Potsdam Station

Corpse brides

April 22 – 23

Russell could only find one spade in the pitch-black shed, so he sent the Russian back inside, fought his way through the brambles to where he thought Hanna’s vegetable patch had been, and began digging. There was little chance of his being heard – the rain and wind would see to that. Not to mention the occasional slam of an exploding shell. It was a night for burying oneself, not atomic secrets.

Varennikov had insisted on a depth of two metres, in case a shell landed on top of his precious papers. Russell decided on a third of that – if the choice was between him getting pneumonia and the Soviets an atomic bomb, he knew damn well which he preferred.

At least it wasn’t cold. He dug on, careful to pile the excavated earth alongside the hole. Once he’d gone down a couple of feet – he supposed he still measured digging in English units because of his experience in the trenches – he pulled the papers out from inside Thomas’ raincoat and placed them at the bottom of the hole. Varennikov had wrapped them in a piece of oilskin that he’d found in the larder, which should protect them from damp for a couple of weeks.

After a moment’s hesitation, he added Gusakovsky’s machine pistol to the hoard – a weapon for emergencies was all well and good, but being caught with it would see them both shot as spies.

He shovelled back the earth and tamped it down, first with the spade and then with his feet. The rain seemed to be easing.

After returning the front door key to its hiding place he went back inside.

‘You dug two metres already?’ Varennikov asked with a lamentable lack of trust.

‘At least,’ Russell lied. ‘The soil is soft here,’ he added for good measure. ‘Let’s go.’

Dawn would be around six, which gave them three hours to cover the ten kilometres. This had seemed like plenty of time, but, as soon became clear, it was not. For one thing, Russell was uncertain of the route – he had driven in from Dahlem on enough occasions in the past, but only along those main thoroughfares which he now wished to avoid. For another, visibility was atrocious. The rain had stopped, but clouds still covered the heavens, leaving reflected fires and explosions as the only real sources of light. It took them more than ninety minutes to reach the inner circle of the Ringbahn, which was less than halfway to their destination.

They saw few signs of life – the occasional glimmer of light seeping out of a basement, a cigarette glowing in the window of a gouged-out house, the sound of a couple making vigorous love in a darkened doorway. Once, two figures crept furtively past on the other side of the street, like a mirror image of themselves. They were in uniform, but didn’t appear to be carrying guns. Deserters most likely, and who could blame them?

As Russell and Varennikov entered Wilmersdorf, the sky began to break up, and patches of starlight emerged between fast-moving clouds. This offered easier movement, but only at the price of enhanced visibility. They narrowly avoided two uniformed patrols by the fortunate expedient of seeing them first – in each case a flaring match betrayed the approaching authorities, giving them time to slip into the shadows. As dawn approached an increasing numbers of military lorries, troop carriers and mounted guns could be seen and heard on the main roads. Everyone, it seemed, was hurrying to get under cover.

Once in Schöneberg, Russell felt surer of directions. He followed a street running parallel to the wide Grunewald Strasse, on which he and Ilse had lived almost twenty years earlier, and passed what was left of the huge Schöneberg tram depot, before turning up towards Heinrich von Kleist Park, where Paul had taken his faltering first steps. The park was in use as some sort of military assembly area, but a short detour brought them to Potsdamer Strasse a few hundred metres south of where Russell had intended. At the end of a facing side street the elevated tracks leading north towards Potsdam Station were silhouetted against the rapidly lightening sky.

The sprawling goods complex was a few hundred metres up the line. Russell had visited the street-level offices once before, accompanying Thomas in search of some printing machinery supposedly en route from the Ruhr. On that day the areas beside and under the tracks had been choked with lorries, but the only vehicles in sight on this particular morning were bomb victims. One lorry had lost the front part of its chassis, and seemed to be kneeling in prayer.

Russell found it hard to believe that anyone would still be working in the goods station – what, after all, could still be coming in or out of Berlin? And it was only six-fifteen in the morning. But he followed the signs to the dispatch office, Varennikov meekly in tow. And lo and behold, there was a Reichsbahn official in neat uniform, two candles illuminating the ledger over which his pencil was poised. After their long night walk across the broken city, the normality seemed almost surreal.

The official looked up as they entered, surprise on his face. Customers of any kind had doubtless become rare, let alone men in foreign worker uniforms. ‘Yes?’ he asked, with a mixture of nervousness and truculence.

‘We’ve been sent by the Air Ministry,’ Russell began. ‘Our boss was told last week that a shipment of paintings had arrived from Königsberg, but he hasn’t received them. If you could check that they’re here, a vehicle can be sent to collect them. I was told to say that our boss has already spoken to Diehls.’

Comprehension dawned on the official’s face, causing Russell to breathe a sigh of relief. ‘We were told to expect you,’ the man continued, in a tone that suggested they hadn’t believed it. He came out from behind his desk and shook their hands. ‘Please, come with me.’

He took a flashlight from his desk, led them out through the back of the building and up a steep iron stairway to rail level. The rising sun had barely cleared the distant rooftops, but the smoke from explosions and fires had already turned it into a dull red ball. As they walked by a line of gutted carriages a shell landed a few hundred metres further down the viaduct, but their guide showed no reaction, ducking under a coupling and crossing a series of tracks to enter a huge and now roofless depot. Inside, the loading platforms were lined with what had once been wagons, and now looked more like firewood. Another shell exploded, closer this time, and Russell was glad to take another staircase down, their guide using his flashlight to illuminate the abandoned office complex beneath the tracks. More stairs and they were actually underground, which had to be an improvement. A corridor led past a row of offices still in apparent use, though none had human occupants. Two more turnings and they reached a half open door, which their guide put his head around. ‘The men for the Königsberg paintings,’ Russell heard him say.

There was the sound of a chair scraping back, and the door opened wide. ‘Come in, come in,’ their new host said, suppressed excitement in his voice. He was also wearing a Reichsbahn uniform, but was much younger than their guide. No more than thirty-five, Russell guessed.

‘I am Stefan Leissner,’ he said, offering his hand.

‘This is Ilya Varennikov,’ Russell said. ‘He doesn’t speak much German.’ He introduced himself. ‘We had two companions, but they were both killed.’

‘How?’ Leissner asked. He looked shocked, as if the notion that Soviet officials were mortal had not occurred to him.

‘In an air raid. They were unlucky.’

‘I am very sorry to hear that. But it is good to see you, comrades. I hope your mission has proved successful.’

‘I think so,’ Russell told him. He had no idea whether Leissner knew what their mission had been, and decided that he probably didn’t – the NKVD were not known for their chattiness. ‘And you are able to hide us until the Red Army arrives?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Leissner looked at his watch. ‘And I should take you to… your quarters, I suppose. I doubt whether many will come to work today, and those that do will mostly be comrades, but there is no point in taking risks. Come.’

Their original guide had been outside, presumably keeping watch. Dis-missed, he walked back down the corridor, his flashlight beam dancing in front of him, while Leissner turned the other way, and quickly brought them to the top of a spiral staircase. ‘You go down first,’ he said, shining his torch to show them the way. When they all reached the bottom, the flashlight revealed two pairs of still-shining tracks – they were in a small lobby adjoining a railway tunnel.

‘This is the S-Bahn line that runs under Potsdam Station and north towards Friedrichstrasse,’ Leissner explained, stepping down onto the sleepers. ‘There are no services on this line anymore, just a few hospital trains stabled beneath Budapester Strasse.’ He set off alongside the tracks, assuring them over his shoulder that the electricity was off. The tunnel soon widened, platforms appearing on either side. They climbed up, and turned in through a corridor opening. Tiny feet scurried away from the questing flashlight beam, awakening memories of the trenches which Russell would rather forget. Much to his relief, they went up another spiral staircase, emerging into a wide hall with a high ceiling. The old skylights had been covered over, but light still glinted round the edges.

A door led through to a large room, in which several camp beds had been set up. There was water, cans of food and a bucket toilet. For illumination there were candles, matches, and a railway headlamp. ‘It’s only for a few days,’ Leissner said apologetically. ‘And it should be safe. The only way in is the one we used – the old station entrance was bricked up before the First War. A comrade will stand guard in the tunnel – if you need anything, just go down and tell him. The army might decide to flood the tunnels by blowing up the roof where it passes under the Landwehrkanal, but that wouldn’t be a problem for you. Not for long, in any case. You wouldn’t be able to get out until the waters went down again, but you’d still be fine up here.’ He lit one of the candles, and dribbled wax onto to the tiled floor to hold it upright. ‘There,’ he said, ‘just like home.’ It was almost light when Paul awoke. He had spent most of the last twelve hours under their tank, catching up on the sleep he was owed. Ivan’s planes had provided several unwanted alarms, but his own thoughts hadn’t kept him awake, as had happened all too often of late. And he knew he had Uncle Thomas to thank for that. It was incredible how calming simple decency could be.

He slid himself out from under the Panzer IV’s exhaust, and found that a light rain was falling. He clambered up the low embankment behind which the tank was positioned, and walked across to the promenade parapet. The dark waters of the Dahme slid north towards their meeting with the Spree, and a host of shadows were streaming across the Lange Bridge. All German, all civilian, as far as he could tell.

Looking round for Werner, he saw the boy walking towards him with a mug of something hot, and had a sudden memory of ’Orace, the breakfast-serving batman in many of the Saint books. He had loved those stories.

‘There’s a canteen in Köllnischerplatz,’ Werner said, offering him the mug, ‘but they’ve run out of food.’

Church bells were ringing away to the west, faint and somehow sad. As they listened to the distant tolling, Paul realised that the sounds of war had died away. Could peace have been declared?

Seconds later, a machine-gun opened up in the distance, leaving him absurdly disappointed.

‘Do you believe in God?’ Werner asked.

‘No,’ Paul said. His parents had both been convinced atheists, and even his conservative stepfather had never willingly set foot in a church. In fact, though it pained him to admit it, one of the things his younger self had most admired about the Nazis was their contempt for Christianity.

‘Me neither,’ Werner said, with far too much assurance for a fourteen-year-old. ‘But my mother does,’ he added. ‘My granddad was a chaplain in the First War. He used to say that people always behave better when they believe in something more powerful than themselves, so long as that something isn’t other people.’

‘Words of wisdom,’ Paul murmured.

‘He was a clever man,’ Werner agreed. ‘He used to tell me bedtime stories when I was really young. He just made them up as he went along.’

The eastern sky was lightening, the drizzle easing off. There were men at work under the bridge, Paul noticed. Planting charges, no doubt. He was still watching them when a Soviet biplane flew low up the river, and opened fire with its machine-gun. Several men dropped into the sluggish current, but Paul couldn’t tell whether they’d been hit or simply taken evasive action. At almost the same moment the first shells of an artillery barrage also hit the water, sending up huge plumes of spray. They had no doubt been aimed at the western bank, and he and Werner made the most of their luck, hurrying for cover while the Soviet gunners fine-tuned their range. They were still scrabbling their way under the tank when a shell landed on the stretch of promenade which they had just abandoned.

The barrage, which only lasted a few minutes, set a pattern for the rest of the day. Every half-hour or so the invisible Soviet guns would launch a few salvoes, then fall silent again. In between time, Soviet bombers and fighters would appear overhead, bombing and strafing whatever took their fancy. The only sign of the Luftwaffe was a sorry-looking convoy of ground personnel, who had been sent forward to the fighting front from their plane-less airfields.

The German tanks, guns and supporting infantry were well dug in, and there were, for once, few casualties. As far as Paul could tell, the German forces in and around Köpenick were strong enough to give Ivan at least a pause for thought. There were more than a dozen tanks, several of them Tigers, and upwards of twenty artillery pieces of varying modernity. If Paul’s tank was anything to go by, they were all likely to be low on fuel and shells, but Ivan couldn’t know that. And if he wanted to find out, he first had to cross a sizable river.

The bridge was finally blown in mid-afternoon, the centre section dropping into the river with a huge ‘whumpf’. It was neatly done, Paul thought – the Wehrmacht had certainly honed a few skills in its thousand-mile retreat. Russell’s watch told him it was almost seven o’clock – he had slept for nine hours. He didn’t regret it – he had needed the rest, and the middle of the day seemed far too dangerous a time to be wandering the streets. After dark seemed a much better bet, although Leissner might have other advice. Now he came to think about it, the Reichsbahn man might be reluctant to let him go. He would have to persuade Leissner that Varennikov was the one that mattered, the prize the Red Army would be hoping to collect.

He fumbled around for the matches and lit a candle. The Russian kept on snoring, which wasn’t surprising – he’d had even less sleep than Russell over the last few days. After Leissner had left them that morning, Varennikov had asked Russell over and over whether he thought they could trust the Reichsbahn official. Was there any reason they shouldn’t? Russell had asked him. There was, it turned out, only one. The man was a German.

Internationalism had not, it seemed, taken root in Soviet soil.

Feeling hungry, Russell drank some cold soup from one of the billy- cans. Its tastelessness was probably its primary virtue, but he certainly needed some sort of sustenance.

Taking the candle with him, he descended the spiral staircase. The flickering went ahead of him, and the lookout was already on his feet when Russell reached the platform. Leissner was either very efficient or very determined not to lose his prize. Or both. He probably had hopes of an important post in a new communist Germany.

‘I need to talk to Comrade Leissner,’ Russell said.

The man thought about that for several moments. ‘Wait here,’ he said eventually, and disappeared up the tunnel.

He returned five minutes later. ‘You can go up to his office. You remember the way?’

Russell did.

Leissner was waiting at the top of the stairs. He ushered Russell into the office, and carefully closed the door behind them. ‘Just habit,’ he explained, seeing Russell’s face. ‘Only a handful of people came in today, and they’ve all gone home. For the duration, I expect. It can’t be long now,’ he added with a broad smile. ‘It really is over.’

Not quite, Russell thought, but he didn’t say so. He had only known this particular comrade for a few hours, but his expectations of the Soviets were likely to be somewhat overblown. Leissner had probably joined the KPD in the late 1920s when he was still a teenager, and spent the Nazi years concealing his true allegiance. His looks would have helped – blonde hair, blue eyes and a chiselled face were never a handicap in Nazi Germany – but living a double life for that length of time could hardly have been easy, and he would certainly have become adept at deception.

But, by the same token, a life spent down the enemy’s throat provided one with few opportunities to learn about one’s friends. For men like Leissner, the Soviet Union would have been like a long-lost father, a vessel to fill with uncritical love.

‘How can I help you?’ the German asked.

‘I have to find someone, and I’m hoping you can help me,’ Russell began.

‘Who?’ Leissner asked.

‘My wife,’ Russell said simply, ignoring the detail of their never marrying. ‘When I left three years ago, she stayed. I’m hoping she might still be living in the same place, and I need to know the safest way to get there.’ Leissner had lost his smile. ‘I don’t think that would be wise. The Red Army will be here in a few days…’

‘I want to reach her before… before the war does,’ Russell said diplomatically.

Leissner took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to leave. What if you were caught by the Gestapo, and they tortured you? You would tell them where Varennikov was. I don’t say this to impugn your bravery of course.’

‘But this is my wife,’ Russell pleaded.

‘I understand. But you must understand – I must put the interests of the Party above those of a single individual. In the historical scheme of things, one person can never assume that sort of importance.’

‘I agree completely,’ Russell lied. ‘But this is not just a personal matter. My wife has been working undercover in Berlin since 1941, and the leadership in Moscow wishes her to survive these last days of the war. My orders,’ he went on, with slightly greater honesty, ‘were to bring Varennikov to you, and then do what I could to find her.’

‘Can you prove that?’ Leissner asked.

‘Of course,’ Russell said, pulling from his pocket Nikoladze’s letter of introduction to the Red Army. If Leissner could read Russian he was sunk, but he couldn’t think of anything better.

Leissner stared at the paper. He couldn’t read it, Russell realised, but he wasn’t going to admit it. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Where do you hope to find your wife?’

‘The last place she lived was in Wedding. On Prinz Eugen Strasse. How would I get there? Is the U-Bahn still running?’

‘It was yesterday, at least as far as Stettin Station. Your best bet would be to walk through the tunnels below here as far as Friedrichstrasse, then catch a U-Bahn if there is one, walk if there isn’t. But I don’t know how far south the front line has moved. The Red Army was still north of the Ringbahn this morning, but…’ He shrugged.

‘It’ll be obvious enough on the ground,’ Russell reassured him. Rather too obvious, if he was unlucky.

‘But you can’t go through the tunnels dressed like that,’ Leissner insisted. ‘The SS are all over the place, and they won’t take kindly to a foreign worker wandering around on his own. I’ll get you a Reichsbahn uniform from somewhere. I’ll send it down to you before morning.’

‘Would dawn be the best time to go? Are there any times of day when the shelling is less intense?’

‘No, it is more or less constant,’ Leissner told him. He seemed proud of the fact.

The pieces of the broken bridge had barely settled on the bed of the Dahme when the first Soviet tanks appeared on the river’s eastern bank, drawing yells of derision and an almost nostalgic display of firepower from the German side. It seemed too good to last, and it was. As darkness fell, signs of battle lit the northern and southern horizons, and less than an hour had passed when news of a Soviet crossing a few kilometres to the south filtered through the few barely coordinated units defending Köpenick. No order was issued by higher authority for the abandonment of the position, but only a few diehards doubted that such a move was necessary, and soon a full withdrawal was underway.

A gibbous moon was already high in the sky, and their driver had few problems manoeuvring the Panzer IV across the wide stretch of heath that lay to the west of the river. At first their intention was to follow the line of the Spree, but numerous battles were clearly raging on the eastern bank, and it seemed more prudent to drive west, through Johannisthal, before turning north. Another stretch of moonlit heathland brought them to the Teltowkanal, and they headed north alongside it, looking for a bridge across. The first two had already been destroyed, but sappers were still fixing charges to the third as they drove up. Once across, they found themselves among the houses of Berlin’s southern outskirts.

Soon after midnight they emerged from a side street onto the wide Rudower Strasse, which stretched north toward Neukölln and the city centre. It was full of people and vehicles, military and civilian, almost all heading north. The edges of the road were littered with those who would go no further – a dead man still seated at the wheel of his roofless car, a whimpering horse with only two legs. And every now and then a Soviet plane would dive out of the moon, and release a few souls more.

And there were other killers on the road. A gang of SS walked by in the opposite direction, their leader scanning each passing male. A few hundred metres up the road, Paul saw evidence of their work – two corpses swaying from makeshift gallows with pale anguished faces and snapped necks, each bearing the same roughly-scrawled message – ‘We still have the power.’ Looking ahead down the long wide road, Paul could see the taller buildings of the distant city centre silhouetted by the flash of explosions. The Soviet gunners had got there before them.

Their tank was crossing the Teltowkanal for the second time when its engine began coughing for lack of fuel, and the driver barely had time to get it off the bridge before it jerked to a halt. Not that it mattered anymore – the Teltowkanal, which arced its way across southern Berlin, was the latest defence line that had to be held at all costs, and strengthening the area around the bridge was now the priority. While the tank commander went off in search of a tow, his grenadiers were put to work digging emplacements in the cemetery across the road. It was gone two when they were finally allowed to stretch out on the wet ground and try to snatch some sleep.

It was a three-kilometre hike through the S-Bahn tunnels to Friedrichstrasse. As Russell walked northward many slivers of light – even beams in places – shone down through the cut-and-cover ceiling. This evidence of bomb and shell damage didn’t inspire much confidence in the integrity of the tunnel, but the thin grey light allowed him to walk at his usual pace, and it only took about twenty minutes to reach the S-Bahn platforms underneath Potsdam Station. These were lined with people, most still sleeping, others staring listlessly into space. No one seemed surprised by his appearance in the borrowed Reichsbahn uniform, but he stopped to take a close look at the track in several places, as he had once seen a real official do. Up above, the Soviet artillery seemed unusually fierce, and one near-miss caused a shower of dust to descend from the ceiling. A few heads were anxiously raised, but most people hardly stirred.

The next section was the worst. As he moved north, the smell of human waste grew stronger in his nostrils; a little further on, and he was picking up the metallic odour of blood. The stationary hospital trains had only just become visible in the distance when he heard the first scream, and not long after that the lower, more persistent groaning of the wounded soldiers on board became increasingly audible. It sounded like Babelsberg’s idea of a slave’s chorus, only the pain was real.

The trains seemed barely lit, and there was no way of knowing what sort of care their passengers were getting. The only person Russell saw was a young and rather pretty nurse, who was seated on some vestibule steps, puffing on a cigarette. She looked up when she heard him coming, and gave him a desolate smile.

The tunnel soon curved to the right. He guessed it passed under the Adlon Hotel, where he’d spent so many hours of his pre-war working life. He wondered if the building was still standing.

Unter den Linden Station suggested otherwise. Large chunks of sky were visible in several places, and no one was using the rubble-strewn platforms for shelter. By contrast, the long curve round towards Friedrichstrasse was the darkest section so far, and when he heard music drifting down the tunnel he thought he must be imagining it. But not for long. For one thing, it grew steadily louder; for another, it was jazz.

As he reached the Friedrichstrasse platforms he could hear the music quite clearly: the players were somewhere close by in the subterranean complex beneath the main-line station. Many of those camping out on the platforms were obviously enjoying it, feet tapping to the rhythm, smiles on their faces. He had seen nothing stranger in six years of war. Or more heartening.

He followed several corridors to reach the U-Bahn booking hall. The trains were still running all the way to See Strasse, which seemed another small miracle – the terminus couldn’t be that far from the front line. Russell waited while a woman pleaded in vain for permission to travel – her eighty-five-year-old mother was alone in her Wedding apartment, and needed help to get out before the Russians arrived. The man on the barrier was sympathetic but adamant – only people with official red passes were allowed on the trains. As she walked despairingly away Russell flashed the one that Leissner had loaned him, and hurried down to the U-Bahn platforms.

He needn’t have bothered. The trains might be running, but not with any regularity, and if the rats playing between the tracks were any judge, an arrival wasn’t imminent. When a train did arrive an hour or so later, the front four carriages were already packed with old-looking soldiers, presumably en route to the front. Russell squeezed into one of the others, almost losing his Reichsbahn cap in the mêlée.

The train must have stopped a dozen times in the tunnels between stations, and on each occasion Russell feared an announcement that it would go no further. He and his fellow-passengers were finally told as much after the train had sat at the Wedding platform for almost half an hour. This was not the nearest station to Prinz Eugen Strasse, but it was not that far away. As he walked up the platform towards the exit he noticed that the Volkssturm were not getting off, and that the front half of the train was being uncoupled for further progress up the line.

As he climbed the stairs towards street level the sounds of the war grew louder, and by the time he emerged onto Müller Strasse it was clear that the fighting front could only be a few kilometres away. The sudden detonation of several artillery shells a few hundred metres up the street was encouraging, implying, as it did, that no Soviet units had yet penetrated the area. The last thing Russell wanted to meet was a T-34.

Haste, he decided, was probably more important than caution. He walked swiftly up the eastern side of Müller Strasse, conscious of how empty this part of the city seemed. Most people would be in their basements, he supposed, just waiting for the Russians. Those still working in the city centre would be sleeping in their offices, not commuting through shellfire.

As he crossed Gericht Strasse he caught a glimpse of the Humboldthain flak towers, which had still been under construction when he left Berlin. The main tower was giving and receiving fire, its guns pumping shells towards the distant suburbs, while incoming Soviet rounds exploded on impact with the thick concrete walls to little apparent effect. The whole edifice was wreathed in smoke, like a wizard’s castle.

He took the next turning, and soon reached the intersection with Prinz Eugen Strasse. The block containing the apartment that Effi had rented as a possible bolthole was down to the right. Or had been. There was only a field of rubble there now. The neighbouring block had lost an entire wall, leaving several storeys of rooms open to the air, but Effi’s had been razed to the ground. And not recently, Russell realised with some dismay. He was sure she’d come back here, but how long had she stayed?

Each pair of blocks had its own shelter, he remembered. As he strode along the street to the next entrance, a shell exploded behind a block on the other side, throwing what looked like half a tree into the air. He broke into a run, reaching the shelter of a courtyard just as another shell landed somewhere behind him. Taking the steps to the shelter two at a time, he suddenly found himself the object of numerous stares.

The Reichsbahn uniform was obviously reassuring, and most of the shelter’s occupants wasted no time in returning to what they’d been doing. One old woman continued smiling at him for no apparent reason, so he walked across to her.

‘My husband used to wear that uniform,’ she told him.

‘Ah.’

‘And before you ask – no, he wasn’t killed in this war. He didn’t live to see it, the lucky old sod.’

Russell laughed, then remembered why he was there. ‘Can you tell me when the block across the street was bombed?’ he asked.

‘Autumn of ’43,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the month. Did you know someone who lived there?’

‘Yes.’

‘No one survived, I’m afraid. The whole building came down, and went right through the basement ceiling. They were digging for days, but they didn’t find anyone alive.’

Russell felt cold spreading across his chest, as if his heart was a heat-pump and someone had just switched it off. He told himself that she’d probably moved out long before, that the Effi he knew would never have settled for simply waiting out the war. She had to be alive. Had to be.

He went back up to the street, and began retracing his steps towards Wedding Station. Shells were now landing several blocks to the north, which was just as well, because he was in the mood for tempting fate. If she was gone, then Berlin could have him splashed across its walls.

But he couldn’t really believe that she was. And if she wasn’t, then how the hell was he going to find her? Where else could he go, who else could he ask?

As he approached the station he suddenly remembered Uwe Kuzorra, the police detective who had helped him escape in 1941, and who lived only half an hour’s walk away. He would have access to state records, to lists of bomb victims, and of those arrested.

No, Russell told himself. If Kuzorra was still working for the police, he wouldn’t be at home. And if he wasn’t, then he wouldn’t be able to help. There was no point.

Heading underground once more, he wondered who else he could go to. The only person he could think of was Jens. At least he knew that Jens was still in Berlin. He might know something, and if Russell had to beat it out of him, he was more than willing to do so.

The train at the platform eventually pulled out, but had only reached Oranienburger Strasse when its journey was abruptly cut short. Russell had sometimes used this stop when visiting the Blumenthals in 1941, and felt a pang at the memory. Martin and Leonore were almost certainly dead, but their daughter Ali had always said she would rather go underground than accept a Gestapo invitation to the east. If she had, she might still be alive. There had been a lot of decent ‘aryans’ in Berlin before the war, and Russell was willing to bet that some would have offered their Jewish friends a helping hand.

Two other memories caught up with him as he walked down the stretch of Friedrichstrasse that lay between the Spree and the railway bridge. First he came to Siggi’s Bar, half in ruins and boarded over; it was there that he’d waited for Effi on that terrible evening, believing that he’d never see her or Paul again. And there, on the other side of the street, was the model shop that he and Paul had often visited, with the proprietor who never tired of talking about his customer, the Reichsmarschal. That too was boarded up, and so, Russell guessed, was Goering’s hunting lodge out at Karinhall, where the Reich’s largest model railway was reputedly laid out. Perhaps the Russians were out there now, playing with the trains. Or perhaps they’d shipped them home to Stalin.

There was no music playing beneath Friedrichstrasse Station, which was something of a disappointment. Down in the tunnel there was nothing to distract him from thoughts of Effi, and the possibility that she had died in Prinz Eugen Strasse. There was not even consolation in the certainty of a quick death – she might have been under the rubble for days.

The hospital trains gave him something else to think about. He remembered that Leissner had talked about a possible flooding of the tunnels, and wondered if any provision had been made for an emergency evacuation of the wounded. Knowing the SS, he doubted it.

Back at their hideaway in the abandoned station, Varennikov looked up from the book he was reading by candlelight. ‘No luck,’ he deduced from Russell’s expression.

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the Russian said in a heartfelt tone. ‘I don’t know how I’d survive without my Irina.’

Dawn brought a quickening of the long range artillery attacks, but Paul’s area around the Schulenburg Bridge only received a couple of hits. Most of the shells were falling far behind them, on the Old Town, the government quarter and the West End. Either Ivan was having a particularly inaccurate morning, or he was saving the more obvious military targets for when his infantry was poised and waiting on the other side of the canal.

Sent in search of something to eat by his fellow-excavators, Paul ran into soldiers from his own division. There were about forty of them in the immediate vicinity, a lieutenant told him. Their situation had been reported, he said, but they hadn’t yet received any new instructions. Until they did, it seemed wisest – he nodded his head in the direction of the SS officer who seemed in overall charge of the Schulenburg Bridge position – to follow the orders of those on the spot.

A mess had been set up in the underground booking hall of the Grenzallee station. It was staffed by local volunteers, women in their forties and fifties with gaunt faces and dead eyes. A huge tureen of soup was all they had to offer, but it smelled and tasted good – the ingredients, one women told him in a whisper – had come from the Karstadt department store on Hermann Strasse, two kilometres up the road. The SS in charge of the adjoining warehouse had been cajoled into releasing some supplies for the fighting men at the front.

Back in the cemetery, Paul shared out the contents of his billycan. There had been a handbill delivery in his absence, and he read through one as he ate. Hitler, it seemed, was actually in Berlin, and still directing the military traffic. And General Wenck was on his way to relieve the capital. According to the Führer Order reprinted as part of the leaflet, ‘Wenck’s Army’ had been summoned to Berlin’s aid, and was now approaching the city. ‘Berlin is waiting for you! Berlin longs for you with all its heart!’ the order concluded. It sounded like some idiot hero in a Babelsberg weepie.

Paul didn’t believe a word of it, and could hardly bear the look of hope on Werner’s face.

A couple of hours later, a passing corporal filled them in on the latest news. The Soviet shelling, unlike the Allied air raids which preceded it, was more or less continuous, and those Berliners that could had taken up more-or-less permanent residence in underground shelters of one sort or another. After two whole days of this many had begun to wonder where their food would come from when present supplies ran out. It was no great secret where the authorities had stored the ration supplies, and that morning crowds had gathered outside many of the relevant premises, invading and looting those that were insufficiently guarded.

At the Karstadt department store on Hermann Strasse, the SS were in charge, and seemed intent on blowing up the building rather than leave the Russians such a treasure trove of supplies. The people of Neukölln had turned up en masse, and been grudgingly permitted a few hours to cart away all of the food. Some had taken the opportunity to seize less edible ware, like silk dresses and fur coats, but Karstadt staff had guarded the doors and taken such items back. Having their stock reduced to rubble was obviously preferable to giving it away.

‘And there’s a big drive on to round up deserters,’ the talkative corporal added. ‘It started this morning. There are roadblocks everywhere, and gangs of the black bastards are going round the basements. Those they find, they hang, so I advise you all to wait here for Ivan.’

He laughed at his own joke, re-lit the stump of his cigarette, and wandered off down the cemetery path.

It wouldn’t be long, Paul thought. Looking around, he could see smoke rising in every direction. Soon this cemetery would erupt all around them, throwing up old corpses, sucking in new. Berlin was waiting for an army all right, but it wasn’t Wenck’s.

It was mid-afternoon when a private came to fetch him. The largest remnant of his division was deployed four kilometres to the east, where the road to Mariendorf and Lichtenrade crossed over the same canal, and he and his fellow stragglers were to join it at once. The assembly point was outside the Grenzallee U-Bahn station.

‘I’m on my way,’ Paul said, stabbing his spade into the earth.

‘Can I come too?’ Werner asked. ‘Where you’re going is only a few kilometres from my house.’

The SS on the bridge might argue, but only if someone was foolish enough to ask them. ‘Okay’, he told the boy. After wishing the tank team luck they left the cemetery by the back gate, and worked their through the side streets to the station, where thirty-odd men were scattered across the staircase leading down to the booking hall. The lieutenant looked twice at Werner, but said nothing.

There was no transport, but it was only an hour’s march, and still light enough outside for vehicles to be something of a mixed blessing.

The lieutenant fell them in and sent them off in pairs, keeping a decent distance between them to minimise the damage a single shell might do. The first street they walked down was almost intact, but the hospital district on the other side of the Britzer Damm had been almost obliterated, and the area of small streets which lay between the canal and the Tempelhof aerodrome was in equally terrible shape. There were ruins and rubble everywhere, and no sign that anyone was interested in clearing anything up. The few adults they passed looked either angry and resentful or listless and indifferent; the only child they encountered ran alongside them firing an imaginary gun and making the appropriate noises, until Paul felt like shooting him.

It was getting dark by the time they reached the Berliner Chaussee, and another long hour was spent waiting in the deepening cold while the lieutenant sought out the divisional HQ. He found it in the basement of a factory which overlooked the canal basin just east of the Stubenrauch Bridge. The remnants of the division – all 130 of them – were deployed in and around the basin, mostly in other industrial buildings. The division’s last four artillery pieces were well dug in and camouflaged, ready for the Soviet onslaught. Paul had been hoping to find a place with one of them, but there was already a waiting list. At least ten men had to die before he got his old job back, and only then if the gun survived its minders.

Still, there was food enough, and old acquaintances to pass the time with. Not everyone had died. Not yet.

The Hitlerjugend held his watch up to the kerosene lamp. ‘It’s after nine,’ he told Effi.

She’d lost track of the time, something easy to do in what smelt and felt like the bowels of the earth. She could no longer hear or see the war, but the constant turnover of casualties was proof enough of its continuance. The smell of fresh blood had been with her all day.

The shift had lasted twelve hours. She was working as a nursing assistant, her uniform a bloodstained apron, her tasks mostly menial – fetching and carrying, boiling instruments, cleaning what had to be cleaned with water collected from the pumps outside. Her only close contact with patients lay in bandaging the wounded and trying to comfort the dying.

Rosa had been with her throughout, sometimes helping but mostly just drawing. Effi had no idea what mental and emotional havoc was being wreaked on the already traumatised seven-year-old, but she didn’t dare let her out of her sight. She told herself that watching people so intent on saving life must surely have a positive effect, but she didn’t really believe it.

The girl seemed okay. They’d just shared a can of sardines and some bread in the room which passed for a hospital staff room, and were sitting at their table, listening to the moans of the wounded next door. The hospital was running out of morphine, and only those in excruciating pain were getting any. Some of the unlucky ones were stoical beyond belief, but most found it easier to groan or scream. Effi had hardly noticed while she was working, but now it made her want to join in.

Annaliese Huiskes sat down beside them. She had somehow got hold of a hot cup of tea, which she offered to share. ‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ she told Effi in a low voice.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Effi told her. ‘You made a brilliant recovery.’ Annaliese had let Effi’s real name slip, but answered the questioning looks with an explanation of staggering simplicity. Dagmar had been given that nick-name, Annaliese explained, because she looked so much like the film star Effi Koenen.

‘The traitor,’ one doctor had murmured. Another had denied the resemblance.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ Effi said, gesturing at the ringed finger. ‘Did you get married?’

A shadow passed over the other woman’s face. ‘A corpse marriage,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t call it that – I hate it when other people use that phrase. But it’s more than three years ago. Maybe you’d disappeared by then, but there was a Führer decree allowing women who’d just lost their fiancées to marry them post-mortem. There was a pension included, and that’s why I went for it, but I did love Gerd, and I’m sure he’d have seen the funny side of it – marrying me when he was already dead.’ She smiled to herself. ‘After the war I’ll find a real husband. Or try to. I suppose there’ll be a shortage of men, and I’m not exactly young any more. What about you? What happened to John?’

‘Who’s John?’ Rosa asked.

‘He was my boyfriend. He went away to Sweden, and I hope he’ll be back when all this is over.’

‘Why shouldn’t he be?’ Annaliese asked.

‘Three and a half years is a long time.’

Annaliese made a face. ‘He was crazy about you. I only met him once, but that much was obvious.’

‘He was then. But if you’re not young any more, what does that make me?’ Effi lowered a voice to a whisper. ‘Do you know you’re the first person who’s recognised me in three years?’

‘You look different, but your eyes are the same. And you don’t look old. I think we’ll both look pretty good once we’ve had some decent food and slept through the night a few times. How about your career? Are you going back to it?’

Effi shrugged. ‘Who knows? There aren’t many parts for women in their forties.’

Rosa had been paying attention. ‘Were you an actress?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘I was,’ Effi admitted. ‘Quite a good one.’

After his trip out to Wedding, Russell had felt physically and emotionally exhausted. Lying down for a few hours had given his body some rest, but his brain was too busy contemplating Effi’s possible fate for sleep to take over. He had to do something, had to keep on the move. He decided he would go back to Schmargendorf and confront Jens. That evening, after dark.

Once the last hint of light had disappeared from the cracks in the booking hall ceiling, he made his way down to the tunnel. A different comrade was on guard, and saw no problem in Russell seeing his boss. He found Leissner in his office, head bent over a ledger. When the men from Moscow arrived they would all be up-to-date.

The Reichsbahn man greeted Russell with a glimmer of a smile, and raised no objections to another foray. He had realised – or been told – that Varennikov was the one who mattered. Or – perish the thought – Moscow had let it slip that Russell himself was far from indispensable.

Maybe he was being paranoid. Leissner was friendly enough, and seemed more than happy to give him a run-down of the current military situation. The Red Army had breached the Teltowkanal defence line in the south-western suburbs that morning, and were expected in Zehlendorf and Dahlem sometime tomorrow. Schmargendorf should still be safe, but only for forty-eight hours.

The U-Bahn, Leissner added, was no longer working – the tunnels were being booby-trapped to prevent the Soviets from using them. And the SS had spent the afternoon setting up lots of checkpoints, particularly in the western half of the city. Russell was unlikely to face summary execution in his Reichsbahn uniform, but now that the trains had stopped running he might be pressed into military service. It would, Leissner suggested, be advisable not to argue.

Russell thanked him, and made his way up and over the elevated tracks to the goods yard entrance. Night had now fallen, and Berlin was bathed in the grim orange glow of cloud-reflected fires. It felt like rain, which might at least put some of them out.

He walked west, keeping clear of the main thoroughfares and inching his head around corners to check what lay ahead. Twice he avoided checkpoints in this manner, carefully working his way around them. And on three other occasions he came upon those who’d not been so careful, who were now swinging from makeshift gibbets with the signatures of psychopaths pinned to their chests.

Incoming shells exploded at irregular intervals as the evening wore on, some as close as a neighbouring street, but there was no point in worrying about them. If staying alive was his goal he should have stayed in London.

By the time he reached the Biesinger house in Schmargendorf it was gone ten, and he felt like falling over. It occurred to him that he’d hardly eaten all day, which hadn’t been very sensible. If he ever did find Effi, she’d be looking after him.

There were no lights visible through the uncurtained windows, but Jens had his own basement shelter, as befitted a high-ranking Party official. If he was home, he’d be ensconced down there, probably drowning the Reich’s many sorrows. Russell hoped he’d be conscious enough to hear the door-knock.

He gave it a mighty series of bangs, which the Russians probably heard in Teltow, and was about to repeat the effort when he heard footsteps. As the door began to open he pushed his way through, forcing a gasp from the person inside. A woman’s gasp. It was Zarah.

‘What do you… who…’

‘It’s John,’ he told her, shutting the door behind him.

‘John?’ she exclaimed in astonishment. What are you…’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I can’t believe it. Come downstairs, where we can see each other.’

He followed her down to the cellar. There were camp beds against three of the walls, tables, chairs and armchairs crammed into the centre of the room.

She turned to look at him, and saw the uniform. ‘What…?’

‘Don’t ask. I take it Jens isn’t here?’

It wasn’t really a question, but she answered with an almost defiant ‘no’. She looked different, much thinner than the last time he’d seen her, and her copper hair was cut much shorter. She should have looked less attractive, but there was something in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

‘Will he be back tonight?’

‘I don’t think so. What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for Effi. I…’

‘I don’t know where she is,’ Zarah said despairingly, as if she should know.

‘You’ve seen her,’ Russell said, hope rising inside him.

‘Not for almost a month.’

‘But you’ve seen her. She’s alive.’ He felt joy sweep through his head and heart.

‘I hope so. She must have been arrested.’

That was an eventuality that Russell hadn’t even considered. ‘What for?’ he asked stupidly.

Zarah smiled ruefully. ‘I don’t know that either. She has never told me anything about the life she’s been living. I know she must be involved in some sort of resistance movement. With the communists, perhaps. I really don’t know.’

‘But what makes you think she’s been arrested?’

‘She didn’t turn up at our usual time. And she hasn’t been in contact since.’

‘Yes, but what makes you think she’s been arrested?’ Russell repeated. ‘She might have been hurt in an air raid. Or even killed,’ he added, almost against his own will.

‘No, I would know,’ Zarah insisted. ‘John, I know you always thought we were like chalk and cheese – and we are – but there’s a bond… I can’t explain it, but it’s there. Sometimes I’ve wished it wasn’t, and I know Effi has too, but it is. I would know if she’d been killed.’

Russell believed her, or wanted to. ‘Okay. So you met regularly. Since when?’

‘It was the end of April, I think. In 1943. She waylaid me in the cinema, sat down beside me at a matinee on Hardenberg Strasse. I nearly had a heart attack. She sounded just the same, but when the lights came on I found that I’d been talking to an old woman. I don’t think I would recognised her if we’d met in the street. Anyway, we went for a walk in the Tiergarten, and she told me everything that had happened, and that you had escaped to Sweden.’

‘How did she find that out?’

‘I don’t know, but she did. She asked me to pass it on to your exwife, so that she could tell your son. Which of course I did. And after that we met every two weeks, usually at the same time, but in different places. She soon had another identity, younger than the one before, but still older than her real age. She had her hair cut much shorter, and she just looked different somehow. It was extraordinary. I don’t how she does it.’

‘Where is she living?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t even tell me what name she was using.’ Zarah smiled, and for the first time in their long acquaintanceship Russell saw something of Effi in her sister. ‘But I found out. I almost ran into her on the street one day, but she didn’t see me, and I was afraid I might mess something up if I just went up to her. And then it occurred to me – I could follow her. And I did, all the way to her home. It was an apartment at Bismarck Strasse 185. Number 4.

‘I never told her that I’d found out, because I knew it would worry her, my knowing. I used to give her ration stamps and money. She took them, but I never got the feeling she needed them.’

This was wonderful, Russell thought, so much better than he’d feared. Or it had been until three weeks ago. ‘So when was this meeting she didn’t turn up for?’

‘Ten days ago. Friday the 13th.’ She wrung her hands. ‘I wasn’t that worried at the time – it had happened before. But she’d always contacted me within a couple of days and set my mind at rest. So I waited a few days, and then I really did start to worry. I went round to Bismarck Strasse on the Wednesday, and the portierfrau told me that she hadn’t seen any of them since the previous Thursday. When she said ‘them’ I thought I’d got the wrong flat, but I managed to get her talking, and it all came out. Frau von Freiwald and her grown-up niece Mathilde had been living there for almost two years, and only the previous week another niece – a small girl – had arrived from Dresden. Frau von Freiwald and the young girl had been there on the Thursday, but no one had seen them since. They must have been arrested, John – Effi wouldn’t leave Berlin without telling me. And who are these fictional nieces – have you any idea?’

‘None at all. Have you been back there since?’

‘Yesterday. There was no one there, and the portierfrau still hadn’t seen any of them.’

Russell ran a hand through his hair. ‘Have you asked anyone… no, silly question – who could you ask? Jens, maybe – did he know you were seeing Effi?’

‘No, I couldn’t risk telling him. It wasn’t that I thought he would turn her in, not really. It was just easier not to, and.. well, he’s had a lot to deal with lately. Look,’ she went on, responding to the look which Russell failed to suppress, ‘I know you never liked him…’

‘I never liked his politics.’

‘No, John, be honest, you didn’t like him.’

‘Not much, no.’

‘I was never interested in politics, and I used to think he was a decent man. He was a good father to Lothar until the war took up all his time.’

‘Where is Lothar?’

‘With my parents. Effi wouldn’t even let me tell them that she was still alive.’

‘Why aren’t you there too?’

‘Why do you think? Lothar’s as safe as any German could be, and I had to be here in case Effi needed me.’

‘Of course,’ Russell said, though until that evening he’d never quite appreciated just how close the sisters were.

‘But now that she really needs me, I haven’t been able to do anything,’ Zarah bitterly admitted. ‘I did ask Jens to look into it – I said Erna von Freiwald was an old friend from school who’d recently got in touch, and had then been arrested. I made up a story about her involvement with a group printing leaflets of Pastor Niemöller’s speeches – the Christians are the only dissidents Jens has any sympathy for. He promised he would look into it, but I don’t think he looked very hard. He discovered there was no one of that name in Lehrter Prison, or in the women’s prison on Barnim Strasse. That was yesterday, and when I asked him again today he told me to forget the whole business, that we had our own fates to worry about. And then he showed me these suicide pills he’d gotten hold of, and seemed to think I would shower him with gratitude. ‘What about Lothar?’ I asked him. ‘And do you know what he said? He said Lothar would know that his parents had been “true to the very end”. I couldn’t stand being with him for a moment longer. I just walked out of his office and came home. I tell you, John, I feel like a corpse bride.’

‘So what will you do now?’

‘Wait for the Russians, I suppose.’

‘That could be dangerous,’ Russell replied without any thought. What other choices did she have?

‘You mean I might be raped?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then that’s what’ll happen, John. I intend to see my son again.’

‘That sounds like a very sane way of looking at it.’

‘I hope so. But what are you going to do?’

‘I came to find Effi. And my son. I’ll keep on looking until I do.’ He smiled to himself. ‘You know Effi rented a flat in Wedding in case we needed to hide from the police?’

‘Yes, she told me that.’

‘I went up there yesterday, hoping against hope that she might still be there. And the whole building was gone, absolutely flattened, and I thought, well, you can imagine, and my heart seemed to shrivel inside me…’

‘She’s alive, John, I’m sure she is. We’ll get her back’

‘I love you for believing that,’ he said, and took her in his arms. ‘I must get back,’ he said after a while. At the outside door they wished each other luck, and Russell had a fleeting memory of standing on the same stoop more than three years earlier, after a drunken Jens had more or less confessed to the deliberate starvation of occupied Russia.

‘And here we have the come-uppance,’ he murmured to himself, as he began the long walk back. Two more hours of screeching shells and sudden flares, of wending his way through ruins and evading the occasional patrol, and he was back in the abandoned station. Varennikov was already asleep, so Russell pinched out the still-burning candle and laid himself out on his bed. He had probably walked further in the last five days than in all the five years that preceded them, and he felt completely exhausted.

Eyes closed, he suddenly remembered Kuzorra again. If the detective still worked at the ‘Alex’ police headquarters he would have access to arrest records. But how could he could be contacted?