Stattin Station

out.

'Anything else?' Kuzorra asked, once he had noted it down.

'Nothing.'

'Did Sullivan say, or hint, that he had something for you? Something material, I mean. Documents perhaps, or photographs.'

'No. But if he had brought something to show me, then presumably his killers will have it now.'

'Perhaps.' Kuzorra ran a hand across the grey stubble which passed for his hair, a personal habit which Russell remembered from their previous meetings. 'This is a strange case. While we're off the record - I presume this works both ways?'

Russell nodded, intrigued.

'The officer who was with me yesterday evening - Obersturmfuhrer Schwering - was appointed as my assistant less than two hours after Sullivan's body was found. He's on secondment from the Sicherheitsdienst. The first thing he suggested was a thorough search of Sullivan's apartment in Dahlem, and when he got there he seemed very insistent on conducting it himself. I let him get on with it, but kept an eye on him. He seemed rather put out when he didn't find anything.'

'Interesting,' Russell murmured.

'He may insist on searching this flat,' Kuzorra added.

'He won't find anything here,' Russell said flatly. Having their home ransacked by the SD was not a welcome prospect. Particularly if only Effi was here to receive them. 'I'm off to Prague this evening,' he told the detective, 'and I'll be gone for a couple of nights. So if you want to search the place, I'd be grateful if you'd do it now. '

Kuzorra gave him a lengthy stare. 'Consider it searched,' he said at last, and got to his feet. 'I'll give Schwering the car number, and tell him I got it from a witness at the station. It should keep him busy for a day or so.'

'Busy failing to trace it?'

'If it's a car from the SD pool. If it isn't, then he'll be the hero of the hour.'

'Depending on whom it does belong to. I don't envy you this particular job.'

Kuzorra paused with his hand on the doorknob. 'It beats chasing blackout robbers. And the expression on Goebbels' face when the penny finally drops should be something to behold.'

An hour or so later, Russell walked down to Zoo Station. Searching through the Volkischer Beobachter over the usual unsatisfactory breakfast, he found no mention of Sullivan's unfortunate demise. Someone had given Goebbels pause for thought, and sufficient reason for delaying his planned publicity blitz around the manhunt for Sullivan's killer. By tomorrow, Russell guessed, it would all be over. Sullivan's death would be fictionalised in a suitably edifying light, his killers on to their next mission of mercy. Kuzorra would be off the hook, and so would he.

It was a two-kilometre walk down the Landwehrkanal to the Abwehr headquarters. Yesterday's clear skies had persisted, and the low sun was frequently in his eyes as he walked south-eastwards along the towpath. It was suitably cold for December the first, and hopefully colder outside Moscow. The coal traffic seemed busier than ever, barge after laden barge puttering down the ice-edged canal towards the factories and generating stations in the north-western outskirts. The men at their helms all looked like the Ancient Mariner, dragged out of retirement in the Reich's hour of need.

With the Abwehr building looming in the distance, Russell used the Graf Spee Bridge to switch banks. As he approached the entrance on Tirpitz Ufer, he noticed the usual Gestapo Mercedes 260 parked on the opposite quay. In pre-war days foreign agents of all descriptions had lurked in this vicinity, hopeful of overhearing some useful tidbit of military information, but the real war had put paid to such boyish games, and Russell could only assume that the men in the car were Germans spying on their own countrymen.

At reception he was told to report to Colonel Piekenbrock, and for once the Section 1 chief didn't keep Russell waiting outside. Piekenbrock invited him in, sat him down and even suggested a cup of coffee. Russell accepted the latter, more in hope than expectation, and was only mildly disappointed when a pretty brunette arrived with the usual slop.

Piekenbrock gulped his down with almost inhuman gusto. 'This is Grashof,' he said, handing across a photograph. 'That was taken quite recently.'

Russell studied the picture. A tall-looking man with a gaunt face and short dark hair was standing on Prague's famous Charles Bridge, the Little Quarter and Castle rising behind him. Grashof was wearing glasses, and his lips were slightly curled in the beginnings of a smile. This is a clever man, Russell thought, and wondered what it was in the photograph that led him to that conclusion.

He handed it back.

'Your meeting will be at the Sramota Cafe. It's on the river, close to the Smetana Bridge. Grashof will be sitting on the terrace, the very last table along from the entrance. You should arrive at exactly two o'clock, with the latest issue of Signal.'

'What if it's raining? Or snowing even?'

'It's a glassed-in terrace.'

'What if someone beats us to that table?'

'They won't. This is all taken care of; you just have to be there. Greet Grashof like he was an old friend, order a coffee, sit and chat for ten, fifteen minutes. Before you arrive, you will have hidden this letter -' Piekenbrock passed a wax-sealed and unaddressed envelope across the desk '- in your magazine. Grashof will have his own copy, and it should not prove difficult to switch them over.'

'Elementary,' Russell murmured. The Admiral's penchant for the old traditions had scuppered his plan to steam the missive open. 'Will there be anything in his copy?'

'No.'

Russell put the envelope in his inside jacket pocket. 'Is that it?'

'You will need your train tickets and visa,' Piekenbrock said, handing over another envelope. 'You will find some local currency for your expenses. More than enough, I'm sure. Do you have any questions?'

He had several, but none that Piekenbrock could or would answer. He shook his head.

'Then have a good journey.'

Russell resumed his walk along the Landwehrkanal for another few hundred metres, before climbing the steps at the Potsdamer Strasse Bridge and strolling northward at a leisurely pace towards Leipziger Platz and the Press Club. He felt unreasonably cheerful, and could only assume it was the play of sunlight working its usual magic.

A couple of dozing Italians and one self-important Romanian were the press club's only customers, and Russell had the English-language newspapers all to himself. Not that they offered any real enlightenment. Some thought the battles in Russia were going well for the Germans, with the battles in North Africa going better for the British; while others thought the opposite on both counts.

He walked up Wilhelmstrasse to the Foreign Ministry. Braun von Stumm was again presiding, a sure sign that the regime was short of good news. The subject of Rostov's fall - and the unknown extent of the subsequent German retreat - was evaded with all the usual finesse: von Stumm simply refused to talk about it. The attack on Moscow was still said to be going well, but there were no new towns in the 'captured' column - German troops were simply 'closer to the capital'. Leafing back through his notebook, Russell found more of the same. The previous day they had 'taken more ground', the day before that 'further progress had been made'. The fall of Istra provided the last specific tidemark, and that had been five days ago. Were they hoarding news of advances for maximum later effect, or had they really run out of steam? His mind said the latter, his heart feared the former.

He headed homeward, stopping off at the Press Club to file a near-perfect copy of the Germans' own official release. There were no caveats he could add which the censors would pass, and the gaps in the German version hardly seemed to need pointing out.

Back at the flat, he packed an overnight bag. A pair of trousers had gone missing - Effi must have taken a sack of washing to the laundry without telling him, and then forgotten to collect it. He rescued the half-read Tristram Shandy from under the bed and eventually dug up the street map of Prague he had bought in 1939. The flat felt cold and empty, and he hung on later than he should, hoping that Effi would arrive home. She didn't, and the slowness of the tram to Anhalter Station would have caused him to him miss his train, had it not been delayed by an hour. Russell asked a convenient Reichsbahn employee whether dinner on the train