Russell hung around until mid-afternoon, then went to meet Wilhelm Isendahl in the Alexanderplatz Station buffet. The young man was already there, gazing round at his fellow customers with a superior smile. As a closet Jew in a judenfrei establishment he could be forgiven, Russell thought.
They brought each other up to date with their respective preparations. Everything was going smoothly, which seemed far too good to be true. Wilhelm went off with Effi's paper-wrapped needlework clasped under one arm and Russell sat with a second cup of coffee, running another mental dress rehearsal in search of potential flaws. He found none, and wondered why that didn't seem more reassuring.
Driving south to Hallesches Tor he ate an early supper at his usual bar, listening to the U-bahn trains clattering their way in and out of the station above. At around eight he drew up in the Neuenburger Strasse courtyard and cut the engine. The sound of several women, all seemingly talking and laughing at once, filled the silence. Frau Heidegger's weekly skat night with her fellow-portierfrauen was well underway.
Her doors were open as usual. He walked through, causing all four women to look up. Frau Heidegger's smile of welcome was not echoed by her skat partners, who offered expressions ranging from irritation to outright hostility. He had, he guessed, committed two major sins - he had interrupted their game and been born English.
'Don't get up,' he reassured a struggling Frau Heidegger. 'I just wanted to leave a message for Beiersdorfer - I won't be here on Wednesday.'
'I'll tell him, Herr Russell.'
'Please, go on with your game,' Russell told the assembled company with a wide smile. He watched for a moment, waited until they were concentrating on their cards, and slowly backed away. As he passed through Frau Heidegger's open front door he slipped the ring of keys off its hook.
He walked up to his own apartment, found an old sweater to wrap Beiers-dorfer's ARP helmet in, and came back down to the first floor landing. He stood outside the door for a few seconds, hearing nothing within. Should he knock to make absolutely sure the man was out? No, he decided - it was better to take a slight risk than make a telling noise. The keys were neatly labelled with their apartment numbers and there was no sound of anyone on the stairs. He let himself in.
The apartment was in utter darkness - Beiersdorfer had rigged up black-out curtains that Dracula would have found comforting. Russell found the light switch and began looking for the man's helmet and arm-band. He tried the bedroom first, seduced by the idea of Beiersdorfer trying them on at his dressing table mirror, but eventually found them in a less fanciful place, in the box seat by the front door.
He had just removed the items when footsteps sounded on the stairs. He reached for the light, then realized that turning it off would look more suspicious than leaving it on. It sounded like two people, which probably meant Dagmar and Siggi, or Dagmar and whoever the other one was. Her familiar giggle came from almost outside the door, confirming his guess. The sound of feet receded upwards.
Russell wrapped the helmet in the sweater and stood there, ear pressed against the wood, until he heard the reassuring click of Dagmar's latch. He re-locked the door, took his booty out to the car, and went back in to return the keys. A sudden peel of laughter from inside Frau Heidegger's flat made him jump, but the skat players were far too absorbed in their entertainment to notice his hand reach across the necessary inches and replace the borrowed ring on its hook.
Back in the car, giving his heart time to slow down, he realized he should have risked taking the keys without advertising his presence to Frau Heidegger. Because what would do Beiersdorfer do when he found his stuff was missing?
Russell groaned as he realized he had made a second mistake. By locking the door when he left he'd as much as signalled that it was an inside job. He should have broken the lock somehow. Beiersdorfer would go straight to Frau Heidegger, the only other source of a key. Would she put two and two together? Perhaps. And if she did, would she say anything? She did loathe the man.
Should he go back in? Or would that be a third mistake? He decided it might. With any luck, Beiersdorfer wouldn't realize his stuff was missing until the ARP exercise started, and then he'd too busy to make trouble for the rest of the evening and night. And by mid-morning his precious things would be at the bottom of a canal. He could huff and puff all he wanted.
Russell headed back to the Adlon for his final felony of the night. Leaving the Hanomag on Unter den Linden, he slipped around the side of the hotel and into the dimly-lit parking lot at its rear. The cars left in Slaney's care were lined up along the far wall, each bearing Embassy stickers in the corners of their windscreens. Crouched out of sight behind them, Russell carefully un-screwed four of the number plates.
Wednesday passed slowly, for both Russell and the Fuhrer. The latter was supposedly waiting for a Polish plenipotentiary to bully, but the cynics at the Adlon had him hoping that none would show up. 'The war's a done deal,' Slaney said. 'The bastard's just waiting for a decent excuse.'
Russell had more immediate worries. Who and what were they going to find in the house on Eisenacher Strasse, always assuming that they got there without being stopped and arrested for impersonating an ARP unit? Would the uniforms and vehicles be convincing? Would the latter be reliable? Would someone make a mistake, say the wrong thing, panic? Would he? By mid-afternoon, when the sirens announced the beginning of the exercise, his mental list of things that might go wrong would have covered several sheets of paper.
How, he asked himself, had he involved Effi in something so dangerous?
She seemed oblivious to the possibility of failure, and was happily applying the first touches of her make-up when he set off, soon after four, for Hunder's garage in Wedding. He was half expecting to get caught in an imaginary air-raid, and have to spend time in a shelter, but his luck held. He had contrived to leave the Schade Printing Works lorry in a distant corner of Hunder's yard, and now parked the Hanomag in front, masking the lorry from anyone watching in the garage office. Suitably screened, he removed the lorry's number plates and screwed on those he had taken from the Adlon parking lot. If anyone compared them they would be in for a surprise, but it didn't seem likely.
He fixed slitted pieces of black cloth to the lorry's headlights, drove it out of its corner, and put the Hanomag in its place. Hunder had promised to leave the gates unpadlocked that night, but Russell thought it worth double-checking. 'Yes, yes,' the garage-owner confirmed, looking up briefly from what looked like accounts.
Russell drove the lorry back towards the Ku'damm, leaving it outside one of the old Jewish workshops near the Savigny Platz Stadtbahn station. The business had been 'aryanised' in 1938, and there was a fair chance that passers-by would assume the lorry was there on official business. As he walked the few hundred metres to Effi's flat the sirens began to sound. Just like last time, he thought - a first imaginary raid at around six. With any luck the second would also follow the previous pattern, and begin a couple of hours after dark.
He and Effi ignored the call to the nearby shelter, and judging by the lack of activity in their rapidly darkening street so did most of their neighbours.
Effi , in any case, would have surprised a few of them. She had put on ten years while Russell was out, her eyes and mouth slightly lined, her tightly-bound hair suffused with grey. She was also, as she showed on standing, noticeably plumper. 'Padding,' she explained, pressing down on the nurse's uniform.
She ordered Russell onto the dressing table stool.
It took her half an hour to recreate 'Uncle Fritz', this time with a slightly more military moustache. Examining himself in the mirror, complete with overalls, armband and helmet, Russell had to admit he looked different. 'I would recognize you,' Effi said, standing beside him, 'and Paul probably would. But no one else. Especially in the dark.'