Silesian Station

Silesian Angels

Russell had considered driving the 450 kilometres to the Polish border - the autobahn would, after all, have carried him two-thirds of the way - but finding petrol in Silesia might prove difficult, and there was always the chance that some jumped-up uniform on manoeuvres would choose to commandeer the car. Still, as his train slipped further and further behind schedule he began to wish that he had risked it. Passages of exhilarating speed were few and far between; the train spent most of its time either advancing at a steady crawl or wearily hissing to a complete stop.

He had planned to spend the night in the border town of Beuthen, but on arrival in a rapidly-darkening Breslau he and his fellow-passengers were informed that the train's onward journey would be subject to delay. The sight of their decoupled locomotive heading off into the gloom was disheartening, and enquiries at the booking office offered no compensatory encouragement. Russell decided he would rather spend the night in a hotel.

Others had already reached the same conclusion, and the taxi rank outside the station was empty. Asking after trams, he was told that the city centre was only a ten-minute walk away. 'Past the Party House,' the kiosk holder told him, pointing up the street towards a building draped with the usual giant swastikas, 'and turn right.'

Darkness had fallen, and the dimly-lit streets seemed strangely empty for nine in the evening. As he walked his spirits seemed to lift, and he realized that he usually felt safer outside Berlin. Why was that? Because he felt safer in motion? Or because he had only himself to worry about?

The first hotel he came to was the Monopol. The name was familiar, and he soon found out why - a placard attached to the wall in reception proudly announced that Hitler had stayed the night in 1932. The room in question had doubtless been preserved in all its Fuhrer-scented glory, complete with pubic hairs trapped in amber and sheets for sniffing.

His own first floor room was small, but included a private bathroom. After testing the bed for bounce he went back down to the bar, which was almost as empty as the streets. Two men in suits dourly acknowledged his greeting and turned their attention back to their schnapps. Russell tried engaging the barman in conversation, but all attempts to elicit a quotable opinion about anything more serious than football proved fruitless. He left his beer unfinished, ordered an early wake-up call at reception, and wearily climbed the stairs to his room.

He was out of the hotel soon after seven the following morning, having reserved a room for two nights hence. It was another blue sky day, and the sun had long since risen above the thin line of mountains to the south. Russell couldn't recall a better summer, and remembered that that was what everyone had said about 1914. The 'wonderful summer before the war.'

Over coffee and rolls in the station restaurant he scanned the papers for something to follow up, and found exactly what he was looking for. Both carried virtually identical accounts of a border incident the previous day. Polish provocateurs had crossed the border some ten kilometres north-west of Beuthen and attacked a German farmer and his family in the village of Ble-chowka. The farmer had been badly beaten, his wife subjected to unspeakable - but unspecified - indignities. How much longer, the editors asked, could the Reich put up with such outrageous behaviour from its eastern neighbour? About a month, if Slaney was right.

Russell finished his coffee and looked up at the clock above the departure board. He had half an hour to spare - time to do a little preliminary checking. There was a man named Josef Mohlmann on the list which Russell had memorized in New York, and he worked for the railway administration here in Breslau. Half an hour should be long enough to find the building.

In the event, it took only a couple of minutes. A convenient official gave Russell the necessary information - the Reichsbahn Direktion building was only a short walk away, on the other side of the station. He walked through the tunnel and found it without difficulty - a five-storey stone block the size of a small football pitch. Six huge statues were perched high above the colon-naded entrance, three of which bore striking resemblances to Jesus, Cortez and Britannia. All of whom seemed somewhat unlikely subjects.

It was almost eight o'clock, and a steady stream of suited workers was pouring in through the front doors. His target might be one of them, but Russell had no time to introduce himself that morning. He would pay Mohlmann a visit when he got back from the border.

He walked back down the tunnel and up the steps to an empty Platform 3. A short train was soon shunted into the station for Russell and the handful of other passengers. Soon they were out of Breslau and chugging south-eastward towards Oppeln through fields of golden grain. Several rakes of empty tank transporters were stabled in country sidings, but the tanks themselves were nowhere to be seen.

The landscape slowly grew more hilly, and soon after noon the first pits of the Silesian coalfield loomed into view. The train stopped for several minutes in Gleiwitz, then ran on towards Beuthen and the eighteen-year-old border between Germany and Poland, stretches of forest alternating with straggling mining villages.

Before 1918 Gleiwitz, Beuthen, Konigshutte and Kattowitz had been the four principal towns of German Upper Silesia, but once the new borders had been established by the Versailles peace-makers and a local plebiscite, the latter two - along with 80 per cent of the coal mines and industrial installations - had found themselves in Poland. Beuthen had been spared, but now lay in a narrow and decidedly vulnerable finger of German territory. To the north, east and south the Polish border lay less than three kilometres away.

A taxi driver in the station forecourt told Russell that the border village of Blechowka was about ten kilometres to the north-west, and proved willing to take him there in his rather ancient-looking vehicle. He made no mention of the previous day's frontier incident, and Russell decided not to tempt fate by introducing the subject, settling instead for a few general enquiries about local attitudes.

The driver, a grey-haired man in his fifties or sixties, was only too happy to list German Silesian grievances. The Poles had taken most of their coal, and they had no real need for so much - half the mines weren't even being worked anymore. And it was German men who had excavated them, and built the railways and the industries that went with them. Why should the Poles get all the benefit?

'Should we take them back?' Russell asked.

'Not if it means war,' the man said, surprising him. 'But if the Poles start one, well that's another matter!'

Russell had expected a rough ride to Blechowka, but the roads had been recently improved, presumably by the military. The villages they passed through seemed busy and prosperous: a few children watched the taxi wheeze by, but most of the inhabitants were only visible in the distance, working in the fields. The manoeuvres were taking place thirty kilometres to the north, the driver volunteered, and the locals were hurrying to get the harvest in before they moved south.

Blechowka was on the other side of the Beuthen Forest, a straggly street of houses and farms less than a kilometre from the border. It had a couple of shops and a police station worthy of a much larger community. Russell marched into the latter and asked the duty officer about the previous day's incident.

The man asked him what he was talking about.

Russell showed him the newspaper report, and watched an emotional sequence play itself out in the man's face - from bewilderment to suspicion, anxiety to denial. 'I'll have to see about this,' he said, and disappeared through an adjoining door, newspaper in hand.

He returned with a question a couple of minutes later. 'Who are you?'

'I'm a journalist,' Russell said, getting out his accreditation from the Propaganda Ministry. 'The German people have the right to know about the threats facing them,' he added for good measure.

The man disappeared again, for longer this time. He returned with the smile of someone who had moved a problem on. 'You must talk to the authorities in Beuthen,' he told Russell, returning the newspaper. 'At the Rathaus. We cannot help you here.'

Russell didn't bother to argue. Back outside, he told the taxi driver to wait and walked up the street to the village shops. He bought himself an apple in the grocer's and asked the woman behind the counter about the previous day's excitement. She looked at him blankly.

They had made it up. Some Party hack had consulted an atlas, picked on a village near the border, and made the whole story up. Choosing a real village - one that could be checked - was more arrogant than stupid. They had simply assumed that no one would bother to check. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred they would have been right.

'We're going back,' he told the taxi driver.

The Rathaus in Beuthen was a substantial affair, the officials suitably sure of themselves. They had also had time to sort out their answers. When Russell complained about the newspaper story, one of his two interviewees asked him what more he needed to know - surely the articles had facts enough to make German blood boil? When Russell pointed out that he had been to Blechowka, the other man asked him if he realized that unaccompanied foreign nationals were not allowed access to the border area.

'I didn't know that,' Russell admitted, 'and I apologise for doing so. But I still want to know why no one in Blechowka noticed this terrifying Polish intrusion.'

The first official pursed his lips in frustration. 'You can't expect local people to know everything that is happening in their area. I can assure you that such incidents are becoming more and more frequent. As are attacks on innocent Germans on the other side of the border. Why are you not investigating them?'

'I intend to,' Russell said with a smile. 'The border is open, I assume?'

'We have not closed it. I cannot speak for the Poles.'

His taxi driver was waiting hopefully in the square, but declined the offer of a paid jaunt into Poland. 'They might take the car,' he explained. 'And I don't have a passport,' he added crushingly.

'The station then,' Russell said, more in hope than expectation.

As it happened, there was an international train due, and it was scheduled to stop at Kattowitz. The good news ended there, however. The train was an hour late, and took almost three hours to complete the fifteen kilometre journey. Most of this time was spent at the German and Polish border posts, which glared at each other across a weed-strewn no man's land. The Germans were only interested in contraband, particularly goods smuggled out for German Jews by misguided aryans. The Poles were only interested in people, regarding every German as a potential fifth columnist. It was all very time-consuming, not to say intensely irritating. For the second day running Russell found himself arriving in a strange city with darkness falling.

A Polish railway official with a few words of English pointed out the nearest hotel, which stood almost opposite the station entrance. It had the same name as his hotel in Breslau, but Russell rather doubted whether Hitler would ever patronize this Monopol - the rooms seemed designed for a race of dwarves, or perhaps Propaganda Ministers. The bed was a carpet of springs, the wall dotted with recently slain mosquitoes, and the bathroom was fifty metres away down a barely-lit corridor. 'Welcome to Kattowitz,' Russell muttered. 'Or even Katowice,' he corrected himself.

Russell's morning interview at the old Rathaus was instructive. His interviewee, a skeletal old man with wispy grey hair and weary eyes, was Tadeusz Jedrychowski. He announced himself as Commissioner for the Silesian District, but left the nature of his responsibilities undefined. He was in civilian clothes, an open white shirt and grey suit as faded as the eyes.

His German was as good as Russell's. He responded to the first question about Polish incursions into Germany with a tired shrug. 'It's all nonsense,' he said. 'Sheer make-believe. I mean, you must ask yourself - why would we give them the excuse they are looking for?'

When Russell asked about German incursions into Poland, Jedrychowski invited him into the next room, where a huge map of the border area was festooned with pins. 'Each of these represents a violation of our border. Most have not been serious, it is true - a few hotheads with too much to drink. But some have been. Men in uniform, whether army or Hitler's private goons. And more than twenty of our people have been killed in the last six months.'

'What about the Germans who live on the Polish side of the border?'

'Some get involved, but most just want to get on with their lives.'

Russell took care with his next question. 'Those who do get involved - it would be understandable if their Polish neighbours sought to punish them.'

'It would. And it happens. But not on the scale the Germans claim. Or anything like it.' He ushered Russell back into his own office. 'We want peace, you know. We have nothing to gain from war.'

'And can it be avoided?'

Jedrychowski managed another weary smile. 'I don't think so.'

An international train was due soon after eleven, and Russell decided to catch it. A conscientious journalist would have checked out one of the pins on Jedrychowski's map, but an afternoon roaming Polish dirttracks and another night on a broken trampoline were far from appealing. Besides, he believed the Poles. When you looked at the overall situation, and the interests of those involved, the Polish claims made sense. Unlike those of the Germans.

The train was on time and the border rituals shorter, at least on the Polish side. As the afternoon wore on, pit wheels, slag heaps and sidings gave way to forests and fields, mining towns to market towns. Russell sat in the half-empty dining car, nursing a glass of schnapps and writing out his Silesian story for dispatch from Breslau. It was not an easy one to write, but over the years he'd grown quite adept at exposing the Nazis as shameless liars without actually saying so.

They reached Breslau soon after six, too late, Russell guessed, for catching Josef Mohlmann at work in the Direktion Reichsbahn building. He walked across on the off -chance, and was directed up to a room on the third floor, just in time to intercept a young parasol-wielding secretary. Yes, Herr Mohlmann was still in his office, she said, clearly keen to be on her way.

'I'm an old friend,' Russell lied helpfully.

'You know where he is then,' she said cheerfully, giving him the clue he needed with a slight flick of the head.

'Thanks,' he said, walking in the direction indicated. The first door he came to bore Mohlmann's name under the job description Deputy Director of Operations, South-East Germany. Without hesitating, he opened the door and walked in.

A man of around forty looked up from what looked like a sheaf of time-tables, light flashing off his spectacles as he did so. His short brown hair was combed straight back, his face carved in the sort of angles a cubist would have admired. Elastic arm-bands held up his sleeves, red braces his trousers.

His response to Russell's precipitate entry belied the sternness of his features. 'Good evening,' he said questioningly, when most men so confronted would have spluttered something along the lines of 'Who the hell are you?'

'Good evening,' Russell replied, advancing with hand extended, his brain working overtime. He'd expected a lowly cog in the Reichsbahn's administrative machinery, not a Deputy Director of Operations. 'Your secretary told me to go straight in,' he lied. 'I have a message for you,' he said as they shook hands. 'From Franz Boyens in America.'

Mohlmann's eyes lit up. 'From Franz? He is well?'

'He's fine.'

'When did you see him?'

'A few weeks ago. In New York. Look, do you have time for a meal or a drink somewhere?'

Mohlmann looked down at his timetables, and his hand jerked slightly, as if he was checking a sudden desire to sweep them from his desk. 'Of course,' he said. 'I work too many hours in any case,' he added jokingly, taking his suit jacket from the back of his chair.

The building seemed almost empty as they walked down the wide central staircase, but Russell hadn't wanted to risk a real conversation in Mohlmann's office - there was no knowing how thick the walls were or who was on the other side.

'Where shall we go?' Mohlmann asked. 'I have a car,' he added almost apologetically.

'It's your city,' Russell said.

'The Biergartenstrasse then. It's the local name for the promenade above the Stadtgraben,' he explained. 'And not too far away.'

His car, an Opel Kapitan, was parked behind the building. They drove round the station, under the bridge carrying the westbound tracks, and up towards the city centre. Biergartenstrasse was aptly named - a series of beer gardens overlooking the waters of the ancient city moat - and doing a brisk business with after-work drinkers. 'This is the furthest garden from the loud-speakers,' Mohlmann said, pushing through a particular gate. He steered Russell to a tree-shaded table and insisted on buying the first round. 'So tell me about Franz.'

Russell did. The Americans had actually introduced him to Franz Boyens, a serious man in his thirties who yearned to do something for what he called the real Germany. He had been a signalling engineer in Breslau until 1934, when someone had informed the Gestapo of his involvement in a local strike. After six months in a concentration camp Boyens had smuggled himself into Poland on a freight train, walked all the way to the Baltic, and worked his passage to America. The New World had provided him with rewarding work and a loving wife, things that would have caused many men to forget their anger and sorrow for the old country, but Boyens' success had just made him sorrier for those he'd left behind. Men like Mohlmann, whom he'd known in the final years of the Weimar Republic.

Russell had liked Boyens. He told Mohlmann about his job with the Pennsylvania Railroad, about his expectant wife Jeannie and their house in suburban Trenton with its big garden backing onto the tracks. He told him that Boyens was active in the union, and a campaigner against the pro-Nazis who dominated the German-American Bund. All of which was true, at least in outline.

'I'm really happy for him,' Mohlmann said. 'I didn't know him for long, but, well, it was a time when you found out who your friends were. When the Nazis were arresting anyone who'd ever said a word against them.'

'I was here,' Russell said. 'In Berlin, that is.'

Mohlmann gave him a shrewd look. 'So you know then.'

This was the moment to talk about potential American help for resisters, but Russell held back. He simply nodded, and signalled the waiter to bring them more beers. 'Have you always lived in Breslau?' he asked.

'No. I was posted here in 1920. I was called up in the last week of the war,' he added, 'and my father had a job waiting for me when I was discharged. He was a Station Manager in Hamburg, and he wanted me as far away as possible, in case anyone accused him of nepotism. And my wife liked it here.' He looked away, as if gazing out across the water, but not before Russell had seen the hint of tears in his eyes. 'She died not long ago,' Mohlmann said, as if he still had trouble believing it.

'I'm sorry.'

'It takes some getting used to.'

'Do you have any children?'

'Two daughters, both married to Party members. One in Dresden, one in Berlin.'

'Ah.'

'At least they're safe,' he said wryly.

'I've been down to the border for my newspaper,' Russell told him, 'but I had another reason for coming to Breslau.' He told Mohlmann the story of Miriam Rosenberg's probable trip to Berlin, and studied the other man's face as he did so. He wasn't disappointed.

'That's disgusting,' was Mohlmann's verdict on the Berlin Kripo's refusal to investigate.

Russell showed him his picture of the Rosenberg family.

Mohlmann studied it closely. 'You know, I think I saw this girl. A month, six weeks ago - I can't be sure. I was on my way to lunch with a friend in the station and a girl like this was sitting on the seat outside. She was with a young man. I remember thinking what an odd couple they looked - she was so dark and Jewish, and he had this tousled blond hair. Perhaps they went off together. A Silesian Romeo and Juliet.'

'I'm afraid not. She was seen on the train to Berlin. Alone.'

'Just one life,' Mohlmann murmured, unconsciously echoing Thomas. 'But that's all any of us are.' He drained the last of his beer. 'Were you ever in the SPD?' he asked Russell.

'I was in the KPD until 1929. After my son was born it seemed sensible to leave. Although that wasn't the only reason.'

'Social Democrats and Communists - we should have fought together,' Mohlmann said. 'That was the one big mistake.'

They talked for another half an hour, mostly about Germany's problematic history, but Russell's mind was already made up. Mohlmann dropped him off at the Monopol, after extracting a promise from Russell to share an evening on his next visit to Breslau. A lonely man, Russell thought, as he trudged upstairs to a new room. And an angry one, with no distracting responsibilities. He would make a wonderful spy, but not for the Americans. What use would a knowledge of train operations in south-east Germany be to them? For the Soviets, on the other hand, they might be the difference between life and death.

Looking round the Monopol's breakfast room the following morning, Russell could understand why Hitler had stayed there. It was the first time he had seen it in daylight, and it was impressive in a Fuhrerish sort of way. Huge brass chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, which was held up by enough dappled marble columns to support a small Egyptian temple. Portraits of earlier German megalomaniacs featured on all but one panelled wall, which carried a mirror large enough to encourage serious delusions of grandeur. Rolls and coffee hardly did the setting justice.

The hotel receptionist told him that the Polish Consulate was a fifteen- minute walk away, on Oderstrasse, a small street between the Ring and the river. Or at least it had been. She couldn't remembering anyone mentioning it for several years.

Russell walked north up Schweidnitzer Strasse to the Ring, the market square at the city's heart. The six-hundred-year-old Rathaus which occupied the square's south-eastern corner was famous throughout Germany, and it wasn't hard to see why - the gable at the eastern end was both huge and elaborate. Walking down the swastika-draped southern side he came to the square's open space, a long cobbled rectangle flanked by classic five-storey houses in pastel shades. At the north-western corner the soaring spire of a shadowed church glinted in the morning sunshine.

The entrance to Oderstrasse was beside the church, and Russell was nearing its far end when he found a plaque announcing the Polish Consulate. A typed notice in a small glass case beside the door gave opening hours of 10am to 3pm, which left him with at least two hours to kill. Assuming the place was still in business. He looked up at the windows for any sign of life, and found none. There was still glass in them, though, which might mean something.

It was worth coming back, he decided. There had been five thousand Poles in Breslau in 1918, and it would be interesting to know what had become of them. In the meantime, another coffee.

He walked on to the Oder and across its southern channel, then stopped to watch two lightermen manoeuvre two fully-laden coal barges into the lock on the canalized section. Away to his right a cluster of spires rose out of the trees on the far bank, a picture of peace until a clanking tram drove across it.

Retracing his steps to the southern bank, Russell walked east past a row of university buildings, and finally found an open cafe close to the Market Hall. Music was playing from the loudspeaker on the street corner, and Russell just had time to order his coffee before a voice started droning. It was the Chief of the German Police, giving a speech on the perils of alcohol in the workplace. The authorities' answer, needless to say, was 'sterner measures'. Like all his Nazi buddies, the Chief was not given to moderation in thought or language. 'Pitiless proceedings' would be taken against canteens where workers got drunk.

Pitiless, Russell thought, was the word that characterised the bastards best. They just loved the concept.

He gulped down his coffee and tried to leave the voice behind. It was easier imagined than done - Breslau seemed unduly blessed with loudspeakers, and only the smallest streets offered areas of relative immunity. Russell suddenly remembered that Breslau had been officially designated 'Adolf Hitler's Most Faithful City' during the previous year's Sportsfest. A future badge of shame if ever there was one.

He reached a crossroads which had been spared an outlet for the regime's rantings. Not by accident, though - the loudspeaker was there, but two lonely lengths of wire hung down beside its host pole. Someone had got fed up with listening. Russell had a mental picture of a figure creeping out under cover of darkness, wire-cutters at the ready.

A small church occupied one corner of the crossroads, and a boy was sitting outside its gate, a rough pile of books beside him. Intrigued, Russell walked across. The books were all the same - a twenty-year-old collection of Johann Scheffler's poems.

'Angelus Silesius,' the boy explained. The Silesian Angel.

Russell knew who the poet was, and he recognized the book. Ilse had been reading it in the Moscow canteen when he first spoke to her.

'He's buried inside,' the boy said helpfully. 'The books are two marks.'

The church door creaked and groaned as Russell opened it, and even in high summer the interior felt chilly and damp. It was beautiful, though, the stained glass-filtered sunlight throwing a kaleidoscope of colour across the pews and walls.

He found Scheffler's tomb and portrait in a patch of sunlight and sat down in the nearest pew. He remembered wondering on that day in 1924 why an ardent young communist like Ilse Schade would be reading religious poetry, and he also remembered teasing her about it after they had become lovers. How could she take such nonsense seriously?

'Easily,' she'd told him, and showed him one of Scheffler's epigrammatic verses:

In heaven life is good:

No one has aught alone.

What one possesses there

All others too will own.

'See,' she said. 'He was a communist.'

Russell had expressed doubts.

'It's how you read them,' she told him. 'Look at this one -

The nearest way to God

Leads through love's open door;

The path of knowledge is

Too slow for evermore.'

'Yes, but...'

'Just substitute socialism for God, and apply the rest to our Revolution. We need love and a socialist spirit more than we need science and organization.'

It had seemed a stretch at the time, but Scheffler and she had been right, Stalin and Trotsky wrong. 'Believers,' he muttered to himself. They had all been believers then - or had aspired to be. But the world had caught up with them.

He looked up at the poet's portrait, the serene certainty in the eyes. The world had moved a lot slower in Scheffler's day - grab hold of a vision and there was a good chance you'd make it to the grave before someone tore holes in it.

Back in the sunlight he handed over his two marks, more because the seller looked hungry than because he really wanted the book.

It was almost ten o'clock. He walked back to Oderstrasse but the Polish Consulate was still devoid of life. He banged a fist on the door rather harder than he intended, the noise echoing down the narrow street. The only answer came from behind him. 'They're gone,' a woman shouted from a first floor window. 'And good riddance!'

According to the timetable there were trains to Wartha every two hours, but only, it appeared, when the Wehrmacht was not practising in the neighbourhood. It was almost two o'clock when Russell's three-coach train trundled out past the Breslau locomotive depot and turned off the main line to Upper Silesia and Poland. Wartha was supposed to be ninety minutes away.

It was a pleasant ride, flat vistas of golden fields as far as Strehlen, followed by gently rolling country, the fields vast, lone trees standing sentry on the ridges, the occasional red-roofed farmhouse nestling beside a copse of beeches. The telegraph poles that followed the tracks, and occasionally broke away towards a distant village, were the only evidence of modernity.

The mountains to the south slowly rose to meet them. Wartha backed onto a gap in the foothills, a widening valley to one side, the Silesian plain to the other. The station was a simple affair, a single platform with a wooden awning, a house for the stationmaster. No one was waiting to get on, and no one else got off. In the yard beyond the station building two open lorries stood unattended, and a youngish man sat, apparently waiting, on the bucket-seat of a horse-drawn cart.

Russell asked him if he knew the Rosenfeld farm.

The man looked at him coldly. 'What do you mean - do I know it?'

'Do you know where it is?' Russell asked patiently.

'Of course.'

'Will you take me there?'

The man hesitated, as if searching for an adequate response. 'I have other business,' he said eventually, and flicked his horse into motion.

Russell watched the cart disappear into its own cloud of dust, and walked back round the station building in search of staff. Knocking on a door marked 'Stationmaster', he found himself face to face with a fat, red-nosed man in a Reichsbahn uniform. Mention of the Rosenfelds elicited a doubtful sniff but no outright hostility. Their farm, it transpired, was about five kilometres away.

'Is there any way I can get a ride out there?' Russell asked.

'Not that I know of.'

'The lorries out front?'

'Their owners took the train to Glatz. They didn't have the petrol to drive there.'

Five kilometres wasn't so far. 'Can you give me directions then?'

'You do know they're Jews?'

'Yes.'

The man shrugged, shut his door behind him, and led Russell back to the front of the building. 'Straight up this road,' he said, pointing westward, where the cart's trail of dust was still hovering above the track. 'You go across two crossroads, straight towards those hills, then you'll come to a fork. The road on the left follows the slope round. There are two farms on it, and you want the second.'

It sounded straightforward enough, Russell thought, and he soon reached the first crossroads. The outskirts of Wartha began a short distance down the road to the left, and the spire of the town church rose above the roofs a kilo-metre or so to the south. He kept going, down a rutted and well-shaded dirt track. An endless field of grain stretched away to the north, and the sound of a distant tractor carried over on the wind. When the motor cut out the silence was almost palpable, and the sudden bark of a dog seemed like a desperate attempt to fill the void.

It was really hot. When he reached the second crossroads Russell stood for a minute in the shade of a convenient oak, wiping his brow with his handker-chief. What was he going to tell the Rosenfelds? Everything, he supposed.

He resumed walking. In a couple of hours the sun would be behind the mountains, and as far as he could remember there had been no moon the night before. He wasn't at all sure he fancied this walk in the dark. And he hadn't even asked about trains back to Breslau.

After what seemed an age he came to the fork in the road. The track grew narrower, more rutted, but the first farm soon loomed into sight. He became aware that a woman was standing watching him. Chickens were squawking at her feet, clearly interested in the feedbag she was carrying.

'Good afternoon,' he shouted.

'Good afternoon,' she replied, more cautiously.

'The Rosenfeld farm?'

She pointed up the road and turned her back.

It took him another fifteen minutes to reach his destination. Miriam's home was on the lee side of a hill, smoke drifting up from its chimney and into the light of the sinking sun. There was a copse of trees to the right, a single cow tethered on a long rope to one of the trunks. On the left was a sturdy wooden barn, beyond that what looked like a kitchen garden.

Another woman was watching him, he realized, hidden in the shadows of the east-facing doorway. He had a sudden inexplicable hope that it might be Miriam, but of course it wasn't. This woman had streaks of grey in her hair.

'Frau Rosenfeld?' he asked.

'My husband will be back in a few minutes,' she told him.

'That is good,' Russell said, stopping a few metres away from her. 'I wish to talk to you both.'

'What about? Who are you?'

'My name is John Russell. My brother-in-law Thomas Schade employed your brother-in-law Benjamin.'

'Employed? Has he lost his job?'

'I'm sorry, Frau Rosenfeld, but Benjamin is dead.'

Her hands flew up to her cheeks. 'But how...' she began, only for another thought to take precedence. 'Who is looking after my daughter?'

'That is why I'm here. I'm afraid your daughter has gone missing.'

'Missing,' she echoed. She closed her eyes, and for a brief moment she seemed to visibly shrink. Then, with what seemed an almost absurd effort of will, she drew herself upright. 'I will fetch Leon,' she said. 'Please...'

'I'll wait here.'

She strode off in the direction of the kitchen garden. Russell sat himself down on the front door step, noticing the mezuzah on the frame as he did so. You didn't see many of those in Berlin anymore.

He felt as if he had crossed into another world. He had known a lot of Jews in his lifetime, but most had been intellectuals of one sort or another, and all had been urbanised. The Yiddish-speaking Jews of the Pale, that vast expanse of plains stretching across southern Poland and Ukraine, were as much of a mystery to him as the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

Miriam's father came into view, half-running ahead of his wife. He looked smaller than he had in the photograph, but Russell could see the kindness in the face, even twisted as now by fear. The words came out in a rush: 'What is it that I am hearing? My brother is dead? My Miriam is missing? What does this mean?'

Russell told him. About Benjamin's murder and their worries about Miriam, about the police refusal to investigate. About the hiring of Kuzorra and the possible sighting, and the threatening of the detective.

Frau Rosenfeld mostly listened in silence, but her husband kept interrupting with hopeful questions, as if determined to find better explanations for what had happened. When Russell reached the present Leon Rosenfeld looked at the ground for the moment, then back at his guest. 'I thank you for coming,' he said. 'Now I must move the cow.'

Russell stared after him with astonishment.

'He needs to think,' Frau Rosenfeld explained. 'He will come back and announce that he is going to Berlin to look for her.'

'That...' Russell began, and hesitated. Wouldn't he scour the planet for Paul if his son went missing? He would, but that didn't make it wise for Rosenfeld to go charging off. 'I would do the same, but it would not be a good idea.'

Her look questioned his wisdom, if not his motives. 'Forgive me,' she said, 'but you are not a Jew. If she is with other Jews in Berlin, would not another Jew have a better chance of finding her?'

'I am not a Jew, but many of the men who work for my brother-in-law are. They knew Benjamin, and they have spread the word among Berlin's Jews. No one has heard from her, or of her. If your husband goes to Berlin...Let me be blunt - the police will not listen to him, and if he kicks up a fuss - which in any sane society he would and should - then they will punish him for it. The Jews in Berlin survive by keeping themselves to themselves. Your husband will be no use to Miriam - or you - if he ends up in a concentration camp. Or worse.'

'I don't know if I can stop him.'

'You must try. I will keep looking, I promise you. I will promise him.'

'I will try.' She sighed, and drew herself up again. 'Forgive me, keeping you outside all this time. Please, come in. A glass of water.'

Russell followed her into the farmhouse. It was as well-kept as the farm, and more comfortable than he had expected. The furniture was old but recovered; an even older-looking piano stood by the far wall. There was small case of books, and a game-ready chessboard on a narrow table. Vases of wild-flowers flanked the menorah on the mantelpiece.

Frau Rosenfeld had just given him the glass of water when her husband returned. He walked over to his wife and put his hands on her shoulders. 'Esther, I must go to Berlin.'

She shook her head. 'I have already told Herr Russell that you would say that. He said he would do the same, but it would not be wise.' She told him why.

It was his turn to shake his head, but he said nothing more. 'Where is my brother buried?' he asked.

'In the Jewish cemetery in Friedrichshain. In Berlin.'

'That is good. He enjoyed life,' he added, mostly to himself.

Outside it was growing noticeably darker. 'I must be going,' Russell said, 'but...'

'No, no - you must eat with us,' Esther Rosenfeld interjected. 'You can stay the night in Miriam's room. Please, it will give us time to decide what to do.'

Put like that, Russell could hardly refuse. Not that he'd wanted to.

The meal was simple but tasty, a rabbit stew with large chunks of home-made bread. The conversation was sparse - Russell guessed that Leon usually did most of the talking, and on this particular evening he seemed frequently - and understandably - lost in thought.

'I saw your neighbour on my walk up here,' Russell said. 'A woman.'

'Eva,' Frau Rosenberg said tersely. 'We were friends before all this, but now they seem afraid to know us. She does, in any case. Their boy Torsten came to see us last week. Miriam told him she would write to him, but she hadn't.'

Russell put two and two together. 'Did he go to Breslau with her? Someone thought they saw her with a boy by the station.'

'He works in Breslau. He was going to see that she got the right train to Berlin. She had only been to Breslau once before.'

'I'd like to talk to him. Do you know where he works?'

'In a big store. A really modern one, Eva told me. It was designed by a famous architect. You could ask his family, of course. I think they would tell you.'

They went to bed soon after eating. 'We live by the sun,' Leon Rosenfeld said simply.

Miriam's room contained an iron bed, a wooden chest of drawers and a small table. Russell lay in bed watching the candlelight flicker on the ceiling, listening to the shuffling of the horse in the barn outside. On the other side of the inner wall a conversation was being conducted in fierce whispers. He understood Leon Rosenfeld's desperate need to go looking, but he hoped Esther would be able to dissuade him. If she didn't, the only outcome of his own visit was likely to be a third family casualty.

He leaned over to blow out the candle, and thought about losing Effi . Her mystery meeting was tonight, he remembered. He wondered what sort of people she was getting herself involved with - many of her friends and acquaintances had a somewhat tenuous grasp of political realities. Effi was sensible enough when she took time to think, but...

Who was he kidding? There were no riskless paths any more. Safety had only ever lain in keeping one's head down and one's conscience in cold storage. It was too late for that now, for him and for Effi . Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth had pushed them both over the edge.

He woke soon after six, the sun streaming through the uncurtained window and onto the wall beside him. The rest of the house was empty, the kettle only warm. After using the latrine behind the house he found Esther Rosenfeld digging up weeds in the kitchen garden.

'Good morning,' she said, straightening her back. 'Leon will take your advice,' she added without preamble. 'He wants to go, but he's also afraid to leave me unprotected. And I encouraged him in that thought, God help me.'

'It's the right decision,' Russell said.

'I hope so. Come, let me give you some breakfast.' She led the way back to the house, placed the kettle on the woodstove and cut some thick slices from yesterday's loaf. A slab of remarkably solid butter was fetched from the larder, a jar of plum jam taken down from a shelf. Tea was made in a Russian-looking samovar.

All in all, it was delicious. Life was apparently possible without coffee. At least for a short time.

'How can I contact you?' Russell asked between mouthfuls of bread. 'When my brother-in-law wrote to you, the postmaster in Wartha denied that the letter had ever arrived.'

She thought for a moment. 'I will give you the name and address of a friend,' she said. 'A goy.'

She found a piece of paper and wrote it out with a slow, steady hand. 'This man is the local blacksmith. He and Leon are still friends, despite everything. Send your letter to us in envelopes addressed to him, and he will bring them to us. Leon will tell him to expect it.'

'Right.'

They sat in silence for a while, Russell sipping at the hot tea, Esther apparently absorbed in thought. 'Do you think our daughter is still alive?' she asked suddenly.

'I don't know. If she was dead, and the police had found her, then I think they would have informed my brother-in-law.'

'There is hope, then?'

'Yes.'

She ran a hand through her hair. 'There is a train to Breslau at around nine. We can hear it when the wind is from the east.'

'Your husband?'

'He is working in the field beyond the barn. He will want to say goodbye.'

They walked out to find him. He was picking cabbages, and judging by the size of the pile had been doing so for several hours.

He wiped his hands on his trousers and shook Russell's. He looked years older than he had the evening before. 'My grandfather bought this land over sixty years ago,' he said. 'He thought they would be safer close to the mountains, and he was right. We should never have sent Miriam away.'

'There was no way you could know that your brother would be attacked,' Russell told him.

Leon was not to be comforted. 'I always said my Miriam was too good for this world,' he said. 'Like an angel.'

Walking away down the dirt-track Russell could feel Esther's eyes on his back. Should he have raised her hopes? Did he have any reason to believe that Miriam was still alive?

Smoke was rising from the neighbouring farm. He thought of stopping to ask where Torsten worked, but the thought of meeting the boy's parents was uninviting. And the clues he had would be good enough. There weren't that many big stores in Breslau, and he was surprised that even one had been designed by a famous architect.

It seemed warmer than the previous day, and he hung his jacket over one shoulder. He walked swiftly, and was approaching the last crossroads, the roofs of Wartha visible across the fields, when he heard the lorry behind him. It was bumping along the dirt-track at a fair speed, belching dust into the air, and showed no signs of slowing down to spare his lungs. A blast of the horn reinforced the message.

Russell stepped onto the verge and beyond, reaching for his handkerchief to cover his mouth. The lorry lurched by, two men in the cab, two standing behind it in the open back.

Enveloped by dust, Russell heard rather than saw the lorry grind to a halt some fifty metres down the track. He saw two shapes climb down from either side of the cab, two more jumping down to the ground. All four shapes walked towards him. As the dust cleared, he saw that the driver and his mate were both wearing brown shirts. That was the extent of their uniform, but it was enough.

'Oh, fuck,' Russell murmured to himself. 'Good morning!' he said cheerily, as if these were the folks he'd most wanted to meet on such a beautiful day.

The response was less friendly. 'Where have you come from?' the driver asked. A short balding man with wide shoulders and a barrel chest, he was a good deal older than the others - around Russell's age - and he seemed to be in charge.

There seemed no point in lying. 'I've been up to the Rosenfeld farm.'

'For the night?'

'It was too late to get back to Breslau.'

'It's against the law, staying with Jews,' one of the younger men offered.

'Why were you up there?' the driver went on, ignoring his companion.

This, as Russell realized at the time, was the moment when he should have said something clever and self-exculpatory. That he was doing an article on Jews who refused to see sense and quit the Reich - something like that. But the last twenty-four hours had reduced his already limited willingness to indulge the local scum, and, in any case, the Rosenfelds deserved a bit of loyalty. 'I was telling them that their daughter is missing,' he said.

That didn't seem much of a surprise to his audience, who were presumably privy to Thomas's missing letter.

'She should have stayed here,' the same young man said with a grin. He was probably one of the gang that had intercepted Miriam on this very track, frightening the Rosenfelds into sending their daughter to Berlin.

The driver advanced a pace, close enough for Russell to smell the cabbage on his breath. 'So she's missing. What the hell is that to you?'

'Just another Jew-lover,' the other Brownshirt volunteered.

'Right,' Russell said sarcastically. 'When I could be admiring an aryan like you.'

He had time to move his head a fraction, saving his nose and teeth at his cheek's expense, but the power of the blow put him on his back. He shook his head, looked up at the four silhouettes gathered above him, and felt more than a little afraid.

'There's a good tree over there,' a voice said, compounding the effect.

'I'm an American journalist,' he said, struggling to keep his voice steady. 'And I also work for the Sicherheitsdienst in Berlin.'

'The what?'

'It's part of the Gestapo,' Russell said, somewhat inaccurately. 'Look at my papers,' he added, 'they're in my jacket.'

The driver picked up the jacket, rifled through the pockets, and examined Russell's journalistic accreditation. 'This says nothing about the Gestapo or the...Sicher-whatever-it-was.'

Russell decided it was time to get to his feet. 'You can ring their HQ at 102 Wilhelmstrasse,' he said, as he rose. 'Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth. He'll tell you.'

'Why would a Gestapo agent be visiting Jews?'

'Why do you think? Their daughter may be mixed up with enemies of the Reich...'

'Miriam Rosenfeld?!?'

'You know a lot about the Jewish opposition groups, do you?' Russell asked scathingly, risking another assault. 'It's very unlikely,' he admitted in a kinder tone. 'But we have to be vigilant.'

The driver still looked unconvinced. 'Get up on the lorry,' he said. 'You are coming with us.'

Those five words had never sounded sweeter. Wherever they were going, it had to be an improvement on a dirt track between open fields, with a 'good tree' close by. The police station or the local Party House?

It was the latter. They turned right at the crossroads and drove into Wartha, along a surprisingly deserted street lined with neat, well-kept houses. The Party House was just beyond the town square, a two-storey building with the usual oversized flag. There were two main rooms on the ground floor, the common room at the front for drinking, the office at the back for keeping tabs on the citizenry.

The local leader, a bespectacled man of around thirty-five with closely-cropped black hair, was in the latter. He was wearing full SA uniform, with every belt, buckle and button polished to perfection. Like most small-time Nazis of Russell's acquaintance, he looked like a puffed-up shopkeeper. Err on the side of flattery, Russell told himself, and for God's sake don't talk down to him.

The driver told his story. He and his friends had received a tip-off that an outsider was staying with the Jews, and they had stopped him before he could reach the station. 'He admitted it,' he added, passing over Russell's papers. 'He says he's a journalist and that he works for the Gestapo,' he added grudgingly.

'The Sicherheitsdienst,' Russell corrected him. 'The SD,' he added helpfully.

The man was examining his papers. 'I know what the Sicherheitsdienst is,' he said curtly, without looking up.

'May I know your name, Sturmbannfuhrer?' Russell asked politely.

'Lempfert. Wilhelm Lempfert.'

'The headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst is at 102 Wilhelmstrasse, Sturm-bannfuhrer Lempfert. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth will vouch for me.'

'Not Gruppenfuhrer Heydrich in person?' Lempfert asked sarcastically.

'I have never had the honour of meeting the Gruppenfuhrer.'

Lempfert gazed at Russell for a few moments, as if wondering whether his sarcasm was being returned. 'I will check your story,' he said. 'Take him through,' he told the driver.

Russell was hustled into the common room, and his others captors looked up expectantly, still hopeful of a lynching. The driver shoved him towards an upright chair by the near wall and joined his companions in the circle of beaten-up armchairs by the window.

Minutes went by, rather more of them than Russell was hoping for. What would Lempfert do if Hirth wasn't there? And what would Hirth say when he heard about the Rosenfelds? The false papers for the Soviets should be waiting for him at Neuenburger Strasse by now. Surely Hirth wouldn't let a little race hatred cost him a good agent?

Almost an hour had gone by when Sturmbannfuhrer Lempfert emerged from the office. 'The Hauptsturmfuhrer wishes to speak to you,' he said shortly, gesturing Russell into his office. Much to the latter's surprise, the door closed behind him. Hirth must have asked for a private conversation.

The Hauptsturmfuhrer was displeased. 'What is this about? Who are these Jews?'

Russell explained about their daughter's disappearance. 'This is a journalistic matter,' he added, not wishing to involve Thomas.

'Can't you find anything more useful to write about?'

'If I stopped criticising the regime the Soviets would smell a rat.'

Hirth grunted his disapproval. 'So why did you mention this department?'

'Because I feared for my life, and I assumed you would want to save it.'

A lengthy silence followed. 'A big assumption,' Hirth said dryly. 'As it happens, you will find something waiting for you when you reach home. Something in need of your urgent attention. You are coming back to Berlin today?'

'I am.'

'Very well. Put the Sturmbannfuhrer back on.'

Russell fetched Lempfert, and watched as he listened to Hirth. 'It will be as you suggest,' Lempfert said finally. 'Thank you for your time, Hauptsturmfuhrer.' He replaced the telephone and looked up. 'You are free to go, Herr Russell. But next time, perhaps you would do us the courtesy of informing us of your plans in advance. It is we who are responsible for enforcing the race laws.'

'Of course. I apologise for not doing so.' He offered his hand across the desk. 'Thank you again.'

Out front, his original captors watched him leave with new expressions on their faces. A simple enemy had turned into something of a mystery - a foreigner who worked for the famous Heydrich, and who made enormous sacrifices for Reich and Fuhrer, like sleeping in a Jewish bed. Russell went across to the driver and offered his hand. The man seemed somewhat surprised, but accepted it.

'Can we drive you to the station?' he asked.

'Thank you, but no,' Russell said, keen to put the Wartha SA behind him. 'I need the exercise.'

It was a refusal he regretted ten minutes later, when the smoke rising above the station told him he had just missed his train. The next one, as he soon discovered, was not for another two hours. He spent them in the shade of the platform awning, sitting on the only bench and staring out across the sun-drenched grain. Hundreds of birds chattered in the copse of beeches beyond the empty siding, and every now and then a party of them would fly off towards the red-roofed farm in the far distance. It was an idyllic scene.

Russell remembered reading Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey in the trenches, and idly wondered whether the Silesian countryside had made a similar pact with the devil. He imagined a landscape painting in Sturmbannfuhrer Lempfert's attic, fields of rotting crops under a red sky, an SA lynch party driving away from a burning farm.

It wasn't until he was settled in his compartment seat, and the train was pulling out of Wartha, that his hands began to shake. He sat there watching them, remembering the same reaction over twenty years before, some hours after a much-dreaded assault across no man's land had been cancelled.

His train reached Breslau just before three, saving him the choice between interviewing Torsten and catching the same service that Miriam had caught. The next Berlin train was not until nearly six, which gave him plenty of time to find the department store where the boy worked and collect his suitcase from the hotel.

He tried to telephone Effi from the Monopol but there was no answer. The receptionist took one long look at his battered cheek but said nothing. She told him the only modern-looking store in Breslau was the Petersdorff, and agreed to keep his suitcase behind her desk while he visited it. Following her directions, Russell walked up Schweidnitzer Strasse and turned right opposite the Rathaus. The Petersdorff store was on a corner one block down, a futuristic oasis in a sea of German tradition. The windows of the main frontage stretched the length of the building, and were rolled around in a semi-circle at one corner, like a six storey-lighthouse. The overall impression was of six trams piled on top of each other, speeding into the future. It looked like it had been left behind by aliens.

In a way it had. It reminded Russell of the Universum, and he was not surprised to find that Erich Mendelssohn had designed it. He was, however, surprised to find that fact still acknowledged on a plaque by the main entrance - Mendelssohn's name had long since disappeared from the Universum.

Inside he asked for the manager's office, and was directed to a suite of rooms on the second floor. The manager was a youngish man with a Pomeranian accent and an obvious desire to please. He confirmed that Torsten Resch worked there, and obligingly agreed to Russell's request for a short private chat without asking for details of the 'family matter' in question. Torsten arrived a few minutes later, a gangly youth with a shock of fair hair. He looked suitably bewildered.

The manager left them to it.

'What is this about?' the boy asked. 'Has something happened at home?'

'Nothing. I'm here about Miriam Rosenfeld.'

The boy's features seemed to soften. 'You have a message for me?'

'She has disappeared,' Russell said bluntly.

'What?'

'She travelled to Berlin, but no one has seen her since she arrived.'

'But that was weeks ago. And her uncle was supposed to meet her.'

'He was beaten up on his way to the station. He died a few days later. You saw her onto the train, right?'

'Yes, we had lunch together. She said I could write to her, but she hasn't sent me her address...'

'She didn't say anything about what she intended to do in Berlin?'

'I told you. She was going to meet her uncle. He had arranged a job for her.'

'She didn't know anyone else there?'

'No, I'm sure she didn't. How could she?'

He seemed genuinely distressed. 'All right,' Russell said. 'Thank you for talking to me.'

Torsten got up slowly. 'If you...' he began. 'If you find out what has happened, will you let me know? I like Miriam,' he said simply. 'I know she's Jewish, but...' He shrugged away his inability to change that fact. 'I've always liked her,' he added, as if it was a shameful secret he had to share.

'I'll let you know,' Russell promised.

The Berlin train left on time, and much to Russell's relief suffered only a few minor delays. It pulled into Silesian Station a few minutes short of midnight, and he stopped at the first public telephone to call Effi . She answered immediately, sounding excited. 'What's happened?' he asked.

'I'll tell you when you get here.'

A Stadtbahn train arrived within minutes. It was full of citizens ignoring the government's ongoing anti-alcohol campaign, one of whom held the train up for five minutes at Friedrichstrasse by jumping in and out of the door like a demented rabbit. The train eventually reached Zoo Station, where an even rowdier Friday night crowd was waiting to get on. Russell alighted with some relief, and walked down the steps to street level. In the space in front of the station, two uniformed cops were asking a boy of about four where his mother was. He looked around as if searching for her, then screamed a simple 'I don't know!' at his questioners.

Russell walked under the Hardenberg Strasse bridge and crossed the road. Three minutes later he was approaching the flat. There were no suspiciously loitering cars, no leather coats clogging up the entrance.

Effi was in her dressing-gown. Her excitement turned to horror when she saw his face.

'It's much worse than it looks,' he said.

'But how....'

'One of the local lads in Wartha didn't like my attitude. Don't worry about it.'

They hugged and kissed until Russell reached for the cord.

'No, no, no,' she said. 'First we must talk.'

He grinned. 'Okay. How did your meeting go?'

'Oh that.' She dismissed it with a wave of a hand. 'I went to the station to meet you,' she said. 'I thought you'd be on Miriam's train, and....'

'I missed it.'

'I know. But I saw him. The man with the dark eyebrows. And he tried to pick up a young girl.'