been guaranteed for a further ten years.
Russell stared into space for a few seconds. Could there be any other explanation? He couldn't think of one. He just sat there for a while, caught in the grip of a terrible sadness. He remembered walking alongside Albert Wiesner in Friedrichshain Park more than two years before. 'Some of my friends think they'll just kill us,' Albert had said, almost daring him to disagree. The friends had been right.
The sound of an arriving train shook him out of it. He put the papers back in the briefcase, fastened the straps and made his way back to the outer office.
As he reached it, Uwe Kuzorra walked in from the platform.
The detective's eyes took in the briefcase. 'Patrick Sullivan's?' he asked.
There was no point in denying it. Russell passed the briefcase across the counter. 'It only occurred to me this afternoon,' he said, as Kuzorra began unfastening the straps. 'But I did claim it was mine. I said I'd lost the ticket. My friend here was just being helpful.'
Kuzorra looked unconvinced. He opened the bag, briefly rifled through its contents, and closed it again. The expression on his face was more disappointed than angry. 'How did you know what to look for?' he asked.
'His wife. She let slip he was carrying a briefcase when he left home.' 'I think we'd better have a talk down at the Alex,' Kuzorra decided. 'It's time I heard the whole story in one go. Having you read me a new chapter every few days is getting more than a little tiresome.'
Russell opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. The car was outside, Kuzorra's driver enjoying a cigarette in the falling snow. They skidded their way out of the forecourt and headed east on Invalidenstrasse before turning south onto Rosenthaler. It took only ten minutes to reach the Alex, and almost as long again tramping corridors and stairs to reach Kuzorra's office on the police building's top floor. The room was crowded but not cluttered, and a framed photograph of the detective's late wife stood on the shelf behind the main desk, allowing her to look out over his shoulder.
Kuzorra took his own seat, gestured Russell into the other, and reopened the briefcase.
'If you read the first one you'll get the idea,' Russell said helpfully.
The detective said nothing in reply, but did look up after working his way through the first document. 'Are they all like this?'
'All except for the last page.'
As Kuzorra read that, Russell watched the sequence of emotions crossing the detective's face - curiosity, anger, disgust, a bottomless grief. At last he looked up, and their eyes met.
The telephone rang.
Kuzorra listened, glanced briefly up at Russell, said 'Very well', and broke the connection. 'Stay here,' he said, 'I'll be back in a few minutes.'
What now? Russell wondered. Would he be handed over to the Gestapo or the SD? He reminded himself that he hadn't done anything seriously illegal. And Kuzorra would help if he could - not because he liked Russell, but because they hated the same people.
The minutes stretched by. He listened to the low hum of the building, the occasional footfalls in the corridor outside. The snow was still falling past the window, the courtyard below a square of ghostly light. He was supposed to be meeting Effi at the Chinese restaurant at seven, which was less than half an hour away. He was going to be late, at the very least. He considered using Kuzorra's phone, but had no idea how to get an outside line.
It was almost seven when the detective finally reappeared. He closed the door firmly behind him and leaned back against it. 'They have you, John,' he said quietly.
'What?' Russell asked, his stomach in freefall.
'I was called downstairs because they know you've been involved in my case,' Kuzorra continued. 'The Gestapo are out looking for you. At your home, the press clubs, the hotels...'
'Why?'
'Espionage.'
Russell was reminded of the day in Flanders, more than twenty years earlier, when he had first understood the expression 'almost choking with fear'.
'Your trip to Prague, someone recognised you. An informer, I think. He tied you to the communist resistance there, and the Gestapo have been showing your picture to communists they have in the camps. One man's refusal to recognise you wasn't very convincing, and they eventually got him to talk about things that happened more than two years ago. A meeting you had in the Tiergarten, naval papers you were supposed to collect in Kiel and pass on to the Reds.'
Russell remembered that day in the Tiergarten, the young man with the shaking hands who said his name was Gert.
'They showed your photograph around in Kiel as well, and someone else recognised you, a woman who was there when the papers were handed over.'
Geli, her name had been. Russell just stared at the detective. His mind seemed reluctant to work.
'What were you going to do with the papers in the briefcase?' Kuzorra asked.
Russell shook his head, hoping to set his brain in motion. 'There's a man at the US Consulate who wants them. He doesn't like big business types who betray their country. The last page I thought I'd keep for myself, and tell the world when I got out.' He managed a wry smile. 'Not that that seems very likely now.'
Kuzorra gave him a long hard look. 'I can probably get you out of the building,' he said eventually, 'but that's all I can do.'
'It sounds like a start,' Russell said. He could hear the brittleness in his own voice. Where the hell was he going to go?
Rolf and Eva Vollmar
Kuzorra inserted the sheaf of papers, fastened the straps on the briefcase, and handed it across. 'Your chances of making use of this are better than mine,' he said. 'Are you ready?'
'As I'll ever be,' Russell told him. His mind was still straining to catch up.
Out in the blissfully empty corridor, Kuzorra hesitated for a second, then chose a direction. 'Try to look less like a hunted animal,' he murmured as they walked towards the distant stairwell. A typewriter was clacking behind one door, voices audible behind another, but that was all.
They reached the top of the stairs at the same time as another uniformed officer. He brushed past them, offering Kuzorra a cursory greeting but hardly glancing at Russell. If questions were asked, the latter realised, the detective would find it difficult to explain why he had chosen to escort a wanted man off the premises. 'I do know the way out,' Russell said, as they hurried down the stairs. 'There's no point in us both being caught.'
'If that was true, I'd still be in my office,' Kuzorra said bluntly. 'You won't get out the way we came in.'
'If you say so.' He had counted eight flight of stairs when Kuzorra turned off down a brightly-lit corridor and headed, if Russell's directional sense was still functioning, for the interior courtyard. Another couple of turns and they seemed to be heading back towards the main frontage on Dircksenstrasse. A man in a long white coat and rubber gloves suddenly emerged in front of them, gave them an indifferent glance, and disappeared through an opposite doorway. A faint whiff of formaldehyde told Russell that they were close to the morgue, and he suddenly recognised the seating area where he'd waited more than two years previously with Eleanor McKinley before viewing her brother's body. The lost property department beyond was unstaffed, the No.2 door to the main street bolted shut for the night.
'Do you know where you are?' Kuzorra asked, as he gently pulled back the bolts.
'Yes. And thanks,' Russell said, offering his hand 'Good luck,' the detective said, shaking it firmly but briefly. As he opened one side of the double doors, a flurry of snow blew in.
Russell stepped out into the darkness, heard the door shut behind him, and fought back a rising sense of panic. One step at a time, he told himself. Turn right. Walk down to the square. Catch a train or a tram. Each step along the front of the police building seemed fraught with danger, those that carried him across the front of the No.1 entrance almost impossibly so; but no voices suddenly cried out, and no car suddenly screeched to a halt beside him.
A train, he told himself, as one rattled its way along the elevated lines to his left. He had to get out of Berlin,
