Stattin Station

differently. And explaining yourself won't help - fourteen-year-olds aren't interested in motives, just in how things affect them.'

'So what can I do?'

'Nothing. Just be patient. You know he loves you.'

'Sometimes I... no, I do know, of course I do.'

'Come here.'

Enfolded in her arms, he suddenly felt on the verge of tears. Everything seemed to be cracking apart. Everything but him and her.

Later, lying awake and cradling her sleeping head, he found himself thinking about Zembski, and the thoughts that must have raced through the Silesian's mind as the Gestapo broke into his studio. He'd have known he was a dead man, and that the only decision left to him lay in the timing. Die now, and take some of the bastards with him, or in a few weeks' time, after enduring agonies of pain and betraying his comrades.

How many people could he give up himself, Russell wondered. He went through the list, arranging them in the sequence of betrayal. How many people in Germany had made such macabre calculations - hundreds? Thousands? Calculations that in all probability would be instantly forgotten in the panic of the moment.

But he would never give her up. Never.

A broken egg

First thing Monday morning, Russell took the elevated U-Bahn towards Silesian Gate on his way to visit Ilse's brother Thomas. His mood remained dark, and the panoramic spread of hospital trains stabled side by side in the yards outside Anhalter Station did nothing to lighten it. He wondered how Thomas, who took this train to work each day, and whose son Joachim was fighting in the East, coped with this daily reminder of all too possible loss.

The previous day he and Effi had tried to leave the war behind and enjoy a normal pre-war Sunday. The effort had been a dismal failure. The outdoor cafe where they had once shared breakfast and newspapers had been closed, the tables folded away and the terrace littered with shrapnel. The Tiergarten was sunny for once, but it was impossible to ignore the wretched monstrosity of a flak tower, which seemed to loom above them whichever way they turned. Those of their favourite restaurants which remained open displayed menus that repelled rather than enticed, and Thomas and his family, whom they often visited on Sunday afternoons, had selfishly refused to answer their telephone. Thomas, Russell eventually remembered, had said something about visiting his wife's family in Leipzig. A last-ditch tour of the cinemas on the Ku'damm hadn't helped - everything on offer from Joey's dream factory seemed designed to depress them even further. Defeated, they had eaten badly at a restaurant full of dull- eyed soldiers on leave, and gone home to the BBC's unwelcome admission that the situation in North Africa was 'still confused.'

Russell wondered what Paul Schmidt would make of the situation at the noon press conference. He had never yet heard a Nazi official admit to confusion.

He walked from the Silesian Gate U-Bahn station to the Schade factory, crossing the Landwehrkanal as a long flotilla of coal barges passed under the bridge, heading for the Spree. Turning into the factory gates, the sight of the familiar black saloons brought him to an abrupt halt. What were the Gestapo doing here? After wondering for a moment whether his arrival would make matters worse, he decided that Thomas might need some moral support.

Both cars were empty of people, but a toy wooden fortress sat somewhat incongruously on the back seat of the second. Even the Gestapo had children.

Russell walked in through the front entrance and turned left into the outer office, where two of the visitors were chatting to the young woman whom they thought was the book keeper. Russell knew better - her name was Erna, and she was one of Thomas's many nieces, recently apprenticed to the family business. The actual bookkeeper, Ali Blumenthal, would have disappeared through the door leading to the printing rooms the moment the cars appeared in her window. By this time Ali would be wearing a star-adorned overall and wielding a broom. Jews were not allowed to do clerical work.

'Who are you?' rapped out one of the men. 'And what do you want?' 'I'm the owner's brother-in-law,' Russell said. This didn't seem the moment to admit that he was no longer married to Thomas's sister.

'Well you'll have to take your turn. Sit there.'

Russell did as he was told, straining his ears to hear the conversation taking place in the inner office above the usual clatter of the presses. Thomas seemed to be doing most of the talking. 'I have explained all this to Groening,' he said with exaggerated patience. 'I cannot fill my government orders if you people keep threatening to decimate my workforce. If I were to lose all the people on this list I dread to think what my output would shrink to.'

A softer voice interjected, one that Russell could not quite decipher. The one word he recognised was juden, and only because it was repeated several times.

'That's nonsense,' Thomas replied, raising his voice a little. 'The Jews I employ are treated as they should be. They have separate toilets and washrooms, and they work the sort of hours which such people should work. You and I could argue for hours about how these particular Jews managed to make themselves essential to the running of this business, but that would not make the slightest difference to the fact that they are. Once the war is won, and I am not up to my ears in urgent government contracts, I will happily take them down to the station and load them on a train for the East myself. But until that day comes...'

The Gestapo man was not convinced. The Reichsminister had decreed that Berlin should become judenfrei, and the process was now underway. It was irreversible. If one factory owner was granted exemptions, they would all want them, and nothing would be achieved. Herr Schade would simply have to find other workers. He would have no trouble getting hold of Russian prisoners, and they could learn anything that Jews could learn.

'If you persist with this nonsense,' Thomas told him, 'I shall have to take the matter up with Gruppenfuhrer Wohlauf.'

This name induced a few moments' silence, and even pricked the ears of the two Gestapo men in the outer office. When their superior in the next room resumed talking it was in a quieter, more conciliatory tone. Russell was impressed. He knew that Thomas had been deliberately widening his circle of influential acquaintances, but Wohlauf was one of Heydrich's proteges, and hardly a name to be taken in vain.

Two Gestapo officers emerged, the older one thin with glasses and a pale angry face, the younger one plumpish and harassed-looking. The former gave Russell a passing glare, and half paused in his stride, as if the need for a scapegoat had been both recognised and deferred in a few split seconds. All four of them passed out through the door, and seconds later the engines of their two cars burst into simultaneous life.

Russell walked into the inner office, and found Thomas at the window, a fist massaging his left temple.

'Wohlauf?' Russell asked with mock incredulity.

Thomas gave him a wry smile. 'Would you believe I had dinner with him and his wife last week? Lotte is in the same Bund Deutscher Madel group as his older daughter, and she found out a few months ago that Papa has a passion for sailing. I eventually dug up a mutual acquaintance and engineered a chance meeting. We may be going up to Rugen Island together in the spring.'

'The sacrifices we make.'

'He's not such a bad chap really. Well, he is; but for a Gruppenfuhrer in the SD he doesn't come across too badly. There's none of the usual obsession with Jews - he seems to despise all races more or less equally.' 'Will he play ball if you need him to?'

'God knows. I hope I don't have to ask.'

'What was it about this time?'

'A list of our Jewish workers for deportation. You know some of them live on the premises? Eleven single men, all over fifty. They were thrown out of their apartments in Wedding and Moabit so we put up some bunks in one of the old storehouses. Nothing special, I'm afraid - I have to keep convincing the Gestapo that I hate the Jews as much as I need them. Anyway, some bright spark down at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse dug up some regulation forbidding Jews from staying overnight at their workplaces, and decided it was a good excuse for putting my lot on the next train.'