'How are you doing?' Russell asked unnecessarily.
'Not well,' Welland said shortly.
'I can see that. Look, I was upstairs, and they asked if I wanted to see you, so of course I said yes. The Gestapo have refused to give out any information since they arrested you. The Consulate's been trying to kick up a fuss, but they couldn't even find out where you were being held. Have you been here the whole time?
'Yes, I must have been.' He massaged his forehead with his fingers. 'They take me up every day for questioning. Sometimes twice a day. Hours and hours of it.'
'What do they think you know?'
Welland's laugh was utterly devoid of humour. 'They don't think I know anything. The interrogations, the beatings - they don't have any purpose. They're just for fun.'
Russell knew why he'd been offered this meeting , but what did it mean for Welland? They would assume that Russell would report the prisoner's condition to the Consulate, that there would be more and bigger protests. Was war between the two countries so close that they no longer cared? 'I'll let the Consulate know where you are,' he said. 'Are there any personal messages you want to send?' he asked.
'My father, back in the States.'
Russell took it his notebook. 'What's his address? What shall I tell him?'
'That I'm alive. That I love him.'
'And the address?'
Welland told him, stretching out the words in such a way that Brooklyn sounded like another planet.
After writing it all down, Russell looked up to find tears streaming down the young man's cheeks. 'They'll let you go soon,' he offered. 'They've made their point.'
'You think so?' Welland retorted bitterly.
Russell had rarely felt so helpless. He reached across and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. 'We'll get you out of here,' he promised, but the hollowness of his words was reflected in the other's despairing expression.
'You'd better be quick,' Welland replied. He was still crying, and once the cell door had closed behind him Russell heard the young American begin to sob. The sound stayed with him as he walked up the stairs, and it was a struggle to keep his anger under control.
Giminich was no longer there - his point made, he had left Leitmaritz to close out the demonstration.
'You may tell the American Consulate that espionage charges are being prepared against Herr Welland,' the Hauptsturmfuhrer said. 'It does not pay to abuse the hospitality of the Reich,' he added with a pointed stare at Russell. 'Now you may go.'
On his way back down to the main entrance, Russell tried to make sense of what had just happened. The visit to Welland had obviously been arranged to scare him, but to what end? Had all the stuff about Zembski and his communist past only been used to put him off guard, make him nervous? It was much more likely, he realised, that the Zembski business had brought his name to someone's attention, and that that someone had looked through his file and seen the possibility of using him against Canaris. If that was indeed what had happened, then going down to Neukolln in search of Zembski had been a serious mistake. Serving time as a cat's-paw of competing Nazi intelligence services was no one's idea of a good time.
Outside it was raining again, more heavily this time, and Russell had neglected to bring an umbrella. His greatest need, though, was for a drink, and these days the most reliable sources of alcohol were the two foreign press clubs. Russell preferred the Foreign Office-sponsored club in the old Anglo-German Society building on Fasanenstrasse, but that was only a short walk from Effi's flat in the West End. The Propaganda Ministry version, by contrast, was just around the corner from the Gestapo, in the former Bleichroder Palace on Leipziger Platz.
Arriving drenched, he left a message - 'still free' - at the studio number Effi had given him, then called Dallin at the Consulate. He passed on Welland's location, described his poor condition, and reported Leitmaritz's message. None of it seemed to interest the American very much. Either Dallin had too much else on his mind or Welland had pissed off his own Consulate almost as much as he'd pissed off the Nazis.
Duty done, Russell headed for the bar. This was closed, but he managed to persuade one of Goebbels' minions that his future good health depended on an immediate brandy, and the heating in the club rooms soon dried him out. With no other journalists around, he had his pick of the foreign newspapers, and spent a couple of hours wading through them. Their assessments of Germany's military prospects were generally less rosy than those of the Nazi press, but the difference was much less dramatic than Russell had hoped for. It seemed as if everything, and particularly Moscow, was still up for grabs.
The rain was beating against the windows, trams splashing their way through one large puddle in the corner of Leipziger Platz. He would give Ribbentrop's press conference a miss, he thought, and lunch where he was. There was plenty of paper, and it was time he produced some copy. He decided to take the official German briefings as gospel, and share his hosts' belief that the capture of Moscow was imminent. Who knew - it might get the Americans off their backsides.
After writing a first draft he brooded awhile on what Giminich might be planning, before abruptly deciding that second-guessing Obersturmbannfuhrers was only likely to make one anxious. Once Ribbentrop's press conference was over the Press Club would rapidly fill with correspondents in search of lunch, and with pleasant odours already drifting up from the kitchens, he headed for the dining-room. A couple of Ministry officials were already there, sitting at different tables with nothing in front of them, waiting for conversations to influence or report on. Goebbels was a thorough bastard in both meanings of the phrase.
Welland's other colleagues received the news of his sighting with resigned shrugs. There was nothing any of them could do to help him, or anyone else foolish or unfortunate enough to end up in the basements of the Gestapo.
Effi sat on the sofa in Ansgar Marssolek's enormous office, watching the producer rummage through an overfull in-tray for whatever it was he was looking for. Outside it was raining in earnest, lakes forming in the empty car lot and torrents gushing from the down-pipes on either end of the sound stage opposite. Two actors in eighteenth-century costume were leaning on either jamb of an open doorway, both smoking cigarettes and staring out mournfully.
She had known of Marssolek for a long time, but had never met him before. Before the Nazis seized their industry by the throat, he had been known as a producer of interesting films, but these days, reduced like the rest of them to the effective status of a state employee, he was best known as one of Goebbels' more reliable disciples. He could be relied upon to get a film made, on time and on message.
'Have you worked with Karl Lautmann?' he asked, still searching, glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose.
'Yes. I did Mother with him a couple of years ago.'
'Of course. I remember now. That must be why he wants you.'
'For what?'
'Ah, here it is,' Marssolek exclaimed, gingerly extracting a script from a teetering pile. 'The working title is "Betrayal", but we need something better.' He came out from behind his desk and joined her on the sofa, the script resting across his thighs. 'My dear, there's one I thing I have to tell you before we proceed. And this comes from the Minister Goebbels himself. Given the nature of this particular role, you are under no professional obligation to accept it.'
A child-molester was her first thought.
'We want you to play a Jewess,' Marssolek said apologetically.