Russell shook his head, closed his eyes and gripped the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. 'Is there any resistance?' he asked eventually.
'From the Jews? No. They have nothing to fight with. And we're not in much better shape. Our organisation is still intact, and we're strong in the docks, but we have no weapons, and no allies to speak of.' Felix managed a rueful smile. 'When the NKVD left in June they killed almost everyone that they'd locked up over the previous year. That helped us, of course, because many of those people could have betrayed us to the Nazis. But it also caused a rift - to put it mildly - between us and the nationalists. There won't be a united front here for a very long time.'
'I see.'
'I used to be a docker,' Felix volunteered. 'But once you pass fifty the work gets difficult, particularly in winter. And my parents left me this hotel.'
'Whose ships are still coming to Riga?' Russell asked.
'The Swedes are the only neutrals who can get here.'
'What do they bring? What's left to trade?'
'Lots of things. Coming in, it's mostly luxury items. If you walked the streets you might think the rich had fled, but they haven't. They're just hunkered down in their mansions, waiting the war out, and they still want their nice soap, their proper coffee, their good cigars. They're not going to get them from Germany, are they?'
'I suppose not.'
'Going out, it's mostly processed foods.'
Remembering Jens's account of chronic shortages, Russell found that surprising. But only for a moment - the Germans needed something to exchange for all that iron ore and all those ball bearings.
After Felix was gone, Russell's mind kept returning to the mental picture of a shifting forest floor, and the last terrifying moments of those who were doing the shifting. His horror grew no less, but there was some compensation in the sheer power of the image, and the way it might be used to arouse the conscience of the outside world. He got out his paper and pencil and began writing it out, hammering another journalistic nail in what he fervently hoped would be the Nazis' coffin. If he ever reached Sweden, he wanted the story ready for printing.
Work also took his mind off other things, like a son betrayed and a love left behind.
Russell had used the one in Potsdam Station, but Effi's recent experience with station toilets was hardly encouraging, so she chose the Wertheim's on Leipziger Strasse for her transformation. She knew exactly where the ladies' room was, and the department store was only a few minutes' walk from the theatrical suppliers she intended to visit. Her one big fear was a chance encounter with her shopping-mad sister, but Effi could hardly imagine Zarah spending Christmas Eve afternoon with anyone but Lothar.
A week ago that thought would have reduced her to tears. So she must be getting stronger.
First she had to get to Wertheim's. She would have to leave Prinz-Eugen-Strasse in daylight, without make-up, and with every chance of running into someone on the stairs. It was crazy, but there was no way round it, and she would just have to do what she could. A little dust and household grime to give a wrinkled look around the eyes, a piece of sticking plaster across her upper lip to disguise the shape of her mouth. A hat pulled down to her eyes, a scarf pulled up across the lower lip, a pair of reading glasses. It was a pity it wasn't snowing, but it was cold enough to justify a lot of covering up.
The journey went well. She met no one on the stairs, no one on the street or in the U-Bahn to Leipziger Strasse. The walk to Wertheim's took only a few minutes, the long climb to the secluded toilets on the top floor rather longer - the lifts were all out of order. Ensconced in a cubicle, she unpacked the Reichfrauenschaft uniform. The blue-black jacket and skirt went on over the correct white blouse that she was already wearing, and she placed the matching fedora on her rigorously pulled-back hair at a slightly jaunty angle. She wondered about the sticking plaster, and finally decided that it detracted from the uniform's authority.
She was now a member of the National Socialist Women's Organisation National Leadership. Hardly someone to be trifled with.
Walking to the theatrical suppliers, it suddenly occurred to her that it might have been bombed, or closed down for some other reason. Had she gone to all this trouble, put herself at all this risk, for nothing?
There were lights in the shop window. She was just ten metres away from the door when an actress she knew almost pranced out onto the pavement and turned towards her. The woman gave Effi a single glance, and quickly averted her eyes from the stern expression and its accompanying uniform.
Effi let herself into the shop. There were two women behind the counter, both around forty. They looked like the keenest of filmgoers, but she didn't recognise them from her previous visits. One disappeared into a back room as the other offered a cautious smile of greeting. The uniform was earning its keep.
'I have a list of powders and creams,' Effi began, handing the sheet of paper over. 'There's quite a lot, I'm afraid. It hasn't been officially announced yet, but the Berlin Bund Deutscher Madel are putting on a special production of Tristan und Isolde in the new year. It's possible that the Fuhrer will attend. If his military duties permit, of course.'
'Of course,' the woman echoed. She began filling the order, plucking boxes and tubes from various drawers and cabinets.
Effi stared at the photographs covering a large part of the wall behind the counter, each one signed by the star in question. After the war she'd come back with her own.
The woman was checking the items through. 'I think that's everything,' the woman said, completing her check. She looked up at Effi and her face seemed to change.
Here it comes, Effi thought.
'Have you ever met the Fuhrer?' the woman asked.
'Only once,' Effi admitted. 'He was charm itself.'
Fifteen minutes later she was back in the Wertheim's cubicle. After changing back into her normal clothes, she sat on the toilet seat and applied some of the new make-up with the aid of her compact mirror. Satisfied, she let herself out and headed for the U-Bahn, remembering just in time to age her walk. The train was crowded and smelly, but one young soldier insisted on giving her his seat, and when she finally closed the apartment door behind her she felt a quiet surge of triumph.
On Christmas evening, Felix came to tell Russell that a Swedish ship was due in port in less than forty-eight hours. Two days later, the small patch of sky outside his window was beginning to darken when the hotel owner entered with a thin young man named Rainis.
When Russell saw the bicycle, he realised that he'd been half-expecting another ride in the back of a van. 'I haven't been on one of these for twenty years,' he muttered, mostly to himself. With his bag tied on the back, he climbed gingerly into the saddle. A quick shake of Felix's hand, and he was off, wobbling down the street in Rainis' wake.
The two-kilometre journey to the docks took them around the eastern edge of the city centre, and Russell was left with an impression of towers and spires faintly silhouetted against a rapidly darkening sky. There was virtually no traffic, and a Mercedes 260 parked by the side of the road turned out to be empty. By the time they reached the docks all natural light had disappeared, but Riga, unlike Stettin, was still making full use of the artificial variety. Open warehouse doors were squares of bright yellow light, the cranes beyond them lit from below.
There were other cyclists about, and several lorries parked with their lights on. Rainis led Russell away from the lights, the two of them bumping across cobblestone setts and between buildings to reach a dark section of the quayside. Further down the basin a freighter was tied up, the name Norma emblazoned on its stern. The sea air was freezing cold.