'It's a good picture,' he said.
'Did she talk to the Minister?'
'Just a few words. He complimented her on her acting.'
'That is good. She must have been pleased.'
'Yes, she was.' Russell took a final sip, gently pushed the cup away, and asked if any messages had been left for him.
There were two. Uwe Kuzorra had called - 'He has information for you, but he has no telephone, so you must call on him whenever it's convenient.' The second message was from a Frau Grostein. 'She said you know her. She would like you to call her on this number' - Frau Heidegger passed over a small square of paper. 'As soon as possible,' she said, 'but that was on Saturday, soon after I got back. The woman sounded... not upset, exactly. Excited perhaps?'
Russell shrugged his ignorance. 'I hardly know her. She's a friend of a friend. I'll call her now.' He got to his feet. 'Thanks for the coffee. It's good to have you back.'
She beamed.
He walked across the ground floor hallway to the block's only telephone and dialled the number.
'Frau Grostein,' a confident voice announced.
'John Russell. I've just got your message.'
'Mr Russell. I need to talk to you, but not on the telephone. Can we meet?'
'I suppose so.'
'Today?'
'All right.'
'It's ten past twelve now. How about two o'clock in the Rosengarten? By the Viktoria statue.'
'Fine. I'll see you there.' The line clicked off, and Russell replaced the ear-piece. A mistake? he wondered. These days his life seemed like one of those downhill ski runs he and Effi had seen at the Winter Olympics in '36. The contestants had plummeted down the mountainside at ever-increasing speeds, needing split-second changes of direction just to keep within bounds. Most had ended up in exploding flurries of snow, limbs and skis splayed at seemingly impossible angles.
Russell parked close to the Wagner monument on Tiergartenstrasse and walked up through the trees to the lake. Just past the statue of Albert Lortzing - the Germans did love their composers - a bridge led him over the stream and into the colonnaded Rosengarten. He caught sight of Sarah Grostein, crouching down to smell the dark red roses that surrounded the Empress Viktoria's marble plinth.
He walked towards her, glancing around as he did so. There were a few office workers, nannies with children, a pensioner or two. No one seemed interested in her or him. No one's head was hidden behind a raised newspaper. Paranoia, he told himself sternly. It beats the axe, a second inner voice retorted.
She stood up, looked round and saw him. She offered her hand and half-whispered, 'Thank you for coming.'
He just nodded.
'I thought we could walk,' she suggested. 'Towards the goldfish pond?'
She was older than he'd thought - around his own age, probably. Still attractive, though. Tall, big for a woman, but well-proportioned. Her clothes looked extremely expensive, her hair like someone had spent a lot of time on it. There was something feline about the contours of her face, something sad in the large brown eyes. 'Wherever you like,' he said.
After leaving the Rosengarten she chose one of the less-used pathways. 'Have you said anything to anyone about...seeing me where you did?'
'I should think half of Berlin saw you.'
'You know what I mean. After meeting me at the Wiesners. It must have surprised you.'
'Seeing a Jewish woman on an SS General's arm? It certainly made me curious.'
'So did you tell anyone?'
'Only my girlfriend.'
'Will she tell anyone?'
'No. When I told her she just suggested that half the people in Berlin were living double lives. And I didn't mention your name.'
'I'm surprised you remembered it.' She fell silent as a couple walked past in the opposite direction. 'I'm not Jewish by the way,' she said once the pair had gone by. She let out a short brittle laugh. 'Now that all Jewish females have Sarah as their second name it's assumed that anyone called Sarah is Jewish, but there are thousands of non-Jewish women named Sarah. Or were. I expect most of them have changed their names by now.'
'So how...?
'My husband was a Jew,' she said. 'Richard Grostein. A wonderful man. He died in Sachsenhausen five years ago. He was one of those Social Democrats who wouldn't shut up when the Nazis came to power. He was an old friend of Felix Wiesner's and I was an old comrade of Eva's - that's how we met.'
'I see,' Russell said, and thought he did. 'You don't need to tell me anything more. Your secrets are safe with me. Even safer if I don't know what half of them are.'
She smiled at that. 'It's not that simple, I'm afraid.' She gave him an appraising look. 'You don't seem to hide how you feel about the Nazis,' she said. 'Of course that must be easier for a foreigner, and you may not take it any further. I have the feeling you do, though. Or maybe that you will at some time in the future. If you do, you'll probably reach that place that I've reached, where you suddenly find that your own decisions have become matters of life and death. Your own life and death.'
Russell nodded. Six months earlier, agonising over what to do with a false passport, he had experienced exactly that thought.
'I've decided to trust you,' she said. 'With my life,' she added lightly. 'I'm guessing you must be a good man because of what you did for the Wiesners, but I don't really know anything about you. Eva told me that you arranged Albert's escape with the comrades, so I'm assuming - hoping - that you're still in touch with them.'
Say no, Russell thought, but he couldn't. 'I could be,' he temporised.
'We...I need to make contact. Our group has had no contact for four years, and we have no idea who it's safe to approach and who it isn't. We just need an address or a telephone number.'
Russell thought about it. She was - to repeat her own phrase - asking him to trust her with his life. He assumed she was a good person because she too had been a friend of the Wiesners, but he didn't really know anything about her either. Except that he'd seen her on an SS Gruppenfuhrer's arm.
Her story rang true. The KPD had certainly been decimated by the Nazis in 1933. Half of its leaders had ended up in concentration camps and half had fled into exile, leaving several million rudderless members to fend for them-selves. Many of those arrested had been persuaded - mostly by fear of torture - into betraying comrades still at liberty. Many had actually joined the Nazis, some from self-interest, others as a clandestine opposition. The problem was knowing which was which.
'We have valuable information,' she insisted. 'My Gruppenfuhrer works in the Reichsfuhrer's office.'
Russell was impressed. 'I'll see what I can do. It may take a few weeks though.'
'After four years, a few weeks won't matter.'
Russell was thinking about Effi's mutual secrets. He knew he wouldn't tell her about this meeting, and the knowledge saddened him.
Another thought occurred to him. 'Do you know a Freya and Wilhelm Isendahl? She was Freya Hahnemann until recently. She's not Jewish but he is.'
'Why are you asking?'
'Because I'm looking for her. I met her parents in New York a few weeks ago and they wanted me to check that she was all right. When I questioned the landlady at their old address I got the impression they were involved in political activity, and I don't want to put them in any danger.'
'I knew a young man of that name, back in '32-'33. Not personally, but by reputation - he was one of the youth wing's rising stars. I'm surprised he's still alive. You know what we used to call our Party activists in 1933?'
'Dead men on furlough.'
'Exactly. I'll see if I can get you an address.'
'Thanks.'
'And you'd better have mine - it's safer to visit than telephone.' She gave him a number and street in one of the posher districts to the north of the park.