Stattin Station (24 page)

He introduced himself, let her choose their table in a lonely corner, and murmured 'an accident' in response to her questioning look at his bandaged head. His expressions of regret for her recent loss were shrugged aside - either she was putting a very brave face on widowhood or she was less bothered than he was.

'How long were you married?' Russell asked, purely out of curiosity. Sullivan had never mentioned a wife.

'Almost two years,' she answered, once the waitress had taken his coupons and gone off in search of coffee and cake. 'He was very good to me,' she added almost grudgingly. 'He was taking me to Italy once he had the money from those papers.'

Russell managed not to look surprised. 'Italy?' he asked.

'Away from the war,' she explained. 'And winters like this.'

'So what information do you have for me?' Russell asked.

The waitress arrived with their coffees and a creamy-looking confection that IG Farben had probably created between batches of synthetic rubber.

She took a bite and made a face. 'I think you already have the information,' she said, after wiping her lips. 'You do have Patrick's papers, don't you? Well, I want my share of whatever it is they're worth. I
was
his wife.'

'I don't have his papers,' Russell told her.

She wasn't convinced. 'Look, I'm sorry I told the police that Patrick was meeting you at Stettin Station. I was flustered.'

'I still don't have any of your husband's papers. What makes you think I do?'

She gave him a hard stare. 'Well, the police turned our flat upside-down looking for something, and what else were they looking for? So they weren't on the... you know, when they found him...'

'The people who killed your husband must have taken them.'

'I don't think so. If they did, why are they watching me?'

'What? How do you...'

'There are men watching me. There's a car outside our building all day. I called that Kriminalinspektor and he said it wasn't his people. So who else can it be?'

A good question, Russell thought. Was this why Kuzorra thought there was still something to find? 'Did they follow you here?' he asked, looking round. He couldn't remember any suspicious-looking characters entering the cafe since her arrival.

'No,' she said. 'I left by the back entrance, and I made sure no one followed me onto the U-Bahn.'

She was, Russell realised, smarter than she looked.

'Look,' she said, 'I don't know whether to believe you or not. When Patrick left home that morning he had the briefcase with him, so he must...'

Russell stopped listening. The strange direction from which Sullivan had appeared at Stettin Station - it suddenly made sense. The ticket... he must have found a chance to drop it, or more likely swallow it.

She was looking at him, expecting an answer.

'Your husband wasn't carrying anything when those men led him away,' he said truthfully. And Kuzorra, he realised, had made no mention of it. 'Did you tell the police about the briefcase?'

'No, of course not. They wouldn't let me sell the papers. They might even arrest me for knowing about them.'

'Maybe he left them in safe keeping at one of the foreign press clubs,' Russell improvised. 'I'll make some discreet enquiries. What does it look like?'

She said nothing, but the suspicion in her eyes was eloquent enough. 'I won't cut you out,' he said reassuringly. 'If I find the papers, and if we can sell them, then we'll split the proceeds 50-50. Fair enough?'

She wanted to protest, but was clever enough to know that he held all the cards. 'All right,' she said grudgingly.

It was a brown leather briefcase with two straps. Sullivan's initials were embossed in gold above the lock.

Russell walked her back to the U-Bahn station, watched her disappear down the steps, and sought out a public telephone. Over recent months the Gestapo had taken to cutting off the American Consulate whenever the mood seemed right, but on this particular day they must have been harassing other innocents. He got straight through, and persuaded the telephonist to summon Joseph Kenyon.

'I need to see you and Dallin,' he told the diplomat.

'Now?' Kenyon asked.

'Tomorrow morning will do,' Russell said, remembering his promise to be home by five.

There was a pause. 'Say ten o'clock,' Kenyon said. 'I'll try and round up Scott.'

'Good.'

Russell only realised that he'd forgotten to visit the hospital as he let himself into the flat. Effi was not yet back, but his son would be home from school. He unhooked the phone and dialled the Grunewald number. Paul himself answered, and sounded genuinely pleased to hear from his father.

Their usual Saturday afternoon get-together had, however, once again fallen victim to the insatiable appetite of the
Hitlerjugend
. The whole day had been taken over for a 'terrain game' in Havelland, and, as if that wasn't enough, four further hours on Sunday morning had been set aside for training in the laying of telephone cables. Russell sometimes wondered if Germany's youth would have any energy left by the time they were called up, but Paul seemed unfazed by the fullness of his weekend. 'Could we go to the game on Sunday afternoon?' he asked. 'I should be finished in time.'

Russell was delighted. They hadn't been for a while - Paul had not seemed keen, and Russell found it hard to feel enthusiastic about football in the middle of a war, though this was not a view shared by his fellow Berliners. Attendances had swollen over the last year, despite the fact that many of the best players and a high proportion of the regular fans were strewn across Europe at the Wehrmacht's bidding. 'I'd like that,' he said.

'So would I,' Paul agreed, and their goodbyes were imbued with the sort of simple father-son camaraderie that both had once taken for granted. A few minutes later Effi walked in, and was suitably shocked by his bandaged head. 'What...'

'It's nothing,' he reassured her. 'Someone took a shot at me. Just a crease. I'm fine.'

'Someone took a
shot
at you?'

'In Prague.'

'Have you seen a doctor?'

'In Prague. A Czech doctor. I meant to go today but...'

'Let me look at it.'

'There's no need...'

'Sit down!'

He did as he was told, and she began unwinding the bandage.

'How's the filming going?' he asked.

'I don't want to talk about it. Not until I've had a drink anyway. And I'm afraid I still haven't got to the shops; we'll have to eat out.' The bandage was off, and the wound seemed clean enough. She felt relieved, but also frightened at the closeness of the shave. 'And stop trying to change the subject. Who was it shot you? And why?'

'The Czech Resistance.'

'Well, they're rotten shots. This doesn't look too bad.'

'The worst bit is having to explain the bandage to everyone I meet.'

She smiled in spite of herself, and went into the bathroom. 'One of those woolly ski caps we bought in Innsbruck would cover it up,' she said, rifling through the medicine cabinet.

'Yes. And add a hint of sartorial
joie de vivre
to Ribbentrop's press conferences.'

She emerged with a new dressing. 'Now tell me the whole story.'

He gave her a detailed precis of his twelve hours in Prague.

'You were lucky,' she said when he was finished. 'And I don't just mean with the bullet.'

'Not that lucky. Canaris made the Swiss arrangement conditional on my delivering the message.'

'So that's off,' she said, failing to hide her disappointment.

'Not necessarily,' Russell told her. 'I have another idea.'

At ten the following morning he was ringing the doorbell at the American Consulate. A sprinkling of snow had fallen overnight, and both Kenyon and Dallin were waiting in Russian-style overcoats. The three of them walked across Pariser Platz, past the Brandenburg Gate and into the festive-looking Tiergarten.

'Any news?' Russell asked, as three fighters flew past a half-kilometre or so to the north. The BBC news of the previous evening had reported 'rising tension' in the Far East, but nothing more specific.

'No,' Kenyon told him, pausing to light one of his cigarettes. 'But we're still thinking days rather than weeks.'

'What about you,' Dallin asked. 'Have you seen Knieriem yet?'

'I tried,' Russell lied. 'I went round to his house last night, and there were two official cars outside. I think Herr Knieriem has thrown in his lot with the Nazis.'

'That doesn't necessarily follow,' Dallin insisted. 'He could be...'

'I know he could,' Russell interjected. 'But it didn't seem like the right moment to find out.'

They all fell silent as a well-wrapped nanny walked by with her two charges, one still in a pram, the other clasping a snowball and clearly itching to throw it.

'So when are you going back?' Dallin asked, looking warily over his shoulder.

'Maybe tonight, but that's not what I wanted to see you about.' He stopped and turned to Kenyon. 'I think I may know where those documents are, the ones Sullivan was going to give us.'

'Where?' Kenyon asked, his eyes lighting up.

Russell ignored the question and turned to Dallin. 'But I need something from you in exchange,' he told the Intelligence man. 'Remember the idea of setting me up in Switzerland as a channel between you and the Abwehr, and the job I was supposed to do in Prague for Canaris as proof of my usefulness and loyalty? Well, the SD torpedoed the job, and Canaris is probably less fond of me than he was. So I need you to push my case from your end, tell Canaris how useful it would be for you and him to have me there in Switzerland.'

Kenyon was smiling, Dallin frowning and shaking his head. 'I can't do a deal like that,' the latter said.

'Of course you can. You liked the idea when I first told you about it, and it's in your government's interest - a channel to the Abwehr would be useful, particularly if Canaris falls out even further with Heydrich. And it's in the Admiral's interests too. All you have to do is insist that I'm the man you want as the go-between. Put it in writing, and I'll deliver it. What could that cost you?'

'And when do you think you can recover Sullivan's papers?' Kenyon asked. Away in the distance a train was rumbling across the Spree bridge outside Bellevue Station.

Russell worked through a mental timetable. 'Saturday,' he suggested. 'Maybe Sunday.'

'I don't know,' Dallin said stubbornly.

As Russell had hoped, the senior diplomat was not about to be denied. 'We'll work something out,' Kenyon assured him.

Dropping in at the Adlon to check for messages, Russell found most of the foreign press corps strewn around the bar like passengers waiting for a train. Some had even taken the precaution of bringing small suitcases with them, just in case. Several were enjoying a late and decidedly alcoholic breakfast.

Around eleven forty-five they set off
en masse
for the Foreign Ministry, rather in the manner of schoolboys and girls resenting a disagreeable outing. The briefing proved even less enlightening than usual - with the battles in Russia and North Africa apparently still raging, all von Stumm wanted to talk about was a heinous attack by terrorists on a German officer in Paris. For once, Russell thought, the German spokesman might have got his priorities right, albeit not in the way he intended. As finite German power was spread ever more thinly across an expanding empire, an ever-swelling tide of resistance seemed inevitable.

The briefing concluded in the traditional way, with one of the Americans asking a question that the Germans either wouldn't or couldn't answer. 'Would the spokesman like to comment on Turkey's decision to accept lend-lease aid from the United States?' Ralph Morrison asked. Von Stumm looked at the table, said for the hundredth time that year that this particular question was 'not worthy of an answer', and made the usual abrupt exit, sucking minions into his wake as he swept from the chamber. There was a brief and thoroughly sarcastic ripple of applause.

The press corps adjourned to the Press Club for a long and highly alcoholic lunch, before attending their second circus of the day at Goebbels' Big Top. One of the Americans was leaving for Switzerland soon thereafter, and a farewell party had been planned for the station platform. Russell didn't know the man well, but joined his drunken colleagues in their stumbling progress to the nearby Potsdam Station. Out on the platform, the party turned into a multinational singsong, with a fine rendition of 'Lili Marlene' sandwiched between equally melodic takes on 'Swanee River' and 'Pennies from Heaven'. Several colleagues had come armed with rolls containing real sausage for the traveller, and insisted that their later consumption be suitably ostentatious - if at all possible, sizable chunks of meat should be casually jettisoned in front of watching Germans.

The whistles finally blew, and as the train moved off into the darkness the journalists all waved white handkerchiefs at their departing colleague. It was quite ridiculous, and annoyingly moving.

After sobering himself up with a strong and thoroughly disgusting coffee at the station buffet, Russell descended the steps to the U-Bahn platforms. The normal rush hours were over, but the trains were still packed, and he stood all the way to Alexander Platz, where he changed lines. The Gesundbrunnen train was almost as full, but a seat opened up after a couple of stops. He was tired, he realised, both physically and mentally. Tired of waiting for some sort of axe to fall.

Emerging from the U-Bahn terminus, he turned down Behmstrasse. Ahead of him, the dark rectangle of Hertha's Plumpe Stadium was dimly silhouetted against the clear night sky. The locomotive driver Walter Metza lived a couple of streets to the north, in one of the old apartment blocks that housed many of the local Reichsbahn workers, and Russell found the street without much difficulty. This was not the sort of area the Gestapo would visit on foot, but for Metza's sake Russell was careful to make sure that he wasn't being followed.

The woman who answered the door was initially suspicious, but managed a thin smile of welcome when he explained who he was, and swiftly ushered him inside. She was a tallish blonde in her early thirties, with one of those plain faces that would sometimes slip into beauty. As she shut the door Russell noticed a Reichspost cap hanging behind it.