Silesian Station

'Do you know anything about the situation in Shanghai?' the woman asked him suddenly.

'Not really. A lot of German Jews have emigrated there over the last six months. I believe the Gestapo chartered several ships.'

'They did. My cousins went on one, but we have heard nothing since.'

'That doesn't mean anything,' her husband interjected. 'You know what the post is like here - imagine what's it like in an occupied country like China.' He turned to Russell. 'We are here for transit visas,' he explained.

'I still think...' his wife began, but saw no point in completing the thought out loud. 'But what are they all doing in Shanghai?' she asked her husband. 'What will we do?'

'Survive,' he said tersely.

'So you say. We could survive in Palestine.'

Her husband made a disparaging noise. 'Palestine is just a big farm. Shanghai is a city. And if we don't like it we can go on to Australia or America.'

'With what?'

'We shall earn. We always have. Until Hitler came along and said we couldn't.'

'That's all very...' She stopped as footsteps sounded in the hall.

The grey suit appeared in the doorway, a newly-lit cigarette in one hand. 'Joseph and Anna Handler? This way.'

Russell was left to examine his surroundings. The Embassy seemed remarkably silent, as if most of the staff were off on holiday. Or off on a purge. The waiting room contained framed portraits of both Lenin and Stalin, gazing severely at each other from opposite walls. He thought through what he intended to say one more time, and hoped he wasn't guilty of over-confidence. He had got away with playing both ends against the middle in March, but he knew he'd been lucky as well as clever. The penalties for failure would be even worse this time, because Effi would also have to pay them. He might be shot as a spy, might escape with deportation. She would go to Ravensbruck.

The smoker returned about fifteen minutes later, and led Russell down a corridor to an office overlooking the central courtyard. A youngish woman with short curly hair and glasses sat behind the only desk, filing her finger-nails. After a minute or so she held them up to the window, examined them from every conceivable angle, and lowered them again.

'Do you speak Russian?' she asked Russell in that language.

'Only a little.'

'English?'

'I am American.'

'Yes I see.' She picked up the passport.

'I am not here for a visa,' Russell said. 'I need to see your highest-ranking intelligence officer - NKVD or GRU, it doesn't matter.'

She just looked at him.

'I am a friend of the Soviet Union,' Russell said, exaggerating somewhat. 'I'm here to offer my services.'

'Wait there,' she said, taking his passport and press credentials and leaving the room. She was wearing bright red carpet slippers, Russell noticed.

A few seconds later the smoker took up position in the doorway. Russell's smile elicited nothing more than a faint curl of the lip. It seemed distressingly likely that the object distorting his suit pocket was a gun.

Several minutes went by before the woman returned. A single sentence of Russian to the smoker, and he gestured Russell to follow. They climbed a wide marble staircase lined with poster-size photographs of factories and dams, and walked around the balustraded gallery. The furthest door led into a spacious office, high-ceilinged with a huge glass chandelier and two tall windows over-looking the Unter den Linden. A man in a dark grey suit, round-faced and balding, stood waiting in the middle of the room.

'Mr Russell? Please take a seat. We can speak in English, yes?' He chose an armchair for himself. 'Thank you, Sasha,' he said to the smoker, who left, closing the door behind him. 'So, you offer us your services?'

'And not for the first time,' Russell said.

'No? Please tell me. I know nothing of you.'

'May I know your name?'

'Konstantin Gorodnikov. I am trade attache here at the embassy. With other responsibilities, of course.'

After sketching in his communist past, Russell told the Russian about the series of articles he had written for Pravda earlier that year, and the oral reports on conditions in Germany that had accompanied them. 'My initial contact was Yevgeny Shchepkin - he never told me which service he worked for - but someone took his place at our third meeting, a woman named Irina Borskaya...'

'Wait a moment,' Gorodnikov said. He walked over to his desk, took a sheet of paper from the pile beside the typewriter, and selected a pen from those in the tray. A quick search for something to rest the paper on turned up a dog-eared copy of a popular German film magazine. Fully equipped, the Russian reoccupied his chair. 'Please continue.'

Russell did so. 'Comrade Borskaya never told me exactly who she worked for, either. She asked me to bring some documents out of Germany, and I agreed to do so on condition that her people helped a friend of mine across the border into Czechoslovakia. We both kept our parts of the bargain, but then she asked me to do something else. And when I refused, she planted some incriminating papers on me and tipped off the Gestapo.

'All this happened earlier this year. The Germans were not sure that I'd actually done anything illegal, but they knew I'd been in contact with your people over the articles and they suspected that there was more. Then, while I was in America this month, they arrested my girlfriend Effi for telling a bad joke about Hitler. When I got back last Monday the SD gave me a choice - work for them or Effi would be sent to a concentration camp. When I asked what they wanted me to do, they said I was to reestablish contact with you people and offer you intelligence. The idea being, of course, that they would be giving me false intelligence to pass on. So here I am. Obviously I have no desire to help the Nazis, or I wouldn't be telling you all this.'

Gorodnikov had written copious notes throughout this exposition, only pausing to sweep an imaginary speck of dust from his trousers when Russell mentioned Borskaya's attempted betrayal. 'That is very crystal clear,' he said, once it was plain the other had finished. 'You have skill for organising information.'

'That's my job,' Russell said dryly.

'Yes, I think so. And crystal clear means little without truth. I have no way to know how true this story is, here, now, but there can be later checking - I think you know that. So, let us say your story is true.'

'It is.'

'So. First question. If our person tries to have Gestapo arrest you, I think you will be very angry with Soviets. So why you want to help us? Why not just do what Gestapo want, and then you and your lady friend will be safe?'

'As I said, I don't like them. That's the first thing. I'm not crazy about you lot either, but if I'm forced to make a choice then there's no real contest. The Soviet Union might turn into something good - miracles can happen. Nazi Germany is something else. Nothing good grows out of scum. Do you understand?'

'You are anti-Nazi. That is good, but not surprise. Many people are anti-Nazi. Many Germans.'

'True, but they're not all being asked to help the bastards.'

Gorodnikov smiled for the first time.

'And they're not all willing to work for you,' Russell went on.

'How you work for us?'

'Well, I'll be bringing you false information that you know is false. Someone should be able to work something out from that.'

'Yes, but...'

'Look, I don't want any misunderstandings here. I'm not saying that I'm willing to die for the Soviet Union. Or anyone else for that matter. I'm willing to take some risks, but not those sort of risks. I won't take any more secrets across borders for you, but I'm ready to do some courier work inside Germany. And I'll pass on all the useful information which I come across as a journalist - I have good contacts here, and in London.'