'And you are?' Russell asked.
The man offered a thin smile. 'You know whom I represent. You don't need a name.'
Russell shrugged, removed the folded sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket, and handed it over.
The man read it through twice, and reached the same conclusion as Effi. 'You could have made this up.'
'I could,' Russell agreed. 'But I didn't.'
'Why would this official reveal this information to you? Was it for money?'
Russell told the whole story - its American genesis, his visit to Knieriem in SS guise, the trick he had played on the ministry official.
'Very ingenious,' the other man responded, with the air of someone who considered ingenuity a bourgeois affectation.
Their fate was hanging in the balance. 'Not really,' Russell told him with a self-deprecating smile. 'Luckily for me, the man was a fool. But the information is genuine. If it were false, I would not be staking my future on it.'
The older man was clearly torn. His own future might also be resting on the validity of Russell's report.
'You have nothing to lose by helping us,' Russell argued. 'Even if I have made all of this up - which I haven't - you would gain nothing by sending us back into the arms of the Gestapo. On the contrary, you know and I know that sooner or later we would talk, and more comrades would be lost.'
'A dangerous argument,' the man said, reaching for his pocket. Russell half expected a gun to appear in his hand, but it was only a wodge of pipe tobacco.
'This is ridiculous,' Effi interjected. 'We are all enemies of the Nazis. We should be helping each other. Those papers will help the Soviet Union.' 'I saw you in Sturmfront,' the man said.
She gave him an incredulous look, then sighed. In that film her husband had been beaten to death by communists. 'I was just playing a role,' she said. 'I didn't write it.'
'Some roles should be refused.'
'I didn't know that then. I'm afraid it takes some people longer than others to see what is happening.'
He smiled. 'You were very convincing. You still are. And you are right,' he said, turning to Russell, 'your departure from Berlin is in everyone's interest.'
'What has been arranged?' Russell asked.
'You are travelling to Stettin tonight.'
Russell felt relieved, but didn't want to make it too obvious. 'And when we get there?' A ship, he guessed. Sweden, with any luck.
'You will be taken care of. I know nothing more.'
'What time do we go?'
The man looked at his watch. 'The train is scheduled to leave at ten, but the sooner you get on board the better. The comrade here' - he gestured towards the younger man - 'will take you across.'
They all stood up, and the older man shook hands with both of them. Out on the moonlit Schwedter Strasse a lorry was disappearing in the direction of the city centre, but otherwise the road was clear. The open gates to the Gesundbrunnen goods yard were almost opposite the Kaiser Bar and, as they followed the young man through them, the sounds of shunting in the sidings beyond were suddenly audible. Away to the south several planes were crossing the moonlit sky, heading west.
'What happens if there's an air raid?' Russell asked.
'That depends,' the young man said, but failed to elucidate.
They walked down the side of a seemingly endless goods shed, worked their way round its northern end and started out across the fan of sidings. The yard lights were on, but hardly bright enough to compete with the moonlight. After crossing the tracks ahead of several lines of open wagons, the young man led them into the gap between two trains of covered vans. 'You're in luck,' he told them. 'The last lot travelled in an empty ore wagon. They'd have been really cold by the time they reached Stettin.'
They were only three boxcars from the end when he stopped, grabbed hold of a rail with one hand, clambered up two steps, and pulled the sliding door open with the other. Jumping back down, he explained that the vans had brought paper from the Stettin mills, and were going back empty. 'The guard knows you're on board,' he told them, 'but the loco crew doesn't. When you get to Stettin, just stay where you are and wait for the guard.' He took the heavy bag from Russell's hand, swung it onto the floor of the boxcar, and unexpectedly offered Effi a helping hand. She took it, and gave him a smile of thanks once she was aboard. Russell followed her up and turned to say goodbye, but the young man had already left. There was nothing to see inside the van, so he pulled the door shut, and they helped each other blindly to the floor.
It had to be at least half-past seven. They had two and a half hours to wait.
'Who'd have guessed it would end like this,' Effi said after a minute or so.
'My grandmother once told me I'd come to a bad end,' Russell admitted. He hadn't remembered that in years - his father's mother had died when he was eight years old.
'What had you done?' Effi asked.
'I ate the cherries off the top of a trifle.'
Her laugh reverberated round the empty van, and he joined in.
'Let's talk about our childhoods,' she suggested eventually, and they did, chattering the time away with what seemed like reminiscences from two other people's lives. Russell was thinking that at least two hours had passed when the floor shook beneath them - a locomotive was being attached to the front of the train. Only seconds later air raid sirens began to wail not far away.
What should they do? Yards like this were a prime target, but the British rarely hit one of those. Would the train leave in the middle of an air raid? If so, they couldn't afford to get off. But then, why wasn't it moving?
For twenty minutes or more nothing happened, no bombs, no movement. Then suddenly there was an enormous bang, and the van rocked on its wheels, as if an army of men had given it a great push. Russell pulled the door open just in time to see another bomb explode, this one beyond the line of the goods sheds, and probably Schwedter Strasse as well. The orange flash lasted only a second, and a column of debris rose up, glittering in the moonlight. At that moment the train clanked into motion, jerking Russell backwards and almost out of the open doorway. He recovered his balance and tugged it shut as two other bombs exploded in quick succession away to his left.
The train quickly gathered speed, violently rolling its way through the switches, as if the driver's only concern was to get it out of Berlin. The bombing continued, but none fell as close again, and the sound of the explosions soon began to fade. They lay entwined on the dusty floor, their bodies prey to each jolt of the wheels, their minds still straining to cope with the fact of leaving Berlin.
The fan in the mirror
It took the train almost nine hours to cover the hundred and twenty kilometres between Berlin and the port city of Stettin. The breakneck pace of their initial escape from the RAF's attentions soon gave way to slow and desultory progress across the rolling Pomeranian fields, with long, frequent and mostly inexplicable stops in what seemed, through the cracks in the door, to be variations on the middle of nowhere. Sleep would have been welcome, but it was soon evident that the appalling suspension and plummeting temperatures ruled out any such respite. They huddled together and shivered.
It was still dark when the wheels beneath them began rattling through points with increasing frequency, suggesting their arrival in Stettin. Easing the door back a few inches, Russell got a glimpse of what was probably the main station, and a few moments later they were rumbling across the huge swing bridge he remembered from his previous visit.
The river disappeared, replaced by the backs of apartment blocks, and the train began to slow. Another long bridge across water, and the tracks began multiplying, with stationary rakes of carriages and wagons stretching into the distance. Their train wove a path through several crossings before straightening itself out in a siding and finally wheezing to a halt. Russell eased the door ajar and stuck his head out. The yard was lit with amber lights mounted on high poles, yellowing the snow which lay across the tracks and casting the whole scene in a sepia glow. The guard was hurrying towards him.