First things first, Russell told himself, and called an old contact in the Foreign Ministry. Was it true? he asked. Off the record, yes. Hudson had made the offers all right, but no one in Berlin had any idea what official sanction, if any, he'd had for making them. The smart money in Ribbentrop's entourage was that the man had been drunk.
Possibly, Russell thought, as he headed for the central post office. He'd have put his money on Hudson being just one more defective product of the public schools, with all the confidence in the world and none of the judgement. They seemed drawn to Whitehall's fl ame like dim moths, and particularly to those departments dealing with the wicked outside world.
At the post office he wired a contact in London who was likely to know the score, and hurried down the Wilhelmstrasse for that morning's briefing. The spokesman, an alarmingly thin young man with a swastika-emblazoned tie, refused to answer any questions about 'The Hudson Affair', and looked increasingly annoyed by the foreign press corps' protracted refusal to take no for an answer. Finally getting his own way, he triumphantly produced a statement from the Hungarian Foreign Minister condemning the recent publication of an anti-German book in Budapest. The book in question, as one of the American journalists delighted in repeating, warned of German designs towards Hungary and claimed that Germany was bound to lose a European War. How had the German government pressured the Hungarian government into making this statement?, the journalist wanted to know.
The spokesman sighed, as if the question was beneath contempt. He had some statistics for them, he said, flourishing a piece of paper to prove it. In the previous June the United States had exported $3.4 million worth of arms to Britain in June and $2.5 million worth to France. Germany, by contrast, had received a shipment of ammunition worth $18. He raised indignant eyes to his audience, at least half of whom were rolling with laughter.
'Another day in Looneyland,' Slaney observed as they walked out.
Russell went back to the post office to see if his wire had been answered. It had - Hudson had indeed been freelancing.
And with what looked like catastrophic results, Russell told himself. The Germans might realize that no such offers were really on the table, but they might also be left with the sneaking suspicion that the British still hungered for a way out of their obligations to Poland. As for the Soviets, they'd probably take Hudson's indiscretions as confirmation of what they already suspected, that the British were much more interested in doing a deal with Nazi Germany than in doing a deal with them. 'And so to war,' he murmured to himself.
He had enough for a short commentary piece, he thought, something they could use alongside the agency reports if the story took off. He sequestered a corner table at the Adlon Bar to write it out, then headed back to the post office to wire it off. By then it was almost four o'clock. He turned the Hanomag for home.
The studio car was on time, but Effi was not. Russell treated himself and the harassed-looking driver to a small measure of the Bourbon he had brought back from America, and was gratified by the appreciative smile he received in return. 'That's good,' the young man said, just as Effi emerged looking suitably ravishing. Her dark hair fell past her face in sweeping waves, her brown eyes glowed, the clinging red dress was beautifully set off by a lace scarf in deepest violet. She had found a shade of lipstick which perfectly matched the dress.
The young driver let out an involuntary sigh of appreciation. For reasons best known to itself, Russell's mind conjured up the image of Effi in her Gestapo cell, rising from the floor in desperate monochrome. It seemed weeks ago, but it wasn't.
The Universum was at Ku'damm 153, only a few minutes away. A hundred metres short of the cinema they joined a slow-moving queue of cars waiting to unload their celebrity passengers. On the other side of the road a few hundred watchers were held behind temporary barriers by a handful of schutzpolizei.
The long-departed Bauhaus architect Eric Mendelssohn had designed the building, which was one of Russell's favourite Berlin landmarks. On the outside, it looked as if someone had sliced the superstructure off an ocean liner, swung the bridge round ninety degrees, and dropped the whole lot beside the Ku'damm. UNIVERSUM was spelt out in huge, solid letters along the semi-circular prow; a fifty-foot poster above the doors advertised the film currently showing. This particular poster - which featured a futuristic Prussian Army galloping madly along beneath the title Liberation - seemed almost as avant garde as the cinema. Effi Koenen was one of the four names listed below the two stars.
They climbed from the car, Effi drawing appreciative murmurs from the crowd. Russell could imagine the asides: what on earth does she see in him?
Once inside, they were hurried to their seats. The auditorium was virtually full, but three rows in the centre had been reserved for the celebrity guests. The actors and actresses chatted among themselves, apparently oblivious to the unconcealed interest of everyone else.
The Reichsminister for Propaganda arrived about ten minutes later. His wife was expensively dressed but, in Russell's admittedly biased opinion, looked somewhat frumpy. The rest of Goebbels' retinue seemed to have been chosen on grounds of size - the seven dwarves came to mind, though they all seemed too pleased with themselves to be Grumpy. Goebbels acknowledged the rest of the audience with a cavalier wave of the hand, then sat looking round at the sweeping, modernistic lines of the auditorium. There was an almost bemused look on his face, as if he was wondering how a Jew could have designed something so gorgeous.
The film let the cinema down, of course. It was standard Third Reich ho-kum, with the usual tried and trusted ingredients - a misunderstood genius whose iron will saves his people, male underlings who find their true purpose by abandoning mere reason, women who reach beyond kitchen, church and children at their peril. The setting - a much-used one in recent years - was the Prussian War of Liberation against Napoleon.
Christina Bergner, sitting three seats along from Russell, played the tragic heroine. As Countess Marianne, the wife of an imprisoned Prussian general, she goes to plead her husband's case with the French occupation commander and, somewhat predictably, falls in love with him. Effi plays her friend, her confidante and - when the Countess finally sacrifices love, life and everything else for the Fatherland - her teary exculpator. She looked rather good in eighteenth century costume, Russell thought.
She looked good in the red dress too. Goebbels seemed to hold her hand for rather too long as he greeted the cast in the huge foyer. Russell, stationed in the background with the other escorts, found himself praying that Effi would restrain herself, but he needn't have worried. She smiled prettily throughout, and only he seemed to notice how tightly she was holding herself.
'He tried to proposition me,' she hissed a few minutes later. 'With his wife a metre away,' she added angrily.
'I shouldn't take it personally,' Russell said. 'I don't think he can help himself. What did he actually say?'