The press conference was getting underway as the door guards checked his credentials, and he could already feel the triumphalist mood as he climbed the marble stairway to the main auditorium. Goebbels was holding forth in his usual manner, suave, persuasive, never far from a cynical smile. Taifun, the attack on Moscow, had apparently been resumed, and with startling success. Curtains parted with a theatrical flourish to reveal the latest positions, and the assembled journalists all leaned forward to make them out. A host of arrows were closing on the fortress towns of Klin, Istra and Tula, the lynchpins of Moscow's final ring of defences. According to the map the latest attacks had seen the Army advance a third of the remaining distance to the Soviet capital.
'In how many days?' someone wanted to know.
'Five,' was the reply, the implication clear - another ten and Moscow would be taken.
A stillness pervaded the room, and Goebbels' lips twitched in a knowing half-smile. Over the next ten minutes he answered questions calmly, wittily, with what seemed palpable frankness. What reason to lie or exaggerate, his smile seemed to say, when the truth was such good news?
Only once did the smile disappear. Like Paul, Ralph Morrison had noticed Werner Molders's absence from Udet's honour guard, and his request for an explanation was, Russell guessed, only intended as a minor spoke in Goebbels' free-running wheels. If so, he got more than he intended.
'An official announcement has not yet been released,' the Propaganda Minister said gravely, 'but Oberst Molders was killed earlier today in a flying accident. In Breslau, on his way to today's funeral. I have no other details at present.'
The room seemed stunned. Molders had been one of Nazi Germany's more acceptable heroes, and there was something ridiculously sad about dying on the way to someone else's funeral. Another dead man on his son's wall, Russell thought. Poor Paul.
Later that evening, Effi sat at a beautifully-laid dining table in the most exclusive district of Grunewald, sipping the best wine she had tasted in several months, listening to her host and a fellow dinner guest enthuse over the latest cinema attendance figures. As a celebrity of sorts, she had rarely lacked for such invitations, but in pre-war times she had politely refused ninety-five per cent of them, and took John with her when she chose to accept. Once the war began, however, she and John had realised how much secret information could be leeched from such gatherings of the rich and influential, and those percentages had been reversed. So, since his presence, as a foreigner and journalist, tended to inhibit her companions, she almost always went alone. Effi had no intention of selling her body for secrets, but flattery and flirting were something else again.
This particular evening, she had realised on meeting her fellow guests, was unlikely to provide anything more than a good meal. Her hosts were Max and Christiane Weinart, he a personal friend of Goebbels and leading shareholder in the Babelsberg studio, she an ex-starlet who had caught her future husband's attention in a film extolling the joys of physical exercise. The other five guests were the camera manufacturer Alfred Hoyer and his wife Anna, two hotshots from the Ministry of Propaganda named Stefan and Heinrich, and a blonde young actress whom she had never met, Ute Fahrian. Effi guessed that Weinart and the Hoyers were in their mid-fifties, Ute in her mid-twenties, and everyone else in or around their thirties. She hoped the food would make up for the conversation, which had turned to the growing problems of actually getting films made. Promi, conscious of rising attendances and the opportunity they represented, had set a target of a hundred a year, but this year, as last, it was unlikely to be met.
The first of several courses arrived, and over the next hour Effi concentrated on the food, speaking only when spoken to. There were vegetables other than potatoes to be eaten, and they hadn't been boiled or fried in chemicals. The meat, which tasted suspiciously like real beef, came with a richly succulent sauce. The bread wasn't battleship grey; the butter was a pale, unthreatening shade of yellow. Her fellow actress kept glancing wide-eyed round the table, as if she could hardly believe such food still existed, but the others clearly took such quality sustenance for granted. Most Berliners might be suffering from skin rashes, yellowing eyes, biliousness and appalling flatulence, but how would her fellow diners know that? They wouldn't be using the U-Bahn, their servants would be doing the shopping, and they'd all have their own private air raid shelters. As John had said the other evening - if the RAF ever worked out how to hit a military target, the war would pass the rich by.
Her anger, she realised, was in danger of spoiling her meal. She concentrated on the Black Forest gateau which had just been placed in front of her.
Still engrossed in the world of films, the men were now talking about the Die Grosse Liebe, and the political row it had unleashed. The movie starred Viktor Staal and Zarah Leander as a Luftwaffe pilot and the woman he meets and sleeps with while on leave. Some people at Promi had apparently considered this theme a little too daring for public consumption, and senior Luftwaffe figures had condemned Staal's character as reflecting dishonour on their service. Goering, on the other hand, had reportedly asked what else a Luftwaffe officer was supposed to do on leave. Weinart, Hoyer and the two Promi men could all see his point.
Stirring her small but wonderfully fragrant cup of black coffee, Effi decided to give them something real to play with. 'I've been asked to play a Jewess,' she announced at the first convenient moment, 'and I must admit to being torn.'
Ute Fahrian let out a heartfelt 'Oh', shook her blonde curls, and said: 'I'm glad I'll never have to face that problem!' Then, as if suddenly hearing her own words, she flushed deeply. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean...'
'Don't distress yourself, 'Effi said. 'I can hardly deny that, in outward appearance, I could pass for a Jewess.'
'Some Jewesses are very beautiful,' Alfred Hoyer said gallantly, raising an expression of faint surprise from Christiane Weinart.
'It is a dilemma,' Anna Hoyer said with the slightest of ironic smiles. She was brighter than she looked, Effi decided. And drinking more than she should.
'If we wish to make films that reflect real life in our country then we need Jewish characters,' Weinart insisted.
'And we can't have them played by real Jews,' his wife chipped in.
'Of course not,' Stefan agreed. 'If you decide to take the part,' he told Effi with a smile, 'then I suggest you give interviews explaining how hard it was for you, but how satisfying you found the experience. Emphasise how difficult it was for you, a German actress, to create a convincing Jew, but how necessary it is for the good of the Reich that the Jewish peril be realistically presented in films.'
'Yes, that sounds right,' Weinart agreed.
'Mmm,' Effi said.
'The people will admire you for your honesty,' Stephan went on, 'and thank you.'
Effi offered him a grateful smile. 'I think you may have solved my dilemma.'
'All in a day's work,' he said, giving her a slight bow. 'And it has been a wonderful day. Has everyone heard the latest news from the East?'
They had not.
'We are closing in on Moscow,' Heinrich explained. 'It should be all over in two weeks. Three at worst.'
Anna Hoyer laughed. 'Now let's not get carried away. We were told it was all over a month ago, and look what happened.'
'A mistake,' Heinrich admitted coldly, 'but an understandable one. If it hadn't been for a sudden change in the weather, it really would have been over.'
'What if the weather suddenly changes again?' Frau Hoyer wanted to know.
'That sounds perilously close to defeatism, my dear,' her husband interjected, with an apologetic look at the Promi men.