David Downing - Potsdam Station

Paul put a comforting hand on his shoulder, and the man violently shook it off. 'Go fuck yourself,' he hissed.

Paul left him where he was. Looking back once, he saw the man still kneeling in the middle of the road, his former comrades passing by on either side, like a stream divided by a fallen rock.

A kilometre to the north, under the S-Bahn bridge by Tempelhof Station, the MPs were waiting for them. They joined the fifty or so men who had already been rounded up, and listened to the sound of the battles still raging while they waited for stragglers. When the road to the south was empty they were marched through the Tempelhof aerodrome gates and delivered to those in charge. There were lots of tanks dug in around the airport buildings, tanks they could have used that morning.

'Guess why they're here?' the Volkssturm man beside him asked, as if he was reading Paul's mind.

'Tell me.'

'Someone special might need a last-minute flight,' the man replied. The thought seemed to amuse him.

It didn't amuse Paul, and neither did the prospect of yet more digging. If he'd stayed in one place he'd be in China by now.

The emplacements, as it turned out, had already been dug, and all that remained was the wait for Ivan. It was actually a beautiful day, the sun shining out of a perfect blue sky until just before noon, when a horde of Soviet IL-4 bombers appeared out of nowhere and started blowing holes in the hangars and terminal buildings. They were careful not to damage the runway – mindful, presumably, of their own future needs.

Paul was assigned to one of the PaK41 emplacements in the aerodrome's north-eastern corner, and had only a distant view of the afternoon's battle, which raged between the S-Bahn defence line and the aerodrome's southern perimeter. Every now and then a jeep full of Hitlerjugend armed with panzerfaust would careen away across the tarmac to take on the Soviet armour, and several familiar-sounding explosions would eventually follow. The gun commander claimed he could see several burning hulks through his binoculars, and Paul had no reason to doubt him. But none of the jeeps came back.

Darkness fell with the Soviets still held at arm's length, but scattered engagements rumbled on by the light of the full moon, and as midnight approached the Russian infantry were still pushing forward. Paul's own gun was down to eleven shells, which didn't bode well for the dawn.

It had been a long and so far fruitless day, in which Varennikov had almost driven him mad with his non-stop ramblings. Sometimes Russell could hear the idealism of his own younger years, but mostly it was just the stupidity. There was nothing he really disliked about the young Russian, but Russell wished he would shut up. After a while he simply tuned him out, and focussed his ears on listening for sounds on the stairs.

It was well into evening before he heard them, and Strohm's head emerged from the stairwell. 'You didn't tell me she was Jewish,' he said without preamble.

'Effi? She isn't.'

'Well, she was arrested as one. On the 13th of April. She was taken to the detention centre for Jews on Schulstrasse – the old Jewish hospital – do you know it?'

Russell felt something grip his heart. 'Yes, I went there once… but that's out beyond the Ringbahn. It'll be in the Soviet hands by now.'

'It is. But Erna von Freiwald was released on the 21st. Last Saturday.

It's in the records – all the remaining prisoners were released that day. I assume the people in charge were trying to earn themselves some credit for the future.'

'Where did she go?' Russell asked automatically.

'I'm sorry, there's no way of knowing.'

'No, of course not.'

'Perhaps she went home,' Strohm suggested.

'No, her sister went to the apartment only two days ago.'

'Then she's probably in one of the mass shelters – you know where they are: underneath the flak towers in the Tiergarten, under Pariserplatz. There's one right next to Anhalter Station. They're all incredibly overcrowded at the moment. Lots of women are hoping that there's strength in numbers, that the Red Army will behave better in front of a thousand witnesses.'

After finishing her shift and eating, Effi could stand it no longer. She had to get some fresh air, had to convince herself that the moon and stars still shone. 'Would you like to go outside, just for a minute?' she asked Rosa.

The girl thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

'Then let's go,' Effi said, taking her hand.

The rooms beyond the hospital seemed more crowded than ever, the smells of sweat, urine and excrement almost impossibly pungent. There were guards on the bunker entrance, but they had no objection to people taking the air – it was, as one of them said, 'their funeral'. Perhaps it would be, Effi thought, but she was beyond caring. She stood for a few moments at the bottom of the steps, inhaling the smoke-laden breeze and listening for sounds of explosions close by. In the sky above, a few faint stars glimmered in the murk.

They went up into the Berlin night. The square was not silent, as Effi had expected, nor empty of movement. Several walkers were visible, all keeping close to those walls that remained. Far up Hermann Goering Strasse a lorry was driving away. Berlin still had a heartbeat, albeit a faint one.

They could see no fires, but the sky was a deep shade of orange, and several of the surrounding buildings were silhouetted against areas of bright yellow. Streamers of dark smoke hung in the air, like photographic negatives of the Milky Way. Far in the distance, she could hear the faint rattle of machine-gun fire..

The familiar keening turned into the familiar scream, and for one dreadful second Effi thought she'd managed to kill them both. But the shell hit a building on the far side of the square, starting an avalanche of masonry and igniting a furnace within.

What people had built, people destroyed, and would no doubt build again. She felt weighed down by the utter pointlessness of it all.

She knew they should go back down, but stubbornly put off the moment. One semi-delirious soldier had recognised her that afternoon, but the doctor had cheerfully put him right. Her acceptance as an Effi Koenen look-alike felt rather strange, but everyone knew that fugitive film stars avoided working in underground hospitals.

Rosa snuggled up to her. 'Is everyone going to die?' she asked, matter-of-factly.

'Not in this war,' Effi told her. 'Everyone does eventually, but I think you and I are going to have really long lives.'

'How long is a long life?'

'Well, according to the Bible, God thinks we should get at least three score years and ten – which is seventy. So let's add another thirty for good luck, and live to be a hundred.'

Rosa digested that in silence for a few moments. 'Is God hiding in a shelter until it's over?' she asked. 'Like us?'

It was a long night. A storm raged in the early hours, adding thunder, lightning and pelting rain to the sporadic Soviet artillery fire, but it all passed over, and by five o'clock there was only smoke to blur the heavens, and a huge red moon seeking shelter behind the western horizon. Dawn brought the usual bombardment, but once again the Soviet artillery and air force seemed fixated on the city centre.

Paul was hunkered down in his unit's emplacement on the north-eastern corner of the Tempelhof field, reading a copy of the Panzerbar newsletter that Goebbels had introduced in place of newspapers, and trying to ignore the bombers droning overhead. 'We are holding on!' the headline claimed, but, as an announcement further down the page made obvious, some believed otherwise. Those who hoisted white flags of surrender from their window would be dealt with as traitors, the propaganda minister promised, and so would all the other occupants of their building.