David Downing - Potsdam Station

She turned to look at him, and saw the uniform. 'What…?'

'Don't ask. I take it Jens isn't here?'

It wasn't really a question, but she answered with an almost defiant 'no'. She looked different, much thinner than the last time he'd seen her, and her copper hair was cut much shorter. She should have looked less attractive, but there was something in her eyes that hadn't been there before.

'Will he be back tonight?'

'I don't think so. What are you doing here?'

'Looking for Effi. I…'

'I don't know where she is,' Zarah said despairingly, as if she should know.

'You've seen her,' Russell said, hope rising inside him.

'Not for almost a month.'

'But you've seen her. She's alive.' He felt joy sweep through his head and heart.

'I hope so. She must have been arrested.'

That was an eventuality that Russell hadn't even considered. 'What for?' he asked stupidly.

Zarah smiled ruefully. 'I don't know that either. She has never told me anything about the life she's been living. I know she must be involved in some sort of resistance movement. With the communists, perhaps. I really don't know.'

'But what makes you think she's been arrested?'

'She didn't turn up at our usual time. And she hasn't been in contact since.'

'Yes, but what makes you think she's been arrested?' Russell repeated. 'She might have been hurt in an air raid. Or even killed,' he added, almost against his own will.

'No, I would know,' Zarah insisted. 'John, I know you always thought we were like chalk and cheese – and we are – but there's a bond… I can't explain it, but it's there. Sometimes I've wished it wasn't, and I know Effi has too, but it is. I would know if she'd been killed.'

Russell believed her, or wanted to. 'Okay. So you met regularly. Since when?'

'It was the end of April, I think. In 1943. She waylaid me in the cinema, sat down beside me at a matinee on Hardenberg Strasse. I nearly had a heart attack. She sounded just the same, but when the lights came on I found that I'd been talking to an old woman. I don't think I would recognised her if we'd met in the street. Anyway, we went for a walk in the Tiergarten, and she told me everything that had happened, and that you had escaped to Sweden.'

'How did she find that out?'

'I don't know, but she did. She asked me to pass it on to your exwife, so that she could tell your son. Which of course I did. And after that we met every two weeks, usually at the same time, but in different places. She soon had another identity, younger than the one before, but still older than her real age. She had her hair cut much shorter, and she just looked different somehow. It was extraordinary. I don't how she does it.'

'Where is she living?'

'She wouldn't tell me. She wouldn't even tell me what name she was using.' Zarah smiled, and for the first time in their long acquaintanceship Russell saw something of Effi in her sister. 'But I found out. I almost ran into her on the street one day, but she didn't see me, and I was afraid I might mess something up if I just went up to her. And then it occurred to me – I could follow her. And I did, all the way to her home. It was an apartment at Bismarck Strasse 185. Number 4.

'I never told her that I'd found out, because I knew it would worry her, my knowing. I used to give her ration stamps and money. She took them, but I never got the feeling she needed them.'

This was wonderful, Russell thought, so much better than he'd feared. Or it had been until three weeks ago. 'So when was this meeting she didn't turn up for?'

'Ten days ago. Friday the 13th.' She wrung her hands. 'I wasn't that worried at the time – it had happened before. But she'd always contacted me within a couple of days and set my mind at rest. So I waited a few days, and then I really did start to worry. I went round to Bismarck Strasse on the Wednesday, and the portierfrau told me that she hadn't seen any of them since the previous Thursday. When she said 'them' I thought I'd got the wrong flat, but I managed to get her talking, and it all came out. Frau von Freiwald and her grown-up niece Mathilde had been living there for almost two years, and only the previous week another niece – a small girl – had arrived from Dresden. Frau von Freiwald and the young girl had been there on the Thursday, but no one had seen them since. They must have been arrested, John – Effi wouldn't leave Berlin without telling me. And who are these fictional nieces – have you any idea?'

'None at all. Have you been back there since?'

'Yesterday. There was no one there, and the portierfrau still hadn't seen any of them.'

Russell ran a hand through his hair. 'Have you asked anyone… no, silly question – who could you ask? Jens, maybe – did he know you were seeing Effi?'

'No, I couldn't risk telling him. It wasn't that I thought he would turn her in, not really. It was just easier not to, and.. well, he's had a lot to deal with lately. Look,' she went on, responding to the look which Russell failed to suppress, 'I know you never liked him…'

'I never liked his politics.'

'No, John, be honest, you didn't like him.'

'Not much, no.'

'I was never interested in politics, and I used to think he was a decent man. He was a good father to Lothar until the war took up all his time.'

'Where is Lothar?'

'With my parents. Effi wouldn't even let me tell them that she was still alive.'

'Why aren't you there too?'

'Why do you think? Lothar's as safe as any German could be, and I had to be here in case Effi needed me.'

'Of course,' Russell said, though until that evening he'd never quite appreciated just how close the sisters were.

'But now that she really needs me, I haven't been able to do anything,' Zarah bitterly admitted. 'I did ask Jens to look into it – I said Erna von Freiwald was an old friend from school who'd recently got in touch, and had then been arrested. I made up a story about her involvement with a group printing leaflets of Pastor Niemoller's speeches – the Christians are the only dissidents Jens has any sympathy for. He promised he would look into it, but I don't think he looked very hard. He discovered there was no one of that name in Lehrter Prison, or in the women's prison on Barnim Strasse. That was yesterday, and when I asked him again today he told me to forget the whole business, that we had our own fates to worry about. And then he showed me these suicide pills he'd gotten hold of, and seemed to think I would shower him with gratitude. 'What about Lothar?' I asked him. 'And do you know what he said? He said Lothar would know that his parents had been "true to the very end". I couldn't stand being with him for a moment longer. I just walked out of his office and came home. I tell you, John, I feel like a corpse bride.'

'So what will you do now?'

'Wait for the Russians, I suppose.'

'That could be dangerous,' Russell replied without any thought. What other choices did she have?

'You mean I might be raped?'

'Yes.'

'Then that's what'll happen, John. I intend to see my son again.'

'That sounds like a very sane way of looking at it.'

'I hope so. But what are you going to do?'

'I came to find Effi. And my son. I'll keep on looking until I do.' He smiled to himself. 'You know Effi rented a flat in Wedding in case we needed to hide from the police?'

'Yes, she told me that.'

'I went up there yesterday, hoping against hope that she might still be there. And the whole building was gone, absolutely flattened, and I thought, well, you can imagine, and my heart seemed to shrivel inside me…'

'She's alive, John, I'm sure she is. We'll get her back'

'I love you for believing that,' he said, and took her in his arms. 'I must get back,' he said after a while. At the outside door they wished each other luck, and Russell had a fleeting memory of standing on the same stoop more than three years earlier, after a drunken Jens had more or less confessed to the deliberate starvation of occupied Russia.