Stattin Station (12 page)
'Did you get anything out of Paul?' Russell asked.
'No, I'm afraid not. I tried, believe me, but he's not stupid. He knows that anything he says to me will get passed on to you. I told him he seemed really angry with you, and he simply denied it. More or less implied I was imagining things. He was very polite about it, of course. He just denies there's a problem.'
'Maybe I should talk to Ilse.'
'It won't help. He's punishing you - I don't think he knows what for. It's not for anything specific that you've done, I'm sure of that.'
'Is that good or bad?'
She smiled. 'Probably neither and both. Look, John, there's nothing you're doing that you could do any differently. And explaining yourself won't help - fourteen-year-olds aren't interested in motives, just in how things affect them.'
'So what can I do?'
'Nothing. Just be patient. You know he loves you.'
'Sometimes I... no, I do know, of course I do.'
'Come here.'
Enfolded in her arms, he suddenly felt on the verge of tears. Everything seemed to be cracking apart. Everything but him and her.
Later, lying awake and cradling her sleeping head, he found himself thinking about Zembski, and the thoughts that must have raced through the Silesian's mind as the Gestapo broke into his studio. He'd have known he was a dead man, and that the only decision left to him lay in the timing. Die now, and take some of the bastards with him, or in a few weeks' time, after enduring agonies of pain and betraying his comrades.
How many people could he give up himself, Russell wondered. He went through the list, arranging them in the sequence of betrayal. How many people in Germany had made such macabre calculations - hundreds? Thousands? Calculations that in all probability would be instantly forgotten in the panic of the moment.
But he would never give her up. Never.
First thing Monday morning, Russell took the elevated U-Bahn towards Silesian Gate on his way to visit Ilse's brother Thomas. His mood remained dark, and the panoramic spread of hospital trains stabled side by side in the yards outside Anhalter Station did nothing to lighten it. He wondered how Thomas, who took this train to work each day, and whose son Joachim was fighting in the East, coped with this daily reminder of all too possible loss.
The previous day he and Effi had tried to leave the war behind and enjoy a normal pre-war Sunday. The effort had been a dismal failure. The outdoor cafe where they had once shared breakfast and newspapers had been closed, the tables folded away and the terrace littered with shrapnel. The Tiergarten was sunny for once, but it was impossible to ignore the wretched monstrosity of a flak tower, which seemed to loom above them whichever way they turned. Those of their favourite restaurants which remained open displayed menus that repelled rather than enticed, and Thomas and his family, whom they often visited on Sunday afternoons, had selfishly refused to answer their telephone. Thomas, Russell eventually remembered, had said something about visiting his wife's family in Leipzig. A last-ditch tour of the cinemas on the Ku'damm hadn't helped - everything on offer from Joey's dream factory seemed designed to depress them even further. Defeated, they had eaten badly at a restaurant full of dull-eyed soldiers on leave, and gone home to the BBC's unwelcome admission that the situation in North Africa was 'still confused.'
Russell wondered what Paul Schmidt would make of the situation at the noon press conference. He had never yet heard a Nazi official admit to confusion.
He walked from the Silesian Gate U-Bahn station to the Schade factory, crossing the Landwehrkanal as a long flotilla of coal barges passed under the bridge, heading for the Spree. Turning into the factory gates, the sight of the familiar black saloons brought him to an abrupt halt. What were the Gestapo doing here? After wondering for a moment whether his arrival would make matters worse, he decided that Thomas might need some moral support.
Both cars were empty of people, but a toy wooden fortress sat somewhat incongruously on the back seat of the second. Even the Gestapo had children.
Russell walked in through the front entrance and turned left into the outer office, where two of the visitors were chatting to the young woman whom they thought was the book keeper. Russell knew better - her name was Erna, and she was one of Thomas's many nieces, recently apprenticed to the family business. The actual bookkeeper, Ali Blumenthal, would have disappeared through the door leading to the printing rooms the moment the cars appeared in her window. By this time Ali would be wearing a star-adorned overall and wielding a broom. Jews were not allowed to do clerical work.
'Who are you?' rapped out one of the men. 'And what do you want?' 'I'm the owner's brother-in-law,' Russell said. This didn't seem the moment to admit that he was no longer married to Thomas's sister.
'Well you'll have to take your turn. Sit there.'
Russell did as he was told, straining his ears to hear the conversation taking place in the inner office above the usual clatter of the presses. Thomas seemed to be doing most of the talking. 'I have explained all this to Groening,' he said with exaggerated patience. 'I cannot fill my government orders if you people keep threatening to decimate my workforce. If I were to lose all the people on this list I dread to think what my output would shrink to.'
A softer voice interjected, one that Russell could not quite decipher. The one word he recognised was
juden
, and only because it was repeated several times.
'That's nonsense,' Thomas replied, raising his voice a little. 'The Jews I employ are treated as they should be. They have separate toilets and washrooms, and they work the sort of hours which such people should work. You and I could argue for hours about how these particular Jews managed to make themselves essential to the running of this business, but that would not make the slightest difference to the fact that they are. Once the war is won, and I am not up to my ears in urgent government contracts, I will happily take them down to the station and load them on a train for the East myself. But until that day comes...'
The Gestapo man was not convinced. The Reichsminister had decreed that Berlin should become
judenfrei
, and the process was now underway. It was irreversible. If one factory owner was granted exemptions, they would all want them, and nothing would be achieved. Herr Schade would simply have to find other workers. He would have no trouble getting hold of Russian prisoners, and they could learn anything that Jews could learn.
'If you persist with this nonsense,' Thomas told him, 'I shall have to take the matter up with Gruppenfuhrer Wohlauf.'
This name induced a few moments' silence, and even pricked the ears of the two Gestapo men in the outer office. When their superior in the next room resumed talking it was in a quieter, more conciliatory tone. Russell was impressed. He knew that Thomas had been deliberately widening his circle of influential acquaintances, but Wohlauf was one of Heydrich's proteges, and hardly a name to be taken in vain.
Two Gestapo officers emerged, the older one thin with glasses and a pale angry face, the younger one plumpish and harassed-looking. The former gave Russell a passing glare, and half paused in his stride, as if the need for a scapegoat had been both recognised and deferred in a few split seconds. All four of them passed out through the door, and seconds later the engines of their two cars burst into simultaneous life.
Russell walked into the inner office, and found Thomas at the window, a fist massaging his left temple.
'Wohlauf?' Russell asked with mock incredulity.
Thomas gave him a wry smile. 'Would you believe I had dinner with him and his wife last week? Lotte is in the same
Bund Deutscher Madel
group as his older daughter, and she found out a few months ago that Papa has a passion for sailing. I eventually dug up a mutual acquaintance and engineered a chance meeting. We may be going up to Rugen Island together in the spring.'
'The sacrifices we make.'
'He's not such a bad chap really. Well, he is; but for a Gruppenfuhrer in the SD he doesn't come across too badly. There's none of the usual obsession with Jews - he seems to despise all races more or less equally.' 'Will he play ball if you need him to?'
'God knows. I hope I don't have to ask.'
'What was it about this time?'
'A list of our Jewish workers for deportation. You know some of them live on the premises? Eleven single men, all over fifty. They were thrown out of their apartments in Wedding and Moabit so we put up some bunks in one of the old storehouses. Nothing special, I'm afraid - I have to keep convincing the Gestapo that I hate the Jews as much as I need them. Anyway, some bright spark down at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse dug up some regulation forbidding Jews from staying overnight at their workplaces, and decided it was a good excuse for putting my lot on the next train.'
'But you've saved them?'
'For the moment. Untangling all the relevant red tape will take me the rest of the morning, but it should be okay. For my eleven, that is. All it really means is that eleven others will be chosen in their place.'
There was no reply to that.
'Is this just a social call?' Thomas asked.
'Yes. We tried to ring you yesterday before I remembered that you were away. How are Hanna's family?'
'Good.'
'No news from Joachim?'
'Nothing for weeks,' Thomas said breezily. 'Look, John, I've got to deal with this business. Why don't we have lunch - how about Wednesday? The Russischer Hof, like we used to. One o'clock.'
'Make it one-thirty. And don't bring along any Gruppenfuhrers.'
'Everyone needs a Gruppenfuhrer, John.'
Seeing Thomas almost always lifted Russell's spirits, and watching the Gestapo sweep out in a collective temper-tantrum had lifted them higher than usual. And despite sitting for the better part of an hour on a hard wooden seat in a tram that probably pre-dated Bismarck, he still felt like smiling when he reached Wilhelmstrasse.
Dr Schmidt soon brought him back to earth. Klin had fallen, Ribbentrop's spokesman announced with a repulsive smirk, and the map behind him, though less crowded with sweeping arrows than Promi's version, showed how important that might be. The left wing of the German forces closing on Moscow would soon be due north of the city, and poised to sweep around behind it. Another 'biggest encirclement battle of all time' seemed on the cards.
The main business of the day, to which Schmidt turned with some reluctance, was the conference to renew the Anti-Comintern Pact. It was due to begin on the following day, and delegations from all the allies, both willing and reluctant, would be arriving today or tomorrow morning. The official renewal ceremony was tomorrow afternoon, and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop would be making the keynote speech on Wednesday. This would also be broadcast on the radio and printed in full in the newspapers.
'The word "ubiquitous" springs to mind,' Ralph Morrison whispered to Russell.
'Not to mention "unavoidable".'
The Fuhrer, Schmidt continued, would be arriving on Thursday for important consultations with the various presidents and prime ministers.
'He's only just left,' an American further down the table muttered.
Schmidt glared at the guilty party, and concluded with the announcement of a special European postage stamp, released to celebrate the continent's new-found unity.
'United in despair,' Morrison said as he got up. 'You know it's Thanksgiving on Thursday. I wish to Christ I was back in the States.'
Russell was still staring at the map, and the red dot marked Klin. 'They might still do it, you know,' he said quietly. 'And God help us if they do.'
After the press conference was over, he avoided the Press Club, settling for a bowl of potato soup in one of the Potsdam Station buffets. Lately, he was finding the company of his fellow journalists harder and harder to stomach, probably because he saw his own cynical impotence reflected in theirs. What was he going to send off today? Anything resembling the truth was
verboten
, and he, like his colleagues, had turned into as much of a propagandist as Dr Goebbels, cherry-picking whichever publishable stories suited his own agenda. He liked to think he was pursuing a deeper truth, but in the here and now it was all about manipulation. Would the American people be more likely to support intervention if the Russians looked close to defeat, or if it looked as if the Germans had been stopped? He wasn't at all sure. In fact, he suspected that at this particular moment it didn't matter a damn what story he filed.
His next stop was the Abwehr building on Tirpitz Ufer. He was simply hoping to drop off the translations, but Colonel Piekenbrock, catching sight of Russell through his open office door, beckoned him in. 'Good,' he said. 'Saved me the trouble of sending for you. The Admiral wants to see you.'
'What for?' Russell asked with some irritation. He didn't like the idea of being 'sent for', and it was hard to imagine such an invitation boding well.
'You will hear that from him,' Piekenbrock said calmly, picking up the internal phone. 'Let me see if he's back from lunch.'
He wasn't, and Russell was left to cool his heels in one of the conference rooms. The windows overlooked the canal, where another long chain of coal barges was chugging slowly westward. Unless of course it was the same one going round in circles, intent on convincing Berliners that fuel supplies for the winter were plentiful.
Perhaps the Admiral wanted to thank him for his services, and wish him well in American exile.
Perhaps Hitler had a mistress named Sarah Finkelstein.
Russell reminded himself of his golden rule, that official requests should never be met with a definite yes or no.
It was almost three o'clock when an aide came to fetch him. The ancient lifts were out of order, so they walked up three flights to the top floor, where Canaris had his spacious office. He was sitting behind a huge desk, but got up to shake Russell's hand, gesturing him towards one end of the large black leather sofa. After Russell had refused the offer of a cigarette from a carved wooden box, Canaris sat down on the other end.
He looked older than his fifty-four years, his face lined by a sailor's long exposure to the sun. He also had a way of glancing sideways at those he addressed which was slightly unnerving. Russell's first impression of the Admiral, from their only previous meeting, had been of a man who knew a lot more than he actually understood, and who wasn't particularly sharp on the uptake. But Canaris had kept Heydrich and his rival
Sicherheitsdienst
at bay for almost seven years, which if nothing else suggested a certain talent for bureaucratic in-fighting.
'Herr Russell, we are pleased with your work for us. Your liaison work with the Americans, that is. I'm sure your translations are also excellent, but they do not concern me.'
Russell nodded his appreciation of the compliments.
'Now, it seems very likely that Japan is about to expand its operations in the Pacific. Exactly how and where we do not know, but it's hard to think of any meaningful Japanese move which the United States will not regard as a
casus belli
. And if America is drawn into a war with Japan, I am certain that Roosevelt will see to it that war is also declared on Germany.' He paused for a second, inviting Russell to comment.
'I can't argue with that,' Russell agreed.
'So your time in Germany is coming to an end?'
'So it would seem.'
'Well, I have a proposition for you. I would like you to consider continuing with the work you've been doing - that is, acting as a liaison between the Abwehr and the United States government.'
'But there will be no American government presence in Berlin.'
'Of course not. You will have to leave Germany. But I do want to stress how important your role might be. There are many Germans who would welcome an understanding with the Western powers that allows them to continue the war in the East. You must remember the Fuhrer's offer of peace to Great Britain last summer. It was genuinely meant, I assure you.'