Silesian Station (2008)

by David Downing

  It was getting dark by the time he reached the West End, and the blacked-out Ku'damm looked like a vast railway tunnel. This time he found Effi stitching together pieces of cloth. 'I could only get one uniform,' she said. 'I couldn't think of a good reason for needing two' she added in explanation.

  'What reason did you give for the one?'

  'That my boyfriend likes playing doctors and nurses.'

  Russell's first visit on Tuesday was to the American Embassy. The official letter recommending departure from Germany seemed an ideal excuse in the event that one should prove necessary, and he felt it wise to explain his lack of progress in contacting the men on Washington's list. This was no time to lose his American passport.

  A harassed-looking Michael Brown listened to his excuses - that reporting the international crisis was both dictating his whereabouts and taking up all of his time - and blithely told him not to worry. 'Probably better to get this present business out of the way,' he said, presumably alluding to Poland. 'Wait for things to settle down again.'

  Russell wholeheartedly agreed.

  Dropping in at the Adlon, he found what remained of the foreign press corps twiddling its collective thumbs. The 'present business' showed no signs of resolution, but none of escalation either. The diplomatic channels between England, France, Poland and Germany were doubtless buzzing with activity, but none of the relevant governments were giving anything away. Rumour had it that the Germans had insisted on a Polish plenipotentiary coming to Berlin, and that England and France had pressed the Poles to send one. The Poles, mindful that a Czech President answering a similar summons had almost been bullied into a heart attack, were not racing to comply.

  All of which was thoroughly irritating for the journalists. 'No-shows,' as one of the Americans pithily exclaimed, were 'no-news'.

  Russell hung around until mid-afternoon, then went to meet Wilhelm Isendahl in the Alexanderplatz Station buffet. The young man was already there, gazing round at his fellow customers with a superior smile. As a closet Jew in a judenfrei establishment he could be forgiven, Russell thought.

  They brought each other up to date with their respective preparations. Everything was going smoothly, which seemed far too good to be true. Wilhelm went off with Effi's paper-wrapped needlework clasped under one arm and Russell sat with a second cup of coffee, running another mental dress rehearsal in search of potential flaws. He found none, and wondered why that didn't seem more reassuring.

  Driving south to Hallesches Tor he ate an early supper at his usual bar, listening to the U-bahn trains clattering their way in and out of the station above. At around eight he drew up in the Neuenburger Strasse courtyard and cut the engine. The sound of several women, all seemingly talking and laughing at once, filled the silence. Frau Heidegger's weekly skat night with her fellow-portierfrauen was well underway.

  Her doors were open as usual. He walked through, causing all four women to look up. Frau Heidegger's smile of welcome was not echoed by her skat partners, who offered expressions ranging from irritation to outright hostility. He had, he guessed, committed two major sins - he had interrupted their game and been born English.

  'Don't get up,' he reassured a struggling Frau Heidegger. 'I just wanted to leave a message for Beiersdorfer - I won't be here on Wednesday.'

  'I'll tell him, Herr Russell.'

  'Please, go on with your game,' Russell told the assembled company with a wide smile. He watched for a moment, waited until they were concentrating on their cards, and slowly backed away. As he passed through Frau Heidegger's open front door he slipped the ring of keys off its hook.

  He walked up to his own apartment, found an old sweater to wrap Beiers-dorfer's ARP helmet in, and came back down to the first floor landing. He stood outside the door for a few seconds, hearing nothing within. Should he knock to make absolutely sure the man was out? No, he decided - it was better to take a slight risk than make a telling noise. The keys were neatly labelled with their apartment numbers and there was no sound of anyone on the stairs. He let himself in.

  The apartment was in utter darkness - Beiersdorfer had rigged up black-out curtains that Dracula would have found comforting. Russell found the light switch and began looking for the man's helmet and arm-band. He tried the bedroom first, seduced by the idea of Beiersdorfer trying them on at his dressing table mirror, but eventually found them in a less fanciful place, in the box seat by the front door.

  He had just removed the items when footsteps sounded on the stairs. He reached for the light, then realized that turning it off would look more suspicious than leaving it on. It sounded like two people, which probably meant Dagmar and Siggi, or Dagmar and whoever the other one was. Her familiar giggle came from almost outside the door, confirming his guess. The sound of feet receded upwards.

  Russell wrapped the helmet in the sweater and stood there, ear pressed against the wood, until he heard the reassuring click of Dagmar's latch. He re-locked the door, took his booty out to the car, and went back in to return the keys. A sudden peel of laughter from inside Frau Heidegger's flat made him jump, but the skat players were far too absorbed in their entertainment to notice his hand reach across the necessary inches and replace the borrowed ring on its hook.

  Back in the car, giving his heart time to slow down, he realized he should have risked taking the keys without advertising his presence to Frau Heidegger. Because what would do Beiersdorfer do when he found his stuff was missing?

  Russell groaned as he realized he had made a second mistake. By locking the door when he left he'd as much as signalled that it was an inside job. He should have broken the lock somehow. Beiersdorfer would go straight to Frau Heidegger, the only other source of a key. Would she put two and two together? Perhaps. And if she did, would she say anything? She did loathe the man.

  Should he go back in? Or would that be a third mistake? He decided it might. With any luck, Beiersdorfer wouldn't realize his stuff was missing until the ARP exercise started, and then he'd too busy to make trouble for the rest of the evening and night. And by mid-morning his precious things would be at the bottom of a canal. He could huff and puff all he wanted.

  Russell headed back to the Adlon for his final felony of the night. Leaving the Hanomag on Unter den Linden, he slipped around the side of the hotel and into the dimly-lit parking lot at its rear. The cars left in Slaney's care were lined up along the far wall, each bearing Embassy stickers in the corners of their windscreens. Crouched out of sight behind them, Russell carefully un-screwed four of the number plates.

  Wednesday passed slowly, for both Russell and the Fuhrer. The latter was supposedly waiting for a Polish plenipotentiary to bully, but the cynics at the Adlon had him hoping that none would show up. 'The war's a done deal,' Slaney said. 'The bastard's just waiting for a decent excuse.'

  Russell had more immediate worries. Who and what were they going to find in the house on Eisenacher Strasse, always assuming that they got there without being stopped and arrested for impersonating an ARP unit? Would the uniforms and vehicles be convincing? Would the latter be reliable? Would someone make a mistake, say the wrong thing, panic? Would he? By mid-afternoon, when the sirens announced the beginning of the exercise, his mental list of things that might go wrong would have covered several sheets of paper.

  How, he asked himself, had he involved Effi in something so dangerous?

  She seemed oblivious to the possibility of failure, and was happily applying the first touches of her make-up when he set off, soon after four, for Hunder's garage in Wedding. He was half expecting to get caught in an imaginary air-raid, and have to spend time in a shelter, but his luck held. He had contrived to leave the Schade Printing Works lorry in a distant corner of Hunder's yard, and now parked the Hanomag in front, masking the lorry from anyone watching in the garage office. Suitably screened, he removed the lorry's number plates and screwed on those he had taken from the Adlon parking lot. If anyone compared them they would be in for a surprise, but it didn't seem likel
y.

  He fixed slitted pieces of black cloth to the lorry's headlights, drove it out of its corner, and put the Hanomag in its place. Hunder had promised to leave the gates unpadlocked that night, but Russell thought it worth double-checking. 'Yes, yes,' the garage-owner confirmed, looking up briefly from what looked like accounts.

  Russell drove the lorry back towards the Ku'damm, leaving it outside one of the old Jewish workshops near the Savigny Platz Stadtbahn station. The business had been 'aryanised' in 1938, and there was a fair chance that passers-by would assume the lorry was there on official business. As he walked the few hundred metres to Effi's flat the sirens began to sound. Just like last time, he thought - a first imaginary raid at around six. With any luck the second would also follow the previous pattern, and begin a couple of hours after dark.

  He and Effi ignored the call to the nearby shelter, and judging by the lack of activity in their rapidly darkening street so did most of their neighbours.

  Effi , in any case, would have surprised a few of them. She had put on ten years while Russell was out, her eyes and mouth slightly lined, her tightly-bound hair suffused with grey. She was also, as she showed on standing, noticeably plumper. 'Padding,' she explained, pressing down on the nurse's uniform.

  She ordered Russell onto the dressing table stool.

  It took her half an hour to recreate 'Uncle Fritz', this time with a slightly more military moustache. Examining himself in the mirror, complete with overalls, armband and helmet, Russell had to admit he looked different. 'I would recognize you,' Effi said, standing beside him, 'and Paul probably would. But no one else. Especially in the dark.'

  The all-clear sounded just before seven-thirty. It was virtually dark now, and with the black-out regulations strictly in force it was hard to make out the buildings on the other side of the street. Earlier that day Russell had checked the weather and moon for the coming night - a clear sky was expected, with a quarter-moon rising soon after midnight. By that time, he hoped, everyone concerned would be safe in bed.

  The two of them drank some warmed-up soup, and watched the clock tick slowly by. Eight-thirty - the Isendahls and their two friends should be setting out from Friedrichshain. Eight forty-five, and it was time for them to leave. Effi put a summer coat over the nurse's uniform, and Russell packed his helmet and armband in an old carpet bag. They walked downstairs and out into the night.

  It really was dark, much darker, Russell thought, than during the previous exercise, and by the time they found the lorry he was beginning to wonder if they would ever find anything else. But the white-painted kerbs and the slitted beams of light did make a difference, and once they reached the Ku'damm it became clear that visibility was better on the bigger streets. All those cracks of lights added up, Russell guessed. He could think of no other reason.

  It took them about ten minutes to reach their destination, a stretch of road by the Landwehrkanal, close to the Lichtenstein Bridge which connected the Zoo and the Tiergarten. Russell drove slowly past the vehicle that was already parked there, and made out the cross on its side.

  He u-turned the lorry at the intersection with Rauch-Strasse and pulled up behind the fake ambulance. As he climbed down there was a loud screech from inside the Zoo.

  'The animals don't like the darkness,' Wilhelm said, materialising out of it. He had managed to get himself an armband, and so, Russell discovered, had Max and Erich. And in this light Freya's uniform looked very convincing. After introducing Effi to the others as Magda, Russell said as much.

  'We fooled one policeman already,' Wilhelm said. 'He came past about ten minutes ago, and wanted to know what we were doing here. I told him we were waiting for our commander, that he'd brought his son on the first call-out and was dropping him off at home between air raids. He believed me, thank God. I didn't want to shoot him.'

  'You have a gun?'

  'Of course.'

  Russell didn't know what to say. He could hardly blame the man, but... 'Only in the last resort,' he insisted.

  'Of course.'

  Russell handed him the two spare number plates and a screwdriver, and held the torch as Wilhelm swapped them with the ones on the van. Once that was done, he addressed the assembled company, feeling like a gang-leader in a bad Hollywood film. 'All right. So we know what we're doing. We set off when the next raid begins, or at eleven if it still hasn't started. Max and Erich will come with me, Magda will travel in the ambulance with Wilhelm and Freya. No second names - the less we know about each other the better.'

  They had less time to wait than Russell expected. Shortly before ten o'clock the roar of aeroplane engines brought forth the sirens, and these in their turn triggered a cacophony of screams, mewls and roars from the occupants of the neighbouring Zoo. Seconds later the flash of anti-aircraft fire from a nearby roof caused even more consternation, and Russell was convinced he heard the trumpeting of an elephant. As another volley of skybound blanks threw spasms of light across the road and canal they moved off in convoy, the lorry leading the way.

  It was little more than a kilometre to the top end of Eisenacher Strasse, but the lack of lighting restricted their pace to a near crawl, and Russell had to circle Lutzow-Platz twice before he found the right exit. Once on Eisenacher Strasse it was a matter of judging distance, and trying to recognize familiar landmarks. Russell was beginning to worry that he had come too far when he spotted the sawtooth roof of the bookbinding factory.

  He pulled up alongside the row of houses opposite and climbed down, just as a flight of planes flew noisily over. In the silence that followed faint voices and music were audible, and as his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness he saw cracks of light where windows must be. The slitted beam of his torch revealed the number of the building in front of him. It was 403.

  There was no noise from within, which seemed like good news. He walked round the corner of the building and found an empty space where the cars had stood. That was good news.

  The others had gathered on the pavement, and the combined light of their muted torches created a pocket of half-light. A collective halo, Russell thought. How fitting.

  He walked up the steps to the front door and used the brass door-knocker, loud enough, or so he hoped, to bring a reaction without rousing the curiosity of the whole street.

  No one answered.

  He banged again, louder this time. Beside him, Effi looked anxious.

  This time there was a response. Footsteps inside, the click of a bolt being drawn back, a spillage of light as the door edged open.

  Russell shoved his way through, causing a cry of consternation from within. Effi and Wilhelm followed. 'Air Raid Protection,' Russell barked at the man who was struggling back to his feet. 'This house has been bombed. I want everybody out. Now.'

  'That's not possible,' the man said, but there was a welcome lack of certainty in his tone. Thin, balding and bespectacled, he was wearing a bizarre mixture of clothes, a civilian shirt and tie with police trousers and boots. 'You do know that this is SS property?' he almost pleaded.

  'I don't care whose it is,' Russell told him. 'Targets are chosen at random, and it's a criminal offence to obstruct an Air Raid Protection unit in the course of its duties. Now, what is your name?

  It was Sternkopf.

  'Well, Herr Sternkopf, how many people are there in this house?'

  'Four. Five including me.'

  'How many women?'

  'Four.'

  Russell breathed an inner sigh of relief. 'Get the other lads,' he told Wilhelm. They had decided beforehand that the two of them would deal with any outside interference while Max and Erich searched the house.

  'I must telephone Standartenfuhrer Grundel,' Sternkopf was saying.

  Russell rounded on him. 'Herr Sternkopf, this is a serious exercise. If British bombers do attack Berlin there'll be no time to make telephone calls. Now please, this way.'

  Sternkopf hesitated, but only for a second, as Russell escorted him outside. Max and Erich, who
passed them on the steps, had already laid out the half-dozen stretchers which Wilhelm had borrowed from one of the few remaining Jewish clinics in Friedrichshain.

  'Lie down on one of these,' Russell ordered. Sternkopf did so, and Freya hung a home-made placard around his neck that bore the words 'severe head injury'. She then squeezed some of the fake blood that Effi had borrowed from the studio onto the side of his head. 'It has to be realistic,' Russell told him sternly. 'Please moan as if you are in real pain.'

  The front door opened again, spilling light across the pavement, and Russell saw Sternkopf staring at him, as if keen to remember what he looked like. 'Let's get him in the ambulance,' he told Wilhelm. 'It'll make it harder for him to remember our faces,' he added in a whisper.

  They lifted him in, reminded him to moan, and shut the ambulance door. On the pavement, two young women were being told to lie down on stretchers. As far as Russell could make out in the gloom, both were young, dark and quite probably Jewish, but neither matched his picture of Miriam Rosenfeld. Both were wide-eyed with fright, and Effi was kneeling beside them, asking their names and quietly explaining that they were involved in an ARP exercise. She and Freya had insisted that telling the girls what was really happening would be more likely to panic than reassure them.

  The street remained empty, the darkness occasionally breached by the distant flash of anti-aircraft batteries. Wilhelm's friends reappeared with another dark-haired girl. This one looked about fifteen. She clung to Erich with one hand, and held the neckline of her nightdress up against her throat with the other. 'This is Rachel,' Max said. 'We can't find anyone else.'

  'The man said four,' Russell reminded him. He was damned if he was going to come this far and not find Miriam.

  'Let me ask Ursel and Inge,' Effi said, and hurried across to the two girls on their stretchers. She returned a few moments later. Miriam's room was on the second floor, at the back.