Potsdam Station (26 page)

The grenadiers came back a few minutes later – Erkner was still in German hands. Everyone climbed wearily aboard, and the tank moved off, swapping rails for road. They rumbled down the sleeping streets, talked their way through the MP checkpoint on the canal bridge, and headed out onto the Berlin road. Reaching the city’s outer defence line near Friedrichshagen, they discovered that their regiment was ordered to Köpenick, five kilometres further on. They arrived in the hour before dawn to find their supposed assembly area – the western end of the Lange Bridge across the Dahme – occupied by a company of Volkssturm. With no other tanks in sight, and confident that the Russians were at least a day behind them, the case for sleep seemed overwhelming.

Werner, however, was hard to turn off. He had been quiet throughout the journey, and now Paul discovered why. The boy couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let his comrades down.

Paul understood why Werner felt that way – only a week ago he had felt the same himself. But not any longer. Maybe it was only him, but over that week the rules had seemed to change. ‘They chose their fate,’ he told Werner, hoping the boy wouldn’t notice all the questions he seemed to be begging. ‘Look, there are only a few days left. There’s nothing you and I can do anymore that will help win the war, nothing we can do to prevent it from ending in defeat. Nothing at all. All we can do is to try and survive it. And I want to survive,’ he said, surprising himself with the vehemence of the thought. Had losing Gerhard and Neumaier made him more determined to live?

‘So do I,’ Werner admitted, as if it were a guilty secret.

‘Good,’ Paul told him. ‘So can we get some rest?’

‘Okay.’

Paul closed his eyes and let the sound of the river lull him to sleep.

Russell woke to darkness, and it was several seconds before he remembered where he was. On the other side of the basement Varennikov was gently snoring, and somewhere in the outside world bombs were falling to earth with a series of distant thuds. ‘Welcome to Berlin,’ he murmured to himself.

Waking briefly in the middle of the night, he had found the young scientist reading the papers by torchlight, and was somewhat surprised not to find him still at it. He had let Varennikov sleep until five in the afternoon on the previous day, mostly because he couldn’t decide what their next step should be. When the Russian had finally woken up, he had assumed that they would wait there for the Red Army – ‘we stay, yes? – but Russell was not so sure. And while Varennikov had spent his evening engrossed in the papers, Russell had spent his sifting through options. Without reaching a decision.

Things seemed no clearer this morning. It might make sense to wait for the Soviets – they should be here in four or five days, a week at the outside. And if he handed Varennikov and the papers over in one piece, then Nikoladze might help him find Effi and Paul. But it didn’t seem likely. Even more to the point, he wanted to find Effi before a drunken gang of Russian soldiers did, not several days later.

And if they let the Russian tide wash over them in Dahlem, those areas of central Berlin still in Nazi hands would be forever out of reacx. Effi might be hiding in the outlying suburbs, but he doubted it. That wasn’t the city she knew, and she had always liked being at the centre of things.

So should he leave Varennikov behind? The Russian would probably be okay, provided he kept to the basement and remembered to eat. But Russell was loath to do so: Nikoladze might well decide he’d abandoned his charge – he was, after all, under orders to seek out a second atomic research laboratory and deliver his charges to the railwaymen comrades. The other laboratory could safely be forgotten – without their NKVD enforcers, and with valuable papers already secured, the risks were not worth taking. And he could always stand up the German comrades at the rail yards, given a good enough reason. But the one thing Nikoladze would expect to find, when he eventually set foot in Berlin, was someone protecting his precious scientist with a new mother’s fervour. ‘I left him in a basement on the other side of town’ would not go down too well.

It had to be the Potsdam goods yard – Varennikov could hardly object if Russell insisted on following their original orders. But not until tomorrow. Today he would go to Zarah’s house in Schmargendorf. If Effi had told anyone that she was still in Berlin, it would be her sister, and during the day Zarah’s husband Jens would be at work, always assuming that there was anything left for Nazi bureaucrats to do. He could also visit Paul’s house in Grunewald, which was only a short distance farther away. It didn’t seem likely that Matthias and Ilse were still in Berlin, but it was possible, and they would have some idea where Paul was. In fact, he would go there first.

He went up to the kitchen, poured two cupfuls of water into the kettle, and lit the gas. The flames seemed even smaller than before, but he was in no hurry. Bombs were still falling in the far distance – on the government district, most likely. He wondered whether Hitler was still in residence, and decided he probably was – if the Führer ever let go of his reins, it was hard to imagine any of the disciples having the gumption to pick them up. And someone was keeping the whole futile endeavour going.

Upstairs, he went through Thomas’s clothes – the two of them were much the same size – and picked out the oldest suit he could find. In the bathroom he found a strip of bandaging, in Thomas’s study a bottle of red ink. The latter looked the wrong colour for blood, but it would have to do. A stick and a limp would complete the illusion of someone unfit for battle.

Or at least it might. Russell had the feeling that death was the only excuse the Gestapo would find acceptable, and only then if you had papers to prove it.

He had no papers of any kind, but without Varennikov in tow he could probably talk himself through a random check. If all else failed he still had Gusakovsky’s gun.

It was time to get moving. Back down in the basement he shook Varennikov awake, and told him he was going out for a few hours. He expected dissent, but the Russian just grunted and went back to sleep.

Closing the front door quietly behind him, he walked down the overgrown path to the arched gateway and took a peek at the outside world. There were other people about, but none looking or moving in his direction. He slipped out into the street, and walked slowly north towards the main road. Halfway up, an old man leaning on a gate wished him a cheery good morning, and predicted a nice day. The Allied bombers still dotting the sky were clearly not a factor worth mentioning.

As Russell limped north, cutting through suburban back streets and avoiding the main thoroughfares, the bombing damage seemed ever more serious – Schmargendorf had fared much worse than Dahlem. Houses were missing from every row, streets and gardens cratered. At least half of the trees were burnt or broken, and those that weren’t had been pollarded for fuel. Green shoots were now rising from the stumps – Eliot had been right about April being the cruellest month.

An all-clear sounded in the distance, but crowds no longer rushed from the shelters as they had in the early years. The visible population seemed almost exclusively female, and there was little in the way of purposeful activity. Women of all ages stood outside their doors and gates, alone or in groups, smoking or chatting or both. Their lives were in limbo, he realised. They were waiting for the war to end, waiting for news of a husband or son, waiting to discover what would be left for rebuilding their streets and their lives.

He crossing the wide and mostly empty Hohenzollerndamm. There was a tram further up the street, but it showed no signs of being in service. So far, he had seen a couple of official-looking cars and several bicycles, but no trace of public transport. No electricity, no petrol. The city, it seemed, had ground to a virtual halt.

He walked on into Grunewald, and finally reached the peaceful suburban avenue where Paul had lived with his mother, stepfather and stepsisters. A few trees had been cut down, but only one dwelling, several hundred metres from Matthias Gehrts’ large detached house, had been completely destroyed by a bomb.

Working on the thesis that boldness was best – skulking seemed much more likely to get him reported – he limped straight up the driveway and reached for the iron knocker. He already feared that the house was empty – it had that indefinable air about it – and the lack of response confirmed as much.

He considered peering through the windows, but decided that would look overly suspicious. He walked back to the gate, played out a pantomime of noting something down, and limped off down the road. As he neared the next corner, he noticed that Paul’s old school was standing empty, chains tied across its rusting gates.

A quarter-hour later he reached the road where Effi’s sister lived. Skulking was his only option here, because Jens might answer a knock on the door. They had never liked each other, and it seemed safe to assume that he and Effi becoming fugitives had only made matters worse. For all Russell knew, Jens had been expelled from the Party for having traitorous relatives.

He had bought a
Volkischer Beobachter
from a still-functioning kiosk on Hubertusbader Strasse – the Nazi paper had shrunk, he gleefully noted, to a single large sheet – and duly positioned himself behind it some fifty metres from the relevant door. It was, he knew, a less than convincing stratagem, but he couldn’t think of a better one. He was, in any case, probably wasting his time. Zarah was probably in the country with Lothar, and he had no intention of approaching Jens.

According to the paper, there was heavy fighting in the vicinity of Müncheberg. Which, in Goebbels-speak, meant that the town had already fallen. The Red Army was almost at Berlin’s door.

An extra issue of rations was announced, supposedly in honour of the Führer’s birthday. And rations for the next two weeks could be collected in advance – someone at least in the Nazi hierarchy seemed reasonably aware of how much time remained.

No one had emerged from the house, which was disappointing but hardly surprising – it would have been something of a coincidence if anyone had appeared during these particular ten minutes. But he could hardly stand there for hours. The temptation simply to walk up and knock grew stronger, and after completing his perusal of Goebbels’ latest bleatings he felt on the verge of succumbing. If Jens answered the door he’d just have to play it by ear.

He was saved by an old man in a milkman’s uniform, who beat him to it, climbing the steps and hammering on the front door with all the insistence of someone intent on settling a long outstanding bill.

There was no answer. The milkman placed a piece of paper against t he door, licked his pencil, and scribbled what looked like a furious message.

Russell started back towards Dahlem. There were more people on the streets now, and most seemed to be smiling. He assumed the extra rations were responsible, but soon learned otherwise. A bald old man with a Hindenburg moustache – he had more hair under his nose than Russell had seen on many heads – insisted on shaking his hand. ‘We made it through,’ he said exultantly.

‘Through what?’ Russell asked.

‘You haven’t heard? That was the last air raid this morning. It was on the radio.’

The BBC, Russell assumed. ‘That is wonderful,’ he agreed, and allowed his hand to be shaken again. Walking on, he could think of only one reason why the Allies would stop their bombing – the Soviets was poised to enter the city.

As if in response to that thought, a rippling wave of explosions erupted away to the east.

There were no planes in the smoke-smeared sky. It could only be Soviet artillery. They were close enough to bombard the city centre.

Things would get worse, he realised. The gaps between air raids allowed time to shop, to collect water, to enjoy a few precious hours of natural light. But the Soviet guns would keep pumping shells around the clock. There would be no respite, no time of safety on the surface. From this point on the residents of Hitler’s rapidly shrinking realm would be spending all their time underground.

There were no shells landing in Dahlem – yet. Reaching Thomas’s gate, he checked the street was empty before hurrying down the path. If anyone was watching from a window, he could only hope that any sense of social responsibility had worn thin. If seeing their city go up in flames didn’t stop people reporting their neighbours, then what would?

Varennikov was awake, standing in the kitchen scratching his bare chest and staring hopelessly at the kettle. There wasn’t enough gas to warm a flea.

‘Someone knocked on the door,’ he told Russell.

‘When?’

‘Oh, fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Here.’

‘You didn’t see who it was?’

‘No. I was afraid they might see me if I moved the curtain.’

‘You were right. Did they only knock once?’

‘No twice. After a half-minute they knocked again.’

‘They?’

Varennikov shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’

It might be nothing, Russell thought. But what innocent reason could anyone have for knocking on Thomas’s door? An old friend looking them up? Perhaps. It would be a coincidence, someone appearing so soon after their own arrival. A neighbour would be more likely, and a neighbour would know there was no one supposed to be here. Unless, of course, their arrival – or his own exit that morning – had been noticed.