and the Manhattan-style island of filing cabinets in the centre of the floor precluded the tower's re-employment as a fairground wall of death. The perfect metaphor for Nazi Germany, Russell thought. Once the petrol ran out, it had dropped like a stone.
'It must have been huge,' Varennikov was saying, a look of awe on his face. Almost reluctantly, Russell thought, the Russian turned his torch beam on the filing cabinets, and began rummaging through their contents.
He was soon lost in the task, throat clicking in apparent appreciation as he added more papers to the Moscow-bound sheaf. It took the better part of an hour to riffle through each cabinet, and by then the file was bulging, the physicist smiling. 'We'll have to be quick with the rest of the offices,' Russell told him.
'Yes, yes,' Varennikov agreed, with the air of a man who already had what he needed.
Which, as they soon discovered, was just as well. The outside offices contained only administrative records. They found no further evidence of Heisenberg's progress in creating a German atomic bomb, but they did discover what the famous physicist's salary was. Russell thought about translating the Reichsmarks into roubles for Varennikov's enlightenment, but decided it would be unkind.
They were in the last room when two things happened. First there was a shout, a few frantic words in German that included nein. And then, only a heartbeat later, the window blew in, sucking in the roar of an exploding bomb with a hail of shattered glass. Russell felt a sharp pain in his face, and heard Varennikov gasp. An instant later, a second bomb exploded, then another and another, each one sounding a blissful stretch further away.
Russell picked a small shard of glass from his check, and felt the blood run. He trained each eye in turn on the moonlit gardens – both were still working. Varennikov, his flashlight revealed, had lost his right ear-lobe, and the stub was bleeding profusely. He seemed more shocked than harmed.
Russell suddenly remembered the shout. He switched off his flashlight, carefully opened the door, and stepped out into the dark corridor. There was nothing moving, and no sign of Gusakovsky or Kazankin, but a thin wash of light filled the lobby area some twenty metres to his left. And there was a dark shape on the floor.
Two, as it turned out. The old man was nearer, a neat black hole drilled through the left side of his forehead, a few locks of silver hair draped across his right eye. Gusakovsky was just beyond him, unnaturally twisted, the back of his head glistening in the dim light. He had been thrown against the wall by the blast, Russell guessed. The bomb must have landed almost on the doorstep, blowing the doors inwards, a split second after Gusakovsky's shooting of the caretaker.
The Russian's gun was lying close to his splayed hand. Russell bent down to pick it up, and placed it in his belt.
'Wh-where's Kazankin?' Varennikov stuttered behind him.
It was a question that needed answering, but far from the only one. Were there any emergency services still operating in Berlin? If so, were they already fully occupied? If any were spare, how long would it take them to arrive? Sooner or later someone was bound to. They had to get away from the Institute.
But where to?
And where was Kazankin?
Russell worked his way between pieces of furniture to the open doorway, and clambered gingerly out across the ruined portico. The moon was almost down, but flames were rising from a building away to his left, flooding the world in yellow light. The bomb had gouged a sizable crater across the pathway leading to the street gates, and the remains of a body lay heaped on the grass ten metres beyond. From a distance, it looked like a shapeless mass of bloodied flesh; closer up, Russell could identify shreds of the foreign worker uniform. One quarter of the face was strangely untouched, and in it a single staring eye. Kazankin's.
He wasn't supposed to feel sorry for his potential executioner, but he almost did.
He looked around. One building on Gary Strasse was merrily burning, but the other three bombs had only inflicted blast damage. No more were falling, and the sky sounded empty of planes. Had Kazankin and Gusakovsky fallen prey to a single stray stick, not so much aimed as discarded?
Varennikov had followed Russell out, and was now standing there, clutching the sheaf of papers, staring down at what was left of Kazankin. He ran a hand through his hair. 'What now?' he asked. It sounded more like a plea than a question.
Russell responded. 'This way,' he ordered, leading the Russian out through the gates and across the empty street. As they approached the intersection with Boltzmann Strasse they both heard vehicles approaching from the Thiel Allee direction. Russell broke into a run, Varennikov following. They turned the corner into Boltzmann Strasse and headed for the pool of deep shadow offered by two large trees.
They had barely reached it when two vehicles drove across the intersection they had just left behind. Fire trucks of some kind, Russell guessed. They would find three bodies, one caretaker and two foreign workers.
One of whom, he realised, was still carrying his Soviet pistol. Fuck!
It was too late to do anything about it. With any luck the Nazis would assume that there'd only been two of them. 'Let's go,' he told Varennikov.
'Where are we going?' the Russian asked as they walked towards the Thielplatz U-Bahn station.
'To my brother-in-law's house,' Russell told him.
'Your brother-in-law? But he's a German!'
'Yes he is. And he's probably the best chance we have of saving our lives.' He certainly couldn't think of any others. But was it fair to land on Thomas's doorstep with a Soviet physicist, and half the Gestapo in probable pursuit? The thought crossed his mind that he could simplify matters no end by taking out Gusakovsky's silenced gun and leaving Varennikov in a Dahlem gutter. But he knew he couldn't do it. The Soviets might find out. And he rather liked the young Russian.
He asked himself how he would feel if Thomas turned up at his door with a ticking bomb. He would take him in, he knew he would. He and his ex-brother-in-law had fought on opposite sides in the First War, but they'd been on the same side ever since.
Thomas even had a cellar – Russell could remember him remarking how they'd probably need it after one of Goering's speeches on the invincibility of the Luftwaffe. They should be able to hide out there until the Red Army reached Berlin. And once they did, then saving Varennikov should earn both him and Thomas some much-needed credit with the Soviets.
All of which assumed Thomas being there. He could imagine him evacuating Hanna and Lotte to Hanna's parents in the country, but he found it hard to imagine Thomas leaving his factory or his Jewish workers. As far back as 1941 he'd been all that stood between them and the trains heading east – he had even taken to cultivating a few Nazi acquaintances as insurance. And things was unlikely to have improved. If the bombing had spared him, Thomas would be there.
'How far is it?' Varennikov asked, interrupting his thoughts.
'About two kilometres,' Russell told him. He couldn't remember hearing an all-clear, but the bombers seemed to have gone. With the searchlights dimmed, the moon down, and the blackout still in force, it could hardly have got any darker. Even the whitened kerbs offered little help – six years of weather and footfalls had worn the paint away.
They took the bridge across the U-Bahn cutting, and headed up the narrow Im Schwarzen Grund. It might be dark, but the main roads carried a heavier risk, and he was fairly confident of finding his way through Dahlem's suburban maze. Varennikov looked less certain, but plodded dutifully along beside him. If the sheaf of papers under his arm amounted to a bomb for Stalin, then the Americans would eventually have questions for Russell. He decided that Thomas didn't need to know what this was all about. For everyone's sake.
The street was quiet. In the poorer parts of Berlin, people would be hurrying home from the large public shelters, but in richer suburbs like Dahlem most houses and blocks had their own. And for obvious reasons the police presence had always been thinner here than in the old socialist and communist strongholds of working-class Wedding and Neukolln. In some areas of Wedding even the Gestapo had needed military back-up.
The streets were quiet, but not entirely empty. Twice on Bitter Strasse the two men were forced to skulk in the shadows while people went by, an air-raid warden on an unlit bicycle, a woman in a long coat. Two of the phosphorescent badges that Russell remembered from the early years of the war were pinned to her chest like pale blue headlights.
There was no sign that Dahlem had been bombed that night – apart, that is, from the four which had fallen
