Silesian Station (2008) (37 page)

This time there was a response. Footsteps inside, the click of a bolt being drawn back, a spillage of light as the door edged open.

Russell shoved his way through, causing a cry of consternation from within. Effi and Wilhelm followed. 'Air Raid Protection,' Russell barked at the man who was struggling back to his feet. 'This house has been bombed. I want everybody out. Now.'

'That's not possible,' the man said, but there was a welcome lack of certainty in his tone. Thin, balding and bespectacled, he was wearing a bizarre mixture of clothes, a civilian shirt and tie with police trousers and boots. 'You do know that this is SS property?' he almost pleaded.

'I don't care whose it is,' Russell told him. 'Targets are chosen at random, and it's a criminal offence to obstruct an Air Raid Protection unit in the course of its duties. Now, what is your name?

It was Sternkopf.

'Well, Herr Sternkopf, how many people are there in this house?'

'Four. Five including me.'

'How many women?'

'Four.'

Russell breathed an inner sigh of relief. 'Get the other lads,' he told Wilhelm. They had decided beforehand that the two of them would deal with any outside interference while Max and Erich searched the house.

'I must telephone Standartenfuhrer Grundel,' Sternkopf was saying.

Russell rounded on him. 'Herr Sternkopf, this is a serious exercise. If British bombers do attack Berlin there'll be no time to make telephone calls. Now please, this way.'

Sternkopf hesitated, but only for a second, as Russell escorted him outside. Max and Erich, who passed them on the steps, had already laid out the half-dozen stretchers which Wilhelm had borrowed from one of the few remaining Jewish clinics in Friedrichshain.

'Lie down on one of these,' Russell ordered. Sternkopf did so, and Freya hung a home-made placard around his neck that bore the words 'severe head injury'. She then squeezed some of the fake blood that Effi had borrowed from the studio onto the side of his head. 'It has to be realistic,' Russell told him sternly. 'Please moan as if you are in real pain.'

The front door opened again, spilling light across the pavement, and Russell saw Sternkopf staring at him, as if keen to remember what he looked like. 'Let's get him in the ambulance,' he told Wilhelm. 'It'll make it harder for him to remember our faces,' he added in a whisper.

They lifted him in, reminded him to moan, and shut the ambulance door. On the pavement, two young women were being told to lie down on stretchers. As far as Russell could make out in the gloom, both were young, dark and quite probably Jewish, but neither matched his picture of Miriam Rosenfeld. Both were wide-eyed with fright, and Effi was kneeling beside them, asking their names and quietly explaining that they were involved in an ARP exercise. She and Freya had insisted that telling the girls what was really happening would be more likely to panic than reassure them.

The street remained empty, the darkness occasionally breached by the distant flash of anti-aircraft batteries. Wilhelm's friends reappeared with another dark-haired girl. This one looked about fifteen. She clung to Erich with one hand, and held the neckline of her nightdress up against her throat with the other. 'This is Rachel,' Max said. 'We can't find anyone else.'

'The man said four,' Russell reminded him. He was damned if he was going to come this far and not find Miriam.

'Let me ask Ursel and Inge,' Effi said, and hurried across to the two girls on their stretchers. She returned a few moments later. Miriam's room was on the second floor, at the back.

'I'll go,' Russell told Wilhelm, and headed up the steps.

Inside, the doors were all hanging open. There was a big bed in Miriam's room, but no sign of the girl herself. Russell was looking under the bed when he heard the faintest of whimpers.

She was cowering in a cupboard, knees pulled up against her chin. 'Miriam,' he said, touching her shoulder as gently as he could, and she jerked back as if he'd given her an electric shock. 'Miriam, I'm here to take you away from this place. I've come from your mother and father. From Wartha. They're worried about you.'

She lifted her head and examined his face with a small child's eyes.

'Come,' Russell said gently. 'We must go.'

She wouldn't allow him to help her out of the cupboard, pushing his hand away with a sharp intake of breath. She extricated herself and stood looking at him, dressed in a long white nightgown which accentuated her black hair and olive skin.

He took a robe, and handed it to her. 'You'll need this outside.'

She put it on, and looked at him again, as if awaiting another instruction.

'Let's go downstairs,' he said, and, after only a slight hesitation, she accepted his invitation to walk down ahead of him. Outside she shied away from Wilhelm's helpful arm, but meekly laid down on one of the remaining stretchers.

'It's Miriam, isn't it?' Effi said, squatting down beside her.

The girl just looked up at her.

'Let's get Sternkopf out of the ambulance,' Russell said, but the sudden sound of an approaching vehicle stopped him in his tracks. Two thin head-lights were coming towards them. 'Keep going,' he murmured, but the vehicle was slowing down. As it inched past the ambulance and turned into 403's parking space Russell caught an unwelcome glimpse of silver runes on a black collar.

The car door slammed, and a bright torchbeam leapt out of the darkness, illuminating the pavement in front of the house. 'What is this?' a voice asked.

Russell turned his weaker beam on the intruder. 'This is an ARP exercise and your torch should be masked,' he said sharply, noticing, with a sinking heart, the uniform of a Waffen SS Standartenfuhrer, the holstered gun. He turned to the others. 'Let's get the wounded in the ambulance.'

'Not that one,' the Standartenfuhrer said. He was shining his torch at the fifteen-year-old. 'Rachel and I have a date.'

'You must postpone it,' Russell insisted. 'We can't leave her behind.'

'You can and you will,' the Standartenfuhrer told him, his tone hardening. 'This time tomorrow I shall be with my unit, and I have no intention of letting an imaginary air raid spoil a very real pleasure.'

Several options flicked across Russell's mind, none of them good. Should he, could he, leave Rachel behind to save the others?

A decision proved unnecessary. There was a sudden shift in the darkness behind the Standartenfuhrer, a glint of metal. The man's head jerked forward and his legs gave way, pitching him onto the pavement. Wilhelm had hit him with what looked like an ancient Luger.

'I couldn't see any alternative,' he said almost apologetically, and gave the prone body an exploratory kick in the ribs. 'He'll be out for a while.'

'Let's put him on a stretcher,' Russell heard a voice say. His own.

'No need for fake blood,' Wilhelm said cheerfully, as they carried him across.

He was right - the back of the man's skull was bleeding most convincingly. 'Sternkopf next,' Russell decided. As they carried the caretaker back to the pavement he gave no sign of having overheard the confrontation, but he did recognize the body on the stretcher.

'Standartenfuhrer Geisler,' Sternkopf muttered to himself. 'Another serious head wound,' he added, reading the placard which someone had already put round the unconscious SS officer's neck.

'The Standartenfuhrer is taking the exercise seriously,' Russell told Sternkopf reprovingly.

The rescued girls were sitting in the back of the ambulance, each wearing a placard describing a slight injury. Freya and Effi got in with them, leaving Wilhelm alone in the front. Erich and Max were waiting for Russell in the lorry cab.

'We'll be back in twenty minutes,' Russell told Sternkopf, and clambered up into the cab.

'Why can't you take us on the lorry?' the man complained.

'Health regulations,' Russell said glibly, and started the engine. Since they were supposedly headed for a hospital, they had included one in their itinerary. If they were stopped before they reached the Elisabeth on Lutzow-Strasse, they had their explanation ready. If they were stopped between the hospital and the Landwehrkanal, they would claim they'd got lost in the dark.

No one stopped them. Fifteen minutes after leaving the house on Eisenacher Strasse the two vehicles pulled up alongside the wall separating Schoneberger Ufer from the dark waters of the Landwehrkanal. As Effi swapped vehicles with Max and Erich, Russell handed Beiersdorfer's helmet over to Wilhelm. 'See you tomorrow,' he said.

The ambulance drove off, leaving Russell and Effi alone. 'Miriam didn't say a word,' she said, her voice sounding harsh in the darkness.

Russell drove north through the deserted Tiergarten and across the Moltke Bridge. Beyond the blue-lit Lehrter Station the streets seemed darker still, and he was past the entrance to Hunder's garage before he realized it. He backed up and drove in through the open gates.

Ten minutes later the lorry was back in its corner, complete with its original number-plates. Russell and Effi sat in the front seats of the Hanomag, helping each other remove their make-up by torchlight. 'We're back,' Effi said when they were finally done, and leaned over to kiss him. 'We did it,' she added, sounding almost surprised. 'We really did.'

'We're not home yet,' Russell reminded her.

As they headed south the sirens began sounding the all-clear, but it seemed as if Berlin had already written the night off and gone to sleep. Russell stopped the car halfway across the Moltke Bridge, checked that nothing was coming, and dropped the two Adlon number plates, the false moustache and Beiersdorfer's armband into the Spree. He hoped Wilhelm was being equally thorough.

It felt good to reach home, but the feeling was short-lived. As they came in through Effi's front door the telephone began to ring. They looked at each other, wondering who it could be. 'Did you give Wilhelm this number?' Effi asked.

'No.'

Effi picked up, listened, and said 'Yes, he is.'

'Someone named Sarah,' she told Russell.

He took the receiver. 'Sarah?'

There was a gulping noise at the other end. 'I have to see you,' she said.

'Okay, but...'

'And it has to be now.'

'Ah. All right. I'll walk over.'

'No, no. You must bring the car. Park it round the back. There's an alley runs up from the river end. I'll be waiting.'

Russell replaced the receiver and told Effi he had to go out again.

'What's happened?'

'Trouble,' he told her. 'She didn't explain.'

'You have to go?' It wasn't really a question.

'It's not far,' he said, as if that helped.

'Would it be useful if I came?'

'Probably. But this is one for me to sort out.'

She clung to him for a moment, then pushed him away. 'Hurry back.'

It was noticeably brighter outside - the recently-risen moon was bathing roofs and sky with pale light. The still-warm Hanomag sprang to life, and Russell sat behind the wheel rubbing his eyes and wondering which route would be safest. He then remembered that the all-clear had been sounded, and that he was driving his own blacked-out vehicle. Until he reached Altonaer Strasse he had nothing to worry about.

The streets were not as empty as they had been earlier, but he encountered only a dozen or so vehicles during the ten minute-drive. The cobbled alley that ran behind the houses on Altonaer Strasse was as dark as anything he'd encountered that evening, and he had to proceed at walking pace to avoid scraping the walls. He was about two hundred metres along when a light ahead flickered on and off.

Another hundred metres and his slitted headlights picked her out, a ghostly figure in a long white nightgown. 'This way,' she whispered, opening a back door and almost shoving him in. In the dimly lit kitchen he got his first good look at her, and his heart sank. She looked on the edge of hysteria, and her nightgown was splattered with what had to be blood.

'I've killed him,' she said, as if confirming the fact to herself.

Oh Christ, Russell thought. Several chains of consequence jostled for consideration in his mind, including the one featuring her arrest, her torture, and his name being taken down by an eager Gestapo scribe. 'What happened?' he asked, much more calmly than he felt.

She looked at him blankly for a moment, then snapped back into the present. 'He's upstairs,' she said. 'I'll show you.'

She raced up the carpeted stairs, Russell following at a suitably reluctant pace. Her Gruppenfuhrer was lying on his back by the empty hearth in the front bedroom, one arm at his side, the other twisted beneath him. His uniform tunic was unbuttoned, the jackbooted legs splayed out. A dark corona of blood surrounded the head, and his face had been battered beyond recognition.

'It was an accident,' she said.

Russell looked at her with disbelief.

'Not the face,' she admitted. 'But he fell. Honestly. He...I'd been reading some of Richard's poems, and I forgot to hide them away. He found them, and started reading one out loud, like it was all a huge joke... I tried to take the book away from him and he fell back across the arm of the chair and cracked his head on the edge of the fireplace. And then...I don't know, I just went out of my mind. I knew he was dead but I could still hear him laughing and I started hitting him with the poker and I couldn't stop.'

Russell ran fingers through his hair. Even if it had been an accident - and there was, he noticed, blood on the tiled surround of the fireplace - there was no way they could pass it off as one now. Even without her Jew-tainted past, she would be facing a murder trial and execution. With it, the process would be that much quicker. What could she do? He stood there staring at the body and its red mess of a face, trying to get his mind in gear.

'Who knows he's here?' Russell asked.

'The maid let him in. The neighbours on that side' - she gestured towards one wall - 'have left for the country, but the couple on the other side may have heard us arguing. I doubt it though - they're both quite deaf, and they sleep at the back.'

She could tell any investigators that the man had left, Russell thought. As long as the body wasn't found, no one could prove she was lying. Ah, but who was he kidding? This was Nazi Germany - they'd investigate her past, and once they knew who they were dealing with they'd get a confession. She might have money, but there was no way someone with her past could brazen it out. She had to disappear.