David Downing - Stettin Station

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.