hosts. He hated the idea of the Ottings paying with their lives for a few days' hospitality, but there was nothing he could do about it. If he and Effi disappeared at that moment there would still be the men who had brought them from the goods yard to the flat. They were the last link in the chain from Berlin, and the Ottings' only real chance was for those two men to either escape the clutches of the Gestapo or die in the attempt.
Darkness finally began to fall, and soon after five Margarete returned home. She was clearly upset to find them still there, and suddenly burst into tears when Effi offered to help with the cooking. 'I'm sorry,' she said eventually. 'It's not your fault. I keep thinking of my son in Africa, and him coming home to find he has no family.'
Effi encased her in a hug. 'We're sorry,' she said. 'We...'
'You are just trying to survive,' Margarete interrupted her. 'I know that. And I hope you get out. I really do.'
A few minutes later Hans returned, took one look at his wife's tearstained face, and reached out to embrace her. Effi and Russell left them on their own for a few minutes, and when Russell returned to the sitting room he found Hans staring at his books with the air of someone who doubted he'd ever see them again. 'We might as well eat,' Margarete said from the kitchen doorway with a rueful smile.
They were just about finished when a loud and confident knock sounded on the outer door. Hans went to answer it, and returned with a tall, smiling young man. 'Are you ready?' he asked Russell and Effi. 'I'm Andreas,' he added, offering a large and calloused hand to each of them in turn. 'I know who you are,' he told Effi with a big grin.
He insisted that they hurry, and their goodbyes had to be brief. Clattering down the stairs ahead of them, he announced almost casually that the Gestapo were 'all over the town'. Two older men sharing a chat on the next landing down clearly heard the remark, and watched them go by with expressions that mingled sympathy and alarm. In the dimly-lit ground-floor lobby, a young couple embracing in a corner showed considerably less interest in their plight.
Outside, an icy rain was falling. The ground was slippery underfoot and the darkness almost complete.
'My van is two streets away,' Andreas told them, as they made their way across the open courtyard. 'I didn't want to park right outside.'
They reached the street just as two pinpoints of lights swung towards them a few hundred metres away. Another two followed, and another two, as the sound of motors rose above the usual hum of the city.
Andreas broke into a run, yelling 'This way!' over his shoulder. The car headlights were muted by the rain, but just bright enough to show them where they were going, straight across the street and onto the gravel path between workshops that Russell had noticed from the Ottings' window. Once off the street it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead, but Andreas obviously knew where he was going, and the path was less slippery than the street had been. Behind them car doors were slamming, a voice shouting orders. 'Just in time,' they heard Andreas murmur. But not for the Ottings, they both thought.
The sounds faded as they moved on, crossing another street and entering another path. The large factory to their right was still working, the sound of machinery drowning out any noise of pursuit, the glow of fires within rising from chimneys like illuminated gold dust in the falling rain. In her mind, Effi could see the men in leather coats hammering on the door, the last hurried farewells as the Ottings' world caved in.
Andreas was waiting at the exit to the next street. A line of lorries was parked on either side of the road outside the main factory entrance, a small van just beyond them, as if it was part of the same fleet.
'I'm right in thinking you have no false papers?' Andreas asked.
'You are.'
'Then you'll have to get in the back.' He opened the rear doors, and showed them the inside with a well- masked flashlight. The pencil-thin beam revealed various metal trays, a large number of paint tins, a bucket full of brushes and a large expanse of crumpled cloth. 'If we're stopped, you'd better get under the dust-sheet,' he advised. 'Just cover yourselves and pray.'
'Where are we going?' Russell asked.
'The docks. And I have something for you,' he added, heading for the front of the van. He returned a few moments later with a gun wrapped in oilcloth. 'It's only an M1910, but it's the best we could do at short notice.'
Russell unwrapped and grasped it, the metal cold in his hand. He had handled one of these guns before, one he had bought from a German officer after the November armistice, on the ridiculous assumption that any self- respecting class warrior needed his own personal firearm. He was later told that Gavrilo Princip had set the whole bloody mess in motion with an M1910, when he used it to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914.
'We should go,' Andreas told him.
Effi and Russell crawled into the back of the van, ending up with their backs to the driving compartment and the dust-sheet roughly draped across their legs, ready for pulling up over their heads. It wasn't nearly voluminous enough, Russell realised. It would take someone half-blind and wholly stupid to fall for such a ruse.
The van's engine started, and they moved off down the street. They could see nothing in the back, but Andreas kept up a running commentary on their progress, as much for his own reassurance, Russell thought, as for theirs. The first name he recognised was the Konigsplatz, which he had walked round during a visit some years before the war. He also remembered Breitestrasse, and could picture their journey down it, passing the Nikolaikirche and taking the bridge across the Oder to Lastadie. 'Almost there,' he whispered to Effi, as the rain hammered a little harder on the van's roof.
He had spoken too soon.
'Someone's shining a red light at me,' Andreas told them, suddenly sounding much younger. 'There's a barrier across the road,' he added a few moments later. 'And at least two men. They look like Gestapo.' As the van began slowing they tried to burrow beneath the dust-sheet, but it was too dark to see how well they had succeeded in covering themselves. The fact that they were tugging it in opposite directions didn't bode well.
Andreas pulled the van to a halt and wound down his window. 'A miserable night,' they heard him say cheerfully. 'So what's this about?'
The man he was addressing seemed uninterested in friendly banter. 'Gestapo,' he said curtly, and asked for Andreas's papers. A long silence followed as he checked them.
Let that be enough, Russell silently pleaded.
The Gestapo officer asked what Andreas was doing out so late.
Andreas explained with a laugh that one of the local Party bigwigs was desperate to have his offices redecorated in time for Labour Minister Robert Ley's imminent visit.
It was the wrong tone, Russell thought. The man asking the questions didn't sound like a lover of the common people. But how many colleagues did he have with him? Russell had heard no other voices.
'What's in the back?' the Gestapo man asked.
'Just my gear.'
'Turn off the engine and get out.'
The van gently rocked as Andreas climbed out. They heard footsteps, and a sliver of light appeared through the crack between the rear doors. 'Open them up,' the Gestapo officer ordered, his voice now coming from behind the van.
Russell took what seemed, in that instant, their only chance of survival. Throwing off the dust sheet, he took aim at the doors, hoping and praying that Andreas, knowing he had the gun, would have the sense to keep out of the line of fire.
He heard the door handle turn, waited for the light to shine in, and blindly pulled the trigger.
The light spun downwards as the boom of the gun echoed in the van, drowning out the sound of the falling body. He heard Effi gasp as he scrambled feet first towards the open doorway, and half-ordered, half-begged her to stay where she was.
The Gestapo man's torch was still on, illuminating a puddle in the road and throwing a faint reflective glow. As Russell kicked it away, his standing foot slipped on the icy cobbles, throwing him onto his back and quite possibly saving him from the shot which rang out at the same instant. A few feet away, scarcely visible in the darkness, two grunting shadows were locked together.
So there were there at least three of them.
As Russell inched towards the two men struggling on the ground, he scanned the darkness for sight or sound
