Stattin Station (13 page)

'So where?' Russell wanted to know.

'Switzerland is the obvious choice - easy access for both us and the Americans. You will have to leave your current job, and set yourself up as an independent - I believe "freelance" is the English word. Zurich would be best, but Basle or Berne if you insist. We will pay all your living expenses, and...'

'But that...'

'And of course we would ensure that your friend Fraulein Koenen was allowed to visit you on a regular basis.'

Russell was suddenly lost for words.

'This would be a secret arrangement,' the Admiral went on. 'It would be vital to ensure that other intelligence services - even other German services - were unaware of your role.'

Like the
Sicherheitsdienst
, Russell thought. Them and them alone, in all likelihood. Which was one good reason for saying no. Looking like a well-paid German stooge was another, but if the Americans also offered financial support he could claim independence. And not to be separated from Effi for however many years the war went on - that had to go in the yes column. He might even be able to get her out on a permanent basis - the Nazis would still have her family as hostages to her good behaviour. 'When would this happen?' he asked.

'Two weeks, maybe three.' Canaris shifted in his seat, as if his back was giving him trouble. 'First, I would appreciate your help in another matter.' Russell's face must have betrayed him.

'There is no need for concern. This only involves a trip to Prague and the delivery of a message. Much the same task as you performed in Copenhagen a year or so ago.'

'I was already going to Copenhagen. And the message was for my own government. Is that the case this time?'

'No, it is not. This message will be in code, and I cannot divulge its contents. I can assure you that it has no bearing on the outcome of the war. You will not be compromising any loyalty you might feel to England or America.'

'But why me?' asked Russell. 'And who's the message for?'

'His name is Johann Grashof,' Canaris said, ignoring the first question. 'He runs the Abwehr office in Prague responsible for Hungary and the Balkans. A good and honourable man,' he added, surprising Russell. 'I have known him for many years.'

'You haven't explained why I've been chosen.'

'Because I believe I can trust you in this matter,' Canaris said. 'Your status as an outsider raises you above the fray, so to speak. You understand?'

Russell thought he did. This was a message that Canaris, for reasons unknown, could not trust to any of his own agents. Which was hardly encouraging. Russell asked the obvious question: 'Is the Swiss arrangement contingent on my delivering this message?'

Canaris looked away, but his words were equally direct: 'Yes, I'm afraid it is. We will fly you there and back,' he added, as if Russell's main objection to the mission might be the number of hours he would have to spend on a train. 'With any luck you'll be back within twenty-four hours.'

'Have you a date in mind?'

'A week today. December the first.'

Russell considered for a moment. 'Would there be any chance of my son visiting me in Switzerland?'

'I don't see why not.'

'It's a tempting offer,' Russell admitted. 'Can I have a few days to think it over?'

'Not too many. I need an answer by Wednesday.'

They shook hands again, and Canaris himself took Russell to the top of the stairs. He descended slowly, wondering what to do. The prize seemed great, the level of risk, for all of Canaris's blandishments, essentially unknown.

Outside the building, he turned left along the canal. What risks could there be? What could a message from the chief of German Military Intelligence to one of his officers contain that might threaten its bearer? Details of a plot to assassinate Hitler? Unlikely. Details of a scheme to undermine Heydrich? More likely, particularly since the destination was Prague, now the capital of Heydrich's own little fiefdom.

It wasn't somewhere Russell wanted to go. His last trip to the old Czech capital had seen him fleeing down alleys with the local Gestapo in close pursuit, suspected by the local resistance, and forced to depart the city with what seemed like undignified haste. Prague might be beautiful, but over the last few weeks Heydrich's crackdown had reportedly turned it into the most dangerous city in occupied Europe. If there were corpses swinging on the Charles Bridge lamp-posts, Russell wouldn't be at all surprised.

But - and it was a big but - when Canaris had offered him the chance of seeing Effi on a regular basis, he had suddenly realised how afraid he was of the alternative, of a separation that might last years, or even decades. Avoiding that fate was surely worth a few risks.

Shooting for
GPU
began on the following Monday, so Effi had stayed at home that day, studying an early draft of the script for
Betrayal
which Marssolek had sent her. It was depressing in the extreme, and seemed - as Russell had suspected it would be - almost immune to interpretation. The thought of it even being made filled her with anger, as did the realisation that most of her fellow actresses would play the part exactly as the makers intended.

Was she being over-sensitive? Surely most of her fellow countrymen would see through this evil nonsense as easily as she did. Her friends would find the storyline laughable. But then her memory slipped back to the conversation with Annaliese Huiskes in her hospital office, and the hundreds of Jews being shot by ordinary German men in Russia. Those men must have found the demonisation of the Jews believable, or they wouldn't be able to act the way they did. And movies must have played a part, however small, in that process, in making such terrible crimes not only possible but almost, it seemed, a matter of routine. The cost might come later, chorusing 'I can't do it anymore' in a Berlin hospital ward with your fellow criminals, but by then it was too late for everyone, murderers and victims alike.

She couldn't do this film, Effi realised. And she couldn't explain her refusal on the grounds that it would harm her career. She would have to tell Marssolek the truth, or something very like it. If they stopped offering her parts, then so be it. She would rather get a job on the trams than play Goebbels' idea of a Jewess.

When Russell got home he found Effi on the sofa and their living room littered with paper aeroplanes. 'You were right,' she said. 'This particular script was not susceptible to a human interpretation.'

'But it makes good paper aeroplanes?'

'Excellent paper aeroplanes.'

'Don't they want it back?'

'I shall say I left it on a tram. What can they do?'

Russell lifted her bare feet and sat down with them in his lap. 'I've had an offer,' he said. '
We've
had an offer,' he corrected himself. He explained the arrangement that Canaris had in mind, and was pleased to see the gleam of hope in Effi's eyes.

'That would be wonderful,' she said. 'I love Switzerland.'

'You may have to actually visit me, you know.'

'All right. But I learnt to ski there when I was sixteen, and I've never been back.'

'Well you can teach me.'

'There's a catch, isn't there?' she asked, suddenly serious.

'Only a small one.' He told her about the planned trip to Prague.

'John, you mustn't do it,' was the instinctual response.

'Why not?'

'Remember what happened the last time.'

'Yes, but...'

'I have a bad feeling about this, John.'

'I have a bad feeling about not seeing you for years.'

'Yes, of course, so do I...'

'Is it anything more than a bad feeling?' he asked. 'Is there something obvious I've missed? As far as I can see, all Canaris wants is for me to put a letter in someone else's hand. And I can't think of any reason why he should want to set me up. If...'

'Are you sure?'

'As sure as I can be. And if some enemy of Canaris's - which I suppose means the SD - if they catch me with the letter, it'll be sealed and in code. I'm just the postman. An innocent dupe.'

She gave him a reproachful look. 'That's not how the SD will see it, and you know it as well as I do.'

'Perhaps. But I'm also a foreign journalist, and someone they believe has done them a few favours in the past. I almost got a medal a couple of years ago. And if the worst came to the worst, I could always offer to work for them against Canaris. They could join the ranks of my visitors in Swiss exile.'

'And then what?'

'Play it by ear.' Russell shrugged. 'What else do I ever do?'

'I'm not convinced,' said Effi.

'Neither am I,' Russell admitted, 'but I think I'm going to risk it. Canaris chose the right reward.'

The following morning he decided on another day's consideration before delivering his answer. Maybe something would turn up, and push him one way or the other. He had, he realised, become another soldier in Berlin's growing army of Micawbers.

The Foreign Ministry press conference followed the recent pattern, only this time it was Solnechnogorsk that had fallen, twenty kilometres on from Klin, and only sixty from the Kremlin. Russell tried to find comfort in the unspoken - but obvious - fact that Tula, defending the southern approaches, had clearly not succumbed to the German onslaught. At least one of the pincers was not converging.

That afternoon the Ministry held a lavish reception for the foreign conference delegates, all of whom had now arrived. The foreign press was not allowed in, so Russell and his colleagues retreated to the Adlon bar, hoping to waylay the delegates en route to their rooms. It proved a successful ploy. Gestapo eavesdroppers were out in force, but as one of the Finns rudely remarked, few of them could speak German properly, let alone a foreign language. The delegates happily shared their thoughts with their own country's correspondents, while the latter, in a rare display of solidarity, happily shared what they'd heard with all of their colleagues. Ribbentrop's new Europe was not, it seemed, wholly united. The Hungarians were not speaking to the Romanians, the Slovaks or the Bulgarians - there were even rumours that a duel with pistols had been arranged for the following sunrise between Hungarian and Romanian colonels. This proved false, unlike the ongoing spat between Italy and Croatia, and the Italian delegation's outrage at being given similar ranking to the Spanish. No one had understood a word the Chinese or Japanese had said, and everyone thought Ribbentrop was an overbearing idiot. Most sensational of all, one Danish delegate revealed that anti-government - and anti-occupation - riots were taking place in Copenhagen at that very moment.

It was almost like old times in the Adlon bar, albeit with two major differences - the quality of the alcohol and the depressing fact that nothing they heard would ever see a front page.

Around seven, Russell realised he had time to pick up Effi at the hospital. He walked down Hermann-Goering-Strasse - or 'Meyerstrasse' as many Berliners now called it, following Goering's boast that they could call him Meyer if a single British bomb dropped on the capital - and around an eerily empty Potsdamer Platz, once the German equivalent of Times Square. Reaching the Elisabeth Hospital, he had trouble finding the military wing, but eventually found Effi sitting in a ward office with a small and tired-looking blonde in nurse's uniform. Both were drinking what looked like pink schnapps, Effi looking decidedly shaken.

She introduced Russell to Annaliese Huiskes, who offered him a drink.

He declined, admitting he'd already had enough for one evening.

They chatted for a few minutes, until Annaliese was called away. 'Take her home,' the nurse told Russell. 'She's had a bad evening.'

'It wasn't any worse than it usually is,' Effi told him as they walked to the tram stop. 'I've usually managed to let it all go by the time I get home. There's just so much of it, so many stories, so much anguish. One boy tonight, he kept on and on about this friend who'd been killed, and how it had been his fault. I told him I couldn't see why he should blame himself, and he just lost his temper - I thought he was going to hit me. He really needed it to be his fault, and I just hadn't realised...'

They had reached the tram stop, and Effi burrowed into Russell's arms, her shoulders shaking with grief. He stroked her hair, and thanked the blackout for their near-invisibility. In a very similar situation before the war, two middle-aged women had practically demanded her autograph.

She wiped her eyes and kissed him. 'Just another day at the office.'

The tram, when it finally arrived, was less crowded than usual. An elderly gentleman offered his seat to Effi, but she refused it with a smile. There were several middle-aged men in
Arbeitsfront
uniforms - shop stewards in the Nazi-controlled unions - standing close to the doors and talking with what seemed drunken abandon. Men to avoid, Russell thought, just as he caught sight of the two young women huddled in a dark corner, wearing yellow stars. It was only a few minutes from their curfew, and judging by the frequency with which the older one consulted her watch she was aware of that fact.

One last look, a word in her younger friend's ear, and the two of them sidled toward the doors as the tram approached the stop outside the closed Ka-de-We department store. The younger girl, Russell noticed, was carrying something rolled up in a piece of cloth. As she neared the door one of the uniformed men - a stereotypical Party man if Russell ever saw one, with his red piggish face and overflowing stomach - deliberately bumped her with an ample hip, causing her to stumble. A raw egg fell out of the cloth and broke on the floor.

The girl stared at the mess, resisting the tug of her older companion, heartbreak written all over her face. The man responsible yanked off her headscarf and thrust it at her: 'Now clear it up, you Jew bitch.'

'Where did a Jew get hold of an egg?' someone else asked indignantly. The doors had now closed, and the tram was in motion.

So was Effi, pushing her way past other passengers to place herself between the Jewish girls and their tormentor. 'You made her drop it, you clean it up,' she told him in cold, calm voice. 'People like you make me ashamed to be a German,' she heard herself add.