around the Institute – but it had clearly suffered during the preceding months. As they crossed the wide and empty Konigin Luise Strasse, Russell noticed several gaps in the once imposing line of houses, and the depredations onVogelsang Strasse seemed, if possible, even heavier. Had the Schade residence survived?
It had. Identifying the familiar silhouette against the starry backdrop gave Russell an intense sense of relief. He had spent many happy hours in this house and the garden that lay behind it. Thomas had bought it in the early 1920s, soon after taking over the family's paper and printing business from his ailing father. Russell and Ilse had stayed there when they returned, as lovers, from the Soviet Union in 1924. Through the 1930s he and Effi had spent many a Sunday lunch and afternoon as part of the extended family, eating, drinking and lamenting the Nazis.
Unsurprisingly for four in the morning, the house lay in darkness. But the small front garden did look unusually unkempt, and the thick spider's web which Russell encountered on the porch implied a distinct lack of human traffic.
'It looks empty,' Varennikov said. He sounded relieved.
'Come,' Russell told him, heading for the archway at the side of the house, where another web was waiting. Many years earlier, Thomas had invited him back to the house, only to realise he'd forgotten his keys. 'There's a spare one round the back,' his friend had said, and there it had been, gathering moss under a water bucket.
The bucket was in the same spot, and so was the key. It felt a little rusty, but still opened the back door. Russell ushered Varennikov into the huge kitchen that Hanna loved so much, and told the Russian to stand still while he attended to the blackout curtains. Once these were closed, Russell used his flashlight to reveal the room's geography.
Two things immediately caught his eye. The documents on the large kitchen table were Thomas's Volkssturm call-up papers. They had been issued the previous autumn.
And on the mantelpiece above the stone fireplace there was one of the black-bordered memorial cards that Russell remembered from 1941. Joachim Schade smiled out of the photograph. Thomas had lost his son. We killed them all April 20 – 21 P aul let himself out of the temporary barracks just before seven, and took a deep breath of fresh air – most of the Hitlerjugend still sleeping inside had probably forgotten what soap and water were for. The sound of aircraft lifted his eyes – high in the sky above Erkner the sun glinted on the silver bellies of Allied bombers. All through the night he had listened to the dull thud of distant explosions, and day it seemed would bring no mercy. To the west, Erkner's Rathaus was silhouetted against a sky laced with the colour of fire. It was, he realised, Hitler's birthday.
He walked across to the railway station and down the short street to the town centre, intent on finding someone from his own division, or at least news of its whereabouts. How else was he going to get away from a bunch of deluded children with a collective death-wish?
But he was out of luck. The traffic clogging the main road west was mostly civilian; the only uniforms in motion were black, and they belonged to embarrassed-looking Waffen-SS soldiers clinging to a farm tractor. At the crossroads an unusually cheerful MP had no idea where the 20th might be, but more than enough information about the Russians, whose advance was apparently gathering speed.
'How far away are they?' Paul wanted to know.
The man shrugged. 'Two days? Maybe only one. But we'll all be pulled back into the city before they get here.'
He made Berlin sound like a real barrier, but Paul had seen French prisoners-of-war hard at work on the so-called 'obstacle belt' on his last trip to the city. A few trenches and gun emplacements weren't going to hold up the Red Army for long, even when manned by soldiers too young to know fear.
Returning to the canteen, he saw Werner across the road, happily chatting to the woman from the day before. 'Frau Kempka's husband was in Italy with the same division as my father,' the boy announced happily, as if that was some consolation for them both being dead.
'Was he really?' Paul said. 'Good morning, Frau Kempka,' he added. She had a coat on, and a suitcase sat by the front door.
'I'm going to try and reach Potsdam,' she said, noticing his glance. 'My brother lives there, although I expect he's serving in the Volkssturm now. It seems safer than staying here, don't you think?' She looked at Paul, as if confident he would know the answer.
I'm only eighteen, Paul felt like saying. 'You're probably right,' was what he said. Potsdam, about twenty-five kilometres south-west of Berlin, seemed as good a place as any.
'We're moving out,' Werner told him. 'They told us fifteen minutes ago – you might have been left behind.'
'Where are we going?'
'A few kilometres east. There's a gap between two lakes, and we're supposed to plug it. Us and a police battalion. And the local Volkssturm.'
Paul groaned inwardly – police battalions were notoriously prone to disappearing without warning, and the Volkssturm would probably just get in the way.
Over the next couple of hours, as they waited for the fuel they'd been promised for their lorries, he saw nothing to make him more optimistic. The members of the police battalion were all armed with rifles, but their eyes looked inward and their faces were pale with fear. The older men of the Volkssturm looked more depressed than frightened, but they were woefully short of weapons. They would only have a rifle each when half of them were dead.
The fuel finally appeared, two barrels on the back of a horse-drawn cart which needed siphoning. It was almost ten when they finally set off, and by then the sky was clouding over. The Hitlerjugend sat clutching their rocket- launchers; apart from a few exceptions like Werner, they seemed eager for battle. Today was the Fuhrer's birthday, they kept reminding each other, the day on which the wonder weapons would be unleashed. This would be the moment the Soviets were stopped and driven back, and they would be able to tell their children that they had been part of it.
Staring out through the back of the lorry at the huge pall of smoke hanging over Berlin, Paul wondered how anyone could still believe in victory.
Their new position was only about three kilometres away, but forcing their way through the oncoming tide of refugees took almost two hours. Paul saw a mix of emotions in the passing faces – faint hope, pity tinged with resentment, even a hint of the old respect – but the commonest look was of incomprehension. It was the one he had seen in Gerhart's mother's eyes, the one that couldn't fathom how anyone might still believe there was anything to fight for.
At the spot where their road passed under the orbital autobahn a large hoarding carried the increasingly ubiquitous 'Berlin Remains German!' slogan, and some joker had added the words 'for one more week' in what looked like large slatherings of gun grease.
No defensive positions had been prepared across the isthmus which divided the lakes, and the next two hours were spent digging themselves in. There were just over a hundred of them, Paul reckoned, enough to hold the position for a few hours, assuming the promised artillery support turned up. If it didn't.. well, Ivan would just plough right on through them.
The two Hitlerjugend in the neighbouring foxhole were still talking about the wonder weapons. Both were certain of their existence, but one seemed less than certain of their imminent arrival. Werner, by contrast, was digging in silence. He was strong for a fourteen-year-old, Paul thought. Another way in which he had grown up too fast.
Russell was woken by the sirens, and for one all-too-brief moment thought himself back in Effi's flat. It was only nine o'clock, and the bed seemed as damp as it had when he first lay down. Sunshine was pouring in through the window, lighting the Hertha team portrait which Joachim had pinned to his wall. It was the 1938-39 team, Russell realised. The four of them – he, Paul, Thomas and Joachim – had gone to most of the home games that season.
Was Paul dead too? He felt his chest tighten at the thought of it.
He swung himself off the bed and went for a piss. Varennikov was still sleeping, one arm stretched out above his head with palm averted, as if he were warding off an attacker. The sheaf of papers from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute peeked out from under the pillow.
