slowly up the southern side of Lippehner Strasse, examining the buildings opposite.
The street had fared better than most in Friedrichshain, and No. 38 was one of five adjoining buildings spared by bombs and shells. According to Dallin, Schreier’s apartment was on the third floor, the one at the front on the right. A faint light was gleaming round the edge of the windows.
Walking on, he noticed a boy of around fifteen watching him from a nearby stoop. The house behind it was a field of rubble. Keeping his eyes on the curtained windows, Russell sat down beside him. ‘Would you like to earn some cigarettes?’
‘Doing what? Are you some kind of pervert?’
Russell couldn’t help smiling. ‘I want to know about the man who lives in that apartment over there.’
‘The one with the Ivans?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about him?’
‘Is he there now?’
‘How many cigarettes are we talking about?’
‘A pack.’
‘A whole pack?’ the boy exclaimed in surprise.
Russell felt like offering a short lesson in bargaining tactics, but decided against. ‘A whole pack,’ he confirmed.
‘So what do you want to know about him?’
‘Is he there?’
‘They came back about an hour ago. Him and the Ivans.’
So Nemedin had been told that Schreier was expendable, Russell thought. Which meant they were expected. He asked how many Russians there were.
‘Two. It’s always two. They swap over later.’
‘When exactly?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Who knows what the time is? The Ivans have all of the watches.’
‘How do they get here? Do they walk?’
‘No, they come in a jeep. They drive up, blow their horn, and wait for the two upstairs to come down. Then they go up, and the other two drive off.’
Russell took a pack of Chesterfields from his pocket and handed it over. ‘Now go home,’ he said.
The boy stared at his prize with glowing eyes, like a prospector finding a golden nugget. ‘This is my home,’ he said, and skipped away across the rubble.
By the time Russell reached the meeting point it was almost eight o’clock. The park stretched away into darkness, and would have been closed if it still had gates. He had met Wilhelm and Freya Isendahl at this entrance in the summer of 1939, and Albert Wiesner six months earlier. Albert was still in Palestine, as far as he knew.
A little way from the entrance, two men were lurking in the shadows. They looked uncomfortable in their German clothes — Dallin been obviously been shopping at one of the black markets — and grinned with relief when Russell gave them the pre-arranged password, a request for directions to Braunsberger Strasse. They introduced themselves: Vinny had the face and accent of an Italian-American from New York City, George the sort of earnest face and broad ‘a’s that Russell associated with Boston.
Halsey appeared out of the gloom a few seconds later, as if he’d been waiting to make his entrance. He was wearing the kind of long coat that gangsters wore in movies, and was presumably trying to look like a black marketeer. Which was fitting, Russell thought — what else were they doing that evening but trying to boost American business prospects? White marketeering, the respectable kind.
Halsey took a gun and silencer from his left coat pocket and offered it to Russell.
He only hesitated for a second — he had seen nothing to alarm him on Lippehner Strasse, but if his companions and the Russians were all carrying guns it seemed foolish to be the odd man out. If all hell did break loose he wanted to be more than a sitting duck.
He told Halsey and the two GIs what he’d discovered in the last halfhour. Halsey looked annoyed at being upstaged, but only for a moment. ‘Let’s get it over with before the next shift arrives. We’ll walk in pairs. You two’ — he indicated Vinny and George — ‘keep about fifty yards behind us.’
They set off. In the old days it would have been three in the morning before the streets were this empty, but post-war Berlin went early to bed. Many dim lights were visible in the obviously habitable buildings, a few in some that looked mere shells. There was no traffic in sight, but every now and then Russell could hear a vehicle on the nearby Greifswalder Strasse. Two pedestrians passed by on the other side, both half-running, as if pursued by a curfew.
They turned into Lippehner Strasse. Halsey hadn’t said a word since they started walking, but Russell could almost feel the young man’s eagerness. The glitter in his eyes suggested something more, and Russell found himself wondering whether Dallin’s favourite had been sampling the cocaine now readily available on Berlin’s black market.
There didn’t seem much point in asking.
They stopped outside Schreier’s building, and waited for Vinny and George to catch up. Staring across the street, Russell thought he saw movement in the ruins, but couldn’t be sure. Maybe his informer had put two and two together, and come to see the show.
The four of them went in through the front door. There were no working lamps in the hall or on the stairs, but enough light was seeping round the edges of doors to offer a modicum of visibility. The building smelled of cabbage, sweat and human waste, like most of the rest of Berlin. Music was playing somewhere up above — the sort of sultry jazz that Goebbels had found so repellent.
The stairs creaked alarmingly, causing Russell to wonder whether the house was as solid as it looked. According to Annaliese, half the people arriving at emergency rooms were the victims of collapsing walls, floors and staircases. The other half were simply starving.
They reached the third floor without mishap. A ribbon of light shone under Schreier’s door, and the music was playing behind it.
‘You knock,’ Halsey told Russell in an exaggerated whisper. ‘Pretend to be a resident complaining about the music. We need to know the situation — where Schreier is, where the Russians have their guns. Okay?’
Russell felt like asking ‘why me?’ but unfortunately knew the answer — none of the others spoke German. He waited until they had disappeared up the stairs, took a deep breath, and knocked.
The music abruptly ceased.
‘Who is it?’ a voice asked in Russian.
‘Herr Hirth,’ Russell improvised. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth had been his SS spymaster in the good old days.
There was no reply.
He knocked again and took a quick step sideways, just in case. Drunken Russians had a habit of shooting doors which annoyed them.
These two proved to be sober. The uniformed man who opened the door was holding a machine pistol half aloft, like someone intent on starting a race. Another slightly older man was sitting at a chessboard on the other side of the room. Both sported the pale blue shoulder insignia of the NKVD.
They looked confused, as if they’d been expecting someone else.
‘Herr Schreier?’ Russell said tentatively.
The Russian at the table leant back in his chair and called into the adjoining room. A few seconds later a tall thin German emerged, and gave Russell an enquiring look.
The complaining resident act seemed unconvincing, but he couldn’t think of anything else. ‘I was just wondering if you could turn the music down,’ he said. ‘My wife is sick, and she needs her sleep.’
Schreier walked across to the radio and mimed Russell’s request to the watching guards, both of whom smiled their assent. The one who had answered the door was still holding the machine pistol, but its barrel was now pointed at the floor. The other man’s gun was sitting on the table, beside a clutch of sacrificed pawns.
Russell made gestures of thanks and withdrew. The door closed behind him, and the music resumed at a lower volume. An accommodating NKVD — what next?
Halsey was waiting a few steps up.
Russell reported what he’d seen, and watched with alarm as Halsey screwed the silencer onto his gun. Vinny
