The train was on time and the border rituals shorter, at least on the Polish side. As the afternoon wore on, pit wheels, slag heaps and sidings gave way to forests and fields, mining towns to market towns. Russell sat in the half-empty dining car, nursing a glass of schnapps and writing out his Silesian story for dispatch from Breslau. It was not an easy one to write, but over the years he'd grown quite adept at exposing the Nazis as shameless liars without actually saying so.
They reached Breslau soon after six, too late, Russell guessed, for catching Josef Mohlmann at work in the Direktion Reichsbahn building. He walked across on the off -chance, and was directed up to a room on the third floor, just in time to intercept a young parasol-wielding secretary. Yes, Herr Mohlmann was still in his office, she said, clearly keen to be on her way.
'I'm an old friend,' Russell lied helpfully.
'You know where he is then,' she said cheerfully, giving him the clue he needed with a slight flick of the head.
'Thanks,' he said, walking in the direction indicated. The first door he came to bore Mohlmann's name under the job description Deputy Director of Operations, South-East Germany. Without hesitating, he opened the door and walked in.
A man of around forty looked up from what looked like a sheaf of time-tables, light flashing off his spectacles as he did so. His short brown hair was combed straight back, his face carved in the sort of angles a cubist would have admired. Elastic arm-bands held up his sleeves, red braces his trousers.
His response to Russell's precipitate entry belied the sternness of his features. 'Good evening,' he said questioningly, when most men so confronted would have spluttered something along the lines of 'Who the hell are you?'
'Good evening,' Russell replied, advancing with hand extended, his brain working overtime. He'd expected a lowly cog in the Reichsbahn's administrative machinery, not a Deputy Director of Operations. 'Your secretary told me to go straight in,' he lied. 'I have a message for you,' he said as they shook hands. 'From Franz Boyens in America.'
Mohlmann's eyes lit up. 'From Franz? He is well?'
'He's fine.'
'When did you see him?'
'A few weeks ago. In New York. Look, do you have time for a meal or a drink somewhere?'
Mohlmann looked down at his timetables, and his hand jerked slightly, as if he was checking a sudden desire to sweep them from his desk. 'Of course,' he said. 'I work too many hours in any case,' he added jokingly, taking his suit jacket from the back of his chair.
The building seemed almost empty as they walked down the wide central staircase, but Russell hadn't wanted to risk a real conversation in Mohlmann's office - there was no knowing how thick the walls were or who was on the other side.
'Where shall we go?' Mohlmann asked. 'I have a car,' he added almost apologetically.
'It's your city,' Russell said.
'The Biergartenstrasse then. It's the local name for the promenade above the Stadtgraben,' he explained. 'And not too far away.'
His car, an Opel Kapitan, was parked behind the building. They drove round the station, under the bridge carrying the westbound tracks, and up towards the city centre. Biergartenstrasse was aptly named - a series of beer gardens overlooking the waters of the ancient city moat - and doing a brisk business with after-work drinkers. 'This is the furthest garden from the loud-speakers,' Mohlmann said, pushing through a particular gate. He steered Russell to a tree-shaded table and insisted on buying the first round. 'So tell me about Franz.'
Russell did. The Americans had actually introduced him to Franz Boyens, a serious man in his thirties who yearned to do something for what he called the real Germany. He had been a signalling engineer in Breslau until 1934, when someone had informed the Gestapo of his involvement in a local strike. After six months in a concentration camp Boyens had smuggled himself into Poland on a freight train, walked all the way to the Baltic, and worked his passage to America. The New World had provided him with rewarding work and a loving wife, things that would have caused many men to forget their anger and sorrow for the old country, but Boyens' success had just made him sorrier for those he'd left behind. Men like Mohlmann, whom he'd known in the final years of the Weimar Republic.
Russell had liked Boyens. He told Mohlmann about his job with the Pennsylvania Railroad, about his expectant wife Jeannie and their house in suburban Trenton with its big garden backing onto the tracks. He told him that Boyens was active in the union, and a campaigner against the pro-Nazis who dominated the German-American Bund. All of which was true, at least in outline.
'I'm really happy for him,' Mohlmann said. 'I didn't know him for long, but, well, it was a time when you found out who your friends were. When the Nazis were arresting anyone who'd ever said a word against them.'
'I was here,' Russell said. 'In Berlin, that is.'
Mohlmann gave him a shrewd look. 'So you know then.'
This was the moment to talk about potential American help for resisters, but Russell held back. He simply nodded, and signalled the waiter to bring them more beers. 'Have you always lived in Breslau?' he asked.
'No. I was posted here in 1920. I was called up in the last week of the war,' he added, 'and my father had a job waiting for me when I was discharged. He was a Station Manager in Hamburg, and he wanted me as far away as possible, in case anyone accused him of nepotism. And my wife liked it here.' He looked away, as if gazing out across the water, but not before Russell had seen the hint of tears in his eyes. 'She died not long ago,' Mohlmann said, as if he still had trouble believing it.
'I'm sorry.'
'It takes some getting used to.'
'Do you have any children?'
'Two daughters, both married to Party members. One in Dresden, one in Berlin.'
'Ah.'
'At least they're safe,' he said wryly.
'I've been down to the border for my newspaper,' Russell told him, 'but I had another reason for coming to Breslau.' He told Mohlmann the story of Miriam Rosenberg's probable trip to Berlin, and studied the other man's face as he did so. He wasn't disappointed.
'That's disgusting,' was Mohlmann's verdict on the Berlin Kripo's refusal to investigate.
Russell showed him his picture of the Rosenberg family.
Mohlmann studied it closely. 'You know, I think I saw this girl. A month, six weeks ago - I can't be sure. I was on my way to lunch with a friend in the station and a girl like this was sitting on the seat outside. She was with a young man. I remember thinking what an odd couple they looked - she was so dark and Jewish, and he had this tousled blond hair. Perhaps they went off together. A Silesian Romeo and Juliet.'
'I'm afraid not. She was seen on the train to Berlin. Alone.'
'Just one life,' Mohlmann murmured, unconsciously echoing Thomas. 'But that's all any of us are.' He drained the last of his beer. 'Were you ever in the SPD?' he asked Russell.
'I was in the KPD until 1929. After my son was born it seemed sensible to leave. Although that wasn't the only reason.'
'Social Democrats and Communists - we should have fought together,' Mohlmann said. 'That was the one big mistake.'
They talked for another half an hour, mostly about Germany's problematic history, but Russell's mind was already made up. Mohlmann dropped him off at the Monopol, after extracting a promise from Russell to share an evening on his next visit to Breslau. A lonely man, Russell thought, as he trudged upstairs to a new room. And an angry one, with no distracting responsibilities. He would make a wonderful spy, but not for the Americans. What use would a knowledge of train operations in south-east Germany be to them? For the Soviets, on the other hand, they might be the difference between life and death.