That didn't seem much of a surprise to his audience, who were presumably privy to Thomas's missing letter.
'She should have stayed here,' the same young man said with a grin. He was probably one of the gang that had intercepted Miriam on this very track, frightening the Rosenfelds into sending their daughter to Berlin.
The driver advanced a pace, close enough for Russell to smell the cabbage on his breath. 'So she's missing. What the hell is that to you?'
'Just another Jew-lover,' the other Brownshirt volunteered.
'Right,' Russell said sarcastically. 'When I could be admiring an aryan like you.'
He had time to move his head a fraction, saving his nose and teeth at his cheek's expense, but the power of the blow put him on his back. He shook his head, looked up at the four silhouettes gathered above him, and felt more than a little afraid.
'There's a good tree over there,' a voice said, compounding the effect.
'I'm an American journalist,' he said, struggling to keep his voice steady. 'And I also work for the Sicherheitsdienst in Berlin.'
'The what?'
'It's part of the Gestapo,' Russell said, somewhat inaccurately. 'Look at my papers,' he added, 'they're in my jacket.'
The driver picked up the jacket, rifled through the pockets, and examined Russell's journalistic accreditation. 'This says nothing about the Gestapo or the...Sicher-whatever-it-was.'
Russell decided it was time to get to his feet. 'You can ring their HQ at 102 Wilhelmstrasse,' he said, as he rose. 'Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth. He'll tell you.'
'Why would a Gestapo agent be visiting Jews?'
'Why do you think? Their daughter may be mixed up with enemies of the Reich...'
'Miriam Rosenfeld?!?'
'You know a lot about the Jewish opposition groups, do you?' Russell asked scathingly, risking another assault. 'It's very unlikely,' he admitted in a kinder tone. 'But we have to be vigilant.'
The driver still looked unconvinced. 'Get up on the lorry,' he said. 'You are coming with us.'
Those five words had never sounded sweeter. Wherever they were going, it had to be an improvement on a dirt track between open fields, with a 'good tree' close by. The police station or the local Party House?
It was the latter. They turned right at the crossroads and drove into Wartha, along a surprisingly deserted street lined with neat, well-kept houses. The Party House was just beyond the town square, a two-storey building with the usual oversized flag. There were two main rooms on the ground floor, the common room at the front for drinking, the office at the back for keeping tabs on the citizenry.
The local leader, a bespectacled man of around thirty-five with closely-cropped black hair, was in the latter. He was wearing full SA uniform, with every belt, buckle and button polished to perfection. Like most small-time Nazis of Russell's acquaintance, he looked like a puffed-up shopkeeper. Err on the side of flattery, Russell told himself, and for God's sake don't talk down to him.
The driver told his story. He and his friends had received a tip-off that an outsider was staying with the Jews, and they had stopped him before he could reach the station. 'He admitted it,' he added, passing over Russell's papers. 'He says he's a journalist and that he works for the Gestapo,' he added grudgingly.
'The Sicherheitsdienst,' Russell corrected him. 'The SD,' he added helpfully.
The man was examining his papers. 'I know what the Sicherheitsdienst is,' he said curtly, without looking up.
'May I know your name, Sturmbannfuhrer?' Russell asked politely.
'Lempfert. Wilhelm Lempfert.'
'The headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst is at 102 Wilhelmstrasse, Sturm-bannfuhrer Lempfert. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth will vouch for me.'
'Not Gruppenfuhrer Heydrich in person?' Lempfert asked sarcastically.
'I have never had the honour of meeting the Gruppenfuhrer.'
Lempfert gazed at Russell for a few moments, as if wondering whether his sarcasm was being returned. 'I will check your story,' he said. 'Take him through,' he told the driver.
Russell was hustled into the common room, and his others captors looked up expectantly, still hopeful of a lynching. The driver shoved him towards an upright chair by the near wall and joined his companions in the circle of beaten-up armchairs by the window.
Minutes went by, rather more of them than Russell was hoping for. What would Lempfert do if Hirth wasn't there? And what would Hirth say when he heard about the Rosenfelds? The false papers for the Soviets should be waiting for him at Neuenburger Strasse by now. Surely Hirth wouldn't let a little race hatred cost him a good agent?
Almost an hour had gone by when Sturmbannfuhrer Lempfert emerged from the office. 'The Hauptsturmfuhrer wishes to speak to you,' he said shortly, gesturing Russell into his office. Much to the latter's surprise, the door closed behind him. Hirth must have asked for a private conversation.
The Hauptsturmfuhrer was displeased. 'What is this about? Who are these Jews?'
Russell explained about their daughter's disappearance. 'This is a journalistic matter,' he added, not wishing to involve Thomas.
'Can't you find anything more useful to write about?'
'If I stopped criticising the regime the Soviets would smell a rat.'
Hirth grunted his disapproval. 'So why did you mention this department?'
'Because I feared for my life, and I assumed you would want to save it.'
A lengthy silence followed. 'A big assumption,' Hirth said dryly. 'As it happens, you will find something waiting for you when you reach home. Something in need of your urgent attention. You are coming back to Berlin today?'
'I am.'
'Very well. Put the Sturmbannfuhrer back on.'
Russell fetched Lempfert, and watched as he listened to Hirth. 'It will be as you suggest,' Lempfert said finally. 'Thank you for your time, Hauptsturmfuhrer.' He replaced the telephone and looked up. 'You are free to go, Herr Russell. But next time, perhaps you would do us the courtesy of informing us of your plans in advance. It is we who are responsible for enforcing the race laws.'
'Of course. I apologise for not doing so.' He offered his hand across the desk. 'Thank you again.'
Out front, his original captors watched him leave with new expressions on their faces. A simple enemy had turned into something of a mystery - a foreigner who worked for the famous Heydrich, and who made enormous sacrifices for Reich and Fuhrer, like sleeping in a Jewish bed. Russell went across to the driver and offered his hand. The man seemed somewhat surprised, but accepted it.
'Can we drive you to the station?' he asked.
'Thank you, but no,' Russell said, keen to put the Wartha SA behind him. 'I need the exercise.'
It was a refusal he regretted ten minutes later, when the smoke rising above the station told him he had just missed his train. The next one, as he soon discovered, was not for another two hours. He spent them in the shade of the platform awning, sitting on the only bench and staring out across the sun-drenched grain. Hundreds of birds chattered in the copse of beeches beyond the empty siding, and every now and then a party of them would fly off towards the red-roofed farm in the far distance. It was an idyllic scene.
Russell remembered reading Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey in the trenches, and idly wondered whether the Silesian countryside had made a similar pact with the devil. He imagined a landscape painting in Sturmbannfuhrer Lempfert's attic, fields of rotting crops under a red sky, an SA lynch party driving away from a burning farm.
It wasn't until he was settled in his compartment seat, and the train was pulling out of Wartha, that his hands began to shake. He sat there watching them, remembering the same reaction over twenty years before, some hours after a much-dreaded assault across no man's land had been cancelled.