Germany.
'I need to talk to Comrade Leissner,' Russell said.
The man thought about that for several moments. 'Wait here,' he said eventually, and disappeared up the tunnel.
He returned five minutes later. 'You can go up to his office. You remember the way?'
Russell did.
Leissner was waiting at the top of the stairs. He ushered Russell into the office, and carefully closed the door behind them. 'Just habit,' he explained, seeing Russell's face. 'Only a handful of people came in today, and they've all gone home. For the duration, I expect. It can't be long now,' he added with a broad smile. 'It really is over.'
Not quite, Russell thought, but he didn't say so. He had only known this particular comrade for a few hours, but his expectations of the Soviets were likely to be somewhat overblown. Leissner had probably joined the KPD in the late 1920s when he was still a teenager, and spent the Nazi years concealing his true allegiance. His looks would have helped – blonde hair, blue eyes and a chiselled face were never a handicap in Nazi Germany – but living a double life for that length of time could hardly have been easy, and he would certainly have become adept at deception.
But, by the same token, a life spent down the enemy's throat provided one with few opportunities to learn about one's friends. For men like Leissner, the Soviet Union would have been like a long-lost father, a vessel to fill with uncritical love.
'How can I help you?' the German asked.
'I have to find someone, and I'm hoping you can help me,' Russell began.
'Who?' Leissner asked.
'My wife,' Russell said simply, ignoring the detail of their never marrying. 'When I left three years ago, she stayed. I'm hoping she might still be living in the same place, and I need to know the safest way to get there.' Leissner had lost his smile. 'I don't think that would be wise. The Red Army will be here in a few days…'
'I want to reach her before… before the war does,' Russell said diplomatically.
Leissner took a deep breath. 'I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't allow you to leave. What if you were caught by the Gestapo, and they tortured you? You would tell them where Varennikov was. I don't say this to impugn your bravery of course.'
'But this is my wife,' Russell pleaded.
'I understand. But you must understand – I must put the interests of the Party above those of a single individual. In the historical scheme of things, one person can never assume that sort of importance.'
'I agree completely,' Russell lied. 'But this is not just a personal matter. My wife has been working undercover in Berlin since 1941, and the leadership in Moscow wishes her to survive these last days of the war. My orders,' he went on, with slightly greater honesty, 'were to bring Varennikov to you, and then do what I could to find her.'
'Can you prove that?' Leissner asked.
'Of course,' Russell said, pulling from his pocket Nikoladze's letter of introduction to the Red Army. If Leissner could read Russian he was sunk, but he couldn't think of anything better.
Leissner stared at the paper. He couldn't read it, Russell realised, but he wasn't going to admit it. 'All right,' he said at last. 'Where do you hope to find your wife?'
'The last place she lived was in Wedding. On Prinz Eugen Strasse. How would I get there? Is the U-Bahn still running?'
'It was yesterday, at least as far as Stettin Station. Your best bet would be to walk through the tunnels below here as far as Friedrichstrasse, then catch a U-Bahn if there is one, walk if there isn't. But I don't know how far south the front line has moved. The Red Army was still north of the Ringbahn this morning, but…' He shrugged.
'It'll be obvious enough on the ground,' Russell reassured him. Rather too obvious, if he was unlucky.
'But you can't go through the tunnels dressed like that,' Leissner insisted. 'The SS are all over the place, and they won't take kindly to a foreign worker wandering around on his own. I'll get you a Reichsbahn uniform from somewhere. I'll send it down to you before morning.'
'Would dawn be the best time to go? Are there any times of day when the shelling is less intense?'
'No, it is more or less constant,' Leissner told him. He seemed proud of the fact.
The pieces of the broken bridge had barely settled on the bed of the Dahme when the first Soviet tanks appeared on the river's eastern bank, drawing yells of derision and an almost nostalgic display of firepower from the German side. It seemed too good to last, and it was. As darkness fell, signs of battle lit the northern and southern horizons, and less than an hour had passed when news of a Soviet crossing a few kilometres to the south filtered through the few barely coordinated units defending Kopenick. No order was issued by higher authority for the abandonment of the position, but only a few diehards doubted that such a move was necessary, and soon a full withdrawal was underway.
A gibbous moon was already high in the sky, and their driver had few problems manoeuvring the Panzer IV across the wide stretch of heath that lay to the west of the river. At first their intention was to follow the line of the Spree, but numerous battles were clearly raging on the eastern bank, and it seemed more prudent to drive west, through Johannisthal, before turning north. Another stretch of moonlit heathland brought them to the Teltowkanal, and they headed north alongside it, looking for a bridge across. The first two had already been destroyed, but sappers were still fixing charges to the third as they drove up. Once across, they found themselves among the houses of Berlin's southern outskirts.
Soon after midnight they emerged from a side street onto the wide Rudower Strasse, which stretched north toward Neukolln and the city centre. It was full of people and vehicles, military and civilian, almost all heading north. The edges of the road were littered with those who would go no further – a dead man still seated at the wheel of his roofless car, a whimpering horse with only two legs. And every now and then a Soviet plane would dive out of the moon, and release a few souls more.
And there were other killers on the road. A gang of SS walked by in the opposite direction, their leader scanning each passing male. A few hundred metres up the road, Paul saw evidence of their work – two corpses swaying from makeshift gallows with pale anguished faces and snapped necks, each bearing the same roughly- scrawled message – 'We still have the power.' Looking ahead down the long wide road, Paul could see the taller buildings of the distant city centre silhouetted by the flash of explosions. The Soviet gunners had got there before them.
Their tank was crossing the Teltowkanal for the second time when its engine began coughing for lack of fuel, and the driver barely had time to get it off the bridge before it jerked to a halt. Not that it mattered anymore – the Teltowkanal, which arced its way across southern Berlin, was the latest defence line that had to be held at all costs, and strengthening the area around the bridge was now the priority. While the tank commander went off in search of a tow, his grenadiers were put to work digging emplacements in the cemetery across the road. It was gone two when they were finally allowed to stretch out on the wet ground and try to snatch some sleep.
It was a three-kilometre hike through the S-Bahn tunnels to Friedrichstrasse. As Russell walked northward many slivers of light – even beams in places – shone down through the cut-and-cover ceiling. This evidence of bomb and shell damage didn't inspire much confidence in the integrity of the tunnel, but the thin grey light allowed him to walk at his usual pace, and it only took about twenty minutes to reach the S-Bahn platforms underneath Potsdam Station. These were lined with people, most still sleeping, others staring listlessly into space. No one seemed surprised by his appearance in the borrowed Reichsbahn uniform, but he stopped to take a close look at the track in several places, as he had once seen a real official do. Up above, the Soviet artillery seemed unusually fierce, and one near-miss caused a shower of dust to descend from the ceiling. A few heads were anxiously raised, but most people hardly stirred.
The next section was the worst. As he moved north, the smell of human waste grew stronger in his nostrils; a little further on, and he was picking up the metallic odour of blood. The stationary hospital trains had only just become visible in the distance when he heard the first scream, and not long after that the lower, more persistent groaning of the wounded soldiers on board became increasingly audible. It sounded like Babelsberg's idea of a
