refusal. Those that welcomed her would often ask about her work, and which other stars she had met. Some would flirt, but more wanted to talk about their girlfriends and wives. The hardest were those who had lost limbs or suffered other disfigurement, and were fearful that they would no longer be wanted.
Her first man - boy, really - was initially almost too star-struck to talk. She slowly won him round, asking the usual questions about family and friends and how he was mending, trying to satisfy his curiosity about life in Babelsberg and the glamorous world of movies. Eventually she was passed, like a prize that had to be shared, from patient to patient and on into the next ward, down a queue of stunned or frightened faces that formed a knot in her throat and brought her perilously close to tears.
Most of the men refused to talk about the war, but those who were willing could talk of little else. 'You can't imagine what's it's like,' they would say, some resentfully, others almost in wonderment, as if they themselves were already finding it hard to credit their memories.
'So tell me,' Effi would reply.
'You're better off not knowing,' the soldiers would say, almost proudly.
'It's always better to know,' Effi would say, though some of the stories gave her reason to doubt it. The boy of eighteen showered with the flesh of his best friend, suddenly headless trunks collapsing in almost comic slow motion, the constant fear of losing one's genitals and no longer being a man.
And then there was the guilt. They had all done it - arriving in a Russian village, stealing the food and the shelter, pushing women and children out into the dark and the cold. 'It was them or us - what else could we do?'
'And what if they resist?'
'Then we shoot them. The children too. Once you've shot the mother you have to shoot the children. How would they survive on their own?'
Her last patient, a young man in his mid-twenties with neat blond hair and the sort of rugged outdoor face which the Propaganda Ministry liked on its posters, had needed shrapnel removing from his neck, but seemed set for a quick recovery. His mind, though, was in such turmoil that he could hardly lie still, twisting his head this way and that, convincing Effi that he would rip out the stitches that criss-crossed his throat. 'The Russians will fight on,' he told Effi, as if he was resuming an interrupted conversation. 'They can't retreat and they can't surrender, so what else can they do? If they retreat then their people shoot them, if they surrender then either we shoot them or they starve. There's no food for prisoners. That's just the way it is. But you can't fight an enemy that won't retreat or surrender. You just have to keep killing and killing and hope that he'll run out of soldiers before we do. But he won't, will he?' the soldier almost shouted. 'The Fuhrer must know this, so why does he keep telling us to attack?'
'Sssshhh,' Effi said, afraid the man would talk himself into trouble. 'We can't know what the Fuhrer knows. He may be getting false reports from his generals.'
The man's eyes lit up. 'That must be it. Someone should tell him. You should tell him. You're famous.'
'I will,' Effi promised.
'All my friends are dead,' he said.
'You're not,' Effi said. 'And you have to get better, and get back to your wife and children. They need you.'
The soldier gave her a questioning look, as if to check her sincerity. 'You're right,' he said without conviction. 'I must get better.'
As she leaned over to kiss him on the forehead she saw tears glistening in his eyes.
Visiting time was over, and she made her way back down the wards, smiling at the men she had spoken to. Annaliese Huiskes was sitting back in her chair, a glass of pinkish liquid in her hand, looking as tired as Effi felt. She was almost thirty, Effi knew, and prettier than she looked tonight.
'Come in,' Huiskes said, reaching inside a desk drawer for a bottle and a second glass. 'Have a drink.'
'Of what?' Effi asked.
'Hospital schnapps. We have the raw alcohol, and one of the doctors is good at giving it different flavours. This one's not bad.'
A drink did seem like a good idea, and it tasted no worse than some of the cocktails that the better hotels were now serving up.
'How did it go?' Huiskes asked.
Effi sighed. 'I hope I help. Some of them anyway. The last man I saw - Becker was the name above the bed - seemed very disturbed.'
'I'll leave a note for the night shift. But he's one of the luckier ones.' She drained her glass, looked at the bottle, and abruptly returned it to the desk drawer. 'It's hard to keep track,' she said. 'There're so many coming and going - more than ever these last few weeks. I hope that just means that we're getting a larger share than before, but who knows? I have a friend in the SS Hospital, and that sounds even worse. One night one of her patients started screaming, 'I can't do it anymore!' and most of the others joined in, until half the ward was screaming and the other half weeping.'
'Do what, I wonder,' Effi murmured.
'Killing people, of course. In their hundreds, thousands even. Jews mostly, but Russians too. They force them to dig huge graves, line them up on the side, and then shoot them. Row after row. Her patients can't stop talking about it, she says.'
'Why?' Effi wanted to know. 'Why are they shooting so many?'
Annaliese shrugged. 'Who knows? I haven't heard from my Gerd for weeks,' she added, as if he might have the answer.
'Where is he?'
'Somewhere in the south. He's with 60th Motorised. I worry about him not coming back, and I worry about who he'll be if he does come back.'
After the meeting with Dallin, Russell had walked the short distance south to the Abwehr headquarters, a five-storey building on Tirpitz Ufer overlooking the Landwehrkanal. The Section 1 offices seemed busy, but section chief Colonel Hans Piekenbrock only made him wait a few moments. After listening to Russell's report of what Dallin had said, the Colonel made a face. 'Is that all?'
'Yes.'
'Very well.'
'But there is one other thing.'
'Yes?'
'When I started working for the Abwehr in this way I made it clear to the Admiral that I could not continue doing so if Germany became involved in a war with my own country.'
'I believe that was the understanding,' Piekenbrock agreed.
'So I will be permitted to leave with all the other journalists?'
'That is my understanding,' the Colonel confirmed.
'That's all I wanted to know,' Russell said, getting up. He only wished he could believe it.
It had grown visibly darker during his brief visit, and the chances of his reaching the second daily press conference on time were remote. But why bother? He wasn't going to learn anything significant, and if one of Goebbels' minions inadvertently let something slip, he wouldn't be allowed to file it. His job was a joke, whichever way he looked at it.
He turned west along the canal towpath, thinking Effi might be home early for once, only to remember as he reached the Cornelius Bridge that this was her hospital night. A drink, he thought, and after skirting round the Zoo he made tracks for the bar on the Ku'damm where he'd last encountered some real whisky. Crossing Hardenbergstrasse he suddenly remembered that Effi's last film was showing just up the road at the Ufa- Palast.
She had, unusually for her, refused to see the film with him when it first came out, and he had never gotten around to seeing it on his own. He walked on up to the giant cinema, which had been the largest in Europe until Hamburg built a bigger one. The early evening showing was beginning in less than fifteen minutes.
There was a long queue at the box office, and the cinema itself was more crowded than he expected, with over three-quarters of the seats filled. Russell settled into an aisle seat near the front, just as the recorded orchestra struck up a rousing theme over shots of the German countryside. The film was dedicated to those
