Stattin Station

The ritual with scissors and ration tickets completed, the two men sipped at what passed for beers in Hitler's triumphant capital. 'I did pick up another story in my trawling,' Russell admitted. 'I was talking to a German friend this morning, a journalist. Apparently the editors of all the big city dailies were called in to Promi yesterday, and told to lay off the winter clothing story. The official line is that it's all waiting at the railheads for distribution, but the trains are in chaos so who knows when they'll get there, and they're worried that the troops will write home and tell their families that nothing's arrived and they're all freezing to death. So no one's supposed to mention the subject, and there's a complete ban on pictures of soldiers in their summer uniforms.' Russell laughed. 'Photographers have been sending back too many pictures of Red Army men in thick coats guarded by shivering Germans in denim.'

Morrison shook his head in amazement. 'Have they really been that incompetent?'

'You bet. The astonishing thing is that they're still advancing. Stalin must be matching them balls-up for balls-up.'

Their lunch arrived, boiled cabbage and potatoes with a few suspicious-looking pieces of sausage. If this was what the Adlon was serving, God help the rest of the Reich.

'The thing about the Nazis,' Russell went on, 'is that everything's short term. They gabble on about thousand-year Reichs but they don't do any real planning. There's a fascinating article in the Frankfurter Zeitung this morning about the importance of infantry in the Russian campaign. Well, it's not fascinating in itself, but the fact of it is. An article like that would have been inconceivable a couple of months ago - all anyone wanted to talk about were the panzers and the Luftwaffe. Short-term weapons, weapons that win quickly, blitzkrieg. And I think that whoever wrote that article has realised that blitzkrieg has failed in Russia, that only the infantry can win it for them now.'

'Do they have the infantry?'

Russell shrugged. 'My guess would be not, but that may be wishful thinking.'

As he ate, another likely consequence of the German emphasis on tanks and tank-supportive planes occurred to him. If German production had all been geared to blitzkrieg over the last few years, there was no chance of Hitler having a fleet of long-range bombers up his sleeve. Russell could understand why Dallin and his Washington bosses were worried: their country was accustomed to immunity from such threats, and the appearance of German bombers in the skies above Manhattan would certainly wreak havoc in the American psyche. But there was no substance to this particular piece of paranoia, and nothing to be gained from his seeking out Franz Knieriem.

Nothing for the Americans, that was. He might earn himself a few points by showing willing. He could at least find out whether the man was still living at the same address - there was no risk in that. And there was always the chance that Knieriem had moved, which would give him grounds for further procrastination. If his luck was really in, the address was now a bomb site.

The slivers of sausage actually tasted quite good, unlike the cabbage and potatoes which tasted of salt and little else.

A waiter materialised at his elbow. 'A call for you, sir,' he said. 'In reception.'

It was his ex-wife Ilse. 'You always told me I could reach you there,' she said, 'but I never quite believed it.'

'Now you know.'

'It's Paul,' she told him. 'He's said something he shouldn't have at school, and...'

'What did he say?'

'I don't know. I'll find out when he gets home. But they want to see his parents, and Matthias is in Hannover.' Paul's stepfather, a thoroughly respectable German businessman, usually acted in loco parentis where the authorities were concerned. 'I'd rather not go alone,' Ilse added.

'What time?' Russell asked.

'Six o'clock. Say half past five here.'

'I'll be there.'

'Thanks.'

Russell replaced the earpiece. Another missed press conference performance at Promi, he thought. Another silver lining. But what about the cloud - what had Paul been saying?

Russell left plenty of time for the endless ride out to Grunewald, but one tram broke down and the driver of the next seemed unwilling to risk a speed of more than ten kilometres an hour. Getting round the city grew more frustrating by the day, except for those with the right connections. Arriving ten minutes late at the Gehrts' house, he found Matthias's Horch staring out of an open garage door, its numberplate adorned with the priceless red square which allowed its owner the luxury of continuing use. Russell felt like unscrewing the numberplate there and then, but a written permit was also required.

Ilse opened the door before he had time to ring the bell. She looked worried.

'Well?' Russell asked. 'What's it all about?'

'Two jokes, and one was about Hitler. Paul should know better.'

'Where is he?'

'In his room.'

Russell climbed the stairs, wondering what sort of reception he was going to get. Over the last few months his fourteen-year-old son had seemed increasingly exasperated with him, as if Russell just didn't get it - whatever it was. Ilse thought it age-related, but the boy didn't seem to behave the same way with her or his stepfather, and Russell knew that his being English, and the complications which that had necessarily caused in Paul's German life, had more than a little to do with their recent difficulties. But there was nothing Russell could do about that. 'It's like your snoring,' Effi had told him when they talked about it. 'I want to murder you, and knowing you can't help it makes it even worse. I can't even blame you.'

He crossed the large landing, and put his head around Paul's half-open door. His son was doing his homework, tracing one of the maps in his Stieler's Atlas. 'Another fine mess you've got yourself into,' Russell observed. Paul loved Laurel and Hardy.

'What are you doing here?' Paul exclaimed. 'If you go to the school, it'll makes things worse.'

Russell sat down on the bed. 'They know you have an English father, Paul. It won't be news.'

'Yes, but...'

'What were the jokes?'

'They were just jokes.'

'Jokes are sometimes important.'

'Well I can't see that these two were. All right, I'll tell you. Describe the perfect German.' Russell had heard this one, but let Paul supply the punchline - 'Someone blond as Hitler, slim as Goering and tall as Goebbels.'

Russell smiled. 'You forgot clever as Ley and sane as Hess. What was the other?'

'One man says: 'When the war's over I'm going to do a bicycle tour of the Reich.' His friend replies: 'So what will you do after lunch?''

Russell laughed. 'That's a good one.'

'Yes, but it's just a silly joke. I don't really think we'll lose the war. It's just a joke.'

'They'll call it defeatism. And the first joke - these people take their racial stereotypes seriously. And they don't like being mocked.'

'But everyone tells jokes like those.'

'I know.'

'John, we have to go,' Ilse called from downstairs.

'Coming,' he shouted back. As he got up he noticed the picture of Udet on the wall, alongside Molders and the U-boat ace Gunther Prien. 'It was sad what happened to Udet,' he said.

Paul looked at him disbelievingly. 'You didn't like him.'

Russell had no memory of saying so to his son, but he probably had. 'He was a wonderful pilot,' he said weakly.

'I want to see the funeral march on Saturday,' Paul insisted.

'Fine,' Russell agreed. 'I'll check the route.'