She paused before replying. 'Why me?'
'Well, there are two reasons. Forgive me, my dear, but you have the right skin tone and hair colour. And it has to be admitted that some Jewesses are, like you, exceptionally beautiful. Secondly, you are a wonderful actress, and this will be a very difficult part to play. One that has to be performed just right. And Lautmann is convinced you could do it justice.'
She felt both repelled and intrigued. 'Tell me the story.'
'It's still in the formative stage - you have GPU to do first, and this other film won't start shooting until at least February. Yours is one of the two central characters - your husband will be the other, and he hasn't been cast yet. He's an SS Standartenfuhrer. The film begins with the two of you meeting. You are beautiful and full of life, and neither he nor the audience has any idea that you're Jewish. He takes to you immediately, and so do his friends. You seduce him - though it doesn't become clear until later how manipulative you have been - and get pregnant. He almost begs you to marry him, and the child is born. The years go by - the film starts in 1933, by the way - and you're enjoying the high life to the full, in fact rather too much for his taste, but he's still willing to forgive you almost anything. He dotes on his son, or at least wants to - there's something wrong there, but the only reason he can think of is that he's away so much on the Fuhrer's business, preparing for the war in the East. In the meantime you use his absences to conduct affairs with other men. And then, out of the blue, someone from your past turns up, a Jew who demands money for not exposing you. Twice you get the money from your husband, telling him it's for other things, but on the third occasion he refuses, suspecting, wrongly as it turns out, that you're having an affair. The Jew then goes to him, tells him he's married to a Jewess and has a mischling son, and demands money for not disgracing him. Your husband gives him the money, and of course realises what's been happening. The whole history of your relationship suddenly makes sense - the distance he feels from his son, your inveterate flirting and love of material things. The writers haven't decided how it ends. You'll have to die, of course. Either the husband will kill you in a fit of rage, or you'll die in a suitably appropriate accident.'
Effi was almost lost for words. 'What happens to the mischling child?'
'The writers haven't decided, but they're leaning towards killing him in the same accident.'
Effi raised one hand, fingers splayed. 'I can't do a film like this,' she almost shouted.
He was all sympathy. 'I understand. As I said at the beginning - you don't have to take this part. We do appreciate how risky it would be for you.'
Risky? Oh God, she thought, he was worried that playing the part would damage her career, that the great German public would see her as a Jew, and assume she really was one. What greater sacrifice could anyone make for their art?
She placed a hand over his. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I know I must think of the wider picture. Of my country. Let me have some time to think this through.'
'Of course, my dear,' Marssolek agreed. 'But I do hope you will do it.' Russell finished his article around four. With an hour and a half to wait before the afternoon press conference at Promi, another visit to the bar seemed in order.
It was crowded with correspondents who had made the same calculation, and there was only one available seat - opposite Patrick Sullivan at one of the tables for two. Russell hesitated, but decided what the hell - of all the American nationals who staffed Goebbels' USA Zone, Sullivan was probably the least offensive.
Since long before the war Radio Berlin had been broadcasting Goebbels' messages across the world from its transmitter at Zeesen, some thirty kilometres south of the city. The stars of the 'USA Zone' were the small collection of American nationals who provided their countrymen and women across the Atlantic with a German's-eye view of the world. At present, if Russell remembered correctly, there were six of them, four men and two women. He knew them all by sight, but like all the real American correspondents - and most of the neutrals - he avoided them whenever possible. All but Sullivan were Americans of German ancestry, and their betrayal, if that was indeed what their activities amounted to, seemed at least understandable. But listening, as he occasionally did, to their broadcasts, Russell felt an instinctive revulsion. They made the obvious points - why, for example, should Americans join sides with the oppressive British Empire against a Germany merely seeking its own rightful place in the world? - but that was about all. Their arguments were usually glib, their humour always cheap, their eagerness to jump on Hitler's anti-Semitic bandwagon downright inexcusable.
Sullivan was different. His ancestry was Irish-American, but his support for the Nazis had little or nothing to do with any traditional Irish hatred of the English. His hate figure was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he saw as the father of the appalling socialist New Deal, and whom he considered an inveterate warmonger. Sullivan saw himself as an ally of those great Americans - men like Henry Ford, J. Edgar Hoover and Charles Lindbergh - who were desperate to keep their country out of the war, particularly now that Germany was doing civilisation's work in the East, subduing the Bolshevik monster.
He had been a small-time Hollywood actor in his twenties and a pulp novelist in his thirties, but despite his lack of journalistic training he had a good eye for a story. He had a regular Saturday spot which he filled with word-pictures of ordinary German life that stressed how well everything was going. The last time Russell had listened to him, Sullivan had been telling Americans how good the food still was in Berlin, and how useful his cigarette ration could be when it came to attracting young frauleins. But Sullivan was far from stupid, and Russell found himself wondering whether he was beginning to have second thoughts about tying his future to the Nazi cause.
Sullivan, as he soon discovered, was more than a little drunk. Though well into middle-age, with thin brown hair greying and receding at the temples, he still conveyed an impression of substance. The pugnacious jaw looked ready for a fight; the restlessly intelligent eyes seemed more than capable of choosing the right opponents. On the last few occasions that they had met, Sullivan had been particularly friendly, and Russell had wondered whether his work for the Abwehr had somehow reached the American's ears. On this occasion too Sullivan's eyes lit up at his approach, and not for the first time Russell found himself wondering about his own post-war reputation. In reality, he had done nothing to help Nazi Germany and several things to impede it, but the number of people who could actually testify to that fact were decidedly thin on the ground. If all of them dropped dead before the war's end he would have some difficult explaining to do.
'How's it going, comrade?' Sullivan asked as he sat down.
'Not so bad. And you?'
'Fine, fine,' he said distractedly, as the waiter loomed over them. 'What can I get you?'
'Whatever beer they have.'
'Okay. And another whisky for me,' he told the waiter. 'Who knows when they'll get another shipment?' he confided to Russell.
'Maybe the war will be over in the New Year,' Russell suggested. 'Moscow before Christmas, a surrender in January?'
Sullivan didn't look convinced. 'Maybe. We can only hope.' He leaned forward. 'Should have been there already, if the truth were known. Those idiots in Rosenberg's department have buggered the whole thing up. If they'd marched in and set up an independent Ukraine straight away... well, it would all have been over weeks ago. Such a wasted opportunity.'
'It's not irretrievable, is it?'
'I don't know, old man. If Roosevelt can buy enough support in Congress to bring us in...'