Russell found it hard to believe that anyone would still be working in the goods station – what, after all, could still be coming in or out of Berlin? And it was only six-fifteen in the morning. But he followed the signs to the dispatch office, Varennikov meekly in tow. And lo and behold, there was a Reichsbahn official in neat uniform, two candles illuminating the ledger over which his pencil was poised. After their long night walk across the broken city, the normality seemed almost surreal.
The official looked up as they entered, surprise on his face. Customers of any kind had doubtless become rare, let alone men in foreign worker uniforms. ‘Yes?’ he asked, with a mixture of nervousness and truculence.
‘We’ve been sent by the Air Ministry,’ Russell began. ‘Our boss was told last week that a shipment of paintings had arrived from Königsberg, but he hasn’t received them. If you could check that they’re here, a vehicle can be sent to collect them. I was told to say that our boss has already spoken to Diehls.’
Comprehension dawned on the official’s face, causing Russell to breathe a sigh of relief. ‘We were told to expect you,’ the man continued, in a tone that suggested they hadn’t believed it. He came out from behind his desk and shook their hands. ‘Please, come with me.’
He took a flashlight from his desk, led them out through the back of the building and up a steep iron stairway to rail level. The rising sun had barely cleared the distant rooftops, but the smoke from explosions and fires had already turned it into a dull red ball. As they walked by a line of gutted carriages a shell landed a few hundred metres further down the viaduct, but their guide showed no reaction, ducking under a coupling and crossing a series of tracks to enter a huge and now roofless depot. Inside, the loading platforms were lined with what had once been wagons, and now looked more like firewood. Another shell exploded, closer this time, and Russell was glad to take another staircase down, their guide using his flashlight to illuminate the abandoned office complex beneath the tracks. More stairs and they were actually underground, which had to be an improvement. A corridor led past a row of offices still in apparent use, though none had human occupants. Two more turnings and they reached a half open door, which their guide put his head around. ‘The men for the Königsberg paintings,’ Russell heard him say.
There was the sound of a chair scraping back, and the door opened wide. ‘Come in, come in,’ their new host said, suppressed excitement in his voice. He was also wearing a Reichsbahn uniform, but was much younger than their guide. No more than thirty-five, Russell guessed.
‘I am Stefan Leissner,’ he said, offering his hand.
‘This is Ilya Varennikov,’ Russell said. ‘He doesn’t speak much German.’ He introduced himself. ‘We had two companions, but they were both killed.’
‘How?’ Leissner asked. He looked shocked, as if the notion that Soviet officials were mortal had not occurred to him.
‘In an air raid. They were unlucky.’
‘I am very sorry to hear that. But it is good to see you, comrades. I hope your mission has proved successful.’
‘I think so,’ Russell told him. He had no idea whether Leissner knew what their mission had been, and decided that he probably didn’t – the NKVD were not known for their chattiness. ‘And you are able to hide us until the Red Army arrives?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Leissner looked at his watch. ‘And I should take you to… your quarters, I suppose. I doubt whether many will come to work today, and those that do will mostly be comrades, but there is no point in taking risks. Come.’
Their original guide had been outside, presumably keeping watch. Dis-missed, he walked back down the corridor, his flashlight beam dancing in front of him, while Leissner turned the other way, and quickly brought them to the top of a spiral staircase. ‘You go down first,’ he said, shining his torch to show them the way. When they all reached the bottom, the flashlight revealed two pairs of still-shining tracks – they were in a small lobby adjoining a railway tunnel.
‘This is the S-Bahn line that runs under Potsdam Station and north towards Friedrichstrasse,’ Leissner explained, stepping down onto the sleepers. ‘There are no services on this line anymore, just a few hospital trains stabled beneath Budapester Strasse.’ He set off alongside the tracks, assuring them over his shoulder that the electricity was off. The tunnel soon widened, platforms appearing on either side. They climbed up, and turned in through a corridor opening. Tiny feet scurried away from the questing flashlight beam, awakening memories of the trenches which Russell would rather forget. Much to his relief, they went up another spiral staircase, emerging into a wide hall with a high ceiling. The old skylights had been covered over, but light still glinted round the edges.
A door led through to a large room, in which several camp beds had been set up. There was water, cans of food and a bucket toilet. For illumination there were candles, matches, and a railway headlamp. ‘It’s only for a few days,’ Leissner said apologetically. ‘And it should be safe. The only way in is the one we used – the old station entrance was bricked up before the First War. A comrade will stand guard in the tunnel – if you need anything, just go down and tell him. The army might decide to flood the tunnels by blowing up the roof where it passes under the Landwehrkanal, but that wouldn’t be a problem for you. Not for long, in any case. You wouldn’t be able to get out until the waters went down again, but you’d still be fine up here.’ He lit one of the candles, and dribbled wax onto to the tiled floor to hold it upright. ‘There,’ he said, ‘just like home.’ It was almost light when Paul awoke. He had spent most of the last twelve hours under their tank, catching up on the sleep he was owed. Ivan’s planes had provided several unwanted alarms, but his own thoughts hadn’t kept him awake, as had happened all too often of late. And he knew he had Uncle Thomas to thank for that. It was incredible how calming simple decency could be.
He slid himself out from under the Panzer IV’s exhaust, and found that a light rain was falling. He clambered up the low embankment behind which the tank was positioned, and walked across to the promenade parapet. The dark waters of the Dahme slid north towards their meeting with the Spree, and a host of shadows were streaming across the Lange Bridge. All German, all civilian, as far as he could tell.
Looking round for Werner, he saw the boy walking towards him with a mug of something hot, and had a sudden memory of ’Orace, the breakfast-serving batman in many of the Saint books. He had loved those stories.
‘There’s a canteen in Köllnischerplatz,’ Werner said, offering him the mug, ‘but they’ve run out of food.’
Church bells were ringing away to the west, faint and somehow sad. As they listened to the distant tolling, Paul realised that the sounds of war had died away. Could peace have been declared?
Seconds later, a machine-gun opened up in the distance, leaving him absurdly disappointed.
‘Do you believe in God?’ Werner asked.
‘No,’ Paul said. His parents had both been convinced atheists, and even his conservative stepfather had never willingly set foot in a church. In fact, though it pained him to admit it, one of the things his younger self had most admired about the Nazis was their contempt for Christianity.
‘Me neither,’ Werner said, with far too much assurance for a fourteen-year-old. ‘But my mother does,’ he added. ‘My granddad was a chaplain in the First War. He used to say that people always behave better when they believe in something more powerful than themselves, so long as that something isn’t other people.’
‘Words of wisdom,’ Paul murmured.
‘He was a clever man,’ Werner agreed. ‘He used to tell me bedtime stories when I was really young. He just made them up as he went along.’
The eastern sky was lightening, the drizzle easing off. There were men at work under the bridge, Paul noticed. Planting charges, no doubt. He was still watching them when a Soviet biplane flew low up the river, and opened fire with its machine-gun. Several men dropped into the sluggish current, but Paul couldn’t tell wh
ether they’d been hit or simply taken evasive action. At almost the same moment the first shells of an artillery barrage also hit the water, sending up huge plumes of spray. They had no doubt been aimed at the western bank, and he and Werner made the most of their luck, hurrying for cover while the Soviet gunners fine-tuned their range. They were still scrabbling their way under the tank when a shell landed on the stretch of promenade which they had just abandoned.
The barrage, which only lasted a few minutes, set a pattern for the rest of the day. Every half-hour or so the invisible Soviet guns would launch a few salvoes, then fall silent again. In between time, Soviet bombers and fighters would appear overhead, bombing and strafing whatever took their fancy. The only sign of the Luftwaffe was a sorry-looking convoy of ground personnel, who had been sent forward to the fighting front from their plane-less airfields.
The German tanks, guns and supporting infantry were well dug in, and there were, for once, few casualties. As far as Paul could tell, the German forces in and around Köpenick were strong enough to give Ivan at least a pause for thought. There were more than a dozen tanks, several of them Tigers, and upwards of twenty artillery pieces of varying modernity. If Paul’s tank was anything to go by, they were all likely to be low on fuel and shells, but Ivan couldn’t know that. And if he wanted to find out, he first had to cross a sizable river.
The bridge was finally blown in mid-afternoon, the centre section dropping into the river with a huge ‘whumpf’. It was neatly done, Paul thought – the Wehrmacht had certainly honed a few skills in its thousand-mile retreat. Russell’s watch told him it was almost seven o’clock – he had slept for nine hours. He didn’t regret it – he had needed the rest, and the middle of the day seemed far too dangerous a time to be wandering the streets. After dark seemed a much better bet, although Leissner might have other advice. Now he came to think about it, the Reichsbahn man might be reluctant to let him go. He would have to persuade Leissner that Varennikov was the one that mattered, the prize the Red Army would be hoping to collect.
He fumbled around for the matches and lit a candle. The Russian kept on snoring, which wasn’t surprising – he’d had even less sleep than Russell over the last few days. After Leissner had left them that morning, Varennikov had asked Russell over and over whether he thought they could trust the Reichsbahn official. Was there any reason they shouldn’t? Russell had asked him. There was, it turned out, only one. The man was a German.
Internationalism had not, it seemed, taken root in Soviet soil.
Feeling hungry, Russell drank some cold soup from one of the billy- cans. Its tastelessness was probably its primary virtue, but he certainly needed some sort of sustenance.
Taking the candle with him, he descended the spiral staircase. The flickering went ahead of him, and the lookout was already on his feet when Russell reached the platform. Leissner was either very efficient or very determined not to lose his prize. Or both. He probably had hopes of an important post in a new communist 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 Köpenick. 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 wa
s 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 Neukölln 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.
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