The four of them had just finished eating when the promised visitor arrived. A short, bald, tough-looking character in his fifties, and clearly an old comrade of the Ottings, he asked after their son in Africa before introducing himself to Russell and Effi. 'I am Ernst,' he said, 'and I am in charge of the arrangements for your... I suppose "escape" is the only word that really fits.' He offered them both a smile, which Russell wanted to find more convincing. 'The plan is to get you aboard a ship for Sweden. An iron ore ship. There's one due to dock on Wednesday evening - it will be unloaded during the next day and then leave as soon after dark as possible. Now the authorities watch these boats very carefully in the hours before sailing, but hardly at all before that, so we plan to get you aboard and well hidden on Wednesday evening. Do you understand?'
'Of course,' Russell said, his hopes rising.
'The voyage will take about forty hours,' Ernst said. 'You should reach Oxelosund on Friday morning. Someone from the Stockholm embassy will meet you there, and take charge of the documents you are carrying. '
The next two days seemed replete with more than the usual number of hours. During the day they had the apartment to themselves, and read until their eyes could no longer cope with the inadequate light. There was no radio, but Russell scoured the morning paper, which Hans brought back each evening, for news of themselves and the war's progress. The same pictures of him and Effi were repeated, but the accompanying words had shrunk to a simple demand that any sighting be immediately reported. Hans seemed almost amused by it all, but his wife, staring at the offending photographs, looked almost stunned, and Effi found herself praying that the Ottings would not suffer for their generosity.
After Russell had mentioned in passing how unused he was to staying indoors all day, Hans took him and Effi down the corridor, through an unmarked door, and up a single flight of stairs to the roof, where a host of washing lines were waiting for better weather. The smell of the sea, thirty kilometres to the north, was faint but unmistakable.
An almost full moon was rising in the east, bathing the city and its river in pale light, and after Hans went back down the two of them stayed out in the bitter cold for as long as they could endure it, taking in what might be their last real sight of Germany.
'What are we going to do when we get to Sweden?' Effi asked, snuggling up against him. 'Are we going to England or America?'
'It may take some time to get to either,' Russell told her. 'I suppose Sweden's still trading with the outside world, but I've no idea whether there are any ships to Britain or the States. We may have to stay in Sweden for the duration.'
'I could cope with that. In a way it would be nice - we'd still be close to our family and our friends. Or at least not too far away.'
Wednesday was another long wait. They were unlikely to meet anyone between flat and docks, but Effi applied their make-up with great care, determined that nothing should be left to even the slightest chance. By the time she had finished, their supply was almost gone, but it seemed unlikely they would need any more - once they left the flat, either the ship or the Gestapo would be taking them away, and there would be no need of disguises in either Sweden or a concentration camp.
So went the theory. Margarete and Hans had been home only a few minutes when a tap on the door announced the arrival of Ernst. Bad news was written across his face. 'The ship has been sunk,' he said without preamble.
'By whom?' Effi asked, surprise and indignation in her voice.
'A Soviet submarine,' Ernst told her. 'We should rejoice of course.'
'Of course,' Russell agreed dryly. He supposed they should: there was no reason why his and Effi's war with the Nazis should take precedence over everyone else's.
'I hope the crew got off,' Hans said.
'Oh, of course,' Effi agreed, momentarily ashamed that she'd only been thinking of herself.
'So what happens now?' Russell asked Ernst. As the news sank in, he could feel the stirrings of panic. The Germans had one of their all-engrossing words for it - torschlusspanik, the burst of terror that accompanies a closing door.
'I don't know,' Ernst was saying. 'There will be other ships, of course. For the moment, you must stay here,' he added, looking at Hans and Margarete as he did so.
'Of course,' Hans agreed, and his wife nodded her acceptance of the fact. But she didn't look thrilled at the prospect, and who could blame her?
Later that night, as she tried to fall asleep, Effi imagined herself on a torpedoed ship, the screams of the wounded, the lurching deck, the cold immensity of the dark sea. The sailors from the sunken ship - were they German or Swedish? - were probably out there still, desperately trying to keep warm as their lifeboats bobbed in the chilling Baltic swell. Why, she wondered for the umpteenth time, would anyone sane start a war?
It was only seven-thirty, and still completely dark, when they heard the knock on the door. The softness of the knock boded well - the Gestapo had a propensity to hammer - and Russell allowed himself the absurd hope that their ship had not been sunk after all. He left their room to find Hans admitting Ernst.
Though clearly out of breath from climbing ten flights of the stairs, the comrade's first priority was a cigarette. 'More bad news,' he told them tersely through a cloud of smoke. 'There have been arrests in Berlin. Many comrades. Twenty at least. And one of them -' he looked at Russell and Effi '- is the man who sent you here.'
'What happened?' Hans wanted to know.
Ernst shrugged. 'We don't know. A traitor, I expect. It usually is. But these two will have to be moved. Tonight, after dark. They should be all right until then.'
Which meant, Russell thought, that the arrests had probably happened the previous evening, and that those arrested were expected to hold out until the same time today, to endure a minimum of twenty-four hours' suffering before coughing up the first name. The guard on the train, he thought. The next link in the chain. He remembered the collapsing wooden bridge in an adventure movie he had seen with Paul, the hero racing to cross the chasm as the trestles collapsed behind him.
Margarete was looking deathly pale.
'If we see their cars in the street,' Russell told her, 'we'll get out of the apartment. Onto the roof. They won't know where we came from.'
She gave him a look of disbelief, as if unable to comprehend such naivety.
'You'll get plenty of warning,' Ernst confirmed. 'They only ever come up here in force. But I don't think it'll be today.'
'Where are we going this evening?' Effi asked him.
'I don't know yet. All I know is Moscow wants you out, and I'll do my best to oblige them. Someone will be here after dark.'
After indicating to Hans that he wanted a private word with Ernst, Russell followed the Party man out into the stairwell. 'Can you get me a gun?' he asked. He wasn't at all sure he would use one, but it would be nice to have the option. 'I don't want them to take us alive,' he said in response to the other man's hesitation. He found it hard to imagine sharing a suicide pact with Effi, but he knew that Ernst would like the idea - dead people stayed silent for a lot longer than twenty-four hours. 'I'll see what I can do,' Ernst told him.
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 the
ir 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.
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