelings. Seeing Effi again had filled him with joy, yet left untouched the dread of losing his son.

And Thomas too. If anyone deserved to survive this war then Thomas did.

A crowd up ahead suggested water, which proved to be the case. Join-ing the queue, they stood there scanning the sky like everyone else, knowing that a bomb could perhaps be outrun, that a shell would give no warning.

Neither fell, and soon they were hurrying back up the street with their containers, trying not to slosh any water overboard.

Effi was waiting at the bottom of the steps, looking almost angry. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been so long.’

Russell put the containers down, and explained that the usual standpipe had taken a direct hit. ‘We had to go further afield. One of the men I was with remembered a tap on Grolman.’

‘I…’ she started to say, and just pulled him to her.

‘There were soldiers here while you were gone,’ Rosa announced from behind her.

‘Two of them,’ Effi confirmed. ‘They said the Russians are in Westkreuz, so it shouldn’t be long.’

‘Where did they go?’

Effi shrugged. ‘Who knows? They seemed lost, but they wouldn’t abandon their uniforms, so Frau Essen had to ask them to leave.’ The three of them made their way back to their corner. There was a drawing on Rosa’s bed, one of Effi that almost brought tears to his eyes. Russell realised that the girl had drawn the pictures he had seen upstairs. ‘This is wonderful,’ he told Rosa. ‘We must get it framed, and hang it in our new house.’

Effi smiled at that, and Rosa’s face lit up. ‘I can do one of you too,’ the girl said. ‘If you’d like. But I promised Frau Pflipsen I’d draw her next. ’

‘Whenever you have time,’ Russell assured her. It was noisy in the shelter, and while Rosa was across the room immortalising her latest subject, he and Effi had the chance to talk. During the night she had told him where Rosa had come from, and now he asked her if Erik Aslund was still in Berlin.

‘As far I know,’ she replied.

‘We may need him,’ Russell said quietly. He made sure that they were not being overheard. ‘Look, I’ve been doing some thinking. The Nazis are history, or soon will be. We can forget the bastards, thank God. Germany will be divided up between the Russians, the Americans and the British. And maybe the French. They’ve already drawn the boundaries. The same goes for Berlin. It’ll be right in the middle of the Russian zone, but the city itself will be shared out.

‘But not for a while,’ he went on. ‘The Russians will want to grab everything they can, so they’ll take their time. They’ll say the city isn’t properly secure – something like that.’

‘Whose bit are we in now?’ Effi asked out of curiosity.

‘Probably the British, but what I’m saying is that they won’t be here for weeks, maybe even months. It’s the Russians we’ll have to deal with, and they’ll be eager to talk to me.’

‘Why?’ Effi asked. ‘You still haven’t told me why they brought you here.’

He went through the story – the American decision to let the Russians take Berlin, his own trip to Moscow, the offer of inclusion in the Soviet team seeking out atomic secrets. He told her what had happened to Kazankin and Gusakovsky at the Kaiser Institute, and how he and Varennikov had hidden out in Thomas’s house.

‘There are plans for an atomic bomb buried in Thomas’s garden?’ she asked incredulously.

‘In Hanna’s vegetable patch, to be precise.’

‘Okay.’

‘And I’m the only one who knows where they are,’ he added. ‘Varen-nikov was killed a few days later.’

‘How?’

Russell sighed. ‘A train fell on him.’

‘A train fell on him,’ she repeated.

‘I know. But that’s what happened.’

‘All right. But what’s the problem? You just hand the plans over to the Russians – no one else need know.’

‘That might be the sensible thing to do. Or it might not. I can think of two good reasons why it wouldn’t be. First off, the Russians might want to make absolutely sure that I don’t tell anyone else. Like the British or the Americans.’

‘But that’s silly,’ Effi protested. ‘You could never tell them that you’d just helped the Russians to an atomic bomb. They’d put you in prison.’

‘Or hang me for treason. I know that and you know that, but the NKVD doesn’t like loose ends.’

‘I suppose not.’ She felt crestfallen. Overnight it had seemed like the worst might be over.

‘I’ve been thinking I need to bargain with them,’ he went on.

‘The papers for your life,’ she guessed.

‘Yes, but more than that. If Paul and Thomas survive, they’ll end up in Soviet camps. Zarah might be arrested too – she is the wife of a prominent Nazi, and the Russians are certainly feeling vindictive. So I thought I’d offer them the papers in exchange for the whole family.’

Effi smiled, but looked dubious. ‘You know the Russians better than I do, but won’t they think that a bit of a cheek? And what’s to stop them beating the location out of you? Or just agreeing and then reneging on the bargain once they have the papers?’

‘Nothing, at the moment. But that’s where your Swedish friend might be useful.’ Russell outlined what he had in mind, and she began to see a glimmer of hope. ‘But first we wait,’ he said. ‘The Soviets gave me a letter to use when making contact, and I hope it’ll offer us – you – some sort of protection when the ordinary troops arrive. Once the battle’s over, I’ll find someone senior to approach.’

‘That sounds good,’ Effi agreed. When they woke up that morning, she had half expected him to set off in search of Paul.

‘I thought about heading over to the Zoo Bunker,’ he said, as if reading her mind. ‘But even if I got there safely, and no one arrested me on the spot, what could I do? I can’t order Paul to come home. He’s not fourteen anymore, and he’ll have a much better idea of the situation down there than I have. If he wants to desert, and he thinks he can get away with it, then he will.’

‘He has this address,’ Effi reminded him.

It was soon after eleven in the morning that an overheard conversation in the soldiers’ canteen pointed Paul in the direction of escape. There were, it seemed, over five hundred corpses in the two towers, not to mention a vast and growing collection of amputated limps. All needed burying, but finding men willing to leave the safety of the walls and dig the necessary graves, while Soviet gunners cratered and re-cratered the area concerned, was far from easy. Why risk the living for the dead?, was most people’s response to any such request.

A few thought differently. Some were claustrophobic, others beaten by the smell or undone by the stress of waiting. Some, like Paul, saw no point in dying to defend a last fortress when everything else was lost. If they were going to die, then better to die outside, where at least you could move and breathe. And where there was always the chance you might slip through a crack and keep on living.

There were around twenty of them all told, lined up outside the packed mortuary with rags across their nostrils to keep out the appalling smell. Each pair carried a bloody stretcher, but Paul, finding himself odd man out, was given two large sacks of arms, legs and heads to carry. He tried to keep the sacks off the ground, but they were simply too heavy, and once outside the walls he settled for dragging them across the grass.

The plot chosen for the burials was just to the north of the Zoo, around two hundred metres from the Gun Tower, but no one had thought to bring digging implements. A few men went back for them, and while Paul and the others awaited their return a shell struck the Control Tower, gouging a hole a metre deep in a wall three times as thick. He supposed the towers might eventually be battered into submission, but the food would run out long before that.

All the men were privates or corporals, and the only deterrents to walking off were peer pressure and a calculation that life on the streets would prove even more hazardous than life in the tower. Paul had intended burying his two sacks, but as more and more minutes went by with no sign of spades, he felt his sense of obligation fade. When others started back towards the tower, leaving their stretchered corpses on the grass, he abandoned his own bag of body-parts and hurried off towards the nearest bridge across the Landwehrkanal.

It was broken, and so, he could see, was the next one up. He retraced his steps and headed for the Zoo, whose geography he knew by heart from many childhood visits. Using one of several new gaps in the boundary wall, he worked his way between wrecked cages and cratered enclosures in the general direction of the nearby railway station. Several eviscerated antelopes were spread across one area, and a dead hippopotamus was floating in the pool. A few yards further on, he almost tripped over a human corpse, a man with a Slavic face in a tattered suit. They were about the same size, and Paul hesitated for a moment, considering a switch of clothes. He was, he realised, reluctant to shed his uniform. He told himself he’d be safer with than without it – if the SS caught him in civilian clothes they wouldn’t waste time with questions.

Walking on, he found another convenient gap in the boundary wall and emerged onto the road that ran alongside the railway embankment. Zoo Station’s glass roof was gone, or rather it was dispersed in a million shards. On the far pavement a group of civilians were walking eastward in close formation, like an advancing rugby scrum. Paul crunched his way across the square where he’d often met his father, and turned up Hardenberg Strasse. The railway bridge was still standing, but a gaping hole showed through the tracks.

The occasional plane flew low overhead, and only seconds went by without a shell exploding somewhere nearby, but today he felt strangely immune. It was ridiculous, he knew – maybe the concussion had left him with delusions of invincibility. Maybe the Führer had received a bang on the head in the First War. It would explain a lot.

He heard himself laugh on the empty street, and felt the sting of tears. ‘No one survives a war,’ Gerhart had told him once.

There was a barricade up ahead, so Paul headed back down to Kant Strasse. At the farthermost end of the long straight street a tattoo of sparks split the gloom. Muzzle flashes, he thought. The Russians were closer than he’d expected.

He worked his way around Savignyplatz, turned the corner into Grolman Strasse, and came to an abrupt halt. On the far side of the street, around thirty metres in front of him, a tall SS Obersturmführer was facing away from him, holding a rifle. His uniform seemed stunningly black amidst the ash and the dust, his boots insultingly shiny. Red hair peeked out from the rear of his cap.

Werner’s killer.

He was about to kill again. Two men were kneeling in front of him, one protesting violently, the other looking down at the ground. The muzzle of the rifle was resting on the former’s forehead.

Behind them, a line of women with petrified faces were clutching all sorts of kitchen pots. The standpipe beside them was noisily splashing water into the dust.

The rifle cracked and the head almost seemed to explode, showering the victim’s companion with blood and brain. Several women screamed, and some began to sob. Paul started forward, pulling the machine pistol from his belt.

Some of the women noticed him, but none of them shouted out. The rifle cracked again, and the second man collapsed in a heap.

Paul was about ten metres away. Hearing footsteps behind him the Obersturmführer turned. Seeing a soldier in uniform he offered Paul a curt smile, as if to reassure him that everything was in hand.

He was still smiling when Paul put a bullet in his stomach. He tried to lift the rifle, but a second shot to the chest put him down on his knees. He looked up with lost puppy eyes, and Paul smashed the pistol across the side of his head with all the force he could muster.

The man slumped to the ground, blue eyes dead and open.

Paul dropped the pistol. He felt suddenly dizzy, and stood there, swaying slightly, only dimly aware of the world around him. A woman was saying something, but he couldn’t hear what. He could see something coming towards him, but had no idea what it was.

Someone was calling his name. ‘It’s me. Your Dad. Are you okay?’

‘Dad?’ He couldn’t believe it.

Russell put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. On his way to the standpipe for the second time that day, he’d been lucky enough to see the SS officer before the SS officer saw him, and had witnessed the whole scene from a corner fifty metres up the road. Unarmed, he had watched aghast as the executions took place, and only realised at the last moment that the lone soldier was his son. ‘It’s me. Are you okay?’

Paul had no idea what the answer to that was. ‘He killed my friend, Dad,’ was all that came to mind.

‘You knew one of those men?’

‘No, no. Not today. He killed my friend Werner. Two days ago, or three. Werner was only fourteen, and he hanged him as a deserter.’ Paul started to cry and Russell cradled him in his arms, or at least tried to. His son was now taller than he was.

‘We’ll go to Effi’s building,’ he told Paul. ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk, but I have to get some water first.’ He had left his containers further up the street, but those that belonged to the dead men were still sitting on the pavement, so he simply collected those and waited for his turn at the tap. Paul stood off to one side, staring blankly into the distance.

Water collected, they each took two containers and started up the street. But they’d hardly gone a hundred metres when two Panthers rumbled across the intersection with Bismarck Strasse, a surprisingly neat formation of troops following in their wake. Hitlerjugend, to judge by their size.

Another followed. They stopped and waited for the danger to pass, but eventually another tank slewed round the corner and headed towards them. Russell led Paul off into a side street, looking for somewhere to hide for a while. There was a small enclosed courtyard a little way down, with a full complement of surrounding walls, and they took up refuge inside, straining their ears for approaching men or armour.

Russell knew he should talk to his silent son, but couldn’t think where to begin. With what had just happened? With his mother’s death? What could he say that wouldn’t rub salt in wound after wound? Just what he felt, perhaps. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

Paul stared back at him, a solitary tear running down one cheek. ‘Yes,’ he said, the ghost of a smile forming on his lips.

‘It heals,’ Russell heard himself say, just as footsteps sounded in the street outside. A moment later a man put his head round the corner of the courtyard entrance. He was wearing a leather jacket and baggy trousers tucked into high felt boots. A star adorned the front of his hat.

Seeing the two of them sitting against the wall, he cal ed out to his comrades and ran quickly forward, rifle at the ready. Russell and Paul raised their hands high, and got to their feet. By this time two others had arrived. Both were wearing around a dozen wrist watches on the outside of their sleeves.

‘Comrade, I need to talk to your commanding officer,’ Russell told the soldier in his own language. How long had his father spoken Russian, Paul wondered.

The soldier looked surprised, but only for a second. ‘Come,’ he ordered, swinging his rifle in the requested direction.

They were hustled down the street. In a courtyard further down a Red Army sergeant with pale blue eyes was studying a street map in the front seat of an American jeep. He looked up with a bored expression.

‘Comrade, I have been working for the Soviet Union,’ Russell told him. ‘I have credentials from the NKVD inside my jacket. Will you look at them please?’

The eyes were more interested now, but also suspicious. ‘Give them to me.’

Russell handed over Nikoladze’s letter and watched the man read it. At that rate War and Peace would take the rest of his life.

‘Get in the jeep,’ the sergeant told him.

Russell stood his ground. ‘This is my son,’ he told the Russian.

‘This says nothing about a son,’ the sergeant said, waving the letter. ‘And he is a German soldier.’

‘Yes, but he is my son.’

‘Then you will meet again. Your son is prisoner. Don’t worry – he will not be shot. We are not like Germans.’

‘Please, don’t separate us,’ Russell pleaded.

‘Get in the jeep,’ the sergeant reiterated, a hand on his holstered pistol.

‘I’ll be all right, Dad,’ Paul managed to say.

Russell climbed in beside the driver, and another man climbed in behind them. ‘I’ll find you,’ Russell shouted above the revving engine, and was almost thrown from his seat as the jeep swung out of the courtyard. Looking back, he had a final glimpse of Paul standing among his captors, his face bereft of expression.

The jeep roared down Kant Strasse, where only a few wary-looking Soviet infantry were in evidence. As far as Russell could see the Russians were advancing eastward up this street while German troops headed west along the parallel Bismarck Strasse, like dogs chasing each other’s tails. The Soviets would eventually win through of course, but they might, for the moment, have over-extended themselves in this particular sector. It was hard to tell. It might take them days to reach Effi’s building. Or only hours.

He prayed she would be all right.

He prayed that Paul would be all right. He had believed the Russian’s promise not to shoot his son, but front-line troops were one thing – they tended to respect their opposite numbers – the men behind them something else. And there was always the chance that Paul would run into someone who was aching for revenge. At best he would end up in a poorly provisioned prison camp, with no prospect of an early release. The Soviets were slow at the best of times, and looking after German POWS would be nowhere on their list of priorities.

Russell found it hard to blame them. If he was Stalin, he’d probably keep his German prisoners until they’d rebuilt every last home and factory.

But the thought of another long separation was almost unbearable. On the last occasion he’d seen his son, Russell had left a fourteen-year-old boy to complete a U-Bahn journey on his own, and worried that something might go wrong. Today he had watched him stride up to an SS officer and shoot the man dead. How many shocks and blows had it taken to get from one to the other? Shocks and blows that a father might have managed to soften or deflect.

But first he had to get him back. The jeep passed over the Ringbahn at Witzleben, and turned onto Messedamm. The loop at the northern end of the Avus Speedway had been turned into a military camp, two T-34s rumbling out as they headed in; others were refuelling from a horse-drawn petrol tanker. The driver parked the jeep in front of an obvious command vehicle and disappeared inside. Russell tried unsuccessfully to make small-talk with the man behind him. This soldier had several watches on one arm, and seemed intent on listening to each one in turn, as if anxious that one might have stopped.

Russell looked around. The mingled smells of manure and petrol made the makeshift camp seem like a cross between a farm and a garage, and he smiled at the thought that such an army had beaten Hitler’s.

The driver reappeared, along with a sour-looking major who now had charge of Nikoladze’s letter. He gave Russell a long cold stare, and the letter back to the driver. ‘Take him to the new HQ,’ Russell thought he said.

They set off again, heading south through Schmargendorf. The driver seemed happy with life, whistling as he drove, but disinclined to conversation. It was probably the letter, Russell thought. Any sort of associa-tion with the NKVD – as ally or victim – was inclined to inhibit normal interaction.

Now they were driving through conquered Berlin, through districts where the war was effectively over. Soviet troops were much in evidence, gathered round canteen carts or impromptu fires, feeding their animals or repairing vehicles. One soldier wobbled by on a captured bicycle, then delighted his comrades by falling off.

There were more Germans out in the open, and some at least were mingling with their conquerors. They saw several burial parties, but an enormous number of corpses still lay uncollected on the streets. As they drove through Steglitz a woman screamed in a house nearby, and the soldier in the back said something that Russell didn’t catch. The driver laughed.

It was a long ride, and one that impressed on Russell just how much of Berlin was in ruins. The building near Tempelhof which proved his final destination stood alone in a field of rubble, with all the pride of a lone survivor. Signs proclaimed it the headquarters of the new Soviet administration.

This time Russell was taken inside, and left in an office still decorated with ‘Strength Through Joy’ cruise posters. After about ten minutes a tall, handsome Russian with prematurely grey hair appeared. He was wearing a regular lieutenant-colonel’s uniform, but the insignia told Russell he was a political commissar.

‘Explain,’ the Russian ordered, placing Nikoladze’s letter on the table between them.

‘I can only tell you so much,’ Russell told him with feigned regret. ‘I arrived in Berlin ten days ago, as part of an NKVD team. I can’t tell you the purpose of our mission without compromising state security. I suggest you contact Colonel Nikoladze, because I am forbidden to discuss this matter with anyone else.’

‘Where are the other members of your team?’

‘They are dead.’

‘What happened to them?

‘I can only discuss this with Colonel Nikoladze,’ Russell said apologetically.

The commissar gave him a long angry look, sighed, and got back to his feet.

‘I have a request,’ Russell said.

‘Yes?’

‘My wife is in Berlin, in the Charlottenburg area. She has been involved in resistance work, here in the city. Once her area has been secured, would it be possible to arrange some sort of protection?’

‘It might be,’ the Russian said, as he opened the door to leave. ‘Why don’t you take the matter up with Colonel Nikoladze?’

It was only when Effi caught sight of the two elderly men who’d accompanied Russell on his water-gathering expedition that she realised he hadn’t come back. The two returnees were already fending off criticism for returning with empty saucepans, and it took her a while to make sense of their story. An SS officer had apparently executed two deserters whom he found in the standpipe queue, and had then been shot by another soldier. Russell had rushed from their hiding place to intervene, but they had beaten a hasty retreat. They had no idea what had happened after that, although one man seemed pretty sure that no more shots had been fired.

Effi asked herself what could have happened. Had the soldier taken Russell away? That didn’t seem very likely. But what other explanation could there be? – he wouldn’t just take off without telling her.

As afternoon turned to evening with no sign of him, her anxiety grew more acute, and when time came for sleep, it proved mostly elusive. She lay beside Rosa, warmed and somewhat comforted by the sleeping child, but plagued by the thought that she had lost him again. When dawn came she volunteered herself for water collection, determined to gather what clues she could at the site of his disappearance.

Approaching the standpipe with two other women, she braced herself for the worst. But there were only three bodies neatly laid out by the side of the street – a red-headed SS Obersturmführer and two men in civilian clothes, all shot. There was no sign of Russell, and no one in that morning’s queue who had witnessed the previous day’s excitement. Effi thought about waiting for others to arrive, but the sounds of battle seemed closer than ever, and she had to get back to Rosa before the Russians arrived. With heavy heart, she filled the pans with water and slowly made her way up Grolman Strasse.

On Bismarck Strasse, German soldiers were falling back in the direction of the Tiergarten, their hold apparently broken. A succession of muffled booms only confused her for a moment – a battle was raging in the U-Bahn tunnels that ran under the street.

The Russians would be there soon, and perhaps it was better that Russell would not be there to greet them. His letter might have provided protection, but then again it might not. And if the Russians really were intent on rape, she was glad he wouldn’t be there. He wouldn’t be able to stop them, but he could certainly get himself killed.

On that Sunday morning Paul woke with the scent of lilac in his nostrils. One of several thousand prisoners corralled in a wired-off section of south-east Berlin’s Treptower Park, he had staked out a space to sleep beside the blossoming bushes on the previous evening. They smelt of spring, of new beginnings.

The night had been cold, the ground hard, but he’d slept long and well. The sense of relief he’d felt on arrival seemed just as strong that morning – his war was over. There were no more choices to make, everything was out of his hands. If the Russians decided to kill him there was nothing he could do to stop them. In the meantime he would lie there and smell the lilac.

He had arrived at the makeshift camp just before dark. Ivan had been good to him overall. A few unnecessary shoves, but that was nothing. One guard had even offered him a cigarette, and he’d put it behind his ear, the way Gerhart used to. After queuing for ages, his name, rank and number had been taken down by a Russian with an extravagant beard, and then he’d been placed in the teeming pen. The food was terrible, but not much worse than he was used to. He had no injuries, so the lack of medical facilities didn’t affect him personally. Captured German medics were doing the best they could with what little the Russians had given them.

Now that the sun was up, he supposed he should take a look round. Maybe Hannes was here, or even Uncle Thomas. But he stayed where he was, pondering the day before. He couldn’t have spent much more than half an hour with his father, and there was something dreamlike about the whole encounter. But he knew it had happened – he could remember his father saying how much he had missed him.

He could also remember shooting the red-headed Obersturmführer. He had no regrets about that. If he ever found Werner’s mother and sister, he could tell them the killer had paid for his crime.

Russell was pacing the office room that served as his prison. Having spent most of the night agonising about Effi and his son, he was trying to calm himself down. He had to focus on what he could do, and not let his fears and anxieties distract him.

Which was easier thought than achieved. He went over his plan again, talking out loud to keep his concentration. He rehearsed what he intended saying to Nikoladze, in both content and tone. If he’d ever needed to convince another man of something, then this was the occasion.

He would do it, he told himself. The plan would work. Maybe not for him, but at least for the others. And he’d had his three years of freedom, while they’d all been trapped in the nightmare. It was his turn now.

As the morning wore on, he found himself thinking about the future of Germany, and the city that had been his home for most of the last twenty years. Berlin would of course be divided. They would call it a temporary measure, but it couldn’t be, not really. The country as well. Anyone expecting anything else was a fool – there was no middle ground between the Soviet system of state planning and the free market. In each zone of Berlin, each zone of the Reich, one or the other would be imposed by the occupying power. And that would be that for the foreseeable future.

Given his current circumstances, Russell doubted he’d be given the choice where to live. But if he had one, which would he choose? Did he want to live in a corner of Stalin’s empire? Because that’s what it would be. He would probably have given it a try twenty years ago, when the whole Soviet experiment was still a flailing child of hope. But now, looking back over millions of dead, it was clear that the flaws had been there from the start. It was impossible to regret a revolution that championed equality, brotherhood and internationalism, but there had never been any chance of institutionalising those values in a country as backward and traumatised as Russia. Once the German revolution had failed it was all over. Trotsky had been right in that, if in little else – like Varennikov’s atomic bomb, socialism only worked as a chain reaction. Cage it in one country or empire, and the result would be brutal. Moscow was no place for journalists interested in truth or criticism, and a Soviet-dominated Germany would be no different.

Did he want to live in the dollar’s empire? Not a lot, but on balance it had more to offer than Stalin’s. The idea stuck in his throat, though. It had been Europe’s communists who had fought Nazism and fascism, who had given their lives while Americans had sat back and profited. He was already sick of hearing them boasting how they’d come again to Europe’s rescue, forgetting the far bigger sacrifices of the Red Army, not to mention the fact that most Americans had been only too happy sitting on the fence until the Japanese pushed them off it.

There was a lot he disliked about America and its priorities. But he could imagine that country producing a Brecht, and he couldn’t say the same of the Soviet Union. The dollar was indifferent – it didn’t care if you lived or died, and for people with education and means, people like himself, freedom and privilege were there for the taking. The NKVD, by contrast, was caring to a fault. Whatever you did was their business, with all the constraints that that implied. Neither knowledge nor money offered much in the way of protection, and often invited the opposite.

A key turned in the door, interrupting his reverie.

It was the same lieutenant-colonel, wearing a slightly less hostile expression. ‘Colonel Nikoladze should arrive here early tomorrow morning,’ he told Russell. ‘And I’ve been instructed to provide your wife with protection. If you could give me the exact address?’

Russell did so, and explained that Effi was using an alias. ‘And please ask your men to tell her that I’m all right.’

The Russian wrote it all down with the stub of a pencil. ‘You are not a prisoner,’ he told Russell, ‘but you will of course remain here until the Colonel arrives. Consider this room your quarters.’

By noon the Russians were in control of Bismarck Strasse. Street battles could still be heard raging in every direction, but no German forces had been seen since mid morning, whereas Ivan was much in evidence. Soldiers had come to their basement, scared its residents half to death, and left with every available wristwatch, Effi’s included. Other men and vehicles passed by at regular intervals, and a horse-drawn canteen had opened for business some fifty metres down the street.

The shelling, of course, had stopped, and while many lingered in the basements, hoping for the safety of numbers, some ventured outdoors, drawn by curiosity and the promise of sunshine. Others, like Effi and Rosa, returned to their apartments, and Rosa spent most of the afternoon by the window, drawing the conquering army. Or, as Effi realised when she saw the drawings, the army of Rosa’s liberation. The Russians looked so good, smiling and waving from the turrets of their shiny tanks; even their horses looked glad to be there.

There had been no trouble so far, but Effi feared the coming of darkness. In the event, she didn’t have that long to wait – the light was only beginning to fade when the first female screams were heard in the distance. She hesitated a moment, but realised she couldn’t just sit there and wait. She took Rosa to the basement and went out in search of someone to plead with.

She found one Soviet officer, but he didn’t speak a word of German, and her attempts at mime drew only smiles and shrugs of non-comprehension. Walking back towards her building, she felt eyes following her, and realised how big a mistake she had made. Footsteps behind her confirmed as much, and sent a chill down her spine.

She hurried in through the door, shutting it behind her. Upstairs or downstairs? Rosa was in the basement, but the piece of paper on which Russell had written his Soviet commander’s name was up in the flat.

She was still running up the stairs when she heard the front door splinter. She threw herself into the flat and began frantically searching for the paper. It had vanished.

She turned to see them in the doorway. One was short and wiry, with a shock of blond hair and gold front teeth. The other was darker-skinned and burly, with longish black hair and moustache. Boots and caps excepted, both looked as though they’d been outfitted at a rummage sale. And she could smell them from across the room.

They were both grinning at her, the small one with relish, the other with something more like hatred. ‘Hello,’ the blond one said, as if he was surprised to see her. He muttered something in Russian to his partner and started across the room towards her. The other man was looking round the room, presumably for portable loot.

‘No,’ Effi said, backing away. ‘I’m too old,’ she insisted, running a hand through her hair to show the grey. ‘Like your mother, your grandmother.’

The big Russian said something, stopping the other in his tracks. He had one of Rosa’s new drawings in his hand, and was beaming at it.

‘We’re friends,’ Effi insisted, but the blond soldier refused to be distracted. Lunging forward he caught her by the arm and pulled her towards him. Placing a hand on top of her head, he pushed her down to her knees, then swung her onto her back. With a knee planted either side of her waist, and one hand holding her down at the throat, he started to tear at her clothing.

With a scream of fury Rosa hurtled into the room and flung herself at Effi’s attacker. ‘That’s my mother,’ she yelled, wrapping a small arm round his head. ‘That’s my mother!’

He grunted and swept her away, then ripped open Effi’s blouse. She was finding it hard to breathe.

Rosa was still screaming, but the other man had lifted her up and was holding her at arm’s length. I have to submit, Effi thought, or God knows what they’ll do to her. She let herself go limp, and felt the pressure ease on her throat.

He smiled in triumph, and started undoing his trousers.

The other Russian shouted something. There was a curse from the one on top of her, and what sounded like a command from his partner. Her assailant had been halted for the moment, but was still arguing, and Effi could see the frustration bulging in his trousers. One word was being repeated over and over, and she realised what it was – Yevr’ey – the Russian for Jews. The burly soldier was pointing at Rosa’s blouse, and the faded star it bore. ‘Yevr’ey!’ he said again.

Her assailant was reluctant to abandon his conquest, but his partner wore him down. ‘Many’, ‘women’ and ‘Berlin’ were words that Effi thought she recognised, and which made some sort of sense. Eventually her assailant sighed loudly, grinned at her, and pulled the blouse back across her breasts. ‘Okay,’ he said, as he clambered back to his feet. ‘Nyet Yevr’ey.’

‘We tell others. You safe,’ the darker man told her in passable German. ‘I also Jew,’ he added in explanation.

They left, taking one of Rosa’s pictures as a souvenir. Effi lay there on the floor, remembering how to breathe. Rosa lay down beside her and put her head on Effi’s shoulder. ‘I can tell you now,’ she said. ‘Rosa is my real name. Rosa Pappenheim.’

Ten minutes later two smartly uniformed Russians arrived at their door. They had been sent by the new city administration to protect Frau von Freiwald. ‘Mr John Russell,’ they assured her, was ‘alive and well.’

Soon after eight in the morning Russell was escorted up several flights of stairs to a huge office on the top floor. Four large desks and many more cabinets lined the inner walls, yet still left space for two long leather settees, which faced each other across a low table and a dark crimson carpet. Yevgeny Shchepkin and Colonel Nikoladze were seated at either end of one settee; behind them, through two of the city’s last unbroken windows, Russell could see smoke rising from the distant Reichstag.

Neither man got up. Nikoladze offered Russell a curt smile as he waved him onto the other settee, Shchepkin something warmer, and perhaps a little mischievous. His old acquaintance looked awful, Russell thought, but better than he had in Moscow. And he was pleased to see him. Shchepkin was not essential to Russell’s plan, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that their fates were in some way connected. That was not why Nikoladze had brought him, of course – the NKVD would still be thinking that Shchepkin was someone whom Russell might trust, and who therefore might come in handy.

Russell realised that he might be kidding himself, but he felt his hand strengthened by Shchepkin’s presence. And weak as the hand was, that could only be good.

Nikoladze was not a man to waste time on pleasantries. ‘So the others are dead?’ was his opening line.

‘They are,’ Russell admitted.

‘Yet you are alive,’ the Russian noted, as if that should be counted against him.

‘As you see.’ Russell sneaked a glance at Shchepkin, who was staring into space.

‘Give us your report.’

Russell began with the botched landing west of Berlin, avoiding any reference to Varennikov’s momentary panic – there was no point in putting Irina’s pension at risk. He explained how it had upset their timetable, and resulted in their arriving at the Institute twenty-four hours later than scheduled. He described the successful break-in, and Varennikov’s excited reaction to some of the papers.

‘He did find something!’ Nikoladze exclaimed, leaning forward in his seat. ‘Where are these papers?’

‘We’ll get to that. Let me tell the story.’

Nikoladze gave him a look, but waved him on.

‘That was when it all fell apart,’ Russell continued. He explained how Kazankin and Gusakovsky had died, then began to blend fact and fiction. ‘We spent the whole day hiding in a bombed-out house, and the following night we walked all the way to the Potsdam goods yard. The comrades hid us in an abandoned underground station – we were there for almost a week. And then, four days ago, a rail-mounted gun fell through the ceiling. I wasn’t there, but Comrade Varennikov was killed. Since then…’

Neither Russell’s subsequent adventures nor his physicist’s fate were of any interest to Nikoladze. ‘And the papers?’ he asked. ‘Where are they now?’

‘They’re safe. Varennikov and I buried them, in case we were stopped and searched.’

‘Where did you bury them?’ Nikoladze insisted, his voice rising slightly.

Russell took a deep breath. ‘Colonel, I don’t want to be difficult, but there’s a problem here.’

‘What sort of problem?

‘One of survival. My own, that is. Because I’ve been wondering what my life will be worth once I tell you where they are.’

Nikoladze was speechless for a long moment. Shchepkin, Russell noticed, was suppressing a smile.

‘You will tell me where the papers are,’ Nikoladze told him coldly. If the threat was palpable, there was also more than a hint of fear in the Georgian’s eyes. He could not afford to fail.

Russell refused to be deflected. ‘I would lay bets that Kazankin had orders to liquidate me the moment we reached the goods yard.’

Nikoladze’s face confirmed as much. ‘He told you that?’

‘He didn’t need to – you people don’t like loose ends. So I have nothing to gain from simply handing you the papers. On the contrary, I would simply be signing my own death warrant.’

Nikoladze snorted, and pulled himself forward. ‘You are at our mercy. You’re in no position to bargain.’

‘Maybe not,’ Russell admitted. ‘But please, Colonel, I did what you asked me to do. So give me a few minutes. Hear my proposal, and we will all get what we want.’

‘We might as well hear what he has to say,’ Shchepkin said, speaking for the first time. ‘What do we have to lose?’

For a moment Russell thought the Georgian would refuse, but he finally nodded his acquiescence.

‘You want the papers,’ Russell began, carefully marshalling his argument, ‘and you don’t want anyone else to know that you’ve got them. I want safe passage to the American zone for all of my family. My son Paul Gehrts is a prisoner-of-war – he was captured with me in Charlottenburg, but I don’t know where he was taken. His uncle Thomas Schade was in the Volkssturm, and he was last seen at Köpenick just outside Berlin, about ten days ago. He was planning to surrender, so you probably have him too. My wife you know about. She has a seven-year-old orphan with her, and a sister named Zarah Biesinger in Schmargendorf. I want them all rounded up and brought here, and then driven to the Elbe.’ He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and offered it to Nikoladze. ‘A list of the names and addresses.’

Nikoladze ignored the outstretched hand. ‘Why the American zone?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Because Zarah’s son and Thomas’s wife and daughter are already there, and I want my wife and son to be beyond your reach. If I hold the Soviet Union to ransom, I expect the NKVD to be angry with me. But I don’t see why the rest of my family should suffer for my crimes.’

‘And the rest of your proposal? I take it there’s more.’

‘My wife knows a Swedish diplomat here in Berlin. His name is Erik Aslund. He’ll travel to the Elbe with the party, see them across, and then report back to me. Once I know they’re safe, I’ll take you to the papers.’

‘And what’s to stop us killing you after that?’ Nikoladze asked. He was engaged by the logic, Russell realised, which had to be good news.

‘Self-interest, I hope. As long as I’m alive, my family will say nothing that could jeopardise my survival, but if I’m dead…’ Russell smiled. ‘But let’s not consider that possibility. Let’s be optimistic. Taking my family to the Elbe will cost you a few litres of petrol. You’ll get the papers, and no one else will know you have them. None of my family will be able to broadcast the story without incriminating me. And you’ll have a lasting hold over me. If you let me go, you can always threaten to expose my involvement in this, and have the Americans hang me for treason. Or you can make use of me. I’m a well-known journalist with a lot of contacts, and I’ve served you well in the past, as Shchepkin here can testify.’

Nikoladze considered. ‘That is all very clever,’ he said slowly, ‘but direct persuasion still looks the simpler option. And quicker. Or am I missing something?’ He glanced at Shchepkin as he said it, and seemed to be challenging them both.

Shchepkin responded. ‘It would be simpler, but also more risky. The story would probably get out,’ he cautioned. ‘If the man died his family would talk, and even if he only disappeared from view, well… And we have no idea who else he might have told, or whether he’s left a written account with anyone. He’s had several days to set this up. If we do things his way, we still get the papers, and a valuable asset in the Western zone.’

Russell listened gratefully, wondering why he hadn’t thought to take such precautionary measures, and marvelling at Shchepkin’s quick-wittedness. Here was an asset, the Russian had to be thinking, that only he could control. They would save each other’s lives.

Nikoladze was ready to swallow his anger, at least for now. ‘Give me the list,’ he demanded.

Russell handed it over. The Georgian, for reasons best known to himself, had decided to go along with him. Maybe the NKVD torturers were all fully booked, or he was just a sweetheart in disguise. He might have bought the argument, or at least some of it. Whatever the reasons, he could always change his mind. When he got his hands on the papers, he would still have his hands on Russell.

But the others would be free.

To Russell, the rest of the day seemed endless. He spent several hours in the basement canteen, where all his attempts at idle conversation were either rebuffed or ignored. Back in his room he paced and fretted, or lay on the camp bed and stared at the ceiling. He could sometimes hear guns in the distance, but the building’s buzz of activity usually drowned them out.

He eventually fell asleep, and only awoke when sunlight glinted through the boarded-up window. The canteen provided bread and black tea, and a visit to the nearby toilets turned up a bucket of lukewarm water and a paper-thin sliver of soap. The subsequent wash raised his spirits a little, but climbing back into filthy clothes dropped them right back down. He was on his way upstairs when a young NKVD officer intercepted him. ‘The people on your list are being brought here,’ the young man said. ‘They will wait in your room.’

‘All of them?’ Russell asked, as much in hope as expectation.

‘Of course,’ the young man answered, as if partial success was an unfamiliar concept. A riotous succession of hurrahs erupted somewhere upstairs, followed by the clinking of glasses. They both looked upwards, and Russell asked if the war was over.

‘No, but Hitler is dead. He shot himself yesterday. Like the coward he was.’

The NKVD man carried on down the stairs, leaving Russell to carry on up. Hitler’s death seemed almost irrelevant, like a debt already paid.

He let himself into his room and looked around it. An anteroom, he thought. A place between war and peace.

An hour or so later the door swung open, and a soldier delivered Thomas. After exchanging rueful smiles, they embraced like long-lost brothers. ‘So what’s this all about?’ Thomas asked eventually. ‘What have I done to deserve Stalin’s mercy?’

Russell told him who else was coming, and where they were all going.

Thomas’s face lit up. ‘Paul’s all right? And Effi as well?’

‘So the Russians tell me.’

Thomas leaned back against the wall, a smile of wonderment on his face. ‘And how have you managed this miracle?’

‘I did a deal with the Russians,’ Russell said simply. ‘A favour for a favour.’

‘And what sort of favour are they getting from you? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘A big one, I think,’ Russell told him, ‘but I don’t really know.’ The papers had excited Varennikov but, as the young man himself had pointed out, the scientists who mattered were all back home in their nice warm labs. ‘And better you didn’t,’ he added, in answer to Thomas’s second question. ‘But there is one thing. It’s part of the deal that I follow on later – in a few days, I hope, but you never know. In case I don’t, well, I saw Paul two days ago, and he seems in bad shape. Not physically…’

‘You don’t have to ask,’ Thomas interrupted. There were footsteps on the stairs.

It was the boy in question. He looked tired, but the haunted look had gone. Russell remembered Armistice Day in 1918, and wondered if Paul was feeling something similar. The reaction came later, of course, but the sense of release was wonderful while it lasted.

Paul was less than happy when he heard the arrangements. He wasn’t sure why, but just driving away didn’t feel right. And when he heard that his father was staying, he insisted on doing the same.

‘I need you to look after Effi and Rosa,’ Russell pleaded hopefully.

‘Effi’s more than capable of looking after herself,’ his son retorted, something that Russell knew only too well, but which he hadn’t expected from Paul. Three years ago his son would have been flattered by the offer of adult responsibilities, but he was an adult now, and only the truth would do.

‘Then do it for me,’ he begged. ‘If I end up sacrificing myself for the family, then at least let it be the whole damn family.’

‘What’s left of it,’ Paul said bitterly. ‘But all right. I’ll go.’

‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ Russell said, realising with a shock that her death had never been mentioned. ‘I only found out a couple of days ago. It hasn’t had time to sink in.’

‘It seems years ago,’ was all Paul would say.

‘And your sisters?’

‘With Grandpa and Grandma. I haven’t seen them for a couple of years.’

‘That won’t matter,’ his uncle told him, ‘they’re still your sisters.’ There was a sad inflection to Thomas’s tone, and Russell realised he was thinking of his own lost son.

The others arrived an hour or so later. Effi threw herself into Russell’s arms, and Rosa’s offer of a hand made Thomas smile again. Zarah looked like she’d been through hell, but was trying not to spoil the party. ‘Later,’ Effi told Russell, when he silently asked what was wrong with her sister.

He told Effi he wouldn’t be coming with them, which was no surprise but still felt like a blow. ‘But you will,’ she insisted.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Or maybe the next day. What’s a few days after more than three years.’

‘Several lifetimes,’ she told him. ‘You should know that by now.’

And then the NKVD troops were at the door, with orders to escort them downstairs. Outside, a line of four jeeps bearing Soviet stars were filling the street with fumes. Nikoladze was there, along with a tall blond Swede whom Effi introduced as Erik Aslund. She had already told Russell about their Jew-smuggling activities, and seeing them together he felt an absurd twinge of jealousy.

He embraced his family one by one, and watched them climb aboard two of the jeeps. A few brave smiles and away they went, roaring down Immelmann Strasse past the blackened hull of a burnt-out German tank.

He turned to go back in. Nikoladze was still on the steps, talking to a Red Army general, and the glance he directed in Russell’s direction seemed anything but friendly. The convoy of jeeps headed west, through Friedenau and Steglitz on the old Potsdam road, the sounds of the battle still consuming Berlin slowly fading to silence. They drove through a landscape of ruins, peopled by shuffling ghosts, smelling of death. In a couple of places Red Army soldiers stood sentry while gangs of German civilians cleared away rubble and gathered in corpses. In a bombed-out space beside one house two piles awaited incineration, one composed of humans, the other of furry pets.

White flags flew from many surviving buildings, red from more than a few. All of the swastikas had vanished, but exhortatory posters still clung to walls, some flapping wildly in the breeze of their passage, as if keen to detach themselves. A dawn had followed the darkest hour, but not the one intended.

And then they were leaving Berlin, and the smell of death wafted away, and the spring seemed suddenly real. A hot sun was beating down, turning dew into mist across the emerald fields.

In the third jeep, Paul found himself thinking about the previous spring, when he and Gerhart had joined the regular army. He could see his friend now, jumping down from the train, and staring entranced at the vast Russian plain that stretched away before them. He could see the surprise on Neumaier’s face as the bullets took him, see the love in Werner’s face when he spoke of his mother and sister.

But it wasn’t painful any more, not for him. It was only painful for the other Paul, the one he had left behind. There was no longer a road leading home for him.

In the jeep ahead, Zarah was crying on Effi’s shoulder. For three days and nights she had conquered the impulse to resist, and allowed the same quartet of Russian soldiers to rape her again and again. Proud of their amenable German girlfriend, the foursome had kept their other comrades at bay, and probably saved her from serious physical harm. She knew in her heart she had done the right thing, but still she couldn’t stop weeping.

They had all suffered, Effi thought. Herself least of all, or so it now seemed. She’d been in terrible danger on several occasions, but no one had ever laid a hand on her. Those first weeks back in Berlin, alone in the flat in Wedding, had been by far the worst of her life, but often, in the years that followed, she had felt more useful, more complete, more alive, than she ever had as a movie star. Saving lives certainly put acting in perspective.

And then there were Rosa, Paul and Thomas. She could only guess at the damage done to the young girl’s heart, and at the damage done to Paul’s. Thomas had been through the horrors of the First War, but even his eyes held something new, a weight of sadness that was not there before.

Yet they were the lucky ones, alive, with all their limbs and loved ones to care for.

There was an undamaged farmhouse across the field to her left, smoke drifting lazily up from its chimney. It had probably looked much the same when she and John had driven this road en route to their pre-war picnics. Not all the world was ruins.

There was much to mend, but it could be done. One heart at a time. Just as long as he came back to her.

Russell settled down to wait. It was around 120 kilometres to the Elbe – in ordinary conditions a two-hour drive each way. Add an hour for haggling, then double the lot, and perhaps the Swede would be back by nightfall.

He wasn’t. Russell had another night of broken sleep, woken by each step on the stairs, each revving engine on the street outside. Had they run into something on the road, been ambushed by Goebbels’ ludicrous Werewolves? Had the Americans refused to take them?

When he finally awoke something seemed strange, and it took him a while to work out what it was. He couldn’t hear a war. The guns had fallen silent.

He was still digesting this when a young officer came to collect him.

Erik Aslund was downstairs in the lobby, Nikoladze waiting by the door. The Swede looked exhausted. ‘They’re across the river,’ he told Russell.

‘You’ve only just got back?’

‘There were arguments, radio messages to and fro. But we won through in the end. Frau von Freiwald – Fraulein Koenen, I should say, now that I know who she really is – she wouldn’t take no for an answer. And when the Americans found out she was a movie star, they didn’t dare refuse her. There were a lot of journalists at the American army headquarters, all looking for a story.’

Russell smiled. He wondered what the journalists would say if they knew that the price of the movie star’s freedom was a Russian atomic bomb. He thanked the Swede for all his help.

‘You’re welcome,’ Aslund said. ‘I hope we meet again, when things are more settled.’

‘I hope so too,’ Russell agreed, shaking the offered hand. He could feel Nikoladze’s impatience.

‘So where are the papers?’ the Georgian asked, with the Swede barely out of the door.

‘In Dahlem. They’re buried in my brother-in-law’s garden.’

‘They had better be,’ Nikoladze replied.

They had, Russell thought, as the two of them walked down the steps. He was beginning to wish he’d indulged Varennikov, and buried them deeper. If they got to Dahlem and found a crater in the vegetable patch, he could see Nikoladze shooting him on the spot.

Out in the street, two jeeps sandwiched a gleaming Horch 930V. Russell wondered where Nikoladze had found such a car, and then remembered that the Red Army had passed through the Babelsberg a few days earlier. The model had been a favourite with Goebbels’ movie moguls.

A Russian map of Berlin was spread across the leading jeep’s bonnet. He, Nikoladze and a Red Army lieutenant gathered round it, pinpointed their destination, and worked out the route.

‘In the front,’ Nikoladze told Russell, as they walked back towards the Horch.

Yevgeny Shchepkin was sitting in the back, wearing the usual crumpled suit and an expression to match.

Russell got in beside the young Red Army driver, who gave him a crooked grin. The lead jeep started off, small Soviet flags fluttering on the two leading corners. It was a beautiful morning, warm and sunny, with a few fluffy clouds gliding like Zeppelins across a blue sky. Two thin columns of smoke were rising to the north, but the city’s silence seemed almost uncanny, the noise of the vehicles unusually loud in the devastated streets.

They made good progress for twenty minutes, but halfway down Haupt Strasse were halted by a Red Army roadblock. The lieutenant walked back to tell Nikoladze that a sniper was being rounded up, and that they’d only be there for a few minutes. They waited in silence, Nikoladze tapping rhythms on his armrest. After almost half an hour had passed without further news, he got out of the car and strode forward in search of someone to bully.

The driver climbed out too, and lit a surreptitious cigarette. It was the first time Russell and Shchepkin had been alone together.

‘My daughter told me about your conversation,’ the Russian said.

‘Natasha? She reminded me of you.’

Shchepkin grunted. ‘Then God help her.’

‘How long were you in prison?’ Russell asked.

‘I was arrested in November.’

‘For what?’

Shchepkin shrugged. ‘I’m still not sure. My boss fell out with Comrade Beria, and I think I got caught in the crossfire. An occupational hazard, I’m afraid.’

‘Time for a change of occupation’ Russell suggested dryly.

Shchepkin smiled at that. ‘What do you think I should do? Retire to the country and raise bees like your Sherlock Holmes?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘That’s not the sort of world we live in any more.’

‘No.’ Russell agreed. He could see his own potential nemesis in the distance, walking back towards them. ‘This is Nikoladze’s world,’ he murmured, as much to himself as to the Russian.

‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Shchepkin said reprovingly. ‘He staked his life on delivering something, and you made him wait for it.’

Russell turned in his seat. ‘Is it really that bad?’

‘Oh yes.’

Not for the first time, Russell felt sorry for the Russian. And for his country.

The driver slipped back behind the wheel, smelling of cheap tobacco.

‘Do you know what’s fetching the highest prices in Berlin these days?’ Shchepkin asked in English.

Russell gave it some thought. ‘KPD membership cards,’ he suggested at last.

‘Close,’ Shchepkin admitted. ‘Jewish stars.’

Of course, Russell thought.

Nikoladze let himself into the back, and soon they were on their way. A couple of hundred metres down the road, Red Army soldiers were standing over the body of a Hitlerjugend, like hunters around a kill. The boy’s dead face was turned towards them. He looked about twelve.

It took them half an hour to reach Vogelsang Strasse. The Schade house was still standing, and if Russell kept his focus narrow he could see what he’d seen six years earlier, arriving for Sunday lunch with Effi. But let his eyes wander a few degrees, and the past lay around him in ruins.

Heart pounding, he led the way round to the back.

Birds were singing in the blossoming trees, and Hanna’s vegetable patch was still a mass of tangled weeds. He realised that he should have used some foliage to camouflage his excavation, which looked like a standing invitation to any passing treasure hunter. Then again, the patch of fresh earth was just the right size for a pet’s grave, and who would go digging for dead cats and dogs?

‘There?’ Nikoladze asked, his finger pointed at the obvious.

Russell nodded.

As two of the soldiers started to dig, Russell looked around the woebegone garden, remembering happier days. Hitler and the Nazis had been evil beyond imagining, but for him and his family the pre-war years had often been a wonderful time. The children growing up, Effi’s incredible success; even the Nazis had played their part, giving him and Thomas something to struggle against, a moral and political lodestone to guide their work and lives.

What would there be now? There was something irretrievably wrong with the Soviet Union, but it was so much stronger. And the Americans were reaching for a parallel empire, whether they wanted to or not. It was hard to feel good about a country that still had a segregated army.

It would be a world of lesser evils and uncertain victories, in infinite shades of grey. And after the Nazis he supposed that wasn’t so bad.

They all heard the spade strike something hard, and Nikoladze gave him a questioning look.

‘It might be Gusakovsky’s gun,’ Russell suggested. ‘I buried it with the papers.’

The soldier put his spade aside, and started sifting through the earth with his hands. He handed up the gun, and then the oilskin parcel. Nikoladze took the papers from their wrapping and quickly riffled through them. They looked stained at the edges, but otherwise undamaged, and his face seemed to sag with relief.

He strode off towards the car without a word.

Russell turned to Shchepkin, and asked him the obvious question: ‘So will the bastard let me leave?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Russian assured him. ‘We never waste an asset.’

Russell smiled. As far as he knew, the gulags were full of them. But it didn’t seem the moment to say so.

THE EXTRACT THAT FOLLOWS IS FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER OF Zoo Station, THE FIRST ‘JOHN RUSSELL AND EFFI KOENEN’ NOVEL, SET IN BERLIN IN 1939.