After one last sip of coffee, Russell looked at his watch and made his excuses. Up in his flat he spread the envelope's contents out on his table. There were three carbon copies of official documents, each on headed Air Ministry notepaper, and a covering note, signed by 'a comrade', which purported to explain the sources. The same 'comrade' also announced his willingness to answer questions.
Russell skimmed through the documents. The first listed up-to-date production figures - current and projected - for the Stuka dive-bomber. The second contained the minutes of a meeting held to discuss a new American bombsight. The third detailed the experimental fixing of supplementary fuel-tanks to the Luftwaffe's longest-range bomber. This, the document's author explained, would extend the effective round-trip range of these bombers by approximately five hundred miles.
It was like one of those old parlour games where you had to guess which one of several stories was false. The last one, Russell decided. It was the only one of the three from which the Soviets could draw conclusions that were both vital and wrong. Everyone knew that Stalin was moving his industrial base eastwards, and here was something to help him decide how far he needed to move it. Russell reached for his atlas and checked the distances. If what the document said was true, then only catastrophic setbacks on the ground would render Soviet cities east of Gorki vulnerable to attack. Conclusion: the five hundred mile figure was a lie, designed to discourage the Soviets from moving their industries still further east.
A nice idea, Russell thought. And nicer still that the Soviets would know that the information was fake, and take the appropriate steps. He grabbed a dusty sheet of paper from his typewriter, thought for a second, and scrawled 'first instalment' across it. He put this in the envelope with everything else, and sat for a moment, staring at his flat.
It was beginning to look like a place that nobody lived in. Which was just about right. Waiting for sleep the previous night he had again found himself thinking about asking Effi to marry him. The trouble was, one good reason for doing so was to give her the possibility of American citizenship, which might make practical sense but certainly muddied the emotional waters. Russell wanted there to be only one reason for their marriage - the fact that they loved each other. 'Some hope,' he murmured to himself.
It was almost twelve-thirty. After inspecting the Hanomag's roof for damage he drove over to Grunewald. Paul was sitting on the wall at the end of the drive, still in his Jungvolk uniform. The boy's mouth dropped open when he saw his father's face.
Russell managed to convince him that the damage was superficial, but detected a hint of scepticism when it came to the supposed accident. 'Where are we going?' he asked, hoping to avert any questions.
'We haven't been to the Aquarium for a long time.'
They spent a couple of hours peering into illuminated tanks of varying sizes. The shoals of exotically coloured minnows glistened, the sharks gazed out of seemingly dead eyes, the anaconda refused, as usual, to unwind. After the porpoises had cheered them up they sat outside with their ice creams and watched barges chug by on the Landwehrkanal.
On their way home Paul announced that there was no Jungvolk meeting in three weeks' time - could they go camping that weekend?
'Leave Saturday morning and come back Sunday? I don't see why not. Has your mother agreed?'
'Not yet, but she will. I thought about asking Effi to come as well, but she doesn't seem the camping sort, really.'
'No. Just the two of us will be better, I think.'
'I think so.'
'Where do you want to go? Camping, I mean?' Russell felt absurdly pleased that his son wanted to go camping with him.
'The Harz Mountains?'
'The Harz Mountains it is.'
The sun finally broke through as they reached the house in Grunewald. Paul insisted on asking his mother about the camping while Russell was there, and Ilse agreed readily enough. He casually told her about his visit to Scheffler's tomb in Breslau, and, rather to his surprise, saw a softness in her eyes which he hadn't seen for years. Her husband Matthias asked Russell in for a drink but he declined, claiming, truly enough, that he was late for work.
Half an hour later he was parked outside the American Embassy. He sat in the front seat for a while, examining the wide boulevard through windscreen and mirrors, but no one seemed to be loitering with intent to spy. And what if they were? he asked himself. The Germans had all but ordered him to knock on the enemy's door.
He took the SD's envelope from the passenger seat, got out, and walked swiftly down the pavement to the Soviet Embassy. The letter-box was small, as if the Soviets were fearful of receiving too much information, and he had to force the envelope through.
A few minutes later he was joining Slaney in the Adlon Bar.
'I see you stirred up some trouble in Silesia,' was the American's first comment, his gaze fixed on Russell's bruise.
'I couldn't find any trouble,' Russell replied. He told Slaney about his search for alleged victims of Blechowka.
'There's been another imaginary incident, then,' the American said. 'It's in there,' he said, indicating the Beobachter which Russell had been carrying round with him all day. 'Hand it over.' He leafed through the pages, found what he wanted, and passed it back. 'Top right.'
The article was heavy on indignation, light on facts. The Polish police in Katowice - or Kattowitz as the Beobachter insisted on calling it - had 'frightfully mistreated eighteen members of the German minority, beating them with rubber truncheons and twisting their limbs.' The officers had been acting on 'direct orders from Warsaw' and 'indirect orders from England.'
Russell laughed. 'I can just see it,' he said. 'Chamberlain and Halifax plotting in the Cabinet Room. "Why don't we get the Polish police in Kattowitz to twist the limbs of a few Germans?" God, I don't suppose either of them has even heard of Kattowitz.'
'It's the "eighteen" I like,' Slaney said. 'You can just imagine them trying to decide what number of victims the story can bear before it becomes completely unbelievable.'
'So there's no real news?'
'Nothing to get excited about.'
'Has Chamberlain's team reached Moscow yet?'
'Yesterday. Their ship docked in Leningrad just before midnight on Wednesday. The galley staff were all Indian, so the diplomats had nine days of curries for lunch and dinner - I dread to think what the atmosphere was like. Anyway, they had a day's sightseeing on Thursday, took the overnight Red Arrow, and presumably spent most of Friday recovering. The talks were supposed to start today.'
'No word yet?'
'No. And there won't be anything positive. You know what'll happen next. The Brits and French will ask the Russians to join them in guaranteeing Poland, and the Russkis will say, "Fine, but how we can get at the Germans if the Poles won't let our troops into their country?" The Brits and French will try to pretend there isn't a problem, but everyone knows the Poles would never agree to a single Russian soldier on their blessed soil, let alone the Red Army. So the whole thing's dead in the water.'
'Probably,' Russell said. He realized he was still clinging, like most Europeans, to the hope that enough opposition would force Hitler to back off .
'The real point,' Slaney continued relentlessly, 'is that Stalin's got absolutely nothing to gain from signing up. If Hitler attacks Poland, and the British and French honour their guarantee, then Stalin can join the fun whenever he wants to, or just sit back and let the Western powers tear each other to pieces. And if the Limeys and Frogs leave the Poles in the lurch, then Stalin can thank his lucky stars he didn't sign up, because he would have found he was fighting Hitler all on his own.'