'That must have made the cabbie's evening,' Russell said, noticing the two threes which ended the registration number.
'He was watching the lights. I told him to hang back a bit in case Eyebrows noticed he was being followed, and we sort of played hide and seek behind a Wehrmacht lorry all the way to Alexanderplatz. We all followed the Stadtbahn for a couple of blocks and then he turned up towards Schonhauser Platz and stopped outside that line of shops at the bottom of Dragoner-Strasse. We stopped about fifty metres short of him but the traffic had thinned right out, and when he came out of the shop with his bag of groceries he looked right at us. He got back in his car and moved off, and I told myself I had his number and it would be better if he didn't know he'd been followed. I told the cabbie to let him go, and was still wondering whether I'd done the right thing when he turned off the street about two hundred metres further up. We gave him a couple of minutes and drove slowly by. His car was parked beside an apartment block - one of those old three-storey ones at the top of the street. There was no sign of him.
'I was just about to tell the cabbie to take me home when I thought - oh my God, what if Eyebrows got the taxi number and tracks down the driver and asks him where he took me. So I got him to drop me at Friedrichstrasse Station, and took the Stadtbahn home. And there I was, basking in my untrackability when two young soldiers came up and loudly asked me for my autograph. The whole carriage watched me get off at Zoo Station.'
Russell smiled, but Effi's story had left him feeling more than a little anxious. He wondered why. She might have been a byword for recklessness in the past, but in this instance she seemed to have acted with commendable caution. Was he underestimating her again?
'Well?' she asked.
'You did brilliantly,' he said.
'I thought so.'
'I could do with a drink,' Russell said.
She poured them both one.
'The girl he approached,' Russell asked. 'Did she look Jewish?'
'She was dark, and she looked sort of lost - haunted even - at first. But you don't see many Jews smiling the way she did when her soldier boy appeared. Not in public anyway.'
'But she looked distressed enough to be Jewish before that,' Russell said dryly.
'Yes.' Effi sat down beside him on the sofa. 'Do you think it's possible he's holding Miriam prisoner in his apartment?'
'If so, he doesn't seem satisfied with just her,' Russell said. Unless, he thought, the man was abducting girls to rape and kill them. Or eat them, like Kuzorra's famous cannibal, whose name he'd already forgotten.
'So what are we going to do?' Effi asked, putting her head on his shoulder.
'I'm damned if I know,' Russell said. 'There's no point in going to the police - it might even be dangerous. We have to find out more about Eyebrows, I suppose. Watch his apartment, see where he goes. Talk to his neighbours, if we can do it without giving ourselves away. Hope he leads us to Miriam.' He found himself yawning and looked at his watch - it was almost two o'clock. 'We can draw up a plan of action over coffee in the park.'
'That sounds good.'
'It does. How did your meeting go, by the way?'
'Don't ask. I don't think I've ever met so many brilliant people in one room, and every last one of them with a death wish. They cracked jokes about all the Nazi leaders, and were practically praying for someone to kill Hitler. They're organising discussion groups on the possibilities of sabotage. The possibility that one of them might be a Gestapo informer doesn't seem to have occurred to them. I think they'll talk themselves into their graves. I came out of there feeling quite frightened, because by law I should have reported every last one of them to the Gestapo. I decided my defence would be that I hadn't taken them seriously, which at least had the virtue of being probable. I certainly won't be going back.'
'And what about Madame Voodoo?'
'She seemed a bit surprised too. I think she'll be sticking to the stars from now on.'
He wasn't at all sure why, but he had rarely found Effi more desirable. He slipped the dressing gown off her thigh, revealing the lipstick number. 'I hope you've copied that down,' he said, 'because it's likely to get smudged.'
Next morning the sky over the Tiergarten was a disappointing grey, and they had the cafe almost to themselves. Russell divided the newspaper between them, but it only took Effi a few moments to throw her pages down in disgust. 'It's that day again,' she said, pointing out a headline.
It was Hitler's mother's birthday, and thousands of German women would be receiving their Honour Crosses from local Party leaders for providing the Reich with extra children.
'If only she'd come back and give him a slap round the head,' Effi muttered.
Russell laughed.
'So what are we going to do about Miriam?' she asked.
Russell folded his paper. 'All right. Let's assume Eyebrows kidnapped her. Why would he do that?'
'For sex?'
'Perhaps. For himself or for others?'
'You mean like a white slaver or something like that?'
Russell grimaced. 'I'm not sure white slavers exist. The fictional ones usually sell their victims to Arabs, and they always want blondes.'
'The whole world seems to,' Effi said wryly.
'I don't,' Russell told her.
'That's sweet. But look, if he took her for himself he'd have to keep her somewhere, and I can't imagine him keeping her in his flat. The walls are thin in those buildings. I suppose he could be keeping her drugged, but not for weeks on end, surely. He must have another place. Maybe somewhere out in the country.'
'Maybe. Let's take it one step at a time. Eliminate the apartment first.'
'How are we going to do that?'
'I don't know. Start with the portierfrau, I suppose. We can drive over there tomorrow morning.'
'Yes, let's do that.'
'You haven't told me how the filming went,' Russell said, deliberately changing the subject.
'Oh, the usual mess. They think it's finished, but that's only because they haven't looked at the rushes yet. I expect I'll find out on Monday or Tuesday that they've decided to reshoot a few scenes. The last one in particular. It's supposed to be uplifting, but half the crew were laughing behind their hands.
You never know, of course.' She looked at her watch, and got to her feet. 'I've got to go. My parents are expecting me for lunch, and they seem to eat it earlier each time I see them.'
They took cabs from the Zoo Station rank, hers heading out towards the family home in Wilmersdorf, his to Neuenburger Strasse. The Hanomag was where he had left it, Frau Heidegger hovering in her apartment door-way.
She made sympathetic noises about Russell's bruised face, and seemed satisfied with his story of walking into an open car door. 'I have a parcel for you,' she said. 'And there's some coffee in the pot.'
Some of it had been there for several days, Russell guessed, after taking the first bitter sip. The parcel turned out to be a large envelope. It was sealed with red wax, suggesting either a nineteenth century eccentric or something more atavistic, like Himmler's gang. At least they hadn't scrawled 'Return to Heydrich' on the back.
'Something official?' Frau Heidegger asked, with all the casualness of an SS attack dog.
'It'll be my new accreditation from the Propaganda Ministry,' Russell said, placing the envelope to one side. 'They had to re-issue it now that I've become an American citizen,' he added glibly. 'How have you been?'
Frau Heidegger was as well as could be expected, given the state of her knees. The doctor had told her to keep bending them, and now they were more painful than ever. Her brother was still frightening her with visions of Berlin under air attack, and one of her skat partners had heard that food rationing would be introduced the moment war broke out with England. She claimed that Dagmar's romantic entanglements were wearing her out, but she seemed to be enjoying them almost as much as Dagmar. Siggi had taken things a little too far the other evening, serenading her from the courtyard like some crazed Hanoverian Romeo - 'I'm afraid he stood on the roof of your car, Herr Russell' - but it had worked. Dagmar had eventually taken him inside, probably for a good talking to.