Stattin Station

The Petschek Palace

Soon after eleven the train reached Dresden, where most of the passengers got off, and Russell was finally able to stretch his limbs on a very cold platform. Several carriages were detached from the rear of the train and, much to his astonishment, replaced by a Czech dining car. There were no meals on offer, but the range of alcoholic drinks seemed wider than that found in Berlin's better hotels. Russell treated himself to three glasses of slivovitz, and sat for the better part of an hour enjoying the views of moonlit mountains in the unscreened windows.

Finding a line of unoccupied seats to lie down on proved surprisingly easy, and he dozed off for a couple of hours. Woken at the Sudeten junction of Usti by the slamming of doors, he noticed that some but not all of the station signs bore the new German name of Aussig. A trip to the waterless toilet indicated that the train was now virtually empty - visas for Heydrich's Protectorate were either hard to come by or in low demand. He was almost asleep again when the train reached the essentially meaningless border, and officialdom required a long and overly suspicious perusal of his papers.

The next few hours were spent in that unsatisfying netherworld between sleep and wakefulness, and as light began filtering around the blackout screens he made his way back to the dining car, where the fields of the Protectorate were now visible. The counter was closed, but Russell could smell the coffee, and a short burst of abject begging persuaded the old Czech in charge to supply him with a cup. It was the best he had drunk for several months, and would prove the undisputed highlight of his trip to Prague.

The train pulled into Masaryk Station - now renamed Hiberner Station - almost two hours late. Russell was supposed to be returning that evening on the same train, but had decided to take a hotel room in any case - after his adventures in Prague two years earlier he had no desire to spend his day wandering the streets, where someone might recognise him. The same risk applied to the Europa Hotel, but any of the other establishments on the long and inappropriately-named Wenceslas Square should prove safe enough. He was just wondering what the new German name might be when he saw the two leather coats waiting at the ticket barrier.

He told himself they were waiting for someone else, but didn't really believe it.

'Herr Russell,' the shorter of the two stated.

There seemed no point in denying it. 'That's me.'

'Come this way please.'

Russell followed, conscious of the other man walking behind him, and of the scrutiny of their Czech audience. He felt an absurd inclination to start goose-stepping, but managed to restrain himself.

They walked through one office and into another. The latter was obviously home to the local transport police, but none were there. Perched on the edge of one desk, arms folded across his stomach, was Obersturmbannfuhrer Giminich of the Sicherheitsdienst. On the edge of the other, in probably unconscious imitation of his superior, was a younger man. He was also wearing a smart dark suit, but the classy effect was spoiled by his gingery blond hair, which several litres of grease had failed to flatten.

'Good morning, Herr Russell,' Giminich said. 'Welcome to the Protectorate.'

'Good morning,' Russell replied.

'Please give me the letter which Admiral Canaris entrusted you with.'

Russell took the envelope from his inside jacket pocket and handed it over.

Giminich examined the Admiral's seal with interest. 'You have no idea of the contents?'

'None whatsoever. As you can see, the seal is unbroken.'

Giminich broke it, and removed what looked like a single sheet half-covered in type. After reading it through he passed the letter to his junior.

'What does it say?' Russell asked, intent on emphasising his ignorance of the contents.

Giminich ignored the question. 'This is Untersturmfuhrer Schulenburg,' he told Russell. 'You will be spending the morning with him.'

'Why?'

'Ah. Perhaps we should begin at the beginning. Please, take a seat,' he added, indicating one of the upright chairs. 'Your meeting with Johann Grashof is at the Sramota Cafe, at two o'clock, the furthest table from the entrance. Yes?'

'You are well informed,' Russell said dryly.

'Much better than yourself, I imagine. What do you know about Johann Grashof?'

'That he's an officer in the Abwehr. Apart from that, absolutely nothing.'

'But you know what he looks like?'

'Yes, I was shown a photograph.'

'Would it surprise you to know that Grashof is a traitor to the Reich?'

'It would.'

Giminich brought his two palms together and balanced his chin on the ends of his fingers. 'Earlier this year certain information was leaked to the British Embassy in Belgrade, information that only three people had access to. Two were away when the leak occurred, but the third - Grashof - was considered above suspicion by Berlin. Then, two months ago, a captured Czech terrorist admitted that he and his organisation had been receiving information from a Wehrmacht source. He had not met this source himself, but he claimed that another terrorist - one that we already had in custody - had met the man. This terrorist was questioned, and eventually produced a vague description - he said he had only met our suspect in the blackout. As before, the description and the information passed on pointed to one of three men, and, as before, two of those men were quickly able to prove their innocence. And once again the third man was Grashof.'

'So why is he still at large?'

Giminich nodded, as if conceding a point. 'The case is not quite complete,' he admitted. 'Herr Grashof has several influential supporters, and they have found it extremely difficult to believe in his treachery. But now, with your assistance, we will soon have enough evidence to convince even the most sceptical.'

Russell couldn't help grimacing.

'You will keep your appointment with him, but deliver a different message. You will tell him, using these exact words: "The Admiral says that you're in danger, and advises you to run".'

'But...'

'You will then ask Grashof if he has any final message for the Admiral. Do you understand?'

Only too well, Russell thought. If Grashof accepted the instruction, he would be condemning both himself and Canaris. And once the two men were revealed as traitors, then those who carried messages between them were unlikely to receive any favours; Russell's own hopes of a comfortable Swiss exile would certainly be over, along with any chance of seeing Effi while the war lasted. And worse than that was a distinct possibility. 'I understand what you'd like me to do,' he said, 'but as I'm sure you can see, this puts me in a very difficult position. I have no personal knowledge of this man Grashof, but I find it hard to believe that Admiral Canaris is a traitor to the Reich...'

'There is no difficulty here,' Giminich interrupted. 'As a resident of the Reich you are obliged, like everyone else, to obey its laws, and treason is most definitely against those laws. If Canaris and Grashof are innocent then that will become clear, and no harm will be done, while if they do prove to be traitors, you will have done the Reich a useful service. What is the problem?'

They had him, Russell thought. He had only one more card, and it was a low one. 'When we met at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse you said my loyalty did me credit.'

Giminich smiled. 'And so it did. But the situation has changed. Where treason is concerned, loyalty becomes a very risky business, something to weigh very carefully. Your cooperation in this matter would certainly remove any doubts about your own position.'

'And if I refuse?' Russell asked.

Giminich shrugged. 'Would threats help you make up your mind?'

'Let's just say I like to know exactly where I stand.'

'Very well. You may have thought that we had forgotten about you since 1939. Your file is a long one, Herr Russell, well-researched and very up-to-date. Your girlfriend, your son, your Jew-lover of a brother-in-law and his son - their lives could all get a lot more difficult. You yourself would forfeit any chance of leaving Germany, and, at best, undergo imprisonment as an enemy alien for the duration of the war. I think we can agree, here, just between us, that this will be a long war. The United States will doubtless join in eventually, but the Atlantic is very wide, and they will find it as hard to cross as we shall. A stalemate seems very likely, and many years for you to regret refusing your services in this matter.'

'No' was not an option, Russell thought. It very rarely was where the Sicherheitsdienst was involved. 'You've convinced me,' he told Giminich. Maybe something would occur to him over the next few hours, some devious means of sabotaging the intended trap that could not be blamed on him, but it didn't seem very likely.

'Excellent,' Giminich said. 'We have reserved a room for you at the Alcron Hotel. Untersturmfuhrer Schulenburg will take you there now, and then to the Sramota Cafe for your treff with Herr Grashof. Anything you require, please ask. Once your part is over, your time is your own. The hotel room is yours until tomorrow, though I believe your return ticket is for this evening.'

'It is. And I do need to be back in Berlin tomorrow.' He didn't, but insisting that he still had an agenda of his own made him feel slightly less helpless.

Schulenburg led him outside to where an ancient-looking black saloon was waiting. Two more men in suits were sitting in the front seats, both of whom looked like Czechs. The Untersturmfuhrer had not opened his mouth in the station office, and his directions to the driver revealed a surprisingly deep voice. He ushered Russell into the back seat and joined him there, absent-mindedly pressing down on his unruly ginger thatch.

The streets of Prague seemed sombre to Russell, but that might just have been the overcast sky. According to the BBC, Heydrich's executioners had hardly enjoyed a moment's rest since early November, but as Russell knew only too well from Berlin, the sufferings of a small minority could pass almost unnoticed by their fellow citizens.

They had reached Jindoisska Street, which now bore the name Heinrichsgasse. As in 1939, giant swastikas adorned the upper facade of the Post Office and nearby Deutsches Haus, but traffic was noticeably lighter. There were a couple of trams in the distance, but no cars beyond their own. As they turned onto Wenzelsplatz another black saloon could be seen parked further up the slope, but that was all - this piece of occupied Europe had apparently exhausted its petrol ration.

Lepanska Street had also been re-christened, but Russell failed to catch the new name. The dark, rectangular and depressingly modern Alcron seemed unchanged from 1939, when he had eschewed it and its predominantly German clientele in favour of the Europa.

Once inside the impression improved, although sharing the small lift with two violently sneezing SS officers was hardly conducive to good health. His room, it turned out, was actually two - a sitting room, with a child's bed, leading into a large bedroom. Both had large windows overlooking the canyon-like street.

Russell looked at his watch - it was ten to ten. He had just over four hours to figure some way out of his and Grashof's predicament. Breakfast would be a start.

'I'd like some coffee,' he told Schulenburg. 'And something to eat. A couple of rolls will do.'

The Untersturmfuhrer seemed momentarily upset by the audacity of this request, but managed to recover himself. He opened the door, relayed the request to someone outside, and shut it once more.

'Have you been in Prague long?' Russell asked him cheerily.

'That's no business of yours,' was the surly reply.

'Just trying to be friendly,' Russell said lightly.

'We are not friends.'

No indeed, Russell thought. Silence it was. He sat down in a convenient armchair, stretched out his legs and waited for breakfast to arrive. Thinking was always hard work without coffee.

He suddenly realised that they hadn't provided him with the requisite copy of Signal. Had Giminich slipped up? Surely Grashof would notice if he turned up without one, but what would he do?

The coffee arrived, along with rolls, real butter and real jam. Russell could hardly believe it, but the Untersturmfuhrer, clearly used to such luxuries, left most of his on the plate. The coffee was no better than Berlin's - but then Prague was just as far from Brazil.

Feast over, Russell asked if he could lie down in the adjoining room. Schulenburg took a long look round, presumably to make sure there were no telephones, semaphore paddles or carrier pigeons available for Russell's use. He then granted permission, contingent on the door remaining open.

Russell laid himself out on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to think. What was Giminich expecting to happen? Grashof would accept the legitimacy of the fake message without query, and perhaps incriminate himself still further by sending an indiscreet message back to Canaris. All of which would be overheard by the SD - a listening device under the table in all likelihood. Knowing which table the meeting was arranged for, they only had to bug the one.

But unless the relevant technology had improved out of all recognition there was no way the SD could record the conversation. So why not just make one up? Why go to all this trouble to get real evidence of guilt? Because, he realised, they needed the real evidence to convince Grashof's 'influential supporters' in Berlin. There would be someone with 'neutral' credentials listening in with the SD operatives, Russell guessed. Someone from the Foreign Office or Wehrmacht.

Once Grashof had incriminated himself, he would be immediately arrested, and the focus would shift back to Berlin. Moving against Canaris would take time - someone of his stature couldn't be arrested without the Fuhrer's agreement, and the latter was notoriously difficult to get hold of, what with his bizarre sleeping hours and penchant for military briefings that lasted longer than the campaigns concerned. And despite Giminich's promise, Russell couldn't see himself being set free until Canaris was beyond warning.

How could he break this chain of events? He would get no chance of warning anyone ahead of time - Schulenburg would be sticking to him like a ginger limpet.

Was there any way of presenting the message that would cause Grashof to smell a rat, yet not cast suspicion on Russell himself? By making faces? Kicking the man's leg under the table? It was hard to imagine that Giminich had neglected such possibilities. There would be people watching, probably droves of them, all with high-powered binoculars. There might even be lip-readers in case the microphones failed.

Could he remain faithful to the script provided, yet undermine the words with inappropriate tones and emphases? It would be risky. An inadequate grasp of the German language would be the only possible excuse, and Giminich knew only too well that he spoke it like a native.

But what else was there? Could he warn Grashof with his eyes? He tried a warning look at the ceiling, and found his mouth was hanging open. Ridiculous.

What was left - telepathy?

There was nothing. Should he have refused? He still could. If he followed Giminich's orders he would, in all likelihood, be condemning a man to death. Against that, Grashof and Canaris were likely to remain firmly fixed in Heydrich's crosshairs with or without his own involvement. Not a noble argument, but a reasonable one. And why should he sacrifice his own future - not to mention those of his extended family - for Grashof and Canaris, who must have known the risks they were taking, and who were apparently betraying a regime they had freely chosen to serve? When it came down to it, he had no real idea whether these two men were enemies of the Reich or just enemies of Heydrich. The evidence for Grashof being a genuine friend of the resistance seemed strong, but Russell still found it hard to imagine Canaris actually working against his own country. The best bet was that Heydrich was using Grashof's real guilt to smear his real adversary.

Not that it really mattered, because Russell had no intention of risking his own future for theirs. There was no honourable way out of this particular predicament. If a risk-free chance to help Grashof came up, he would take it. Maybe even a low-risk chance. Very low-risk. But that was all. He would have to play it by ear, hope that something went wrong, and live with himself if it didn't. The Abwehr was not his family.

He got up off the bed to explore the adjoining bathroom. A turn of the tap produced hot water, and he decided that taking a bath might cheer him up. The suspicious Schulenburg explored the room for secret exits, then left him to it. It felt like a victory, though he knew it was nothing of the sort.

Drying himself off with a huge soft towel, he felt renewed pangs of hunger. With rolls that good, who knew what Prague had to offer in the way of real meat and vegetables? Like all Berliners in recent months he had, he realised, fallen in thrall to his taste buds. 'What about lunch?' he asked Schulenburg.

The Untersturmfuhrer was unsympathetic: 'You can eat afterwards.' Russell went back to waiting, and the search for a flaw in Giminich's plan. None occurred to him. His thoughts wandered, taking him back to his last time in Prague, and his clandestine contacts on Washington's behalf with the still-gestating resistance movement. He had no idea whether those contacts had borne lasting fruit, or whether any of those involved were still alive. The resistance would be hard-pressed now, and those still at large would be lying low, waiting for Heydrich's storm to blow over. He remembered the execution he had witnessed, the lifeless corpse collapsing into the sand.

'Time to go,' Schulenburg said from the doorway.

Collecting the man in the corridor, they went down to the car, where the fourth member of the original party was half asleep behind the wheel. Jerked awake by Schulenburg's sarcastic greeting, the driver started the engine and roughly released the clutch, causing the car to take off like a frightened horse. Russell found himself wondering whether his guards would be stupid enough to drop him off at the cafe door.

The answer was no. They drove to the eastern end of the Legii Bridge, which now bore the name of the Czech composer Smetana. At a quarter to two Schulenburg pulled a copy of Signal from his briefcase, handed it to Russell and set him in motion. He would walk the remaining distance - across the bridge and a short way along the opposite bank - on his own. He would also, as Schulenburg made amply clear, be under constant observation.

The bridge was a long one, crossing two arms of the charcoal-coloured river and the island of bare trees that lay between them. It was on this island that Russell had met his first resistance contact in the summer of 1939, but today the paths were as empty as the trees, and the sun nowhere to be seen. In fact it was beginning to rain, and the dark forbidding castle high to his right was rapidly disappearing behind a curtain of mist.

Once beyond the island Russell could see the line of establishments on the far bank, their illuminated interiors brightly glowing in the overall gloom. The Sramota Cafe was the last in line, its outside terrace covered by an awning of ironwork and glass. Russell felt a faint stirring of hope - the clatter of rain on such a roof might hide their conversation from Giminich's microphones.

It was still only ten to two when he reached the steps leading down from the bridge to the quay. He stopped and leaned on the parapet, only too aware that he was getting wetter, but determined not to miss a single trick. The more time he gave the SD for making mistakes, the more likely they were to make one.

A man appeared in the distance, walking down from the direction of the Charles Bridge. Identification was impossible in the gloom, but the general build was consistent with Grashof's. The man entered the Sramota Cafe.

With enormous reluctance Russell resumed his journey, descending the slippery stone steps and making his way along the cobbled quayside. The rain was now swirling above the dark river, masking the far bank from view. It had turned into what the English called a 'filthy day' - the SD would need more than high-powered binoculars to see through this lot. Assuming that the watchers were far away. They might be in the back of the cafe, or sitting at a nearby table.

Russell reached the outer door and swung it open. There were several customers visible in the warmer interior of the cafe, but only one man, wrapped in raincoat and scarf, at the far end of the covered terrace. Johann Grashof.

Russell walked slowly towards the Abwehr officer. The windows to his left offered those in the cafe proper an excellent view of those on the terrace, and there were several obvious hiding places for microphones - on the bottom of the table, inside the suspiciously early bunches of Christmas holly, among the decorative ironwork which supported the glass roof. The patter of the falling rain was depressingly muted.

'Good day,' Grashof said politely.

'Good day,' Russell echoed, sitting down and placing his sodden magazine beside the other man's copy. Grashof's expression invited him to say more.

There was no way out of it.

'The Admiral says that you're in danger, and advises you to run.'

Grashof's lip curled slightly, as if he found the message amusing. 'I don't understand,' he said, though his eyes told a different story. 'In danger from what? Run where? What does he mean?'

This wasn't in the script, and neither was the Luger which Grashof suddenly brought into view, leaving the hand that held it resting on the metal table.

'Who are you?' Grashof asked.

'I am John Russell. The man you came here to meet.'

'I came here to meet a man of that name. Can you prove that you're John Russell?'

Russell took out his papers and handed them across the table, wondering what the SD eavesdroppers were making of this unexpected turn.

'These look like forgeries,' Grashof announced. 'Who are you really?' 'John Russell.'

'I don't think so. Are you a foreign agent?'

'Of course not. I...'

'Then I can only assume that you're an impostor in the pay of the Sicherheitsdienst, and that this is all part of some preposterous scheme to expose me as a traitor.'

'I know nothing of...'

'Well, please tell whoever hired you that their scheme has failed. As all their attempts will, for one very simple reason. I am not and never have been a traitor.'

Grashof was enjoying himself. He had been tipped off, of course, an eventuality which hardly seemed surprising in hindsight. A lot of ordinary Czechs had witnessed Russell's virtual arrest at Masaryk Station, and several members of the Czech resistance whom he'd met in 1939 had worked at the nearby depot. News of the SD's intervention had been passed on to Grashof, and the Abwehr officer had made up his own little speech for the hidden microphones.

Of course the very fact of a tip-off had treason written all over it, but Grashof had certainly made the best of a bad situation. Russell felt like congratulating him, but decided to wait until after the war. Giminich would be furious.

Moments later, the man himself emerged from inside the cafe, trailing leather coats and SS uniforms in his wake.

Grashof's fingers momentarily tightened on the Luger's butt, and for one dreadful second Russell expected to die in the crossfire. Then the fingers relaxed and retreated from the weapon, with Grashof settling for an ironic smile. 'You must be the ringmaster of this particular circus,' he said, addressing Giminich.

'You are required for questioning,' the latter said, gesturing two of the uniforms forward.

'By whose authority?'

'That of the Reichsprotektor.'

'Then of course I am happy to oblige.' Grashof got to his feet. 'May I take my gun?'

'No,' Giminich said. 'The Petschek Palace,' he told the uniforms, who escorted Grashof out onto the quay.

'I tried,' Russell told the Obersturmbannfuhrer.

'He was forewarned,' Giminich said. 'And we shall find the men who forewarned him.'

Bully for you, Russell thought. 'So I'm free to go?'

'Not quite. Admiral Canaris must not hear of this. Your report to him will be very simple. You came to the rendezvous, but Grashof did not show up. That is all. If the Admiral discovers what really happened I will hold you personally responsible. Is that clear?'

'Very,' Russell agreed. He seemed to have got off lightly. 'My bag is still at the hotel,' he added.

Giminich was already on his way. 'Collect it and return to Berlin,' he snapped over his shoulder.

At least the rain was easing. His appetite returning, Russell walked up to the central square of the Little Quarter and found a small restaurant filling the street with enticing odours. The food was indeed good, but the staff and the other customers seemed unfriendly. He should have ordered in English rather than German, he eventually realised.

The rain had fully stopped when he emerged, and there was even a hint of blue in the sky above the castle. As he walked across the Charles Bridge he sense that he was being followed, and sure enough, fifty metres or so behind him, there lurked a small bespectacled man in raincoat and hat. He told himself that he was imagining things, that if he turned his head on any street in the world he was likely to find someone bringing up his rear, but the small man still looked suspicious. Reaching the tower at the eastern end of the bridge, Russell stood in a recessed doorway and waited. The small man, now walking a bit faster, seemed surprised to see him, but kept on going, disappearing into one of the streets that led into the heart of the Old Town.

Russell took a different route, trusting on a combination of memory and instinct to reach Na Prikope, and the foot of Wenceslas Square. From there he had no trouble finding Lepanska Street and the Alcron Hotel, but securing his possessions proved rather more difficult. The Czech receptionist refused to let him upstairs, and it took several phone calls to some unspecified authority and the helpful intervention of a passing SS officer before a busboy could be sent to retrieve his bag.

This accomplished, Russell still had several hours to waste before his train was due to depart. He considered a long sojourn in the well-stocked bar, but was deterred by the number of black uniforms on display. It also occurred to him that finding Masaryk Station in the blackout would be far from easy. Better to get there while it was still light, and camp out in the station restaurant for the duration.

Picking up his bag, he sauntered out of the front doors and began walking towards Wenceslas Square. He would later have a vague memory of a car engine bursting into life, but in the here and now the vehicle was almost level with him when he first became aware of it. Slowing his stride as he turned to look, Russell noted, in very swift succession, a flash in a window, a searing pain in the side of his head, and a loud echoing boom which went rolling down the narrow street. As the car sped away he fell backwards against the stone side of the building, and slumped to the pavement feeling more than a little foolish. The Resistance, he thought, as consciousness faded.

On her way to the studio that afternoon Effi remembered she had some shopping to do, and asked the driver to drop her off on the Ku'damm. She had hardly walked ten metres when she noticed Ali Blumenthal stepping down from a tram outside the Universum Cinema. There was no yellow star sewn into her coat.

'I'm going to the cinema with a friend,' Ali explained, once Effi had caught up with her. 'But I'm half an hour early.'

'Let's have a coffee,' Effi suggested. 'There's a place just round the corner.'

'Are you sure?' Ally asked. 'If they ask to see my papers...'

'They won't. They know me, and I'll say you're my baby sister.'

'If only I was,' Ali said wistfully.

The cafe was full, but empty tables just seemed to appear when celebrities arrived, and on this particular occasion Effi decided not to feel too guilty about it. She ordered coffees and cakes, and hoped that they wouldn't be noticeably better than those served at the adjoining tables.

The two of them chatted about films until the women at the next table left, and there was no longer any danger of their being overheard. Effi asked after Ali's family, and received an earful of the girl's frustration with her parents. 'My dad is such an innocent,' Ali complained, 'but my mother's even worse. She knows better, and she's not afraid to say so, but she won't actually stand up to him. When they get the letter they'll just bicker with each other all the way to the train, and they'll still be bickering when they get wherever it is they're sent to.'

'You won't go?'

'Absolutely not. I shall stay in Berlin. You know -' she lowered her voice to a whisper '- I heard a wonderful story yesterday about a Jewish woman who wanted an Aryan work permit. She waited for an air raid, and then looked for a block in which the Party office and all of its records had been destroyed. Then she went to the report centre for people who've been bombed out and gave them a false name, a real photograph and the number of one of the houses which had been destroyed. They had no way of checking her story so they gave her the permit. And some emergency money! The welfare service fed and housed her for several weeks, and then evacuated her to Pomerania. And now she's got a job working as a housekeeper for a Party bigwig!'

Effi couldn't help smiling.

'I know there's not enough bombing at the moment,' Ali went on, 'but Kurt says - he's my boyfriend,' she explained, blushing slightly - 'he says it will get worse and worse once the Americans come into the war. There'll be more and more record offices bombed, and it'll be harder and harder for them to keep track of people. More and more Jews will be living as Christians - hundreds of them, I wouldn't wonder.' She looked at her watch. 'I must go. Do I look all right?'

'You look gorgeous,' Effi said, and meant it. She watched the girl go, thinking of herself at seventeen. She'd been every bit as headstrong, but the possible consequences of her youthful exuberance had not included years in a concentration camp.

The next face Russell saw belonged to Obersturmbannfuhrer Giminich. Someone else's fingers were playing with his hair, causing shooting pains across his scalp.

'Not serious,' a voice behind him said in Czech-accented German. The fingers did one more painful dance. 'Water, disinfectant, bandage,' the voice added. 'That is all.'

'Do whatever you have to, doctor,' Giminich said curtly. 'You have been extremely fortunate,' he told Russell, in a tone that implied someone else would have made a more deserving recipient of such luck.

Russell recognised his surroundings - he was back in the original hotel bedroom. He asked how long he'd been out.

'About half an hour,' Giminich grudgingly revealed.

'This stings,' the doctor told him, a second before dousing his head with what had to be neat alcohol.

He wasn't exaggerating. The shock took Russell's breath away, and for a second he thought he was losing consciousness again. 'Christ,' he murmured, as the pain slowly subsided.

The doctor began wrapping a long bandage around Russell's head. He was younger than he'd sounded, a short Czech in his late twenties or early thirties man with a shock of curly dark hair and a cadaverous face.

'What did you see of your assailants?' Giminich wanted to know. He was pacing up and down, a lit cigarette clamped between finger and thumb. Schulenburg, Russell now noticed, was standing by the blackout-screened window.

'Nothing really. The car was an Adler, but I didn't see any faces.'

'The car was stolen,' Giminich said, as if someone had asked him to explain the motorisation of the Czech resistance. 'It was abandoned outside Hiberner Station,' he added unnecessarily.

Russell was wondering why he'd been so stupid. The men who had tipped off Grashof had assumed that Russell was in league with the SD, and Russell himself had done nothing to shake that assumption. He had made no protest when taken away at Masaryk Station, and he had said nothing at the Sramota Cafe to suggest he was an unwilling participant in the entrapment process. Grashof's friends in the resistance had assumed Russell was one of the enemy, and following Grashof's arrest they had sought the obvious retaliation. He could hardly fault their logic, painful as the consequences still were.

'Did you see anything suspicious on your way back to the hotel?' Giminich asked him.

'I thought I was being followed on the Charles Bridge,' Russell said incautiously. 'But I wasn't,' he added quickly. Think before speaking, he told himself.

'What made you think you were not?' Giminich asked, his pacing momentarily suspended.

Russell went through the story, concluding with the disappearance of his supposed tail in another direction.

'They work in pairs,' Giminich told him.

'There was no one else,' Russell insisted, although it now seemed likely that there had been.

Giminich looked dissatisfied, but then that was who he was. The doctor had finished with his bandaging, and looked only too ready to depart. 'You must see a doctor when you reach Berlin,' he told Russell. 'But you will be fine.' Like Giminich, he seemed less than ecstatic about this outcome.

Russell thanked him anyway.

'You will come to headquarters now,' Giminich told him. 'Where your protection can be assured.'

The prospect of several hours cooped up in the Petschek Palace was appalling, but Russell very much doubted that he could refuse. What Giminich had just said was depressingly true - Heydrich's men in black were all that stood between him and the righteous wrath of the Czech Resistance. Irony was too short a word.

He slowly levered himself off the bed, and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of any sharp reaction inside his skull. The doctor had been right; the bullet had caused little more damage than a sudden blow from a sharp instrument. He had seen many such wounds in Flanders, where they had often been welcomed as a relatively painless ticket away from the front line.

The trip down in the lift made him feel slightly woozy, but the cold night air soon put that right. Night had fallen, and the car waiting outside had the usual thinly-slit covers over its headlights. 'Has Prague been bombed?' he asked his companions.

'Of course not,' Schulenburg told him.

Then why a blackout, Russell wondered but didn't ask. The Resistance was probably grateful.

The streets were virtually empty, only one darkened tram squealing its way past them as they neared the top of Wenceslas Square. In less than five minutes they were drawing up outside what Russell could only assume was the Petschek Palace. He had seen the building by daylight in 1939, a vast block of huge stones which reminded him of the Inca capital Cuzco in Paul's much-loved Wonders of the World book. It had five main floors, with two more in the roof and an unknown number below ground level. Several, if Russell knew the Gestapo and SD. They loved their cellars.

Inside the hanging lights seemed permanently dimmed, walls and stairs receding upwards into apparently depthless shadow. A uniformed SD officer was waiting for Giminich, and instructions.

'Take ten men from the Cinema,' Giminich told him. 'And make sure there are reports in tomorrow morning's Czech newspapers. A list of names, and the reasons for their execution.'

Russell had a terrible notion of what this was all about. 'You're not going to kill ten prisoners in retaliation for the attack on me?' he blurted out, realising as he did so that protest would only anger his hosts. 'I don't want that sort of blood on my hands,' he added, as if Giminich would care a damn what he wanted.

'It's nothing to do with you,' Giminich snapped, waving his surprised subordinate away. 'Whatever you want and whatever your sympathies, those who tried to kill you considered you a representative of the Reich. Such attacks must be deterred.'

'And you think killing ten innocent men will weaken the will of the Resistance?'

'I do. But I repeat, this is not your concern.' He turned to Schulenburg. 'Willi, take Herr Russell to the reception lounge.'

'This way,' Schulenburg ordered, as Giminich strode away down a corridor. The reception lounge was in the opposite direction, and surprisingly well-furnished for a police headquarters. A place to park visiting dignitaries, Russell assumed, not to mention foreign journalists on the run from the Resistance. 'You will remain here,' Schulenburg ordered.

'One question,' Russell said, although he wasn't at all sure he wanted the answer. 'What is the Cinema?'

Schulenburg smiled, which was scary in itself. 'It's the room downstairs where prisoners wait for their interrogations. The walls are bare, and several months ago one of them told his interrogator that he had seen his worst imaginings projected onto them. Like a horror film. It has been called the Cinema ever since.' He closed the door behind him.

Russell lowered himself into the nearest armchair. A vehicle was in motion outside the blacked-out window, but that was all he could hear - the building might have been empty for all the sound its other occupants were making. The walls didn't look as if they'd been sound-proofed, but they were probably already thick enough for the Gestapo's purposes. For all he knew there were men and women screaming their heads off a few rooms away.

He looked around him. The armchairs, polished wooden table and eighteenth-century desk, the fleur-de-lys embossed wallpaper, ornate cornices and bucolic oil paintings - all the trappings of moderate affluence, anywhere in Central Europe. It all looked so ordinary, in a faded, antiquated sort of way. Like the anteroom to an outmoded version of hell.

His head was throbbing, which might or might not be a good sign. He placed a hand over the wound, and found the bandage was sticky with blood. Not wet, though. He walked across to the mirror, but no amount of twisting his head could provide him with a decent view. Another two inches to the left, he thought, and his brains would have been splattered all over Lepanska Street. Perhaps he was destined to survive the war.

Unlike the ten men from the Cinema. Their deaths were not down to him, not in any real sense. He hadn't attacked them himself, hadn't ordered reprisals. But if he hadn't been seduced by the promise of Swiss weekends with Effi, those ten men would not be living their last few hours.

He shook his head, and pain coursed through it.

The door opened, revealing Schulenburg. 'Come,' he said.

Russell reached for his bag, noticing for the first time the neat line of blood droplets which adorned it.

'Leave that,' Schulenburg ordered.

'We're not going to the station?'

'Not yet.'

They walked down a long corridor, turned left, and descended a flight of worn stone steps. With each step down the weight of the building seemed to grow, and Russell felt the kernel of fear in his stomach begin to expand. He told himself not to worry. What could they possibly want from him? Silence was the obvious answer, one that chilled him to the bone. He had a sudden picture of himself, knelt down, his executioner holding the pistol to the back of his neck.

Two head shots in one day seemed excessive.

They were, he guessed, two floors below street level. A shorter corridor, an ominously reinforced door, and they were entering one end of a long narrow room. It was spotlessly clean, and the metallic smell of blood was probably all in his imagination. Or emanating from his own head wound.

Obersturmbannfuhrer Giminich was waiting, along with two uniformed men with machine guns, several other Germans in plain clothes and a line of Czech prisoners. Seven of them. One was the man who had followed him across the Charles Bridge.

'Do you recognise any of these men?' Giminich asked.

Russell took his time, walking slowly down the line, scrutinising each face with apparent thoroughness. Most were bruised, some cut as well, and a couple of eyes were swollen shut. The open eyes were full of defiance. Not to mention loathing.

The man from the bridge was not the only one he recognised. A second man, younger, with a pugnacious face and longish blond hair, also seemed familiar, but not from today. Russell realised he must have come into contact with him during one of his two trips in 1939, but he couldn't remember which, let alone what the circumstances had been. He was fairly sure that the man had recognised him.

'No,' he told Giminich, 'I don't recognise any of them.'

'Are you certain? Take another look.'

Russell took another slow walk along the line-up. Had the man on the bridge already confessed? Was Giminich using the man to trap him?

He wasn't going to give the man up, but... 'I can't be sure,' he said, hedging his bets.

'But you have an idea?'

'No, not really. Nothing that I'd risk an innocent man's life on.'

'They tried to kill you,' Giminich reminded him.

'Someone did,' he agreed. And I can't say that I blame them, he thought to himself. Judging by the looks on the Czech faces, he would be well-advised to avoid post-war Prague.

Rather to Russell's surprise, Giminich did not seem disappointed. 'Very well, ' he said, consulting his watch. 'You will be taken to the station now. You will be well looked after until the train leaves, and a compartment has been arranged for your personal use as far as Dresden. I'm sure I don't need to remind you of our earlier conversation, about the wording of your report to the Admiral.'

'No,' Russell agreed, 'you don't.'

Walking up the stone stairs seemed infinitely preferable to walking down, as if the weight of the building was sloughing off his back. They collected his bag from the guest lounge and made their way out to the interior courtyard, where a combination of masked headlights and ill-fitting window screens cast everything in a thin blue light, as if the world was wreathed in cigarette smoke.

Schulenburg got in the back with him, but said nothing on the short drive to the station. The concourse was unusually empty, and Russell felt sadly reassured by all the uniforms and guns in evidence - leaving Prague like a Nazi celebrity might not prove a treasured memory, but it definitely seemed preferable to dying in a hail of Resistance bullets.

The train was already at the platform. Schulenburg rapped out a few orders and walked away without a word of farewell, leaving two uniformed Ordnungspolizei to stand guard outside Russell's compartment until the train departed. It began drawing out of the station at precisely nine o'clock. It was his third departure from the Masaryk Station in two years, and all three had been accompanied by a decided whiff of desperation.

He headed for the bar, where the blackout screens had not been lowered. They were just passing the locomotive depot where Russell had witnessed a more successful Resistance execution, and it suddenly occurred to him that the face he had vaguely recognised in the line-up had belonged to the young man standing guard outside the sand-dryer building on that long-ago night.