'I know that. And you're probably right. I was thinking last night - this won't go away, I have to get out. But getting Effi out will take time - they won't just let her leave. Do we have that sort of time? The smart money's all on September, after the harvest, before the rains.'
'There's no way of knowing, is there? We seem to go through the same dramatic scenes every six months. Hitler stamps his foot and shouts a lot, everyone rushes around making him offers, and he graciously accepts a mere 99 per cent of what he asked for. It could happen again.'
'Not with the Poles.'
'You're probably right. I wish I could send Joachim somewhere safe.' Thomas's seventeen-year-old son was doing his compulsory year's service in the Arbeitsdienst public works programme, and would be shifted to auxiliary military duties if war broke out.
The two men sat in silence for a moment.
'So you're seeing the SD tomorrow,' Thomas said eventually. 'How are you going to spend the rest of today?'
'Worrying. And working, I suppose. I have a new job, by the way. Central and East European correspondent of the San Francisco Tribune. Salary, expenses, the works.'
'Well, that makes a welcome change. Congratulations.'
'Thanks. I met the Editor in New York - Ed Cummins. An amazing old man, very pro-Roosevelt.' Russell smiled. 'He wants me to wake America up. Particularly those Americans with their roots in Germany and Germany's neighbours. The Jewish-Americans of course, but the Polish-Americans, the Hungarian-Americans, all of them. He wants them to know what's really happening in the old countries, and to get really angry about it. And not to go along with all that crap - to use his own words - about it being none of America's business.' Russell laughed. 'Of course, we weren't reckoning on the SD and Gestapo breathing down my neck. I'll just have to convince the bastards that retaining my credibility as a journalist is in their interests too. Because if I suddenly start sucking up to them in print, no one who matters will trust anything I do or say.'
'I suppose not. Are you going to be covering the day-to-day stuff?'
'Not really - they'll carry on using the agencies for that. I'm more comment than news - the big diplomatic stories and whatever else strikes me as important. The first thing Cummins wants is a piece on how the Czechs are doing under occupation. And I thought I might visit that agricultural school in Skaby that the Jews are running for would-be emigrants to Palestine. I can't believe the Nazis are still sponsoring it.'
Thomas grunted his agreement as another suburban train headed for Gor-litzer Station. One carriage seemed full of over-excited young boys, most of whom were hanging out of the windows. A school trip, Russell supposed.
'Talking of Jews,' Thomas said, 'I've got a mystery of my own to solve.' He brushed a speck of dirt off his trousers. 'I had an employee by the name of Benjamin Rosenfeld. A good worker, he started here five or six years ago. A Jew, of course. About six weeks ago he came to ask if I had a job for his seventeen-year-old niece. Her family are farmers in Silesia, the only Jews in the area apparently, and she was being harassed - perhaps more, he didn't say - by the local boys. Her parents thought she'd be safer in Berlin.' Thomas's shrug encompassed both the sad absurdity of the problem and the impossibility of knowing where a Jew might be safest in such times. 'As it happened I'd just lost a young woman - her exit visa had arrived that week and she was off to Palestine - so I said yes. Rosenfeld arranged the trip, sent the ticket, and arranged to meet her at Silesian Station. That was on the last day of June. Almost three weeks ago.
'As far as I can make out, on the day she was supposed to arrive Rosenfeld left here with the intention of walking straight to the station - it's only about three kilometres away. Somewhere along the way, some thugs decided he needed beating up. Storm troopers probably, from their barracks on Kopenicke Strasse, but they weren't in uniform according to Rosenfeld. Someone took him to one of those makeshift Jewish hospitals in Friedrichshain, and he was in and out of consciousness for several days. I didn't know he'd been attacked until one of the workers told me on the following day. I wondered what had happened to the girl, but assumed she had managed to make contact with Rosenfeld's friends, and that she'd turn up for work on the Monday. But she didn't. I had no proof she'd ever left Silesia, and the fact that she hadn't turned up seemed like a good reason for doubting it. I told myself I would contact the parents when Rosenfeld had recovered sufficiently to tell me their address, but he never did. He died about a week after the attack.'
'I don't suppose the police were interested?'
'I don't think anyone even bothered telling them,' Thomas said wryly. 'I went to the funeral, and talked to as many of the mourners as I could. Most of Rosenfeld's friends knew she was coming, but none of them had seen her. Then, after the ceremony, a man I hadn't talked to came up to me with a suit-case. He told me he was Rosenfeld's landlord, and said he didn't know what to do with the man's belongings. "I was wondering if you could send them back to his family with his final wages."' Thomas grimaced. 'To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about the wages. I told him I had no address for the family, and he said he hadn't either. He was obviously eager to get rid of the stuff, so I took it, thinking I could always share out whatever was in there with his work-friends. Two days later the landlord showed up at the works with a letter which had just arrived for Rosenfeld. It was from his brother, the girl's father. He was worried that he hadn't heard from his daughter.
'There was no address of origin, only a Wartha postmark. It's a small town - a big village really - about sixty kilometres south of Breslau. About a week ago I sent a letter to the Wartha post office, asking them to forward another letter that I'd enclosed for Rosenfeld's brother, but there was no reply. So yesterday I telephoned the post office. A man who claimed to be the postmaster said he'd never got the letter and that he'd never heard of the Rosenfelds. "Jews, I suppose" - I think those were his exact words. "They've probably gone somewhere where they're wanted."
'So I went to the Kripo office in Neukolln - not, I have to admit, in a conciliatory frame of mind. It probably wouldn't have made any difference, but I certainly rubbed the duty officer up the wrong way. After I'd explained all the circumstances, he told me that the girl had probably run off with a boyfriend, and that the German police had better things to do than scour the city for sex-mad Jewesses. I almost hit him.' Thomas clenched his fist reminiscently. 'And I've thought about reporting him to his superiors - there are still some decent men in the Kripo, after all - but it doesn't really seem like such a good idea. If I get on the wrong side of the authorities it won't be me that suffers, or at least not only me. It'll be the three hundred Jews who work here.' He paused for a moment. 'But I can't just forget about her. And I remembered that you did a piece - quite a few years ago now - on private investigators in Berlin.'
Russell grunted his agreement. 'It was after that movie The Thin Man came out. Berlin went from having one private detective to having fifty in a matter of months. Most of them only lasted a few weeks.'
'Can you recommend one that's still in business?'
'I don't know. If he's still in business, I mean. A man named Uwe Kuzorra. He was a Kripo detective who couldn't stomach working for the Nazis. So he quit, opened an agency in Wedding. I liked him. Knew this city inside out. But he was in his late fifties then, so he may have retired. I could find out for you.'
'If you could.' Thomas rubbed his cheeks and then clasped his hands together in front of his face. 'There were always things I hated about my country,' he said, 'but there used to be things I loved as well. Now all I feel is this endless shame. I don't know why - it's not as if I ever voted for them. But I do.'