There was nobody behind Zembski's counter, on which lay a tripod, still attached to a clearly broken camera. A middle-aged man in a dark grey suit was sitting on one of the chairs which the photographer had used for family portraits, his leather coat draped across another, his hands cradled in his lap. His younger partner was sitting almost behind the door, arms folded across the front of his coat. A gun lay on the cabinet beside him.
'How can I help you?' the older man asked with a heavy Bavarian accent. He was about forty, with sharpish features that ill-suited his general bulk, rather in the manner of an over-inflated Goebbels.
'Is the studio closed?' Russell asked. 'Where is Herr Zembski?' he added, realising a few seconds later that acknowledging an acquaintance with the studio's owner might prove unwise.
'He is no longer here,' said the younger man. He was a Berliner, dark and thin, with the sort of face that would always need shaving.
'He has gone out of business,' the first man said. 'Please sit down,' he told Russell, indicating a chair and taking a notebook and pencil from the inside pocket of his jacket. 'We have some questions.'
'What about?' Russell asked, staying on his feet. 'And who are you?' he added, hoping to play the outraged innocent.
'Gestapo,' the older man said shortly, as if it hardly needed saying.
It didn't, and Russell decided that asking to see the man's identification might be pushing his luck. He sat down.
'Your papers?'
Russell handed them over, and noted the flicker of interest in the Gestapo man's eyes.
'John Russell,' he read aloud. 'American,' he added, with a glance at his partner. 'Your German is excellent,' he told Russell.
'I've lived here for almost twenty years.'
'Ah. You live on Carmer Strasse. That's near Savigny Platz, is it not?'
'Yes.'
The man turned to his accreditation from Promi, as the Ministry of Propaganda was almost universally called. 'You are a journalist. Working for the
'Yes.'
His interrogator was now scribbling in the notebook, copying down relevant details from Russell's identity and press documents. 'You have been to this studio before?' he asked without raising his eyes.
'Not for a long time. Before the war I used it whenever I needed photographic work.'
The eyes looked up. 'A long way from Savigny Platz. Are there no studios closer to home?'
'Zembski is cheap.'
'Ah. So why did you stop coming here?'
'I changed jobs. The paper I work for now uses the big agencies for photographs.'
'So why are you here today?'
'A personal job.' Russell took the envelope of snapshots from his inside pocket, silently blessing his own forethought, and handed them over. 'I wanted one of these enlarged, and I've lost the negatives. I remembered Zembski doing something similar for me years ago, and doing it well. They're of my son,' he added in explanation.
The older Gestapo man was looking through the pictures, his younger partner peering over his shoulder. 'He's a good-looking boy. His mother is German?'
'Yes, she is.'
Russell felt a sudden, almost violent aversion to the way the two men were staring at the pictures of Paul, but managed not to show it.
The photographs were handed back to him.
'So Zembski won't be back?' he asked.
'No,' the older man said with the hint of a smile. 'I believe he returned to Silesia.'
'Then I will have to find another studio. Is that all?'
'For the moment.'
Russell nodded, a tacit recognition that a conditional release was all that anyone could hope for in such difficult days, and the younger Gestapo man even opened the door for him. Once outside he play-acted a period of hesitation, ostentatiously checked that his ration stamps were in his pocket, then headed across the street to the cafe opposite, where he made a further show of inspecting the meagre menu on display before venturing into the steamy interior. Twice in the distant past handwritten notes on the studio door had pointed Russell in this direction, and on both occasions he had found Zembski amiably chatting with the proprietor, an old man with thick Hohenzollern sideburns. The latter was still there, propping up his counter and eyeing Russell with more than a trace of suspicion. The only other customer was reading a paper by the window.
'Remember me?' Russell asked. 'Zembski used to do a lot of work for me before the war. I came in here to collect him more than once.'
A non-committal grunt was all the reply he got.
Russell took a deep breath. 'And now there's a couple of Heydrich's finest camped out in his studio,' he went on more quietly, hoping that he hadn't misjudged his audience. 'Do you know what happened to him?'
The proprietor gave him a long stare. 'Nothing good,' he murmured eventually. 'It's not much of a secret, not around here anyway. The authorities came to call, soon after midnight on Thursday. There were two cars - I saw them from upstairs - I was just getting ready for bed. They just knocked the door down, woke up half the street. I think there were four of them went in - it's hard to see across the street in the blackout, but there was a moon that night. Anyway, there were shots, two of them really close together, and a few minutes later one man came out again and drove off. A van arrived after about half an hour and two bodies were carried out. It was too dark to see who they were, but I'm guessing one of them was Miroslav. He hasn't been seen, and two of the... two men have been arriving each morning and leaving each night ever since. What are they doing in there?'
Russell shrugged. 'Nothing much that I could see. Asking questions, but I've no idea why. Was Zembski mixed up in anything? Politics, maybe?'
It was a question too far. 'How should I know?' the proprietor said, straightening up to indicate the interview was over. 'He just came in here for coffee, in the days when we used to have some. That and a talk about football.'
All of which left a lot to be desired, Russell thought, walking back up Berlinerstrasse towards the U-Bahn station. Particularly for Zembski, who presumably was dead. But also for himself. His only hope of an illegal escape was apparently gone, and worse: in the unlikely but still conceivable event that Zembski was alive, his own name might be one of those being mentioned in the interrogation. Russell counted the days - more than four had passed, if the cafe owner's memory was accurate. In the old KPD it had always been assumed that most prisoners, if denied the chance to kill themselves, would eventually break, and the only obligation placed on Party members was to hold out for twenty-four hours, thus giving their comrades a good head start on the inevitable pursuit.
Zembski must be dead, Russell thought, as he descended the stairs to the U-Bahn platform. The Silesian would have given up his grandmother by now, let alone a casual fellow-traveller like himself.
Some certainty wouldn't go amiss, though. Zembski had falsified a passport for him once, and a few months later had helped him get a woman comrade out of the country. She had killed an SS Colonel, but Zembski had not known that. He had known that Russell was in touch with Moscow, but not that the German authorities were aware of those contacts. The potential for confusion was enormous, and Russell earnestly hoped that the Gestapo were suitably confused. They usually liked some semblance of clarity before turning their dogs on a prominent foreigner.
As the U-Bahn train rumbled north he remembered that even the Gestapo were legally obliged to inform a family of a relative's death. Zembski's cousin Hunder, who owned the garage across the river where Russell's car was waiting out the war, might have some definite information.
Russell changed onto the Stadtbahn at Friedrichstrasse, travelled the single stop to Lehrter Station, and made his way through the tangle of streets which lay to the east of the rail yards. The garage office seemed deserted, which was hardly surprising given the virtual cessation of private motoring that had accompanied the Wehrmacht's long, petrol-hungry drive into Russia. The gate hadn't been locked though, and Russell finally found an old mechanic with his head under the bonnet of a Horch in the farthest corner of the yard.
Hunder Zembski had been called up two months ago, the man told him, grimacing as he straightened his
