statues were perched high above the colon-naded entrance, three of which bore striking resemblances to Jesus, Cortez and Britannia. All of whom seemed somewhat unlikely subjects.
It was almost eight o'clock, and a steady stream of suited workers was pouring in through the front doors. His target might be one of them, but Russell had no time to introduce himself that morning. He would pay Mohlmann a visit when he got back from the border.
He walked back down the tunnel and up the steps to an empty Platform 3. A short train was soon shunted into the station for Russell and the handful of other passengers. Soon they were out of Breslau and chugging south-eastward towards Oppeln through fields of golden grain. Several rakes of empty tank transporters were stabled in country sidings, but the tanks themselves were nowhere to be seen.
The landscape slowly grew more hilly, and soon after noon the first pits of the Silesian coalfield loomed into view. The train stopped for several minutes in Gleiwitz, then ran on towards Beuthen and the eighteen-year-old border between Germany and Poland, stretches of forest alternating with straggling mining villages.
Before 1918 Gleiwitz, Beuthen, Konigshutte and Kattowitz had been the four principal towns of German Upper Silesia, but once the new borders had been established by the Versailles peace-makers and a local plebiscite, the latter two - along with 80 per cent of the coal mines and industrial installations - had found themselves in Poland. Beuthen had been spared, but now lay in a narrow and decidedly vulnerable finger of German territory. To the north, east and south the Polish border lay less than three kilometres away.
A taxi driver in the station forecourt told Russell that the border village of Blechowka was about ten kilometres to the north-west, and proved willing to take him there in his rather ancient-looking vehicle. He made no mention of the previous day's frontier incident, and Russell decided not to tempt fate by introducing the subject, settling instead for a few general enquiries about local attitudes.
The driver, a grey-haired man in his fifties or sixties, was only too happy to list German Silesian grievances. The Poles had taken most of their coal, and they had no real need for so much - half the mines weren't even being worked anymore. And it was German men who had excavated them, and built the railways and the industries that went with them. Why should the Poles get all the benefit?
'Should we take them back?' Russell asked.
'Not if it means war,' the man said, surprising him. 'But if the Poles start one, well that's another matter!'
Russell had expected a rough ride to Blechowka, but the roads had been recently improved, presumably by the military. The villages they passed through seemed busy and prosperous: a few children watched the taxi wheeze by, but most of the inhabitants were only visible in the distance, working in the fields. The manoeuvres were taking place thirty kilometres to the north, the driver volunteered, and the locals were hurrying to get the harvest in before they moved south.
Blechowka was on the other side of the Beuthen Forest, a straggly street of houses and farms less than a kilometre from the border. It had a couple of shops and a police station worthy of a much larger community. Russell marched into the latter and asked the duty officer about the previous day's incident.
The man asked him what he was talking about.
Russell showed him the newspaper report, and watched an emotional sequence play itself out in the man's face - from bewilderment to suspicion, anxiety to denial. 'I'll have to see about this,' he said, and disappeared through an adjoining door, newspaper in hand.
He returned with a question a couple of minutes later. 'Who are you?'
'I'm a journalist,' Russell said, getting out his accreditation from the Propaganda Ministry. 'The German people have the right to know about the threats facing them,' he added for good measure.
The man disappeared again, for longer this time. He returned with the smile of someone who had moved a problem on. 'You must talk to the authorities in Beuthen,' he told Russell, returning the newspaper. 'At the Rathaus. We cannot help you here.'
Russell didn't bother to argue. Back outside, he told the taxi driver to wait and walked up the street to the village shops. He bought himself an apple in the grocer's and asked the woman behind the counter about the previous day's excitement. She looked at him blankly.
They had made it up. Some Party hack had consulted an atlas, picked on a village near the border, and made the whole story up. Choosing a real village - one that could be checked - was more arrogant than stupid. They had simply assumed that no one would bother to check. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred they would have been right.
'We're going back,' he told the taxi driver.
The Rathaus in Beuthen was a substantial affair, the officials suitably sure of themselves. They had also had time to sort out their answers. When Russell complained about the newspaper story, one of his two interviewees asked him what more he needed to know - surely the articles had facts enough to make German blood boil? When Russell pointed out that he had been to Blechowka, the other man asked him if he realized that unaccompanied foreign nationals were not allowed access to the border area.
'I didn't know that,' Russell admitted, 'and I apologise for doing so. But I still want to know why no one in Blechowka noticed this terrifying Polish intrusion.'
The first official pursed his lips in frustration. 'You can't expect local people to know everything that is happening in their area. I can assure you that such incidents are becoming more and more frequent. As are attacks on innocent Germans on the other side of the border. Why are you not investigating them?'
'I intend to,' Russell said with a smile. 'The border is open, I assume?'
'We have not closed it. I cannot speak for the Poles.'
His taxi driver was waiting hopefully in the square, but declined the offer of a paid jaunt into Poland. 'They might take the car,' he explained. 'And I don't have a passport,' he added crushingly.
'The station then,' Russell said, more in hope than expectation.
As it happened, there was an international train due, and it was scheduled to stop at Kattowitz. The good news ended there, however. The train was an hour late, and took almost three hours to complete the fifteen kilometre journey. Most of this time was spent at the German and Polish border posts, which glared at each other across a weed-strewn no man's land. The Germans were only interested in contraband, particularly goods smuggled out for German Jews by misguided aryans. The Poles were only interested in people, regarding every German as a potential fifth columnist. It was all very time-consuming, not to say intensely irritating. For the second day running Russell found himself arriving in a strange city with darkness falling.
A Polish railway official with a few words of English pointed out the nearest hotel, which stood almost opposite the station entrance. It had the same name as his hotel in Breslau, but Russell rather doubted whether Hitler would ever patronize this Monopol - the rooms seemed designed for a race of dwarves, or perhaps Propaganda Ministers. The bed was a carpet of springs, the wall dotted with recently slain mosquitoes, and the bathroom was fifty metres away down a barely-lit corridor. 'Welcome to Kattowitz,' Russell muttered. 'Or even Katowice,' he corrected himself.
Russell's morning interview at the old Rathaus was instructive. His interviewee, a skeletal old man with wispy grey hair and weary eyes, was Tadeusz Jedrychowski. He announced himself as Commissioner for the Silesian District, but left the nature of his responsibilities undefined. He was in civilian clothes, an open white shirt and grey suit as faded as the eyes.
His German was as good as Russell's. He responded to the first question about Polish incursions into Germany with a tired shrug. 'It's all nonsense,' he said. 'Sheer make-believe. I mean, you must ask yourself - why would we give them the excuse they are looking for?'
When Russell asked about German incursions into Poland, Jedrychowski invited him into the next room, where a huge map of the border area was festooned with pins. 'Each of these represents a violation of our border. Most have not been serious, it is true - a few hotheads with too much to drink. But some have been. Men in uniform, whether army or Hitler's private goons. And more than twenty of our people have been killed in the last six months.'
'What about the Germans who live on the Polish side of the border?'
'Some get involved, but most just want to get on with their lives.'
Russell took care with his next question. 'Those who do get involved - it would be understandable if their Polish neighbours sought to punish them.'
'It would. And it happens. But not on the scale the Germans claim. Or anything like it.' He ushered Russell
