Outside, an icy rain was falling. The ground was slippery underfoot and the darkness almost complete.
'My van is two streets away,' Andreas told them, as they made their way across the open courtyard. 'I didn't want to park right outside.'
They reached the street just as two pinpoints of lights swung towards them a few hundred metres away. Another two followed, and another two, as the sound of motors rose above the usual hum of the city.
Andreas broke into a run, yelling 'This way!' over his shoulder. The car headlights were muted by the rain, but just bright enough to show them where they were going, straight across the street and onto the gravel path between workshops that Russell had noticed from the Ottings' window. Once off the street it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead, but Andreas obviously knew where he was going, and the path was less slippery than the street had been. Behind them car doors were slamming, a voice shouting orders. 'Just in time,' they heard Andreas murmur. But not for the Ottings, they both thought.
The sounds faded as they moved on, crossing another street and entering another path. The large factory to their right was still working, the sound of machinery drowning out any noise of pursuit, the glow of fires within rising from chimneys like illuminated gold dust in the falling rain. In her mind, Effi could see the men in leather coats hammering on the door, the last hurried farewells as the Ottings' world caved in.
Andreas was waiting at the exit to the next street. A line of lorries was parked on either side of the road outside the main factory entrance, a small van just beyond them, as if it was part of the same fleet.
'I'm right in thinking you have no false papers?' Andreas asked.
'You are.'
'Then you'll have to get in the back.' He opened the rear doors, and showed them the inside with a well-masked flashlight. The pencil-thin beam revealed various metal trays, a large number of paint tins, a bucket full of brushes and a large expanse of crumpled cloth. 'If we're stopped, you'd better get under the dust-sheet,' he advised. 'Just cover yourselves and pray.'
'Where are we going?' Russell asked.
'The docks. And I have something for you,' he added, heading for the front of the van. He returned a few moments later with a gun wrapped in oilcloth. 'It's only an M1910, but it's the best we could do at short notice.'
Russell unwrapped and grasped it, the metal cold in his hand. He had handled one of these guns before, one he had bought from a German officer after the November armistice, on the ridiculous assumption that any self-respecting class warrior needed his own personal firearm. He was later told that Gavrilo Princip had set the whole bloody mess in motion with an M1910, when he used it to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914.
'We should go,' Andreas told him.
Effi and Russell crawled into the back of the van, ending up with their backs to the driving compartment and the dust-sheet roughly draped across their legs, ready for pulling up over their heads. It wasn't nearly voluminous enough, Russell realised. It would take someone half-blind and wholly stupid to fall for such a ruse.
The van's engine started, and they moved off down the street. They could see nothing in the back, but Andreas kept up a running commentary on their progress, as much for his own reassurance, Russell thought, as for theirs. The first name he recognised was the Konigsplatz, which he had walked round during a visit some years before the war. He also remembered Breitestrasse, and could picture their journey down it, passing the Nikolaikirche and taking the bridge across the Oder to Lastadie. 'Almost there,' he whispered to Effi, as the rain hammered a little harder on the van's roof.
He had spoken too soon.
'Someone's shining a red light at me,' Andreas told them, suddenly sounding much younger. 'There's a barrier across the road,' he added a few moments later. 'And at least two men. They look like Gestapo.' As the van began slowing they tried to burrow beneath the dust-sheet, but it was too dark to see how well they had succeeded in covering themselves. The fact that they were tugging it in opposite directions didn't bode well.
Andreas pulled the van to a halt and wound down his window. 'A miserable night,' they heard him say cheerfully. 'So what's this about?'
The man he was addressing seemed uninterested in friendly banter. 'Gestapo,' he said curtly, and asked for Andreas's papers. A long silence followed as he checked them.
Let that be enough, Russell silently pleaded.
The Gestapo officer asked what Andreas was doing out so late.
Andreas explained with a laugh that one of the local Party bigwigs was desperate to have his offices redecorated in time for Labour Minister Robert Ley's imminent visit.
It was the wrong tone, Russell thought. The man asking the questions didn't sound like a lover of the common people. But how many colleagues did he have with him? Russell had heard no other voices.
'What's in the back?' the Gestapo man asked.
'Just my gear.'
'Turn off the engine and get out.'
The van gently rocked as Andreas climbed out. They heard footsteps, and a sliver of light appeared through the crack between the rear doors. 'Open them up,' the Gestapo officer ordered, his voice now coming from behind the van.
Russell took what seemed, in that instant, their only chance of survival. Throwing off the dust sheet, he took aim at the doors, hoping and praying that Andreas, knowing he had the gun, would have the sense to keep out of the line of fire.
He heard the door handle turn, waited for the light to shine in, and blindly pulled the trigger.
The light spun downwards as the boom of the gun echoed in the van, drowning out the sound of the falling body. He heard Effi gasp as he scrambled feet first towards the open doorway, and half-ordered, half-begged her to stay where she was.
The Gestapo man's torch was still on, illuminating a puddle in the road and throwing a faint reflective glow. As Russell kicked it away, his standing foot slipped on the icy cobbles, throwing him onto his back and quite possibly saving him from the shot which rang out at the same instant. A few feet away, scarcely visible in the darkness, two grunting shadows were locked together.
So there were there at least three of them.
As Russell inched towards the two men struggling on the ground, he scanned the darkness for sight or sound of the man who had fired the last shot. There was nothing - the knowable world had shrunk to a lightless bubble, leaving him blind, deaf and prey to any lucky bullet. He told himself that his opponents were in the same position, but fear still rose in his throat, tightening his finger on the pistol's trigger.
A flashlight suddenly flared into life, illuminating the rain and the road, the two men struggling by the stationary van. As the beam whirled to pick out Russell himself, he raised the gun and fired, bracing his body for the bullet that was surely on its way. But none came. A second torch fell to the ground, and there was a muffled splash as something heavy hit the ground.
There was another shot, this time much closer, an accompanying grunt of surprise, and then only the sound of the falling rain.
Russell raised his gun as a silhouette struggled to its feet. 'Andreas?' he asked.
'I'm here,' the shape said.
'Were there only three of them?' Russell asked. His hand was shaking, he realised.
'That's all I saw.'
'John?' Effi enquired anxiously from the back of the van.
'Stay there a moment,' he told her, and walked across to where the body was lying beside the still-lit torch, the face half-buried in an icy puddle. He picked up the torch and examined the man, who seemed far too youthful for his ordnungspolizei uniform. Russell's bullet had passed straight through the throat, as lucky a shot as he could have wished for. The young man's fatal mistake had been to switch on his torch, but Russell, remembering his own moment of terror in the darkness, understood what had caused him to make it.