stretchers.
'It's Miriam, isn't it?' Effi said, squatting down beside her.
The girl just looked up at her.
'Let's get Sternkopf out of the ambulance,' Russell said, but the sudden sound of an approaching vehicle stopped him in his tracks. Two thin head-lights were coming towards them. 'Keep going,' he murmured, but the vehicle was slowing down. As it inched past the ambulance and turned into 403's parking space Russell caught an unwelcome glimpse of silver runes on a black collar.
The car door slammed, and a bright torchbeam leapt out of the darkness, illuminating the pavement in front of the house. 'What is this?' a voice asked.
Russell turned his weaker beam on the intruder. 'This is an ARP exercise and your torch should be masked,' he said sharply, noticing, with a sinking heart, the uniform of a Waffen SS Standartenfuhrer, the holstered gun. He turned to the others. 'Let's get the wounded in the ambulance.'
'Not that one,' the Standartenfuhrer said. He was shining his torch at the fifteen-year-old. 'Rachel and I have a date.'
'You must postpone it,' Russell insisted. 'We can't leave her behind.'
'You can and you will,' the Standartenfuhrer told him, his tone hardening. 'This time tomorrow I shall be with my unit, and I have no intention of letting an imaginary air raid spoil a very real pleasure.'
Several options flicked across Russell's mind, none of them good. Should he, could he, leave Rachel behind to save the others?
A decision proved unnecessary. There was a sudden shift in the darkness behind the Standartenfuhrer, a glint of metal. The man's head jerked forward and his legs gave way, pitching him onto the pavement. Wilhelm had hit him with what looked like an ancient Luger.
'I couldn't see any alternative,' he said almost apologetically, and gave the prone body an exploratory kick in the ribs. 'He'll be out for a while.'
'Let's put him on a stretcher,' Russell heard a voice say. His own.
'No need for fake blood,' Wilhelm said cheerfully, as they carried him across.
He was right - the back of the man's skull was bleeding most convincingly. 'Sternkopf next,' Russell decided. As they carried the caretaker back to the pavement he gave no sign of having overheard the confrontation, but he did recognize the body on the stretcher.
'Standartenfuhrer Geisler,' Sternkopf muttered to himself. 'Another serious head wound,' he added, reading the placard which someone had already put round the unconscious SS officer's neck.
'The Standartenfuhrer is taking the exercise seriously,' Russell told Sternkopf reprovingly.
The rescued girls were sitting in the back of the ambulance, each wearing a placard describing a slight injury. Freya and Effi got in with them, leaving Wilhelm alone in the front. Erich and Max were waiting for Russell in the lorry cab.
'We'll be back in twenty minutes,' Russell told Sternkopf, and clambered up into the cab.
'Why can't you take us on the lorry?' the man complained.
'Health regulations,' Russell said glibly, and started the engine. Since they were supposedly headed for a hospital, they had included one in their itinerary. If they were stopped before they reached the Elisabeth on Lutzow-Strasse, they had their explanation ready. If they were stopped between the hospital and the Landwehrkanal, they would claim they'd got lost in the dark.
No one stopped them. Fifteen minutes after leaving the house on Eisenacher Strasse the two vehicles pulled up alongside the wall separating Schoneberger Ufer from the dark waters of the Landwehrkanal. As Effi swapped vehicles with Max and Erich, Russell handed Beiersdorfer's helmet over to Wilhelm. 'See you tomorrow,' he said.
The ambulance drove off, leaving Russell and Effi alone. 'Miriam didn't say a word,' she said, her voice sounding harsh in the darkness.
Russell drove north through the deserted Tiergarten and across the Moltke Bridge. Beyond the blue-lit Lehrter Station the streets seemed darker still, and he was past the entrance to Hunder's garage before he realized it. He backed up and drove in through the open gates.
Ten minutes later the lorry was back in its corner, complete with its original number-plates. Russell and Effi sat in the front seats of the Hanomag, helping each other remove their make-up by torchlight. 'We're back,' Effi said when they were finally done, and leaned over to kiss him. 'We did it,' she added, sounding almost surprised. 'We really did.'
'We're not home yet,' Russell reminded her.
As they headed south the sirens began sounding the all-clear, but it seemed as if Berlin had already written the night off and gone to sleep. Russell stopped the car halfway across the Moltke Bridge, checked that nothing was coming, and dropped the two Adlon number plates, the false moustache and Beiersdorfer's armband into the Spree. He hoped Wilhelm was being equally thorough.
It felt good to reach home, but the feeling was short-lived. As they came in through Effi's front door the telephone began to ring. They looked at each other, wondering who it could be. 'Did you give Wilhelm this number?' Effi asked.
'No.'
Effi picked up, listened, and said 'Yes, he is.'
'Someone named Sarah,' she told Russell.
He took the receiver. 'Sarah?'
There was a gulping noise at the other end. 'I have to see you,' she said.
'Okay, but...'
'And it has to be now.'
'Ah. All right. I'll walk over.'
'No, no. You must bring the car. Park it round the back. There's an alley runs up from the river end. I'll be waiting.'
Russell replaced the receiver and told Effi he had to go out again.
'What's happened?'
'Trouble,' he told her. 'She didn't explain.'
'You have to go?' It wasn't really a question.
'It's not far,' he said, as if that helped.
'Would it be useful if I came?'
'Probably. But this is one for me to sort out.'
She clung to him for a moment, then pushed him away. 'Hurry back.'
It was noticeably brighter outside - the recently-risen moon was bathing roofs and sky with pale light. The still-warm Hanomag sprang to life, and Russell sat behind the wheel rubbing his eyes and wondering which route would be safest. He then remembered that the all-clear had been sounded, and that he was driving his own blacked-out vehicle. Until he reached Altonaer Strasse he had nothing to worry about.
The streets were not as empty as they had been earlier, but he encountered only a dozen or so vehicles during the ten minute-drive. The cobbled alley that ran behind the houses on Altonaer Strasse was as dark as anything he'd encountered that evening, and he had to proceed at walking pace to avoid scraping the walls. He was about two hundred metres along when a light ahead flickered on and off.
Another hundred metres and his slitted headlights picked her out, a ghostly figure in a long white nightgown. 'This way,' she whispered, opening a back door and almost shoving him in. In the dimly lit kitchen he got his first good look at her, and his heart sank. She looked on the edge of hysteria, and her nightgown was splattered with what had to be blood.
'I've killed him,' she said, as if confirming the fact to herself.
Oh Christ, Russell thought. Several chains of consequence jostled for consideration in his mind, including the one featuring her arrest, her torture, and his name being taken down by an eager Gestapo scribe. 'What happened?' he asked, much more calmly than he felt.
She looked at him blankly for a moment, then snapped back into the present. 'He's upstairs,' she said. 'I'll show you.'
She raced up the carpeted stairs, Russell following at a suitably reluctant pace. Her Gruppenfuhrer was lying
