Stattin Station (32 page)

The sitting room window faced south, overlooking the street below and offering a panoramic view of central Stettin. They shared the watch, dreading the sound of approaching motors yet perversely eager for any relief from the tension and boredom. When he told Effi about his request for a gun, she looked blank for a moment and then simply nodded, as if accepting that some point of no return had finally been passed.

'But could you hit anything with it?' she asked after a while.

'I'm actually a pretty good shot,' he retorted. 'Or at least I was in 1918.'

The sky was overcast, but they could tell from the fast-vanishing snow that the temperature was rising, and when the clouds opened later that afternoon it was rain mixed with sleet that obscured their distant view of the city. As the hours went by, Russell found it hard not to dwell on unwelcome outcomes, both for them and their hosts. He hated the idea of the Ottings paying with their lives for a few days' hospitality, but there was nothing he could do about it. If he and Effi disappeared at that moment there would still be the men who had brought them from the goods yard to the flat. They were the last link in the chain from Berlin, and the Ottings' only real chance was for those two men to either escape the clutches of the Gestapo or die in the attempt.

Darkness finally began to fall, and soon after five Margarete returned home. She was clearly upset to find them still there, and suddenly burst into tears when Effi offered to help with the cooking. 'I'm sorry,' she said eventually. 'It's not your fault. I keep thinking of my son in Africa, and him coming home to find he has no family.'

Effi encased her in a hug. 'We're sorry,' she said. 'We...'

'You are just trying to survive,' Margarete interrupted her. 'I know that. And I hope you get out. I really do.'

A few minutes later Hans returned, took one look at his wife's tearstained face, and reached out to embrace her. Effi and Russell left them on their own for a few minutes, and when Russell returned to the sitting room he found Hans staring at his books with the air of someone who doubted he'd ever see them again. 'We might as well eat,' Margarete said from the kitchen doorway with a rueful smile.

They were just about finished when a loud and confident knock sounded on the outer door. Hans went to answer it, and returned with a tall, smiling young man. 'Are you ready?' he asked Russell and Effi. 'I'm Andreas,' he added, offering a large and calloused hand to each of them in turn. 'I know who you are,' he told Effi with a big grin.

He insisted that they hurry, and their goodbyes had to be brief. Clattering down the stairs ahead of them, he announced almost casually that the Gestapo were 'all over the town'. Two older men sharing a chat on the next landing down clearly heard the remark, and watched them go by with expressions that mingled sympathy and alarm. In the dimly-lit ground-floor lobby, a young couple embracing in a corner showed considerably less interest in their plight.

Outside, an icy rain was falling. The ground was slippery underfoot and the darkness almost complete.

'My van is two streets away,' Andreas told them, as they made their way across the open courtyard. 'I didn't want to park right outside.'

They reached the street just as two pinpoints of lights swung towards them a few hundred metres away. Another two followed, and another two, as the sound of motors rose above the usual hum of the city.

Andreas broke into a run, yelling 'This way!' over his shoulder. The car headlights were muted by the rain, but just bright enough to show them where they were going, straight across the street and onto the gravel path between workshops that Russell had noticed from the Ottings' window. Once off the street it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead, but Andreas obviously knew where he was going, and the path was less slippery than the street had been. Behind them car doors were slamming, a voice shouting orders. 'Just in time,' they heard Andreas murmur. But not for the Ottings, they both thought.

The sounds faded as they moved on, crossing another street and entering another path. The large factory to their right was still working, the sound of machinery drowning out any noise of pursuit, the glow of fires within rising from chimneys like illuminated gold dust in the falling rain. In her mind, Effi could see the men in leather coats hammering on the door, the last hurried farewells as the Ottings' world caved in.

Andreas was waiting at the exit to the next street. A line of lorries was parked on either side of the road outside the main factory entrance, a small van just beyond them, as if it was part of the same fleet.

'I'm right in thinking you have no false papers?' Andreas asked.

'You are.'

'Then you'll have to get in the back.' He opened the rear doors, and showed them the inside with a well-masked flashlight. The pencil-thin beam revealed various metal trays, a large number of paint tins, a bucket full of brushes and a large expanse of crumpled cloth. 'If we're stopped, you'd better get under the dust-sheet,' he advised. 'Just cover yourselves and pray.'

'Where are we going?' Russell asked.

'The docks. And I have something for you,' he added, heading for the front of the van. He returned a few moments later with a gun wrapped in oilcloth. 'It's only an M1910, but it's the best we could do at short notice.'

Russell unwrapped and grasped it, the metal cold in his hand. He had handled one of these guns before, one he had bought from a German officer after the November armistice, on the ridiculous assumption that any self-respecting class warrior needed his own personal firearm. He was later told that Gavrilo Princip had set the whole bloody mess in motion with an M1910, when he used it to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914.

'We should go,' Andreas told him.

Effi and Russell crawled into the back of the van, ending up with their backs to the driving compartment and the dust-sheet roughly draped across their legs, ready for pulling up over their heads. It wasn't nearly voluminous enough, Russell realised. It would take someone half-blind and wholly stupid to fall for such a ruse.

The van's engine started, and they moved off down the street. They could see nothing in the back, but Andreas kept up a running commentary on their progress, as much for his own reassurance, Russell thought, as for theirs. The first name he recognised was the Konigsplatz, which he had walked round during a visit some years before the war. He also remembered Breitestrasse, and could picture their journey down it, passing the Nikolaikirche and taking the bridge across the Oder to Lastadie. 'Almost there,' he whispered to Effi, as the rain hammered a little harder on the van's roof.

He had spoken too soon.

'Someone's shining a red light at me,' Andreas told them, suddenly sounding much younger. 'There's a barrier across the road,' he added a few moments later. 'And at least two men. They look like Gestapo.' As the van began slowing they tried to burrow beneath the dust-sheet, but it was too dark to see how well they had succeeded in covering themselves. The fact that they were tugging it in opposite directions didn't bode well.

Andreas pulled the van to a halt and wound down his window. 'A miserable night,' they heard him say cheerfully. 'So what's this about?'

The man he was addressing seemed uninterested in friendly banter. 'Gestapo,' he said curtly, and asked for Andreas's papers. A long silence followed as he checked them.

Let that be enough, Russell silently pleaded.

The Gestapo officer asked what Andreas was doing out so late.

Andreas explained with a laugh that one of the local Party bigwigs was desperate to have his offices redecorated in time for Labour Minister Robert Ley's imminent visit.

It was the wrong tone, Russell thought. The man asking the questions didn't sound like a lover of the common people. But how many colleagues did he have with him? Russell had heard no other voices.

'What's in the back?' the Gestapo man asked.

'Just my gear.'

'Turn off the engine and get out.'

The van gently rocked as Andreas climbed out. They heard footsteps, and a sliver of light appeared through the crack between the rear doors. 'Open them up,' the Gestapo officer ordered, his voice now coming from behind the van.

Russell took what seemed, in that instant, their only chance of survival. Throwing off the dust sheet, he took aim at the doors, hoping and praying that Andreas, knowing he had the gun, would have the sense to keep out of the line of fire.

He heard the door handle turn, waited for the light to shine in, and blindly pulled the trigger.

The light spun downwards as the boom of the gun echoed in the van, drowning out the sound of the falling body. He heard Effi gasp as he scrambled feet first towards the open doorway, and half-ordered, half-begged her to stay where she was.

The Gestapo man's torch was still on, illuminating a puddle in the road and throwing a faint reflective glow. As Russell kicked it away, his standing foot slipped on the icy cobbles, throwing him onto his back and quite possibly saving him from the shot which rang out at the same instant. A few feet away, scarcely visible in the darkness, two grunting shadows were locked together.

So there were there at least three of them.

As Russell inched towards the two men struggling on the ground, he scanned the darkness for sight or sound of the man who had fired the last shot. There was nothing - the knowable world had shrunk to a lightless bubble, leaving him blind, deaf and prey to any lucky bullet. He told himself that his opponents were in the same position, but fear still rose in his throat, tightening his finger on the pistol's trigger.

A flashlight suddenly flared into life, illuminating the rain and the road, the two men struggling by the stationary van. As the beam whirled to pick out Russell himself, he raised the gun and fired, bracing his body for the bullet that was surely on its way. But none came. A second torch fell to the ground, and there was a muffled splash as something heavy hit the ground.

There was another shot, this time much closer, an accompanying grunt of surprise, and then only the sound of the falling rain.

Russell raised his gun as a silhouette struggled to its feet. 'Andreas?' he asked.

'I'm here,' the shape said.

'Were there only three of them?' Russell asked. His hand was shaking, he realised.

'That's all I saw.'

'John?' Effi enquired anxiously from the back of the van.

'Stay there a moment,' he told her, and walked across to where the body was lying beside the still-lit torch, the face half-buried in an icy puddle. He picked up the torch and examined the man, who seemed far too youthful for his
ordnungspolizei
uniform. Russell's bullet had passed straight through the throat, as lucky a shot as he could have wished for. The young man's fatal mistake had been to switch on his torch, but Russell, remembering his own moment of terror in the darkness, understood what had caused him to make it.

Behind the body, parked up against a wall, was the Gestapo car.

He walked back to the van, and pointed the torch beam at the other two bodies. Both were wearing leather coats, and Russell's victim had lost most of his face. 'Is yours dead?' he asked Andreas.

'Yes.'

Russell took a deep breath. He had just killed as many men in thirty seconds as he had managed in ten months of the Great War, but at least he wouldn't have to finish anyone off.

'Oh God,' Effi said quietly, as she stepped out past the first victim.

'We should be getting out of here,' Andreas urged.

'No, wait,' Russell said, turning off the flashlight and staring out into the darkness. There were no lights heading their way, no distant voices, and he doubted whether the sounds of gunfire had travelled far in the rain. The buildings that surrounded them were obviously not houses. 'Are we at the entrance to the docks?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'And we were going into them?'

'There's a disused warehouse the Party uses for storage. It was the best we could come up with at short notice.'

'Of course,' Russell muttered. 'But after they find these men I should think they'll scour every inch of the dockyards.'

'Yes, but...'

'We could have been leaving,' Effi interjected. 'How would they know?'

By the position of the bodies, Russell thought. Create a mirror image of the current configuration on the other side of the barrier, and maybe, just maybe, the wrong assumption would be made. He explained the idea to Andreas, and the two of them dragged a body each under the barrier, leaving them lying in the equivalent position on the other side. Both had shed flesh and blood where they fell, and Russell did his best to scatter the solids, trusting the rain to wash everything away. The young man by the barrier was left where he was.

It was the best they could do. Once Effi had clambered into the back, Russell lifted the barrier for Andreas to drive the van through, lowered it once more and climbed into the front seat, gun at the ready. Every bridge behind them was broken now.

They drove on into the docks, bumping across inlaid rails, moving slowly for fear of driving off one of the quaysides. They met only one other vehicle, a lorry moving at a similar speed, which gave them a friendly toot of its horn as it passed. It was probably heading south, Andreas told Russell, and would not be using the Lastadie entrance. Hardly anything did at this time of night. 'Which is why I thought it would be safe to use,' he added wryly.

As they ventured further in, visibility seemed to improve, and an angular pattern of cranes loomed out of the darkness. Soon the sky seemed infused with pale light, and as they passed the end of a warehouse they found the source - a well-lit ship and quay on the far side of a basin. 'Ball bearings from Sweden,' Andreas guessed. 'They're allowed to relax the blackout for those.'

That view was soon cut off by more low buildings, and Andreas finally pulled up alongside a warehouse on the opposite side of the road. He led them to a corrugated iron door, and only turned on his flashlight once they were all inside. His thin beam darted round the interior, a wide space between windowless walls, empty save for a few broken crates, some broken glass and the odd length of frayed rope. The scurrying sound had to be rats.