decided. There will be no more ships for at least a week, which, given the situation in the city, is much too long for you...'
'What is the situation?' Russell asked.
'Many arrests. Your friends Hans and Margarete, many others.'
A wave of sadness and guilt washed through Effi's brain.
'And Ernst?' Russell was asking.
'Ernst is safe for the moment.'
'They must have found the men we killed.'
'No,' Andreas said with a hint of a smile. 'The bodies were moved last night. They were put back in their car and the car was pushed into one of the deeper docks before first light. It was a committee decision,' he added, as if that were explanation enough. 'The bodies will never be found, and later this morning one of our people inside the local Kripo will tell the Gestapo about a tip-off he has received, that someone saw two cars in a high speed chase on the Stargard road late yesterday evening. Which should get them looking in the wrong direction altogether.'
'I'm ready,' the other man shouted across. He was unfolding a large sheet of dark red cloth.
'You need new papers,' Andreas said in reply to Russell's questioning look. 'Which means photographs.'
'We need to fix our make-up,' Effi said, tearing her thoughts away from Hans and Margarete. She still wore most of her last application, but the previous night's rain had removed most of Russell's. The moustache, though, showed no sign of loosening its grip on his upper lip.
'As quick as you can,' Andreas urged them.
'We're almost out in any case,' she told Russell, as she worked on the area around his eyes.
'Then save it for yourself,' he said. 'You're the one who'll be recognised.' 'There's enough,' she told him. 'And I can't leave you with one side of your face looking twenty years older than the other.'
Preparations completed, they each had their photographs taken standing in front of the red material that Andreas held up as a backcloth. The photographer grumbled about the light, but thought the resulting pictures would probably do.
'Who'll be looking at them?' Russell asked Andreas. 'Where are we going?'
'Riga.'
'Riga?!'
Andreas sighed. 'You can't stay in Stettin, and Riga's the only other place with regular sailings to Sweden. We have people there who'll look after you, and it's the one direction the Gestapo will not expect. These days no one travels east out of choice.'
'A train?' Russell asked.
Andreas nodded. 'Trains. It'll take about two days. You'll need to change in Danzig and Konigsberg, perhaps in Tilsit as well. Don't worry,' he said, noticing their expressions, 'you will have excellent papers. Your chances are good. Certainly much better than they would be here.'
'Who do we contact when we get there?'
'I'll tell you that this evening. The overnight express for Danzig leaves at eight-thirty, and we will find a way to get you there before then.'
'How?'
'I don't know yet. Your papers will be for a husband and wife, by the way. Herr and Frau Sasowski. Werner and Mathilde.'
'What happened to them?' Russell asked.
'They committed suicide after the Gestapo killed their son.'
More dead people, Effi thought. They were being lifted out of Germany by the arms of the dead.
'Married at last,' Russell said to her, as Andreas and the photographer walked away across the warehouse floor.
She put an arm round his waist and leant her head on his shoulder.
Andreas had brought water with him, enough to last them the day. There was still some food, but neither of them felt hungry, and they spent most of the daylight hours curled up on the folded rug, drifting in and out of uneasy sleeps. Russell had wondered whether one of them should stay awake, and decided there was no point. If the Gestapo roared up outside, there would be enough time to follow through on their pledge of the night before. More than enough.
Strange as it seemed, Effi felt safer by day. The night might hide them, but not from fear or surprise, whereas daylight, which rendered them visible, also seemed redolent of life - the distant sounds of unloading elsewhere in the docks, the ships' horns like mournful animals seeking a place to rest. If this was where her life ended, in a derelict corner of a city she had never seen before, then she wanted her final moments in the light, conscious of every last cobweb that hung from the ceiling, of every piece of rubbish which the breeze blew along the warehouse floor.
Dying in darkness would be so... so completely
She thought about the Ottings and what they must be going through, and struggled to conceal her own sense of dread.
Andreas returned soon after six. 'All the entrances to the docks are being watched,' he announced with his usual smile. 'The roads and ferries.'
'So how will we get out?' Russell asked calmly, wondering what the young man had up his sleeve this time.
'By boat,' Andreas said triumphantly. 'A small boat will come to the quay outside at seven. It will take us out of the docks, and up the Oder to a small landing stage close to the railway station. You will only have a five-minute walk. That's good, eh?'
Russell admitted it sounded so.
Andreas handed over their new documentation, which looked convincing enough. Had they still been alive, Werner and Mathilde Sasowski would have been fifty-four and fifty-two, roughly the ages which he and Effi looked in the photographer's grainy pictures. There were no obvious signs that the latter had just been added to the frayed and grimy papers.
'And here are your tickets,' Andreas added, handing them across.
'How much do we owe you?' Russell asked, reaching for his wallet. It seemed like weeks since he'd spent any money.
Andreas made a gesture of refusal. 'We didn't pay for them,' he said. 'Now, once you reach Riga, you must go to 16 Satekles Street - it's near the station - and ask for Felix. You must tell him that you have a message from Stettin. Have you got all that?'
Russell repeated it.
'Good. Now all we all have to do is wait.' He looked at his watch. 'Forty-two minutes.'
Effi asked Andreas about himself. How long had he been a painter? Was he married?
He wasn't married and he wasn't a painter - the van was his father's. He had worked in the docks since he was sixteen, and been a Party member almost as long - since 1932, in fact. Both his uncles had been killed the following year, one in a street fight and one in a concentration camp. So had many others. But the Party was still strong in Stettin, and particularly in the docks. Seven iron carriers had been sabotaged over the last two years, all sent to the bottom of the Baltic with explosives which the Gestapo and their sniffer dogs had failed to find. Things were certainly bad at the moment, but the cells had all shut down - 'like the compartments of a U-boat'. A few would be prised open, but most would survive. And after the war... well, Effi would return to a communist Germany, and make a movie about her own escape and the comrades who helped her. 'We will all play ourselves,' Andreas decided.
At five minutes to seven they walked out onto the darkened quay, Andreas guiding them to a ladder of iron rungs which led down to the water. The faintest of lights was already visible in the mouth of the basin; as it grew steadily nearer, the low purr of an engine became audible. With Andreas carrying their bag they all climbed down towards the water, waiting in a vertical queue for the boat to draw up alongside. It was a simple skiff with a one- man crew - a wizened old man who nodded a greeting from his seat by the tiller.
He gently opened the throttle and turned the craft back towards the dock entrance, running parallel with the barely visible quayside wall. He had extinguished his faint light, Russell noticed. Now that he was carrying illicit cargo, hitting something probably seemed a much better bet than being noticed. Russell asked Andreas whether
