'Neither am I,' Russell admitted, 'but I think I'm going to risk it. Canaris chose the right reward.'
The following morning he decided on another day's consideration before delivering his answer. Maybe something would turn up, and push him one way or the other. He had, he realised, become another soldier in Berlin's growing army of Micawbers.
The Foreign Ministry press conference followed the recent pattern, only this time it was Solnechnogorsk that had fallen, twenty kilometres on from Klin, and only sixty from the Kremlin. Russell tried to find comfort in the unspoken - but obvious - fact that Tula, defending the southern approaches, had clearly not succumbed to the German onslaught. At least one of the pincers was not converging.
That afternoon the Ministry held a lavish reception for the foreign conference delegates, all of whom had now arrived. The foreign press was not allowed in, so Russell and his colleagues retreated to the Adlon bar, hoping to waylay the delegates en route to their rooms. It proved a successful ploy. Gestapo eavesdroppers were out in force, but as one of the Finns rudely remarked, few of them could speak German properly, let alone a foreign language. The delegates happily shared their thoughts with their own country's correspondents, while the latter, in a rare display of solidarity, happily shared what they'd heard with all of their colleagues. Ribbentrop's new Europe was not, it seemed, wholly united. The Hungarians were not speaking to the Romanians, the Slovaks or the Bulgarians - there were even rumours that a duel with pistols had been arranged for the following sunrise between Hungarian and Romanian colonels. This proved false, unlike the ongoing spat between Italy and Croatia, and the Italian delegation's outrage at being given similar ranking to the Spanish. No one had understood a word the Chinese or Japanese had said, and everyone thought Ribbentrop was an overbearing idiot. Most sensational of all, one Danish delegate revealed that anti-government - and anti-occupation - riots were taking place in Copenhagen at that very moment.
It was almost like old times in the Adlon bar, albeit with two major differences - the quality of the alcohol and the depressing fact that nothing they heard would ever see a front page.
Around seven, Russell realised he had time to pick up Effi at the hospital. He walked down Hermann- Goering-Strasse - or 'Meyerstrasse' as many Berliners now called it, following Goering's boast that they could call him Meyer if a single British bomb dropped on the capital - and around an eerily empty Potsdamer Platz, once the German equivalent of Times Square. Reaching the Elisabeth Hospital, he had trouble finding the military wing, but eventually found Effi sitting in a ward office with a small and tired-looking blonde in nurse's uniform. Both were drinking what looked like pink schnapps, Effi looking decidedly shaken.
She introduced Russell to Annaliese Huiskes, who offered him a drink.
He declined, admitting he'd already had enough for one evening.
They chatted for a few minutes, until Annaliese was called away. 'Take her home,' the nurse told Russell. 'She's had a bad evening.'
'It wasn't any worse than it usually is,' Effi told him as they walked to the tram stop. 'I've usually managed to let it all go by the time I get home. There's just so much of it, so many stories, so much anguish. One boy tonight, he kept on and on about this friend who'd been killed, and how it had been his fault. I told him I couldn't see why he should blame himself, and he just lost his temper - I thought he was going to hit me. He really needed it to be his fault, and I just hadn't realised...'
They had reached the tram stop, and Effi burrowed into Russell's arms, her shoulders shaking with grief. He stroked her hair, and thanked the blackout for their near-invisibility. In a very similar situation before the war, two middle-aged women had practically demanded her autograph.
She wiped her eyes and kissed him. 'Just another day at the office.'
The tram, when it finally arrived, was less crowded than usual. An elderly gentleman offered his seat to Effi, but she refused it with a smile. There were several middle-aged men in
One last look, a word in her younger friend's ear, and the two of them sidled toward the doors as the tram approached the stop outside the closed Ka-de-We department store. The younger girl, Russell noticed, was carrying something rolled up in a piece of cloth. As she neared the door one of the uniformed men - a stereotypical Party man if Russell ever saw one, with his red piggish face and overflowing stomach - deliberately bumped her with an ample hip, causing her to stumble. A raw egg fell out of the cloth and broke on the floor.
The girl stared at the mess, resisting the tug of her older companion, heartbreak written all over her face. The man responsible yanked off her headscarf and thrust it at her: 'Now clear it up, you Jew bitch.'
'Where did a Jew get hold of an egg?' someone else asked indignantly. The doors had now closed, and the tram was in motion.
So was Effi, pushing her way past other passengers to place herself between the Jewish girls and their tormentor. 'You made her drop it, you clean it up,' she told him in cold, calm voice. 'People like you make me ashamed to be a German,' she heard herself add.
His contorted face looked almost fiendish in the dim yellow light. 'Mind your own fucking business,' he shouted. 'Who the fuck do you think you are? You look like a fucking Jew yourself.' He flicked out a hand, making contact with her left breast. 'Where's
'Back off, you bastard,' Russell said, giving the man a solid shove in the chest. He had no doubt that he could knock this one down, but the other three might prove more of a problem. 'What's the matter with you? Is this your idea of a good time - bullying women?'
'They're Jews, for fuck's sake,' the man shouted, as if that rendered all other considerations null and void.
'So fucking what?' Russell shouted back.
Effi had rarely seen him so angry. The tram, she noticed, had almost come to a halt. 'Go,' she told the Jewish girls, and they needed no second bidding. The elder one pulled the doors open, and they both tumbled down to the street and out into the darkness.
Russell and the
It broke the spell. Russell beamed at the still-raging face in front of him, and turned to follow her. Stepping off, he heard a woman's voice inside the tram say, 'I'm sure that was Effi Koenen.'
Improvisations
Russell told Thomas the story at lunch next day, although not before checking the underside of their tables and chairs for listening devices. The ceilings in the Russischer Hof dining rooms were exceptionally high, so the chandeliers at least were free of bugs.
'I'm amazed that I didn't slug him,' he told Thomas. 'I don't know what stopped me. When he punched Effi in the breast... But I'm glad that I didn't, because God knows what would have happened. I'd have been flattened by his friends, and Effi would have joined in and probably been flattened too. And the two Jewish girls might have been caught and arrested and put on the next train out.'
'You said it was Effi who blew up first.'
'Yes, but I'm usually there to calm things down, not make them worse.'
'That would seem to work better than the two of you egging each other on,' Thomas said with a wry smile. 'Still, it doesn't look like you'll be around for much longer.'
'What have you heard?'
'Oh, nothing specific. Only the usual sources,' he added, meaning the BBC. 'It just looks like things are coming to a head.'
'Hitler might distance himself from a Japanese attack. After all, what would he gain from joining them? There's no way he could help them fight the Americans, but if he keeps out of it, the Americans might reward him by moving most of their forces from the Atlantic to the Pacific.'
'That makes perfect sense,' Thomas agreed, 'but does it sound like our Fuhrer?'
