All of which pleased her no end. Even Frau Beckmann would struggle to find this film convincing.
When his number 30 tram eventually hove into view, Russell noticed with some dismay that it was one of the older vehicles. More and more of these were being brought back from the breakers' yards to replace modern relatives now gathering rust in the depot for want of spare parts or a mechanic to fit them. They were certainly more beautiful - this one had exquisite porcelain lamps attached to its inner sides - but that was all that could be said for them. They were almost as slow as walking, and their lack of springs ensured that every bump in the track was experienced to the full. This particular one was packed, and despite the cold weather smelt as rank as yesterday's U-Bahn.
The passengers thinned out a bit on Tauenzien Strasse, and quite a lot more on Potsdamer Strasse, but there were still a lot standing when an obviously pregnant woman got on at Potsdamer Platz, the yellow star conspicuously sewn across the left breast of her rather threadbare coat. Russell watched the expressions of his fellow passengers, wishing he had a seat to give up. Many simply turned their heads, and most of those that didn't looked angry, as if they'd been insulted or threatened in some way. But not all. Much to Russell's surprise, a young German in an army uniform abruptly got to his feet and offered the Jewish woman his seat.
She tried to refuse, but he was having none of it, and, with a quick smile of gratitude, the woman sat herself down. The soldier then looked round at his fellow passengers, daring any of them to raise a protest. None did, at least verbally, leaving Russell to wonder what would happen if the woman's champion got off before she did. In that event, he decided, he would pick up the torch. He hadn't hit anyone in several years, but there was something about living in Hitler's Germany which cried out for that sort of release on a fairly regular basis.
In the event, his services were not required; both he and the woman got off at the Brandenburg Gate, she heading in the direction of the Reichstag, he down Unter den Linden, past the barely-functioning American Consulate and Goebbels' 'fumigated' Soviet Embassy, towards Kranzler's and what passed these days for a morning coffee. He bought a Volkischer Beobachter from the kiosk outside, took a window seat in the sparsely populated restaurant, and got out the appropriate pink, yellow and white ration sheets for his ersatz coffee, watered-down milk and real sugar. One of the ancient waiters eventually noticed him, lumbered over, and laboriously cut off the requisite stamps with the small pair of scissors which hung like a fob watch from the front of his waistcoat.
War speeded up the process of dying, Russell thought, but tended to slow down everything else.
He examined the front page of the Beobachter, and the black-rimmed photograph of Generaloberst Ernst Udet that filled most of it. Udet, the head of the Reich Air Ministry's development wing, had been killed the previous day while test-piloting a new German fighter.
Russell had seen the Great War ace's flying show back in the 1920s, and Udet had never struck him as a real Nazi, just one of those people who are supremely gifted in one narrow sphere, and never apply much thought to anything else. The job of creating a new Luftwaffe would have appealed to him, but he wouldn't have worried too much about how or why it might be used. According to German friends, Udet had been more responsible than anyone for the highly successful Stuka dive bomber, and Russell hardly felt inclined to mourn his passing. Paul would though, and Russell could see why. Only the U-boat aces could compare with the fighter pilots when it came to the sort of lone wolf heroics that young boys of all ages loved to celebrate.
A state funeral was planned for the coming Saturday. And unless he was very much mistaken, Paul would want to go.
Russell went through the rest of the paper, secure in the knowledge that all the other papers would be carrying the same stories. Some, like the Frankfurter Zeitung, would be better written, others, like the Deutsche Allegemeine Zeitung, would be tailored to a particular class sensibility, but the political and military facts would not vary. What one paper said, they all said, and all were equally disbelieved. The German people had finally woken up to the fact that the claimed tally of Russian prisoners now exceeded the stated number of Russians in uniform, all of which chimed rather badly with the sense that those same Russians were fighting the German army to a virtual standstill. Each week another pincer movement was given the honour of being the most gigantic of all time, until it seemed as if the whole wide East was barely large enough to accommodate another battle. But still the enemy fought on.
And yet, despite themselves, the German newspapers did offer their readers a mirror to the real situation. It was merely a matter of learning to read between the lines. Over recent weeks, for example, there had been many articles stressing the inherent difficulties of the war in the East: the inhuman strength of the primitive Russian soldier, the extremes of climate and conditions. Prepare yourself for possible setbacks, the subtext read, we may have bitten off more than we can chew.
Russell devoutly hoped so. He drank the last of his coffee with a suitable grimace, and got up to leave. He had twenty minutes to reach the Foreign Ministry, which hosted the first of the two daily press conferences, beginning at noon. The second, which was held at the Propaganda Ministry, began five hours later.
Outside the sun was still shining, but the chill easterly wind was funnelling down the Unter den Linden with some force. He turned into it, thinking to check out the window of the closed American Express office on Charlottenstrasse, which someone had told Effi about. The reported poster was still in pride of place, inviting passers-by to 'Visit Medieval Germany.' Either the authorities had missed the joke, or they were too busy trying to catch people listening to the BBC.
Russell laughed, and received an admonitory glance from a passing soldier. Further down the street he encountered two women dressed in black, with five sombre-looking children in tow. Their soldiers wouldn't be coming back.
At the Foreign Office on Wilhelmstrasse he climbed the two flights of bare steps to the Bismarck Room, took one of the remaining seats at the long conference table and nodded greetings to several of his colleagues. As ever, a pristine writing pad sat waiting on the green felt, a sight which never ceased to please Russell, knowing as he did where the pads actually came from. They were manufactured at the Schade printing works in Treptow, a business owned and run by his friend and former brother-in-law Thomas, and mostly staffed by Jews.
The Berlin Congress had been held in this room in 1878, and the furnishings seemed suitably Bismarckian, with dark green curtains, wood-panelled walls and more Prussian eagles than Goering had paintings. An enormous and very up-to-date globe sat on one side of the room; a large map of the western Soviet Union was pinned to a display stand on the other. The arrows seemed perilously close to Moscow, but that had been the case for several weeks now.
At noon precisely, Braun von Stumm strode in through the far doors and took the presiding seat at the centre of the table. A diplomat of the old pre-Nazi school, he was much the more boring of the two principal spokesmen. His superior Dr Paul Schmidt - young, fat, rude and surprisingly sharp for a Nazi - was more entertaining but even less popular. He tended to save himself for the good news.
The first question of the day was the usual plant, dreamt up by the Germans and asked by one of their allies, in this case a Finn. Would the German Government like to comment on the American plan to ship large numbers of long-range heavy bombers to the Philippines, from which they could reach Japan? The German Government, it became clear, would like to comment at length, on this and every other aggressive move which the warmonger Roosevelt was making these days. The American journalists doodled on their pads, and Russell noticed a particularly fine caricature of von Stumm taking shape under the scurrying pencil of the Chicago Times correspondent.
As usual the spokesman sounded as if he was speaking by rote, and his languid diatribe eventually petered out, allowing a Hungarian correspondent to ask an equally spurious question about British brutality in
Iraq. This elicited another long answer, moving the doodlers onto the second or third page of their pads, and twenty minutes had passed before a neutral correspondent got a word in.
Would Herr von Stumm like to comment on foreign reports of Wehrmacht difficulties around Tula and Tikhvin? one of the Swedes asked.
The rings around both Moscow and Leningrad were tightening daily, von Stumm announced, then promptly shifted the discussion a few hundred kilometres to the south. The battle for the Crimean capital of Sevastopol was entering its final phase, he said, with the German 11th Army now launching ceaseless attacks on the Russian defences that surrounded the beleaguered city.
More dutiful questions followed from the Italian and Croatian correspondents, and time was almost up when von Stumm finally allowed an American question. Bradley Emmering of the Los Angeles Chronicle was the lucky man. Would the spokesman like to comment on the BBC's claim that a German freighter flying an American flag had been seized in mid-Atlantic by the US Navy?
No, von Stumm said, he would not. The BBC, after all, was hardly a reliable source. 'And that, gentleman,' he said, getting to his feet, 'will be all.'
It wasn't. 'Would the spokesman like to comment on the widespread rumour that Generaloberst Udet committed suicide?' the Washington Times's Ralph Morrison asked in his piercing nasal drawl.
Von Stumm seemed struck dumb by the impudence of the question, but one of his aides swiftly leapt into the breach. 'Such a question shows a deplorable lack of respect,' he snapped. Von Stumm paused, as if about to add something, but clearly thought better of the idea and stumped out.
The Americans grinned at each other, as if they'd just won a major victory.
Russell found Morrison on the pavement outside, lighting one of his trademark Pall Malls. 'How did he do it?' Russell asked.
Morrison looked around to make sure that no one was listening - the 'Berlin glance' as it was called these days. 'My source in the Air Ministry says he shot himself.'
'Why?'
'Not so clear. My source says it was over a woman, but he's also been telling me for months that Goering and Milch have been using Udet as a scapegoat for all the Luftwaffe's problems.'
'Sounds right.'
Morrison shrugged. 'If I find out anything for certain, I'll pass the story on to Simonsen. He should be able to place it on his next trip back to Stockholm. There's no way they'd let any of us get away with as much as a hint, not with a full state funeral on the way.'
'True.' Russell checked his watch. He was due to meet Dallin in an hour, which left him time to eat a bowl of soup at the Adlon before walking to their usual meeting place in the Tiergarten. The soup proved better than he expected - the Adlon still managed to produce a decent meal, especially for its old habitues - and the sun had emerged once more as he ventured across Pariser Platz, though the Brandenburg Gate and onto the camouflaged Chaussee, or the East-West Axis as it was now called. Huge nets interlaced with lumps of foliage were suspended above the arrow-straight boulevard, which would otherwise have offered the perfect direction-finder for anyone seeking to bomb the government district.
Russell headed out across the still-frosty grass in the general direction of the Rose Garden. No one seemed to be following him, but it wouldn't matter if they were - the Germans were already aware of his meetings with the intelligence man from the American Consulate. Indeed, they were probably under the impression that they had set the whole business up.
In the summer of 1939, Reinhard Heydrich's foreign intelligence organisation, the Sicherheitsdienst or SD, had seized on Russell's known contacts with the Soviet NKVD and blackmailed him, or so they believed, into working for them. But when war broke out his Anglo-American parentage made him more relevant to the Abwehr, the Wehrmacht intelligence service that was run by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, and the SD had graciously handed him over. It had taken the Abwehr several months to claim the gift - as Russell later found out, Canaris had been knocked for six by the depravity of German behaviour in Poland - and when they did finally pull him on board, his duties proved much lighter than expected. Russell had considered refusing, if only to test the continuing potency of the original SD threats to Effi and his family; but if all the Abwehr wanted was help translating English and American newspaper articles, it didn't seem worth the risk. And there was always the chance that working for Canaris might provide him with some protection against Heydrich.
This happy arrangement had continued through the first winter of the war, and the calamitous spring and early summer of 1940.
Throughout that period Russell had also been paying off another debt. Although his mother was American, he had grown up in England and felt essentially English. He was a British national, with a passport to prove it. As Hitler's aggressive intentions became clearer, and the possibility of an Anglo-German war grew ever more likely, he had faced the certainty of deportation and years of separation from Paul, Effi and everyone else he cared for. In March 1939 the Americans had offered him a deal - an American passport, which would allow him to remain in Germany, in exchange for a little low-level intelligence work, contacting possible opponents of the Nazis in the fast-expanding Reich. He had accepted their offer, and safely managed a few such contacts before the war broke out. Over the next year, much to Russell's relief, the Americans had disappeared into their shells, and made no demands that he couldn't ignore or endlessly defer. But in the autumn of 1940, with France kaput and England on the ropes, they had started pressing him again. Rather than seek out the contacts they prescribed, any of whom might turn him in to the Gestapo, Russell had come up with a suggestion of his own - could he not act as a safe, neutral and deniable channel between the Americans and the Admiral's Abwehr, passing on information which each had an interest in the other knowing? Russell knew that the Abwehr had created such links with the British through Switzerland - why not operate a similar arrangement with the American Consulate here in Berlin.
He secured a meeting with the Canaris's deputy General Oster, and finally a meeting with Canaris himself. The Admiral had liked the idea, and so had the Americans. Since November 1940, Russell had been carrying messages between them, and feeling very pleased with himself. The work was safe in itself, and more to the point, gave the Abwehr and the Americans respectively good reason to keep him out of Heydrich's clutches and spare him any riskier assignments.
It seemed too good to be true, but his luck continued to hold. After Hitler's invasion of Russia, Russell had braced himself for new approaches from the SD and the Soviets, but neither had yet made contact. The latter, he assumed, would find it difficult to reach him, and the former had apparently lost track of his existence. He only hoped that yesterday's visit to Zembski's studio hadn't started bells ringing in Heydrich's belfry on Wilhelmstrasse.
He had almost reached the Rose Garden, with more than ten minutes to spare. He walked on around it, in the vague direction of the huge concrete flak tower which loomed over the distant zoo. Despite the sunshine the Tiergarten was virtually empty; there were two women pushing prams and several men in uniform enjoying a kick-about, along with the usual army of darting squirrels. Scott Dallin was nowhere to be seen, which probably meant that he was already sequestered in the Rose Garden.
The American was sitting on one of the benches, hands in pockets and overcoat collar turned up, a hat concealing most of his golden-brown hair. 'Hi,' he said. 'Jesus, it's cold.' Russell sat down beside him.
Dallin was another tall Californian, but any resemblance to Gerhard Strohm ended there. If the latter looked like a refugee from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, the former might have stepped out of a Scott Fitzgerald novel. He always looked well turned-out, even when most of his Consulate colleagues had been reduced to scarecrows by the clothing shortage - though he did have a tendency to wear the sort of colours that suited sunny California rather better than corpse-grey Berlin.
Money was the obvious reason. Dallin had grown up in Santa Barbara the son of a water tycoon, so one of Russe
ll's friends at the Consulate had told him. He had attended an Ivy League college in the East, and encountered no apparent problems in securing a plum post in the diplomatic service. When he had arrived in Berlin a year or so ago it had been his first trip out of America, and it had showed. Dallin wasn't stupid, but he knew very little and didn't seem sufficiently aware of that fact. His obvious doubts about Russell probably stemmed from reading the official file and discovering his communist past. A man like Dallin would have no idea how anyone good or intelligent could become a communist, and would therefore assume that the man in question was either a knave or a fool. And since Russell was obviously not a fool, the odds on his being a knave of some sort had to be high.
'Imagine how cold it's getting outside Moscow,' Russell said.
'I guess that's something,' Dallin agreed. 'But let's get this over with. What's the word from the Admiral?'
'He has some figures for you,' Russell said, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and passing it over. 'Oil and manpower. Oil and manpower shortages, to be precise.'
Dallin studied the figures, and let out a low whistle. 'These don't look so good for Adolf.'
'If they're true, they're not.'
'You think they're faked? An under-estimate, I suppose.'
Russell shrugged. 'I've no way of knowing, but my guess is not.'
'So why pass them on? It's an admission of weakness.'
'Ah. The second half of the message is that Stalin is considering a separate peace. Provided Moscow doesn't fall, that is - Uncle Joe will only negotiate from a position of strength.'
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