Stattin Station jr-3

by David Downing

  '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.

  His contorted face looked almost fiendish in the dim yellow light. 'Mind your own fucking business,' he shouted. 'Who the fuck do you think you are? You look like a fucking Jew yourself.' He flicked out a hand, making contact with her left breast. 'Where's your fucking badge?'

  'Back off, you bastard,' Russell said, giving the man a solid shove in the chest. He had no doubt that he could knock this one down, but the other three might prove more of a problem. 'What's the matter with you? Is this your idea of a good time - bullying women?'

  'They're Jews, for fuck's sake,' the man shouted, as if that rendered all other considerations null and void.

  'So fucking what?' Russell shouted back.

  Effi had rarely seen him so angry. The tram, she noticed, had almost come to a halt. 'Go,' she told the Jewish girls, and they needed no seco
nd bidding. The elder one pulled the doors open, and they both tumbled down to the street and out into the darkness.

  Russell and the Arbeitsfront official were still eyeball to eyeball, glued in place by their mutual loathing. 'John, let's go,' Effi said peremptorily, holding the door with one hand and tugging at his sleeve with the other.

  It broke the spell. Russell beamed at the still-raging face in front of him, and turned to follow her. Stepping off, he heard a woman's voice inside the tram say, 'I'm sure that was Effi Koenen.'

  Improvisations

  Russell told Thomas the story at lunch next day, although not before checking the underside of their tables and chairs for listening devices. The ceilings in the Russischer Hof dining rooms were exceptionally high, so the chandeliers at least were free of bugs.

  'I'm amazed that I didn't slug him,' he told Thomas. 'I don't know what stopped me. When he punched Effi in the breast... But I'm glad that I didn't, because God knows what would have happened. I'd have been flattened by his friends, and Effi would have joined in and probably been flattened too. And the two Jewish girls might have been caught and arrested and put on the next train out.'

  'You said it was Effi who blew up first.'

  'Yes, but I'm usually there to calm things down, not make them worse.'

  'That would seem to work better than the two of you egging each other on,' Thomas said with a wry smile. 'Still, it doesn't look like you'll be around for much longer.'

  'What have you heard?'

  'Oh, nothing specific. Only the usual sources,' he added, meaning the BBC. 'It just looks like things are coming to a head.'

  'Hitler might distance himself from a Japanese attack. After all, what would he gain from joining them? There's no way he could help them fight the Americans, but if he keeps out of it, the Americans might reward him by moving most of their forces from the Atlantic to the Pacific.'

  'That makes perfect sense,' Thomas agreed, 'but does it sound like our Fuhrer?'

  'Perhaps not,' Russell admitted. 'I've been doing a lot of straw-clutching lately.'

  'Who isn't?'

  His friend was looking noticeably older, Russell thought. The wrinkles around his eyes and the grey in his hair were both spreading. The strain of having a son at the front must be bad enough, without the need to fight an endless rearguard action against the Gestapo in defence of his Jewish workers. 'No word from Joachim?' he asked.

  'Oh yes, I meant to tell you. There was a letter yesterday. Just a few words - no specific news. But he's all right. Or at least he was a few days ago.'

  'Hanna must be relieved. '

  'Yes, of course. Though it gives her more space to worry about Lotte. Our daughter has suddenly decided, for reasons that neither of us can even begin to fathom, to become an exemplary - and I do mean exemplary - member of the Bund Deutscher Madel. Three weeks ago she was a normal healthy sixteen-year-old, interested in boys and clothes and film stars. Now she has his picture over her bed. I mean, I suppose it's harmless enough, at least for a while; but why, for God's sake? It's as if some malign spirit has taken over the poor girl's brain.'

  'At least the Gestapo won't be coming for her,' Russell said.

  Thomas laughed. 'There is that.'

  'And did you sort out Monday's difficulty?'

  'Yes, but they'll be back. It's like building sandcastles - sooner or later the tide rolls over them. Unless there's some basic change of heart, my Jews will be sent away to whatever horrors are waiting for them. And what could provoke one? I sometimes wonder which would be better for the Jews - a quick victory in the East or a bloody stalemate that lasts for years. Victory might endow our leaders with a little magnanimity, whereas defeat would probably make them even nastier. So here I am,' he concluded, raising his glass in mock salute, 'longing for total victory.'

  'No one finds a cloud in a silver lining better than you do,' Russell agreed.

  They were halfway through dessert - an applecake seriously lacking in apple - when the waiter came round warning the diners that the broadcast was about to begin. He had hardly disappeared when inspirational music began pouring from the speakers.

  'Ribbentrop's speech,' Russell remembered. 'Into every life...'

  They were onto their ersatz coffees by the time the Foreign Minister began his peroration. Continuing their own conversation proved impossible. 'It's impossible to tune him out,' Thomas said. 'I've actually been thinking about him lately...'

  'Why, for God's sake?'

  'I've come to see him as the essential Nazi. The absolute distillation of Naziness. And that's why you can't get away from his voice - it's as if the whole system is doing the talking.'

  'I would have thought the Fuhrer would take the starring role.'

  'He would, he would. No, Ribbentrop isn't a star, much though he'd like to be. He's the Nazi everyman. He loves himself to death, he's not very clever but he thinks he is, he prides himself on his logic and reeks of prejudice, and above all he's crushingly boring.'

  'After the war you should write his biography.'

  Thomas's laugh was cut short by something he saw over Russell's shoulder. 'Behave,' he whispered, and rose from his chair, hand outstretched. Russell turned to see a tall, greying man with a chiselled face in the uniform of an SS Gruppenfuhrer.

  Thomas introduced them, and invited the Gruppenfuhrer to share their table. Much to Russell's relief, the man was with his own party. Russell listened as the other two made arrangements for an afternoon's sailing on the Havel, Ribbentrop's voice droning away behind them.

  'It was good to meet you, Herr Russell,' the Gruppenfuhrer said, shaking his hand again. 'You are not a sailor like your brother-in-law?'

  'No, but I can see the attraction.'

  'You must join us one weekend. Perhaps in the spring when the weather is kinder.'

  'Perhaps,' Russell agreed with a smile. He watched the man walk back to his table, where two other black-uniformed officers were waiting for him. 'What powerful friends you have,' he murmured.

  'I'll probably be needing them,' Thomas replied. 'Believe it or not, once you get that man out of his uniform and onto a boat he's a decent enough chap.'

  'Some of them are.'

  'Not that it matters much,' Thomas said. 'Decent or not, the lever that works is self-interest. And since things started looking iffy in Russia, people like the Gruppenfuhrer have started worrying about the world after the war. They're still not expecting defeat, mind you, but they do sense the possibility, and they're looking for some sort of insurance. Being nice to people like me, who've never had anything to do with the Nazis, is one way they can keep a foot in the other camp. Just in case.'

  'And that gives you names to wave at the Gestapo.'

  'It does. I don't like most of these people, in or out of uniform, but being nice to them doesn't exactly cost me anything.' He looked at his watch. 'I'd better be getting back. I doubt they'll visit us again this week, but I like to be on hand.'

  As they stood on the steps outside prior to parting, Thomas looked up at the clear blue sky. 'The English will be back tonight,' he predicted. 'They won't miss the chance of embarrassing Ribbentrop while his guests are in town.'

  Thomas headed for the U-Bahn at Friedrichstrasse Station, while Russell went towards Unter de Linden and the Adlon. Ribbentrop's voice rose and fell with each loudspeaker he passed, like ripples of an intermittent headache. Until only a year or so ago people had gathered beside speakers at moments like these, but nowadays they just hurried by, as if the voice was driving them onwards. In the Adlon bar there was no escape, and people were simply shouting above the speech. Russell talked to a couple of his Swedish colleagues, who confirmed his opinion that no other news would be allowed to challenge the Foreign Minister's speech that day. Since he had the entire text in his pocket - copies had been handed out at the noon press conference - there seemed little point in waiting around. He sat himself down at a vacant table and wrote a simple summary of the speech interspersed with ample quotes. An
honest evaluation would not be allowed, but should in any case be superfluous. If Russell's readers on the other side of the Atlantic were dim enough to take Ribbentrop's fantasies seriously then he could only wish them a speedy recovery.

  His job as a Berlin correspondent was over, he decided. Some time in the next few days he should take the trouble to resign.

  Other work beckoned. He stopped off at the Abwehr headquarters on his way home, and was taken straight to Canaris's office. The Admiral seemed slightly surprised that he was willing to visit Prague, a reaction which set faint alarm bells ringing in his mind. Russell told himself it was only Canaris's diffident manner, and chose to ignore them. The arrangements for his meeting with Johann Grashof had still not been finalised, and he was told to see Piekenbrock on Monday morning, prior to catching the overnight train. The promise of air travel was unfortunately rescinded - the Luftwaffe had nothing to spare.

  Arriving home before dark, he found Effi memorising her GPU lines, and an unusually aromatic casserole simmering on the stove. 'It's nearly the end of the month, so I went mad with our ration coupons,' she explained. And there was a message from the American Consulate. 'A man named Kenyon wants to see you tomorrow, at ten if you can make it. He said it was about contingencies,' she added. 'Whatever that means.'

  Russell had no idea. He had met Kenyon a couple of times: once at the American Consulate in Prague in the summer of 1939, and again a few months later after the diplomat's transfer to Berlin. As far as Russell knew, the man had nothing to do with American intelligence, although that might have changed. Or perhaps Dallin had asked for Kenyon's help in persuading Russell to contact the Air Ministry official Franz Knieriem. If so, he'd been wasting his time.

  They did, however, have excellent coffee at the Consulate. After ringing and leaving a message for Kenyon that he'd see him the following morning, Russell decided to phone his son. Paul seemed happy to talk for a change, albeit mostly about his growing proficiency with guns. That Saturday, it turned out, he was taking part in a Hitlerjugend shooting tournament, and wouldn't be able to see his father. Russell was surprised and upset by the momentary sense of relief this news caused, and almost welcomed the more lasting feelings of guilt which swiftly followed.