'Someone did,' he agreed. And I can't say that I blame them, he thought to himself. Judging by the looks on the Czech faces, he would be well-advised to avoid post-war Prague.
Rather to Russell's surprise, Giminich did not seem disappointed. 'Very well, ' he said, consulting his watch. 'You will be taken to the station now. You will be well looked after until the train leaves, and a compartment has been arranged for your personal use as far as Dresden. I'm sure I don't need to remind you of our earlier conversation, about the wording of your report to the Admiral.'
'No,' Russell agreed, 'you don't.'
Walking up the stone stairs seemed infinitely preferable to walking down, as if the weight of the building was sloughing off his back. They collected his bag from the guest lounge and made their way out to the interior courtyard, where a combination of masked headlights and ill-fitting window screens cast everything in a thin blue light, as if the world was wreathed in cigarette smoke.
Schulenburg got in the back with him, but said nothing on the short drive to the station. The concourse was unusually empty, and Russell felt sadly reassured by all the uniforms and guns in evidence - leaving Prague like a Nazi celebrity might not prove a treasured memory, but it definitely seemed preferable to dying in a hail of Resistance bullets.
The train was already at the platform. Schulenburg rapped out a few orders and walked away without a word of farewell, leaving two uniformed
He headed for the bar, where the blackout screens had not been lowered. They were just passing the locomotive depot where Russell had witnessed a more successful Resistance execution, and it suddenly occurred to him that the face he had vaguely recognised in the line-up had belonged to the young man standing guard outside the sand-dryer building on that long-ago night.
No warning
The train pulled into Berlin's Anhalter Station soon after nine, and Russell let it empty out before alighting. As on the outward trip, both corridors and vestibules had been packed with standing passengers between Dresden and Berlin, and only the lack of heating had prevented the rank atmosphere from becoming truly unbearable. If the Third Reich was going to last a thousand years it needed more soap and less flatulence-inducing food.
It was a cold, grey day, with gusts of an easterly breeze tugging at the swastikas above the station's main entrance. Russell bought a paper from the forecourt kiosk and asked whether there had been any air raids over the last two nights. There had not, the proprietor told him, gazing with blatant curiosity at the blood-encrusted bandage still wrapped around Russell's head.
'A falling brick,' he offered in explanation, and headed for the tram stop. He had never acquired the hat- wearing habit, but several years ago Effi had bought him a very smart fedora, and this seemed like a good time to break it in.
He reached the flat around ten. It was empty of course - Effi would be into her third day of shooting by now - but a note on the pillow announced her intention of being back around five. The bed still held a trace of her warmth, and he lay there for a few moments wondering what to do. His head was sore, but not so much that medical attention seemed urgent. He would get the Abwehr over with first. The quicker he told his lie, the less chance that the truth would get there before him.
But first a bath, and a change of clothes. As the water ran, he removed both bandage and dressing without causing a haemorrhage, and with the help of two mirrors managed to get a decent look at the furrow in his head. Considering its origin it seemed healthy enough, but a visit to the hospital would probably be wise. After taking his bath he dug some gauze and an old roll of bandage out of the medicine cabinet, re-dressed the wound, and went in search of the fedora. It looked very stylish, the more so when worn with clothes. He left Effi a note promising to be back by five, and started out for the Abwehr headquarters.
He was halfway there when a flaw in Giminich's story occurred to him. It was all very well claiming that Grashof had failed to make their appointment; the problem was, Canaris would want his letter back. The same letter which Giminich had casually torn open and pocketed. How could he explain its disappearance?
On the train home he had considered, and then dismissed, the option of defying Giminich and telling Canaris the truth. Now, walking along the bank of the ice-edged Landwehrkanal, he considered it again. He would be giving Canaris reason to trust him, and reason to proceed with the Swiss arrangement. But the latter would have to happen before the SD got wind of his betrayal, which wasn't very likely. The fact that Giminich had already known all the details of his
So what lie should he tell? He reached a final decision as the aide led him up to Piekenbrock's office. The Colonel seemed busy as ever, endlessly shuffling papers in an apparently vain attempt to secure some workable order. He listened to Russell's brief account, shrugged, and warned that the Admiral might have further questions at a later date. Russell asked the Colonel to remind Canaris of the Swiss arrangement which they had discussed the previous week. He was halfway to the door when Piekenbrock remembered the letter.
'I burned it,' Russell admitted. 'When Grashof failed to appear I became worried that someone might know of the letter, and try to steal it. Since the Admiral wrote it I didn't think he would need reminding of its contents.'
Piekenbrock considered this explanation for a few worrying moments, but then accepted it. 'You destroyed it completely?'
'Of course. I flushed the ashes down a toilet,' he added, hoping that he was not overdoing it. Or that Giminich would post it back to Canaris. '
Excellent,' Piekenbrock said absent-mindedly, as if he had suddenly realised how easily an outbreak of arson could clear his own desk.
Outside the building, Russell's immediate sense of relief soon turned to something more ambivalent. He had managed to avoid betraying Giminich, but that might just encourage the SD man to come back with another daring wheeze from the SS Book of Adventures. The Abwehr might still agree to set him up in Switzerland, but time was probably short, and they didn't seem in much of hurry. It was beginning to seem as if a swift American entry into the war offered him his best chance of safety, albeit one that neither included Effi nor guaranteed a prompt exit from the Reich.
Of course, much might have happened since he last heard or read an uncensored news report, and, given that he was still employed to write the stuff, he supposed he should bring himself up to date. The Foreign Press Club on Leipziger Platz was the nearest source of relatively uncensored news, and if that failed to provide, one could always find a journalist or three in the Adlon Bar. Even if they were only Italians.
The Press Club was deserted, the foreign newspapers four days old. He walked up Hermann-Goering-Strasse, wondering what had happened outside Moscow in those four days, and remembering a Sunday years before, waiting with an anxious Paul for the evening papers to arrive at the local kiosk with the football results. Hertha had lost.
The Russians, apparently, had not. Ralph Morrison was in the Adlon Bar, typing noisily away at a corner table on his brand new portable and ignoring the dirty looks being cast in his direction. 'They've hit real trouble,' he told Russell in what could only be described as a joyous whisper.
'The Germans?'
'Of course the goddamned Germans. They're up to their necks in snow, their tanks won't move, their planes won't fly... It's Napoleon all over again.'
'What's the source?'
'Wehrmacht. It's the goods, believe me. There are whole divisions coming down with frostbite.'
Russell felt a warm glow spreading up from his stomach, and fought back the desire to cheer out loud. 'What are their press people saying?' 'Oh, the usual crap. 'Heavy fighting', 'titanic struggle', you know the stuff. But they've given up claiming advances. And you can see it in their eyes. They
'What about North Africa?'
'Harder to say. If I were a cynical man...'
