round the table, as if she could hardly believe such food still existed, but the others clearly took such quality sustenance for granted. Most Berliners might be suffering from skin rashes, yellowing eyes, biliousness and appalling flatulence, but how would her fellow diners know that? They wouldn't be using the U-Bahn, their servants would be doing the shopping, and they'd all have their own private air raid shelters. As John had said the other evening - if the RAF ever worked out how to hit a military target, the war would pass the rich by.
Her anger, she realised, was in danger of spoiling her meal. She concentrated on the Black Forest gateau which had just been placed in front of her.
Still engrossed in the world of films, the men were now talking about the
Stirring her small but wonderfully fragrant cup of black coffee, Effi decided to give them something real to play with. 'I've been asked to play a Jewess,' she announced at the first convenient moment, 'and I must admit to being torn.'
Ute Fahrian let out a heartfelt 'Oh', shook her blonde curls, and said: 'I'm glad I'll never have to face that problem!' Then, as if suddenly hearing her own words, she flushed deeply. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean...'
'Don't distress yourself, 'Effi said. 'I can hardly deny that, in outward appearance, I could pass for a Jewess.'
'Some Jewesses are very beautiful,' Alfred Hoyer said gallantly, raising an expression of faint surprise from Christiane Weinart.
'It is a dilemma,' Anna Hoyer said with the slightest of ironic smiles. She was brighter than she looked, Effi decided. And drinking more than she should.
'If we wish to make films that reflect real life in our country then we need Jewish characters,' Weinart insisted.
'And we can't have them played by real Jews,' his wife chipped in.
'Of course not,' Stefan agreed. 'If you decide to take the part,' he told Effi with a smile, 'then I suggest you give interviews explaining how hard it was for you, but how satisfying you found the experience. Emphasise how difficult it was for you, a German actress, to create a convincing Jew, but how necessary it is for the good of the Reich that the Jewish peril be realistically presented in films.'
'Yes, that sounds right,' Weinart agreed.
'Mmm,' Effi said.
'The people will admire you for your honesty,' Stephan went on, 'and thank you.'
Effi offered him a grateful smile. 'I think you may have solved my dilemma.'
'All in a day's work,' he said, giving her a slight bow. 'And it has been a wonderful day. Has everyone heard the latest news from the East?'
They had not.
'We are closing in on Moscow,' Heinrich explained. 'It should be all over in two weeks. Three at worst.'
Anna Hoyer laughed. 'Now let's not get carried away. We were told it was all over a month ago, and look what happened.'
'A mistake,' Heinrich admitted coldly, 'but an understandable one. If it hadn't been for a sudden change in the weather, it really would have been over.'
'What if the weather suddenly changes again?' Frau Hoyer wanted to know.
'That sounds perilously close to defeatism, my dear,' her husband interjected, with an apologetic look at the Promi men.
'I do think we need to be realistic,' Effi said, coming to her aid. 'Your wife is only pointing out how dangerous wishful thinking can be. And it would be terrible to suffer October's disappointment all over again.'
'I have a brother in the East,' Ute Fahrian revealed. 'He's only eighteen.'
So many of them are, Effi thought, remembering the rows of young faces in the Elisabeth Hospital.
After the press conference Russell joined most of his fellow correspondents in heading for the Press Club on Leipzigerplatz. Two black cars were parked in the rapidly darkening square, each with the traditional pair of leather-coated Gestapo officers occupying the front seats. They made no move to get out, but the expressions on their faces as they scanned the foreign journalists were almost absurdly hostile. Russell had a sudden memory of a pantomime that his parents had taken him to, somewhere in London's West End before the first war, and how much he had enjoyed hissing at the villains.
Upstairs, dinner was already being served. It was decent enough by current standards, but he toyed with the food, his mind on Paul and how much easier being a father had once seemed. An evening of reckless drinking beckoned, but he tore himself away, heading home on foot under a clear sky. It looked a great night for bombing, which probably meant that they wouldn't come.
The press conference had also depressed him. Had his feeling that the Germans had shot their bolt been over-optimistic? If Moscow and the Caucasus fell, and the Soviets were taken out of the equation, then Hitler's hold on the continent would surely be secure. Invading Britain might prove beyond him - he had given Churchill over a year to strengthen the island's defences - but invading Europe would be equally beyond his enemies. A stalemate would ensue, while each side raised new armies and developed new weapons and Hitler let his soul-dead acolytes loose on Europe's helpless: the Jews, the disabled, the Reds and the queers, anyone who deviated from Promi's ludicrous travesty of what a human being should be. Russell would get to stay with Effi and Paul, but only in the worst of futures.
He got home soon after eight. Effi would be hours yet, which gave him time to translate two technical articles from the American press which the Abwehr's Colonel Piekenbrock had given him a couple of weeks earlier. He mistranslated the occasional word when it suited him - and when the mistake was easily explainable - but usually there seemed no harm in giving the Abwehr what it wanted. These were not secrets he was dealing with.
He wasn't totally convinced that his translations were ever read. They might be commissioned, at least in part, to satisfy the German hunger for completeness, but Russell suspected that Canaris and his subordinates were simply thinking up something for him to do, something that would keep him on board, an asset-in-waiting for a situation that hadn't yet arisen. With any luck it never would, Russell thought, as he spread out the papers on the kitchen table.
An hour or so later, with one article finished and the kettle waiting to boil, he turned on the radio. The latest BBC news bulletin had just finished, so he turned the dial in search of Radio Berlin and found Patrick Sullivan's laconic voice in full flow, describing an imaginary Axis attack on the United States. The intention was to ridicule, and after a fashion it worked - U-boats carrying fleets of bombers, aircraft carriers fuelled on corn that could sail up America's rivers and navigate the Niagara Falls, a veritable 'Sixth Column'. But was Sullivan's heart really in it? It didn't sound like it to Russell, but perhaps he was reading too much into one chance remark.
He turned off the radio, made his tea and went back to work, one ear cocked for the sound of Effi's feet on the stairs.
She arrived home just before midnight, the self-satisfied purr of the studio limousine sounding unnaturally loud on the otherwise silent street. 'The food was wonderful, the company boring,' she told him, throwing her coat across the back of a chair. 'With one slight exception.' She told him about Anna Hoyer. 'I'm meeting more and more people like her - people who can see what's happening, but only ever say so when they're drunk. And they'd never dream of doing anything. It wouldn't even occur to them that they could.'
'Did you get anything out of Paul?' Russell asked.
'No, I'm afraid not. I tried, believe me, but he's not stupid. He knows that anything he says to me will get passed on to you. I told him he seemed really angry with you, and he simply denied it. More or less implied I was imagining things. He was very polite about it, of course. He just denies there's a problem.'
'Maybe I should talk to Ilse.'
'It won't help. He's punishing you - I don't think he knows what for. It's not for anything specific that you've done, I'm sure of that.'
'Is that good or bad?'
She smiled. 'Probably neither and both. Look, John, there's nothing you're doing that you could do any
