David Downing - Silesian Station

'Oh John.'

'I know, but… Look, I'll tell Thomas the whole story tomorrow. Maybe he'll have an idea.'

They went out to eat on the Ku'damm, then drove across town to the dance hall they'd found a few weeks earlier, but it wasn't the same. Effi insisted on their driving down Eisenacher Strasse one more time, but there was nothing new to see. 'What can we do?' she murmured to herself several times, putting different emphases on the four words, but neither she nor he could think of an answer. It was after one in the morning when Russell had the first glimmering of an idea. One good enough to wake her. Effi was excited by his plan in the dead of night, but more subdued than usual when morning came. It seemed to Russell that there were two new Effis he had to get used to: the one who seemed to take their new situation far too lightly, as if it were a game with no real consequences, and the one sitting beside him now in the sunlit Tiergarten, who took it all far more seriously than he had ever imagined. Both Effis, he realized, had been there all the time, but the latter in particular still needed getting used to.

It was, he admitted, hard to sustain an acute sense of peril when house-maids wheeled their prams through hopping squirrels, and hard to take the world seriously when the front page of the Beobachter was almost all headline: 'Whole of Poland in War Fever! 1,500,000 men mobilized! Uninterrupted troop transport towards the frontier! Chaos in Upper Silesia!' Skimming through the editorial Russell noted an escalation of demands – not just Dan-zig and the Corridor but all the territories that Germany had lost in 1918.

Around eleven o'clock Effi set off for Wilmersdorf and a long-arranged family lunch. Russell had also intended to go, but work and the matter of Miriam's rescue seemed a lot more pressing. He arrived at the Adlon Bar to find it buzzing with an unconfirmed rumour that some German units had actually advanced into Poland on the previous Friday morning. An invasion had apparently been scheduled, and news of its cancellation had not reached the units in question. More significantly, as the journalists discovered at an Economics Ministry press briefing that morning, food rationing was starting the following day. The cards had been sent out a couple of weeks earlier, but Russell suspected that their activation would still come as a salutary shock to most Germans.

Frau Heidegger hadn't heard the news when he reached Neuenburger Strasse, and he wasn't about to spoil her morning. He did accept her offer of coffee with more inner enthusiasm than usual, because he was keen to confirm that her set of apartment keys was still hanging in its usual place by the door. She only had one item of mail for him – a formal letter from the US Embassy advising all Americans whose presence was not absolutely necessary to leave Germany. He wasn't expecting anything from the SD or NKVD, and he assumed Sarah Grostein would make contact when she had something for him.

On the way up to his room he knocked on Beiersdorfer's door, and told the block warden he didn't yet know whether he'd be home for the ARP exercise on Thursday. He would let him know on Tuesday. Beiersdorfer sighed, and reminded Russell that the weekly Party meeting was on Tuesday evenings, causing him to be out between seven and nine.

He had phoned Thomas from the Adlon and been invited to lunch. The family mood, as expected, was coloured by Joachim's absence – Thomas looked drained, his wife Hanna seemed withdrawn, and their fifteen-year-old daughter Lotte was trying to rather too hard to cheer them up. They ate in the sunny garden, but it felt all too different from the last such gathering, on the eve of Russell's trip to Prague. The first member of their extended family was gone. How many others would follow?

Afterwards, in the cool of Thomas's study, he told his friend about 403 Eisenacher Strasse and his plan for freeing its inmates.

Thomas was shocked, and surprised that he was. 'Are you sure you've got it right?' he asked.

'One missing girl. A man who approached her and others at Silesian Station. People who can use the police to prevent any investigation. A house with every window lit and SS officers coming down the steps. The same house our man was taking Effi to. Can you think of another explanation that fits?'

'No.'

'And if by any chance we have got it wrong, and the place is full of SS manicurists and etiquette tutors, we'll just leave them on the pavement.'

Thomas looked lost. 'I didn't mean…' he began.

'You were right,' Russell told him. 'About saving one life.'

Thomas grunted. 'How can I help?'

'I need a small van and a lorry. With full tanks, and without Schade Printing Works emblazoned all over them.'

'That shouldn't be a problem. But what…'

'Don't ask. If it ever comes back to you, just say I asked for the loan of the vehicles.'

'I feel I should be doing more.'

'You're doing enough already. I sometimes think you're providing the Jews of Berlin with half their income.' After arranging to pick up the two vehicles on the following evening Russell drove north into Friedrichshain. The streets around Busching Platz looked even more run-down than he remembered, and Busching-Strasse was no exception. He drove slowly past the address Freya Isendahl had given him, looking out for any sign that the block was being watched, but the only humans in sight were two young children playing Heaven and Earth on the opposite pavement. He parked the car fifty metres further down, hoping that the mere presence of motorised transport would not be enough to provoke curiosity.

The Isendahls, he discovered, shared a fourth floor flat with another couple. They were comrades, according to Wilhelm, but Russell was still pleased they were out. Wilhelm and Freya's room was large, low-ceilinged, with distant views of Friedrichshain park. Russell glanced around, and was relieved by the lack of seditious leaflets on display. The room was certainly crowded, but there was nothing to suggest it was anything other than the first home of a young couple struggling to make ends meet.

Wilhelm offered him the single battered armchair, removing the copy of Rilke's Duino Elegies which was perched on one arm. Freya put a saucepan of water on the electric ring to make tea.

'Has my article been printed?' Wilhelm asked, taking one of the two up-right chairs. Even in blue overalls he managed to look vaguely aristocratic.

Russell admitted that it hadn't, that he was still looking for a safe way to get it out of Germany. He asked about the situation on the Siemens shopfloor, which kept Wilhelm talking until the tea was made.

'I need your help with something else,' Russell said once Freya was seated. He told them the story of his search for Miriam Rosenfeld, from her original disappearance to her probable imprisonment in the house on Eisenacher Strasse. They both listened intently, Wilhelm's face growing grimmer as Freya's eyes brimmed with unshed tears.

Russell explained his plan for getting the girls out, realizing as he did so that this was one of Sarah Grostein's life and death moments, when you opened yourself up to the possibility of betrayal. 'It's very simple,' he said in summary. 'On the day of the exercise – that's next Wednesday, the 30th – we turn up disguised as an ARP patrol, declare that the building has been hit by a bomb, and order everyone out. Even the SS have to obey ARP instructions, so we shouldn't have any trouble. We just separate the men from the girls, say we'll be back for the men, and drive away with the girls.'

'What do you want us to do?' Wilhelm asked.

'I need at least three more people to make it realistic. Can you drive?'

'Of course.'

'Then I'd like you to drive the ambulance.'

'Where are you going to get one of those?'