Potsdam Station (25 page)

Staring out through the back of the lorry at the huge pall of smoke hanging over Berlin, Paul wondered how anyone could still believe in victory.

Their new position was only about three kilometres away, but forcing their way through the oncoming tide of refugees took almost two hours. Paul saw a mix of emotions in the passing faces – faint hope, pity tinged with resentment, even a hint of the old respect – but the commonest look was of incomprehension. It was the one he had seen in Gerhart’s mother’s eyes, the one that couldn’t fathom how anyone might still believe there was anything to fight for.

At the spot where their road passed under the orbital autobahn a large hoarding carried the increasingly ubiquitous ‘Berlin Remains German!’ slogan, and some joker had added the words ‘for one more week’ in what looked like large slatherings of gun grease.

No defensive positions had been prepared across the isthmus which divided the lakes, and the next two hours were spent digging themselves in. There were just over a hundred of them, Paul reckoned, enough to hold the position for a few hours, assuming the promised artillery support turned up. If it didn’t.. well, Ivan would just plough right on through them.

The two
Hitlerjugend
in the neighbouring foxhole were still talking about the wonder weapons. Both were certain of their existence, but one seemed less than certain of their imminent arrival. Werner, by contrast, was digging in silence. He was strong for a fourteen-year-old, Paul thought. Another way in which he had grown up too fast.

Russell was woken by the sirens, and for one all-too-brief moment thought himself back in Effi’s flat. It was only nine o’clock, and the bed seemed as damp as it had when he first lay down. Sunshine was pouring in through the window, lighting the Hertha team portrait which Joachim had pinned to his wall. It was the 1938–39 team, Russell realised. The four of them – he, Paul, Thomas and Joachim – had gone to most of the home games that season.

Was Paul dead too? He felt his chest tighten at the thought of it.

He swung himself off the bed and went for a piss. Varennikov was still sleeping, one arm stretched out above his head with palm averted, as if he were warding off an attacker. The sheaf of papers from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute peeked out from under the pillow.

Russell went downstairs in search of food and drink. There was water in the taps and, rather to his surprise, a weak flow of gas from the oven hob. There was a can of ersatz coffee, some sugar, and several tins of Swedish soup – a gift from someone with influence, no doubt. He stared out of the window at the overgrown garden while he waited for the water to boil, then left a saucepan of soup above the derisory flames.

Taking care to keep clear of the windows, he worked his way through the downstairs rooms. The living-and dining-room furniture was wreathed in sheets, Thomas’s office a dustier version of what he remembered. Standing in the front hall, he idly picked up the telephone, and was astonished to hear a working tone.

On impulse, he dialled the Gehrts’ number. It rang, but no one answered.

Next he tried Effi’s old flat. He knew she couldn’t be there, but he loved the idea of hearing the telephone ring in their old living room.

There was no answer.

Who else could he call? Zarah, he decided. If Effi had spent the last forty months in Berlin, he found it hard to believe that she hadn’t made contact with her sister. But what was the Biesingers’ number. Did it end with a six or an eight?

He tried the six. He counted ten rings, and was about to hang up when someone picked up. ‘Yes?’ a tired male voice asked.

It was Jens, Russell realised, Zarah’s Nazi husband. He broke the connection.

Outside, the sound of bombs exploding seemed to be getting nearer. They should move to the cellar.

It was early evening when the rumour spread through the basement rooms of the collection camp, leaving something close to terror in its wake. Effi could feel the rising sense of panic before she knew its cause, that Dobberke had finally received the order to kill them all. Like everyone else, she instinctively turned her eyes to the door, for fear that their killers were about to burst through it.

It was almost dark outside. Would they do it at night or wait for the dawn? Effi had heard of wounded people lying motionless for hours under corpses, waiting for the moment to crawl away. Had they just been lucky, or was there a trick she needed to know?

‘What’s happening, Mama?’ Rosa said, jolting her out of the dark reverie. Over the last few days, the girl had voiced none of those questions that she must be asking herself, but the look in her eyes was too often fearful. And this was the first time she had ever called Effi ‘Mama’.

‘I’m not sure,’ Effi told her. How could you tell a seven year-old that her execution had just been ordered?

The sirens started wailing, welcome for once. Would their jailers all come down to the basement as if nothing had changed? Would Dobberke stand there smoking his cigarettes, sharing an occasional joke with his prisoners?

He did, although he looked more uncertain than usual, at least to Effi. She decided she couldn’t bear to wait. She needed to know if the rumours were true.

The men in the fourth room would know, the ones who’d been locked in the cells until the weekend bombing. ‘You stay with Johanna,’ she told Rosa. ‘I’m going to find out what’s happening. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

She came across Heilborn and Lewinsky in the third room – the old mortuary, as Nina had told her. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked them without preamble.

The rumour was apparently true. A fourteen-year-old Jew named Rudi, who worked as a shoeshine boy for their Gestapo jailers, had overheard one end of a telephone conversation between Dobberke and his superior Sturmbannführer Möller, and then listened in as Dobberke passed on the news to his subordinates. Möller had ordered the ‘liquidation’ of the camp. ‘At once.’

That sounded like good news to Effi – by taking his time Dobberke was already disobeying orders.

There was more. The Hauptsturmführer had agreed to a meeting after the air raid with two representatives of the prisoners. Which suggested a willingness to consider counter-proposals.

‘What are they planning to say?’ Effi asked. She felt more than a little resentful that a few men had taken it upon themselves to speak for everyone, but reluctantly conceded that time might be short for democracy.

‘They’re going to ask him to release everyone,’ Heilborn told her. ‘And to tell him that the gratitude of a thousand Jews might well save his life in the weeks to come.’

Effi made her way back to Rosa, and passed on what she had heard to Johanna and Nina. On the other side of the room Dobberke still looked unusually tense. She prayed he would know a good bargain when he saw one.

An hour or so later she still had no answer. The two prisoners had returned from their meeting with the Hauptsturmführer. They had offered him signed testimonials from each and every one of his thousand Jewish prisoners in exchange for freedom, and he had promised to think about it.

Whatever Dobberke decided, it would happen in the morning. Effi doubted whether many of the collection camp’s inmates would sleep that night. She knew she wouldn’t.

Paul and Werner spent their afternoon waiting in the trench. Given some encouragement, Werner talked about his family – the engineer father that he’d lost, the mother who loved to sing while she cooked, his younger sister Eta and the doll’s house which he and his father had made her. And as he listened, Paul caught mental glimpses of his own childhood. One in particular, of decorating a cake with his mother when he was only four or five, had him fighting back tears.

Twice during the afternoon Soviet fighters flew low over their positions, one offering a desultory burst of machine-gun fire which killed one of the policemen, and soon after four o’clock tank fire was heard in the distance. But as dusk fell it grew no louder, and Paul was daring to believe they would survive the day when a lone T-34 tank emerged from the trees a few hundred metres down the road. Then the world exploded around them, a barrage of incoming shells straddling their positions, sucking earth and limbs skyward. They pressed themselves up against the wall of their foxhole, and tried to remember to breathe.

The shellfire soon abated, which only implied one thing – Ivan was coming through. As if in confirmation, a ‘Christmas tree’ flare burst out above them, sprinkling the blood-red sky with searing lights. Raising his eyes over their parapet, Paul could see a swarm of advancing T-34s, and the bulkier silhouettes of several Stalin tanks. As he looked, a boom sounded behind him, and one of the smaller Russian tanks exploded in flames. Two German Panthers had put in an appearance, and many of the
Hitlerjugend
were whooping and cheering as if the war had been won.

The Stalins were clearly unimpressed. One moved forward at a frightening pace, tracer rounds ricocheting off its hull in all directions; the other took careful aim. A whoosh and a flash left one of the Panthers ablaze, the other frantically traversing its gun as it scuttled backwards towards the dubious shelter of the trees. Looking to his left, Paul was sure he could see T-34s already level with their position – the police battalion had fled or been overrun. They had to withdraw.

A figure suddenly emerged above them, apparently oblivious to the bullets shredding the air. Orders to fall back, Paul assumed, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. ‘We’re going for them,’ the boy said, a ‘Christmas tree’ lighting his excited face. ‘They won’t be able to see us until we’re right among them,’ he added nonsensically, before hurrying on to the next foxhole.

Paul slumped back into his own. Werner was looking at him, waiting for direction, for encouragement, for permission to die. Well, he was damned if he was going to offer any of those. Why die defending a gap between two small lakes that the enemy could easily bypass? The thought crossed his mind that if his body was found in a pile of
Hitlerjugend
his father would think he’d learnt nothing. And he would hate that.

The light of the last ‘Christmas tree’ was fading. Glancing back out over the rim, he could see the shadowy figures of
Hitlerjugend
leaving their trenches and starting towards the oncoming Soviet tanks, each with a panzerfaust slung over his shoulder. Another ‘Christmas tree’ and they would all be mown down.

Paul felt the urge to go with them, and dismissed it as ridiculous. ‘Do you want to see your mother and sister again?’ he asked Werner.

‘Yes, of course…’

‘Then put that down and follow me.’ He levered himself out of the foxhole, and started running, crouched as low as he could manage, towards the nearest trees. Werner, he realised, was close behind him. Reaching the shelter of a large oak, they stopped to look back. The second Panther was also burning, the T-34s roaming this way and that like cowboys rounding up cattle in an American Western. As they watched, one erupted in flames – at least one
panzerfaust
had found its mark. But the
Hitlerjugend
had vanished from sight, swallowed by darkness and battle.

They moved on into the trees, keeping the road some fifty metres to their right and moving as fast as the darkness would allow. Behind them, the ‘Christmas trees’ were increasing in frequency, like a firework display reaching for its climax.

They had gone about half a kilometre when three Soviet tanks rumbled past on the road – they would, Paul guessed, soon be sitting astride the autobahn intersection. He led Werner towards the south-west, intent on crossing the autobahn further down, and after jogging on for another half an hour they finally came to the lip of a cutting. But there was no autobahn below, only twin railway tracks. As they reached the bottom of the bank they heard something approaching. A train, Paul supposed, but it didn’t sound like one.

Werner started forward, but Paul pulled him into the shadows. A tank loomed out of the gloom, half on and half off the tracks. Someone was standing up in the hatch, and several other human shapes were draped across the hull, but it was several seconds before Paul could be sure they were Germans.

He thought about trying to attract their attention, but only for a moment. They probably wouldn’t see him, and if they did the chances were good that they’d open fire.

Following them, though, seemed a good idea – if there were any Russians on the line to Erkner, the tank would find them first. He and Werner started walking down the tracks, the sound of the tank fading before them.

After around an hour Paul realised they were coming into Erkner. A few seconds later the tank loomed out of the darkness, still straddling the rails. His first thought was that it had run out of fuel, but it hadn’t been abandoned – a man was still standing up in the turret, smoking a cigarette. Paul risked a shout of ‘
kamerad
’. The man quickly doused his cigarette, but invited them forward when Paul supplied the names of their units.

The tank had fuel enough, but the commander, fearing that the Russians were already in Erkner, had sent his grenadiers ahead on reconnaissance. If they came back with a good report, then he’d drive straight through the town. If Ivan was already ensconced, then he’d find another way round. In either case, they were a panzergrenadier short, and Paul was welcome to the vacancy. The boy could come along for the ride.