Potsdam Station (30 page)

‘Words of wisdom,’ Paul murmured.

‘He was a clever man,’ Werner agreed. ‘He used to tell me bedtime stories when I was really young. He just made them up as he went along.’

The eastern sky was lightening, the drizzle easing off. There were men at work under the bridge, Paul noticed. Planting charges, no doubt. He was still watching them when a Soviet biplane flew low up the river, and opened fire with its machine-gun. Several men dropped into the sluggish current, but Paul couldn’t tell whether they’d been hit or simply taken evasive action. At almost the same moment the first shells of an artillery barrage also hit the water, sending up huge plumes of spray. They had no doubt been aimed at the western bank, and he and Werner made the most of their luck, hurrying for cover while the Soviet gunners fine-tuned their range. They were still scrabbling their way under the tank when a shell landed on the stretch of promenade which they had just abandoned.

The barrage, which only lasted a few minutes, set a pattern for the rest of the day. Every half-hour or so the invisible Soviet guns would launch a few salvoes, then fall silent again. In between time, Soviet bombers and fighters would appear overhead, bombing and strafing whatever took their fancy. The only sign of the Luftwaffe was a sorry-looking convoy of ground personnel, who had been sent forward to the fighting front from their plane-less airfields.

The German tanks, guns and supporting infantry were well dug in, and there were, for once, few casualties. As far as Paul could tell, the German forces in and around Köpenick were strong enough to give Ivan at least a pause for thought. There were more than a dozen tanks, several of them Tigers, and upwards of twenty artillery pieces of varying modernity. If Paul’s tank was anything to go by, they were all likely to be low on fuel and shells, but Ivan couldn’t know that. And if he wanted to find out, he first had to cross a sizable river.

The bridge was finally blown in mid-afternoon, the centre section dropping into the river with a huge ‘whumpf’. It was neatly done, Paul thought – the Wehrmacht had certainly honed a few skills in its thousand-mile retreat. Russell’s watch told him it was almost seven o’clock – he had slept for nine hours. He didn’t regret it – he had needed the rest, and the middle of the day seemed far too dangerous a time to be wandering the streets. After dark seemed a much better bet, although Leissner might have other advice. Now he came to think about it, the Reichsbahn man might be reluctant to let him go. He would have to persuade Leissner that Varennikov was the one that mattered, the prize the Red Army would be hoping to collect.

He fumbled around for the matches and lit a candle. The Russian kept on snoring, which wasn’t surprising – he’d had even less sleep than Russell over the last few days. After Leissner had left them that morning, Varennikov had asked Russell over and over whether he thought they could trust the Reichsbahn official. Was there any reason they shouldn’t? Russell had asked him. There was, it turned out, only one. The man was a German.

Internationalism had not, it seemed, taken root in Soviet soil.

Feeling hungry, Russell drank some cold soup from one of the billy- cans. Its tastelessness was probably its primary virtue, but he certainly needed some sort of sustenance.

Taking the candle with him, he descended the spiral staircase. The flickering went ahead of him, and the lookout was already on his feet when Russell reached the platform. Leissner was either very efficient or very determined not to lose his prize. Or both. He probably had hopes of an important post in a new communist Germany.

‘I need to talk to Comrade Leissner,’ Russell said.

The man thought about that for several moments. ‘Wait here,’ he said eventually, and disappeared up the tunnel.

He returned five minutes later. ‘You can go up to his office. You remember the way?’

Russell did.

Leissner was waiting at the top of the stairs. He ushered Russell into the office, and carefully closed the door behind them. ‘Just habit,’ he explained, seeing Russell’s face. ‘Only a handful of people came in today, and they’ve all gone home. For the duration, I expect. It can’t be long now,’ he added with a broad smile. ‘It really is over.’

Not quite, Russell thought, but he didn’t say so. He had only known this particular comrade for a few hours, but his expectations of the Soviets were likely to be somewhat overblown. Leissner had probably joined the KPD in the late 1920s when he was still a teenager, and spent the Nazi years concealing his true allegiance. His looks would have helped – blonde hair, blue eyes and a chiselled face were never a handicap in Nazi Germany – but living a double life for that length of time could hardly have been easy, and he would certainly have become adept at deception.

But, by the same token, a life spent down the enemy’s throat provided one with few opportunities to learn about one’s friends. For men like Leissner, the Soviet Union would have been like a long-lost father, a vessel to fill with uncritical love.

‘How can I help you?’ the German asked.

‘I have to find someone, and I’m hoping you can help me,’ Russell began.

‘Who?’ Leissner asked.

‘My wife,’ Russell said simply, ignoring the detail of their never marrying. ‘When I left three years ago, she stayed. I’m hoping she might still be living in the same place, and I need to know the safest way to get there.’ Leissner had lost his smile. ‘I don’t think that would be wise. The Red Army will be here in a few days…’

‘I want to reach her before… before the war does,’ Russell said diplomatically.

Leissner took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to leave. What if you were caught by the Gestapo, and they tortured you? You would tell them where Varennikov was. I don’t say this to impugn your bravery of course.’

‘But this is my wife,’ Russell pleaded.

‘I understand. But you must understand – I must put the interests of the Party above those of a single individual. In the historical scheme of things, one person can never assume that sort of importance.’

‘I agree completely,’ Russell lied. ‘But this is not just a personal matter. My wife has been working undercover in Berlin since 1941, and the leadership in Moscow wishes her to survive these last days of the war. My orders,’ he went on, with slightly greater honesty, ‘were to bring Varennikov to you, and then do what I could to find her.’

‘Can you prove that?’ Leissner asked.

‘Of course,’ Russell said, pulling from his pocket Nikoladze’s letter of introduction to the Red Army. If Leissner could read Russian he was sunk, but he couldn’t think of anything better.

Leissner stared at the paper. He couldn’t read it, Russell realised, but he wasn’t going to admit it. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Where do you hope to find your wife?’

‘The last place she lived was in Wedding. On Prinz Eugen Strasse. How would I get there? Is the U-Bahn still running?’

‘It was yesterday, at least as far as Stettin Station. Your best bet would be to walk through the tunnels below here as far as Friedrichstrasse, then catch a U-Bahn if there is one, walk if there isn’t. But I don’t know how far south the front line has moved. The Red Army was still north of the Ringbahn this morning, but…’ He shrugged.

‘It’ll be obvious enough on the ground,’ Russell reassured him. Rather too obvious, if he was unlucky.

‘But you can’t go through the tunnels dressed like that,’ Leissner insisted. ‘The SS are all over the place, and they won’t take kindly to a foreign worker wandering around on his own. I’ll get you a Reichsbahn uniform from somewhere. I’ll send it down to you before morning.’

‘Would dawn be the best time to go? Are there any times of day when the shelling is less intense?’

‘No, it is more or less constant,’ Leissner told him. He seemed proud of the fact.

The pieces of the broken bridge had barely settled on the bed of the Dahme when the first Soviet tanks appeared on the river’s eastern bank, drawing yells of derision and an almost nostalgic display of firepower from the German side. It seemed too good to last, and it was. As darkness fell, signs of battle lit the northern and southern horizons, and less than an hour had passed when news of a Soviet crossing a few kilometres to the south filtered through the few barely coordinated units defending Köpenick. No order was issued by higher authority for the abandonment of the position, but only a few diehards doubted that such a move was necessary, and soon a full withdrawal was underway.

A gibbous moon was already high in the sky, and their driver had few problems manoeuvring the Panzer IV across the wide stretch of heath that lay to the west of the river. At first their intention was to follow the line of the Spree, but numerous battles were clearly raging on the eastern bank, and it seemed more prudent to drive west, through Johannisthal, before turning north. Another stretch of moonlit heathland brought them to the Teltowkanal, and they headed north alongside it, looking for a bridge across. The first two had already been destroyed, but sappers were still fixing charges to the third as they drove up. Once across, they found themselves among the houses of Berlin’s southern outskirts.

Soon after midnight they emerged from a side street onto the wide Rudower Strasse, which stretched north toward Neukölln and the city centre. It was full of people and vehicles, military and civilian, almost all heading north. The edges of the road were littered with those who would go no further – a dead man still seated at the wheel of his roofless car, a whimpering horse with only two legs. And every now and then a Soviet plane would dive out of the moon, and release a few souls more.

And there were other killers on the road. A gang of SS walked by in the opposite direction, their leader scanning each passing male. A few hundred metres up the road, Paul saw evidence of their work – two corpses swaying from makeshift gallows with pale anguished faces and snapped necks, each bearing the same roughly-scrawled message – ‘We still have the power.’ Looking ahead down the long wide road, Paul could see the taller buildings of the distant city centre silhouetted by the flash of explosions. The Soviet gunners had got there before them.

Their tank was crossing the Teltowkanal for the second time when its engine began coughing for lack of fuel, and the driver barely had time to get it off the bridge before it jerked to a halt. Not that it mattered anymore – the Teltowkanal, which arced its way across southern Berlin, was the latest defence line that had to be held at all costs, and strengthening the area around the bridge was now the priority. While the tank commander went off in search of a tow, his grenadiers were put to work digging emplacements in the cemetery across the road. It was gone two when they were finally allowed to stretch out on the wet ground and try to snatch some sleep.

It was a three-kilometre hike through the S-Bahn tunnels to Friedrichstrasse. As Russell walked northward many slivers of light – even beams in places – shone down through the cut-and-cover ceiling. This evidence of bomb and shell damage didn’t inspire much confidence in the integrity of the tunnel, but the thin grey light allowed him to walk at his usual pace, and it only took about twenty minutes to reach the S-Bahn platforms underneath Potsdam Station. These were lined with people, most still sleeping, others staring listlessly into space. No one seemed surprised by his appearance in the borrowed Reichsbahn uniform, but he stopped to take a close look at the track in several places, as he had once seen a real official do. Up above, the Soviet artillery seemed unusually fierce, and one near-miss caused a shower of dust to descend from the ceiling. A few heads were anxiously raised, but most people hardly stirred.

The next section was the worst. As he moved north, the smell of human waste grew stronger in his nostrils; a little further on, and he was picking up the metallic odour of blood. The stationary hospital trains had only just become visible in the distance when he heard the first scream, and not long after that the lower, more persistent groaning of the wounded soldiers on board became increasingly audible. It sounded like Babelsberg’s idea of a slave’s chorus, only the pain was real.

The trains seemed barely lit, and there was no way of knowing what sort of care their passengers were getting. The only person Russell saw was a young and rather pretty nurse, who was seated on some vestibule steps, puffing on a cigarette. She looked up when she heard him coming, and gave him a desolate smile.

The tunnel soon curved to the right. He guessed it passed under the Adlon Hotel, where he’d spent so many hours of his pre-war working life. He wondered if the building was still standing.

Unter den Linden Station suggested otherwise. Large chunks of sky were visible in several places, and no one was using the rubble-strewn platforms for shelter. By contrast, the long curve round towards Friedrichstrasse was the darkest section so far, and when he heard music drifting down the tunnel he thought he must be imagining it. But not for long. For one thing, it grew steadily louder; for another, it was jazz.

As he reached the Friedrichstrasse platforms he could hear the music quite clearly: the players were somewhere close by in the subterranean complex beneath the main-line station. Many of those camping out on the platforms were obviously enjoying it, feet tapping to the rhythm, smiles on their faces. He had seen nothing stranger in six years of war. Or more heartening.

He followed several corridors to reach the U-Bahn booking hall. The trains were still running all the way to See Strasse, which seemed another small miracle – the terminus couldn’t be that far from the front line. Russell waited while a woman pleaded in vain for permission to travel – her eighty-five-year-old mother was alone in her Wedding apartment, and needed help to get out before the Russians arrived. The man on the barrier was sympathetic but adamant – only people with official red passes were allowed on the trains. As she walked despairingly away Russell flashed the one that Leissner had loaned him, and hurried down to the U-Bahn platforms.