'Hard,' Jens said, and smiled rather bleakly. 'Hard,' he echoed himself. 'Just between us,' he said, waving a hand to embrace them all, 'the job is becoming impossible.'
Russell couldn't resist asking: 'Which job?'
'Feeding everyone,' Jens said simply. 'In peacetime it was a challenge, but one we could meet. In wartime - well, you can imagine. There are fewer men available for farm work, so production has suffered...'
'Aren't there enough Land Girls?' his wife asked.
'A lot of them are getting married just to avoid farm work,' Effi offered.
'We can feed our cities and countryside,' Jens went on, as if no one else had spoken. 'But the Wehrmacht is more of a problem. We now have almost four million soldiers and half a million horses to feed, and most of them are more than eight hundred kilometres from the old borders of the Reich.'
'And there aren't enough trains,' Russell murmured. He was, he realised, about to learn something.
'Exactly. So they must live off the Russian countryside. They will consume the agricultural surplus that used to feed the Russian towns.' 'And the Russian towns?' Effi asked.
'As I said, it is hard. We must be hard.'
He looked anything but, Russell thought. In fact, he might be imagining it, but there seemed to be a glint of tears in Jens's eyes.
There was a sudden silence around the table.
Russell thought through the implications. Most of the Russian peasantry would survive - they'd been hiding food from invaders and governments since time began. The towns would indeed suffer, but not as badly as the millions of Soviet prisoners. What would they be fed with? And then there were the Jews, trainload after trainload travelling east, into this man-made famine. What would they eat? They wouldn't.
'You can only do your best,' Zarah was telling her husband.
He looked furious, but only for an instant. 'Of course. The men at the front are the ones who really suffer. I just work in an office.' He got up. 'Excuse me for a moment. I thought I heard Lothar.'
'He worries about the boy,' Zarah said.
He should worry about himself, Effi thought. He was as close to a breakdown as any of her soldiers in their hospital beds. 'He's a good father,' was all she said.
'That's something, isn't it?' Zarah replied. 'I was thinking the other day - so many boys are going to be without their fathers when all this is over.'
There was no air raid that night, but Russell was woken by the sound of Effi crying. He found her wrapped in her old fur coat, curled up on the sofa with her knees up under her chin. 'I'm sorry,' she sobbed. 'I didn't want to wake you.'
He took her in his arms, and asked what the matter was.
'It just gets worse and worse,' she said.
He knew what she meant.
A valued friend of the Reich
They woke later than usual, and Effi cooked the eggs that Zarah had insisted on giving them. 'What time are you meeting Paul?' she asked.
'I'm not,' Russell said, realising he hadn't told her about the
'Don't they allow fathers?'
'If they do, Paul forgot to tell me.'
'Oh well, you can come shopping with me. I need some new boots.'
'You'll be lucky.'
'Ah, I've been told about an old man in Friedrichshain who still makes them. He must get the leather on the black market.'
'Wouldn't it be simpler to borrow some from the studio wardrobe department?'
'Of course, but not half as much fun.'
It occurred to Russell that he hadn't mentioned his rendezvous with Sullivan either. 'I've got a meeting at noon,' he told her, 'but it won't take long. We could meet after that. Two o'clock at the stop in Alexander Platz?'
'Fine. But I thought you'd given up on Ribbentrop's press conferences.'
'I have. It's something else. I'll tell you later,' he added, touching his ear to indicate that they might be overheard. It was several weeks since their last hunt for listening devices.
'Nothing too dangerous, I hope,' she said lightly.
'I can't see why it would be,' he told her, but half an hour later, standing on the Zoo Station platform, he didn't feel quite so sure. The way Kenyon had presented it, Russell was just meeting Sullivan for a friendly chat and a peek at the latter's
Russell was reasonably certain that he wasn't being followed, and it wouldn't be hard to make absolutely sure. In any case, it seemed much more likely that Sullivan would be followed, since any doubts about the Radio Berlin broadcaster's continuing loyalty to the Reich would have stemmed from his own behaviour. The man had to know that, and would be taking the necessary precautions.
Or would he? Sullivan was intelligent, but in Russell's experience intelligent people just had bigger blind spots.
How could he be sure that Sullivan wasn't being followed? He couldn't trail the man from his home because he didn't know where he lived. He could hope to watch him arrive at Stettin Station, but the number of entrances - at least three from the street and one from the U-Bahn - made missing him much more likely. There were even two entrances to the buffet, although the street one was little used. His best bet was to find a spot on the concourse with a good view of the buffet, hope Sullivan used that entrance, and watch for anyone following him in.
But first things first. He left the Stadtbahn train at Lehrter Station, and remained for several minutes on the elevated platform, staring down with apparent interest at the throat of the terminus below. All but two of the other alighting passengers took the steps down to the mainline platforms, and those two were already out of sight when Russell followed them down the walkway to Invaliden Strasse. Reaching the main road, he could see the man walking west past the old guards' barracks, the woman crossing the road to his right, with the apparent intention of entering the District Court building. She disappeared through the doorway.
Russell walked eastward, turning once or twice to check that the woman hadn't re-emerged. It was about a kilometre to Stettin Station, and he had over half an hour to spare. Crossing the Hohenzollern Canal he could see the Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery stretched out along the eastern bank, a conveniently short journey from the huge military hospital which rose behind it. A steam barge was disappearing into the grey distance, the rust-coloured water rippling in the breeze.
Ten minutes later, he was walking in through the western side entrance of Stettin Station. It was one of Berlin's older and smaller termini, with half a dozen platforms hosting services to Stettin, Rostock and Danzig, and local trains serving Pankow and the outlying suburbs beyond. A spacious glass-roofed concourse lay between the buffers and the booking office, with the buffet and other facilities lining the sides. After buying a newspaper at the kiosk, Russell took up position near the entrance to platform 1, where the steady stream of passengers looking to board the Stettin express offered a modicum of anonymity. He had a clear view of all three street exits, the steps down to the U-Bahn, and the concourse entrance to the buffet. It was eleven forty-five.
The minutes ticked by. Two young women in black walked past him, heading for the Stettin train, and following them with his eyes Russell saw one of several waiting coffins being loaded into a luggage van. Outside it had begun to rain - with some abandon if the loud drumming on the station roof was any guide. A local train pulled in on the far side with a squeal of tired brakes, and soon a procession of arrivals were crossing the concourse towards the various exits. Sullivan was not among them.
