Silesian Station

'Not at all. I didn't hate any of the Germans on the other side of no man's land, but I was quite prepared to kill them.'

'Is that the same? I suppose it is in a way. But you weren't sleeping with the enemy.'

'No.'

She managed another half-strangled laugh. 'I suppose this is what passes for small talk in a Thousand Year Reich.'

After dropping Sarah off at her home Russell headed straight for Effi's. As he pulled the Hanomag into the yard beside her building, he noticed two men standing outside the front door. They were in civilian dress, but they didn't look like salesmen.

Both were wearing long coats and hats despite the warmth of the evening, and the shorter of the two - a slim blonde with a weasel face - sported beads of sweat on his forehead and above his upper lip. As he moved to block Russell's entrance he tried for a winning smile. He failed, but the mere attempt was reassuring.

'John Russell,' he said. It wasn't a question.

'That's me.'

'We need to talk to you. In your car, perhaps?'

There was no point in refusing. Russell led the way back to the Hanomag and opened the doors. The taller man jammed himself into the back, leaving Russell and weasel-face in the front. 'A message from Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth?' he asked.

The man looked disappointed that his line had been stolen. 'Instructions,' he corrected. 'You will be receiving a number of documents in the next few days. The Hauptsturmfuhrer assumes you know what to do with them.'

'Pass them on to the Reds.'

'That is correct.' He reached for the door handle.

'Hold on a moment,' Russell said. 'How are you planning on delivering these documents? You can't come here again - the Soviets know I live here most of the time, and they could be watching the place.' He very much doubted that they were, but he wanted to keep Heydrich's goons as far away from Effi as possible. And if they got the impression he was taking his new mission seriously, it might even bolster his credibility.

Weasel-face stared out at the darkened street. 'They will also know of your other address.'

'Of course. You'll have to use the post,' Russell explained, trying not to sound like he was talking to a ten-year-old child. 'Send everything to Neuen-burger Strasse,' he added.

The man nodded. 'It shall be done as you suggest,' he said, and reached for the door handle again.

Russell sat in the car watching them walk away. He expected more from Heydrich's people, and felt somewhat cheered by the utter banality of the encounter. Don't get too cocky, he told himself. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth was not a fool.

He was only halfway up the stairs when Effi opened the door with a face full of questions. 'Who were they?' she asked as she almost pulled him inside. 'What did they want?'

'Nothing that important,' he told her, kissing her on the forehead. 'A couple of Heydrich's boys delivering a message. Did they come up?'

'Oh yes. They wanted to wait for you inside. I told them I had a reputation to think of, and both of them leered at me. But they went back downstairs.'

'They were well-behaved then,' he said, taking her into his arms. He could see that she'd been shaken by their appearance. 'Have you eaten?' he asked, thinking that it would be better to get her out of the flat.

'I'm not hungry. What was the message, John?'

'I thought we agreed not to tell each other certain things.'

'Yes, yes, I know we did. All right. But I've been standing by the window waiting for you to come back and wondering what they wanted with you... whether they were going to arrest you or ask you to do something horrible. John, I don't want you doing anything that you know is wrong just to keep me safe.'

He put his hands on her shoulders. 'If it ever comes to that, I'll tell you. And we'll decide together.'

'Yes, but what choice will there be?'

'We can do what they want me to do, or we can leave. Together.'

'How could we leave? They won't let us.'

'I'm working on that.'

She looked up at him with worried eyes.

'It's going to be all right,' he said, and found, rather to his surprise, that he half-believed it.

She dropped her head on his chest and hugged him tightly.

'I haven't eaten,' he said eventually.

'No, neither have I,' she admitted, looking at her watch. 'So who needs sleep? I'm supposed to look haggard tomorrow - it's the scene where I've been sitting at the SA squad leader's bedside for nights on end. Lili will be amazed by how little make-up I need.'

They walked to the small French restaurant just off the Ku'damm. Both city and restaurant seemed quiet for a Friday night, another consequence, Russell guessed, of the military manoeuvres. As they waited for their meals in a secluded corner of the rear garden, he brought Effi up to date on the search for Miriam Rosenfeld.

'You can't blame him,' she said of Kuzorra's resignation, 'but what are you and Thomas going to do now?'

'I don't know. We've got so little to go on - nothing really, nothing definite. The one witness Kuzorra found couldn't swear it was her. And if it wasn't her, then the man he saw talking to her is irrelevant. He could have been a father meeting a daughter or an uncle meeting a niece - something perfectly innocent.'

'But the man was seen again.'

'Probably. We're not totally sure it was the same man.'

'So why did they lean on your detective?'

Russell shrugged. 'A private grudge? Someone enraged by the idea that a missing Jew needs finding? We just don't know. We still don't know for certain that she ever reached Berlin.'

'I think you do,' Effi said. 'All right, none of the things your detective discovered are a hundred per cent. But together - it's just too much. A girl who looks remarkably like Miriam meets a man who makes a habit of hanging round Silesian Station, and the moment your detective starts asking questions about the two of them he gets a visit from his old colleague. If those were the opening scenes of a movie you would know what had happened.'

Russell sighed. 'I know. I just keep hoping there's another explanation, that she never got here, or that her meeting with our mystery man was an innocent one, and she decided for some reason or other to go home. She might have found out about her uncle being beaten up and just panicked, and gone rushing back to her family. She is only seventeen, and I don't think she'd even seen a city before, let alone one this size.'

'So are you and Thomas going to look for another detective?'

'We might try, but I doubt we'll find one.'

'Then what?'

'I don't know. I'll drop in and see Thomas on my way to Paul's tomorrow. If I can find enough petrol, that is.' He explained the shortage, and the new garage policy of favouring regular customers. 'Which is fine if you have a regular garage. I don't.' He saw the look on her face, and grinned. 'I know. There are always trams. Especially for those of us who don't warrant studio cars.'

It was gone ten by the time they got home, almost eleven when Effi's breathing took on the pattern of sleep. Russell lay there, enjoying the soft warmth of her body curled into his, thinking back over his day. Two embassy appointments to discuss espionage work, an angry private detective and a rather remarkable woman, a sweet young pair of resisters and a dumb young pair of SD goons. All topped off with the love of his life lying naked beside him. Life was far from empty.

He had promised Effi that everything was going to be all right. Was it? He felt safe in Berlin, which was more than he'd felt in Prague. But was he missing something crucial? Had he taken one of those oh-so-ordinary life-and-death decisions without realizing it?

Look at the big picture, he told himself. The Germans could hardly accuse him of spying for the Soviets when it was they who had put him up to it. And vice versa. His spying for the Americans could be justified as part of his double role with the Soviets, and most of it could, at a pinch, be explained away as over-zealous journalism. And if things got out of hand there was always the emergency call to Zembski. What did he have to worry about?