Stattin Station (19 page)

The first face he saw - both boyish and bookish - belonged to a tall young man in an SS Obersturmfuhrer's uniform. The second, half hidden behind the first man's shoulder, belonged to Uwe Kuzorra. 'Herr John Russell,' the Obersturmfuhrer stated rather than asked.

The man had lost an arm, Russell realised. 'That's me,' he said, without unblocking the doorway.

'We need to ask you some questions. Inside, if you please.'

Russell stepped back to allow them in, and pushed the door shut. Effi had retreated to the bedroom doorway, and the Obersturmfuhrer was staring at her with obvious recognition.

'I'll leave you to it,' she said with a smile, and closed the door behind her.

Russell offered the two men seats, his mind racing. They must have discovered that he had an appointment to meet Sullivan on the previous day. What could he safely tell them? Certainly not that Sullivan had secret information to hand over - Russell had no desire to face an espionage charge.

Kuzorra lowered himself onto the sofa with obvious pleasure. The detective would have had a long and busy day, and he was well into his sixties by now.

The Obersturmfuhrer remained on his feet, tapping his right thigh with his hand.

'You know who I am,' Kuzorra told Russell. 'This is my assistant, Obersturmfuhrer Schwering.'

The younger man reluctantly accepted Russell's offer of a handshake. 'I noticed you this morning,' Kuzorra went on. 'I was rather surprised to find that you were still in Berlin.'

'I live here,' Russell said with a shrug. Saying as little as he could seemed a good guiding principle where this conversation was concerned.

'We have discovered that our victim arranged a meeting with you,' the Obersturmfuhrer said accusingly. 'Stettin Station at twelve o'clock, I believe.'

'Who told you that?' Russell asked pleasantly.

'That is neither...' Schwering began.

'His wife,' Kuzorra cut his subordinate off. 'His widow,' he corrected himself.

'It's true that I had arranged to meet him,' Russell admitted. 'But I was late. If he ever turned up, he was gone by the time I got there.'

The Obersturmfuhrer looked unconvinced, but let that go for the moment. 'So what was this meeting for?'

'He said he had some information for me. As I'm sure you know, most journalists get their information from a variety of sources.'

'Was he giving or selling?' Kuzorra wanted to know.

'Selling. Patrick Sullivan was only ever interested in the truth as a commodity.'

'What was this information?' Schwering asked.

Russell shrugged. 'I've no idea. Sullivan obviously thought it was worth something, but he wouldn't tell me anything in advance. He was probably afraid that spreading a few clues would allow me to dig the story up myself.'

The Obersturmfuhrer was far from happy. 'We shall be checking your story,' he said, as if knowing that fact would persuade Russell to come clean.

'I'm sure Herr Russell is aware of that,' Kuzorra said, getting to feet. 'How is your wife?' Russell asked, hoping to move matters onto a more convivial footing.

'She died last year,' Kuzorra told him, a moment of bleakness apparent in his eyes. 'A sudden illness. She didn't suffer.'

Unlike you, Russell thought. He remembered how well suited the two of them had seemed. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'How long have you been back at work?'

'Since that time.' He managed a thin smile. 'I needed something to do.'

Russell showed them out, and leant back against the door with some relief.

'Trouble?' Effi asked as she emerged.

'I don't think so.' He filled in those bits of the conversation which she had been unable to follow from the other side of the bedroom door.

'That's sad,' she said of Kuzorra's loss. She had not met the detective before, but remembered Russell's description of him and his wife Katrin.

'She seemed the one with the energy,' Russell recalled. 'And she made a wonderful cup of coffee.'

'Let's go out to eat,' Effi said. 'In case they come back. I don't want to share my last free evening before filming with an overgrown boy in a black uniform.'

They followed the white kerbs to the Ku'damm, and walked slowly west along the wide boulevard. This was also blacked-out, but the sheer number of phosphorescent badges and masked headlights provided sufficient illumination for seeing their way and recognising restaurants. Most of the latter were doing good business, Berliners having just received their December ration tickets.

They opted for the Chinese. The meat in the chow mein didn't taste much like chicken, but then it didn't taste much like anything else either. Russell wasn't even sure it was meat. Watching the members of the extended family who owned and ran the restaurant hurrying to and fro, he wondered, not for the first time, what on heaven's earth had persuaded them to set up shop in Hitler's Reich.

After they had finished eating someone stopped at the table to ask for Effi's autograph, and she obliged with her usual good grace. 'Are you looking forward to tomorrow?' Russell asked once the happy fan had returned to her own table.

'First days are usually fun,' she said. 'Everyone's trying to make a good impression on everyone else, even the director. And a masterpiece still seems possible, especially if you've only read your own part of the script. Of course, the first scene usually shatters that particular illusion.'

'Not the first scene of
GPU
, surely?'

'That may have the whole cast in stitches. I hope so. If everyone knows what rubbish it is, then we really can have some fun with it. But if the director thinks he's making an important statement, then God help us.' She smiled a quite dazzling smile at Russell. 'But I do love it most of the time. If it wasn't for the getting up at four-thirty in the morning, and the fact that we hardly see each other when I'm filming...'

'I know. Particularly now, when I may be whisked out of the country at a moment's notice.'

She reached a hand across the table. 'I've been meaning to tell you. Just in case you don't know. I shall be waiting for you, however long it takes. Though I can't guarantee that I'll still have my film star looks. '

'I love you too,' he said. 'And with any luck at all we'll soon be enjoying regular conjugal visits in Switzerland, courtesy of the Abwehr.'

'Conjugal, eh?'

'I was hoping.'

'I shall miss our bed, though.'

'It is an excellent bed.'

'And waiting for us right now.'

'I'll get the bill.'

Russell was still half asleep when he heard the knock on the door, and his first thought was that Effi had returned, having forgotten her keys and God knew what else. He was almost at the door when he noticed the clock, and realised that she would be in front of the cameras by this time.

It was Kuzorra, and this time he was alone. Russell stood aside to let the detective in, and offered him a cup of coffee.

'Real coffee?' his guest asked.

'I'm afraid not. Even we pampered foreigners have trouble getting that.'

'Then I'll pass.'

Kuzorra took the seat he had occupied the evening before. 'There's a phrase you journalists use when you want a quote, and the person concerned doesn't want anyone to know that it came from them...'

'Off the record.'

'That's the one. Well, I'd like you to tell me what you know about this business - off the record.'

'What makes you think I know anything more than what I've already told you?'

Kuzorra smiled. 'A journalist who loathes the Nazis meets a journalist who loves them for unexplained reasons. And before you can say "Joseph Goebbels" the second journalist is apparently beaten to death. It's hard to believe there's no connection.'

'I didn't kill him.'

'I didn't say you did. But I do think you know more about this than you're telling me. Hence the unofficial visit. Without my new assistant.'

Russell considered. 'These are strange times we live in,' he said finally, 'when the police are asking questions off the record.'

'These are strange times.'

'Why can't it have been a robbery?' Russell asked, still prevaricating. Kuzorra smiled again. 'According to the Luftwaffe weather people it only stopped raining around two in the morning on Sunday. The body was wet underneath but dry on top when it was found an hour or so later.'

'So he was killed during that hour.'

'He'd been dead for well over twelve hours when the pathologist examined him at eight this morning.'

'Ah.'

'Ah indeed. He was killed just a few hours after your missed appointment, and placed in the park a lot later, between two and three in the morning.'

'And I don't suppose you're looking for a gang of Jewish-Bolshevik cut-throats?'

'They're thin on the ground these days.'

Russell had run out of wriggle room. 'Off the record,' he began, 'I didn't lie to you yesterday, but I didn't tell you the whole truth either. I didn't meet with Sullivan, but I did see him arrive at Stettin Station.' He paused, wondering how to explain his preliminary surveillance. 'I was a bit worried about meeting him in public,' he went on, improvising heroically. 'Sullivan was a Nazi, after all, and I could imagine him agreeing to help trap me in some sort of indiscretion. Anyway, I watched him go into the buffet and then waited a few moments to make sure that he wasn't being tailed. No one appeared, and I was just about to join him when two goons in suits beat me to it. They took Sullivan out to their car and drove off with him. I had no idea why, and I still haven't. I try and stay out of arguments between Nazis.'

'What did these men look like?'

Russell described them, and the car.

'I don't suppose you noticed the number.'

In for a penny, Russell thought. He collected the notebook from his jacket pocket, and read the number out.

'Anything else?' Kuzorra asked, once he had noted it down.

'Nothing.'

'Did Sullivan say, or hint, that he had something for you? Something material, I mean. Documents perhaps, or photographs.'

'No. But if he had brought something to show me, then presumably his killers will have it now.'

'Perhaps.' Kuzorra ran a hand across the grey stubble which passed for his hair, a personal habit which Russell remembered from their previous meetings. 'This is a strange case. While we're off the record - I presume this works both ways?'

Russell nodded, intrigued.

'The officer who was with me yesterday evening - Obersturmfuhrer Schwering - was appointed as my assistant less than two hours after Sullivan's body was found. He's on secondment from the
Sicherheitsdienst
. The first thing he suggested was a thorough search of Sullivan's apartment in Dahlem, and when he got there he seemed very insistent on conducting it himself. I let him get on with it, but kept an eye on him. He seemed rather put out when he didn't find anything.'

'Interesting,' Russell murmured.

'He may insist on searching this flat,' Kuzorra added.

'He won't find anything here,' Russell said flatly. Having their home ransacked by the SD was not a welcome prospect. Particularly if only Effi was here to receive them. 'I'm off to Prague this evening,' he told the detective, 'and I'll be gone for a couple of nights. So if you want to search the place, I'd be grateful if you'd do it now. '

Kuzorra gave him a lengthy stare. 'Consider it searched,' he said at last, and got to his feet. 'I'll give Schwering the car number, and tell him I got it from a witness at the station. It should keep him busy for a day or so.'

'Busy failing to trace it?'

'If it's a car from the SD pool. If it isn't, then he'll be the hero of the hour.'

'Depending on whom it does belong to. I don't envy you this particular job.'

Kuzorra paused with his hand on the doorknob. 'It beats chasing blackout robbers. And the expression on Goebbels' face when the penny finally drops should be something to behold.'

An hour or so later, Russell walked down to Zoo Station. Searching through the
Volkischer Beobachter
over the usual unsatisfactory breakfast, he found no mention of Sullivan's unfortunate demise. Someone had given Goebbels pause for thought, and sufficient reason for delaying his planned publicity blitz around the manhunt for Sullivan's killer. By tomorrow, Russell guessed, it would all be over. Sullivan's death would be fictionalised in a suitably edifying light, his killers on to their next mission of mercy. Kuzorra would be off the hook, and so would he.

It was a two-kilometre walk down the Landwehrkanal to the Abwehr headquarters. Yesterday's clear skies had persisted, and the low sun was frequently in his eyes as he walked south-eastwards along the towpath. It was suitably cold for December the first, and hopefully colder outside Moscow. The coal traffic seemed busier than ever, barge after laden barge puttering down the ice-edged canal towards the factories and generating stations in the north-western outskirts. The men at their helms all looked like the Ancient Mariner, dragged out of retirement in the Reich's hour of need.

With the Abwehr building looming in the distance, Russell used the Graf Spee Bridge to switch banks. As he approached the entrance on Tirpitz Ufer, he noticed the usual Gestapo Mercedes 260 parked on the opposite quay. In pre-war days foreign agents of all descriptions had lurked in this vicinity, hopeful of overhearing some useful tidbit of military information, but the real war had put paid to such boyish games, and Russell could only assume that the men in the car were Germans spying on their own countrymen.

At reception he was told to report to Colonel Piekenbrock, and for once the Section 1 chief didn't keep Russell waiting outside. Piekenbrock invited him in, sat him down and even suggested a cup of coffee. Russell accepted the latter, more in hope than expectation, and was only mildly disappointed when a pretty brunette arrived with the usual slop.

Piekenbrock gulped his down with almost inhuman gusto. 'This is Grashof,' he said, handing across a photograph. 'That was taken quite recently.'

Russell studied the picture. A tall-looking man with a gaunt face and short dark hair was standing on Prague's famous Charles Bridge, the Little Quarter and Castle rising behind him. Grashof was wearing glasses, and his lips were slightly curled in the beginnings of a smile. This is a clever man, Russell thought, and wondered what it was in the photograph that led him to that conclusion.