As the train cleared the platform, Russell found himself drawn to the edge. A headless body was lying between the rails about twenty metres on from where the youth had jumped. The head was nowhere to be seen.
The dogs were whining now, the three leather coats staring down at the mutilated corpse. Even they seemed subdued by the turn of events. Russell was probably imagining it, but their expressions seemed those of children, up early on a Christmas morning, who had just broken a much-anticipated toy.
He turned on his heel and made for the stairway. Half-way down he found one of the leaflets the youth had been distributing. 'In whose name?' was the headline; that of the German people, the text insisted, had been taken in vain.
Too true, Russell thought. But who gave a Fuhrer's fuck for the wishes of the German people? Back home that evening, Russell listened as Effi recounted her depressing lunch with Zarah, and decided against making things worse by sharing his experience at Zoo Station. Thinking the BBC might raise their spirits, they risked a joint listening session, seats pulled up close beside the wireless. But for once the Oxbridge-vowelled spokesman sounded strangely unsure of himself. They scoured the German wavelengths for some cheerful music, but all they could find were variations of central European gloom. The idea of going out was swiftly abandoned when the rain began beating on the blacked-out windows.
'A day to forget,' Effi said, as they settled for an early night.
Which was easier said than done. As Russell lay there unable to sleep, the train thundered on in his mind.
Next morning at ten, they met Paul at the main entrance to the Friedrichstrasse Station. Since his fourteenth birthday that March, Russell's son had been allowed to navigate his own way across Berlin, and the novelty had obviously not worn off – he clattered down the stairs from the elevated platforms in his Hitlerjugend uniform, looking very pleased with himself. Noticing how happy his son was to see Effi, Russell congratulated himself on overcoming her objections to attending. 'Why would I want to stand in the rain for God knows how many hours just to watch some dead Nazi roll by on a flag-covered cart?' had been her first reaction to his suggestion.
The actual ceremony was a bigwigs-only affair – the Fuhrer had apparently arrived overnight from his eastern military headquarters – but thousands of Berliners were thronging the streets, heading for vantage points on the route of the procession. The rain had finally moved on, and the sky in the west showed definite signs of brightening. The wind remained brisk, lifting and shaking the legions of swastikas that flew at half-mast from poles, roofs and facades.
'I thought the Marschall Bridge,' Russell suggested to Paul.
'Good idea,' his son agreed, with the sort of smile that Effi imagined she used on Zarah. Perhaps her sister had a point about families and war.
They walked along the front of the station, crossed over the river, and continued down past the Electricity Works to the Marschall Bridge. A lot of people had had the same idea, but the three of them found a good vantage point on the downstream side, up against one of the parapets.
'The service should be over by now,' Russell said, looking at his watch. The crowd around them was growing by the minute – soldiers, sailors and airmen on leave, bureaucrats in suits and secretaries in high heels, lots of mothers with children, a large sprinkling of older men wearing their Great War medals.
'There are lots of people, aren't there?' Paul said. 'People must have known how good he was.'
'I'm sure they did,' Russell agreed.
He might just as well have disagreed, Effi thought, watching Paul's face. She understood what Russell had meant when he begged her to come. The boy did seem to be looking for a fight, although whether or not he was aware of it was another matter. 'I hear you've been getting yourself into trouble,' she said lightly.
He shrugged. 'Not really.'
'Well, I know how easy it is. I got arrested for making a joke, remember? And I've been really careful ever since.'
'I'll be careful.'
'Promise?' Russell asked playfully.
'Didn't I just say so?'
'Yes…'
'They're coming,' Effi said, hoping that Udet's funeral procession was indeed responsible for the signs of movement on the distant Wilhelmstrasse.
It was. A few moments later a snatch of music arrived on a momentary change of the wind; a few minutes more and the strains of the funeral march were clearly audible. It grew louder as the small object in the distance slowly grew into a gun-carriage with a swastika-draped coffin, flanked by an honour guard, followed by rank after rank of men in Luftwaffe uniform. As the carriage crossed onto the bridge, the hands in the crowd swept up in the familiar salute, Paul's among them. After only a moment's hesitation Effi followed suit, but Russell resisted. He was English, he told himself, and therefore excused.
His son thought differently. 'The England football team gave the salute,' he almost hissed at his father.
Russell raised his arm, feeling more foolish than for many a year. Paul gave him one last reproachful look, and turned back to the procession. Another famous pilot, Adolf Galland, was one of the honour guard, but Russell didn't recognise any of the others. On the other hand the fat man padding along behind the gun-carriage was easy to identify – the Reichsmarschall, resplendent in red-brown boots and gold-braided pale grey uniform. Goering was already breathing heavily, and Russell wondered whether he'd make it to the Invalidenfriedhof cemetery. He wasn't yet halfway.
The top-ranking Luftwaffe officers marched behind him, along with all those pilots who had won the Knight's Cross. 'There's Walter Oesau,' Paul whispered excitedly, more to himself than any audience. 'And Hans Hahn. And there's Gunther Lutzow! But where's Molders?'
Where was Germany's other famous ace? Russell wondered. His shoulder was beginning to ache, and now that the bigwigs had gone past most people were lowering theirs. Russell happily followed suit. But Paul held his aloft for several minutes more, waiting until the gun carriage had disappeared under the Stadtbahn bridge and the crowd had slowly begun to disperse. By the time they'd had lunch and – at Paul's suggestion – revisited the stamp exhibition at the Central Library, it was time for Russell to head off for the afternoon press conference. Effi suggested to Paul that the two of them walk back across the Tiergarten to Zoo Station, and Russell stood for a few seconds on the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Unter den Linden watching them head off towards the park, hoping that she would come back with a clearer idea of what exactly was eating at his son.
The press conference was getting underway as the door guards checked his credentials, and he could already feel the triumphalist mood as he climbed the marble stairway to the main auditorium. Goebbels was holding forth in his usual manner, suave, persuasive, never far from a cynical smile. Taifun, the attack on Moscow, had apparently been resumed, and with startling success. Curtains parted with a theatrical flourish to reveal the latest positions, and the assembled journalists all leaned forward to make them out. A host of arrows were closing on the fortress towns of Klin, Istra and Tula, the lynchpins of Moscow's final ring of defences. According to the map the latest attacks had seen the Army advance a third of the remaining distance to the Soviet capital.
'In how many days?' someone wanted to know.
'Five,' was the reply, the implication clear – another ten and Moscow would be taken.
A stillness pervaded the room, and Goebbels' lips twitched in a knowing half-smile. Over the next ten minutes he answered questions calmly, wittily, with what seemed palpable frankness. What reason to lie or exaggerate, his smile seemed to say, when the truth was such good news?
Only once did the smile disappear. Like Paul, Ralph Morrison had noticed Werner Molders's absence from Udet's honour guard, and his request for an explanation was, Russell guessed, only intended as a minor spoke in Goebbels' free-running wheels. If so, he got more than he intended.
'An official announcement has not yet been released,' the Propaganda Minister said gravely, 'but Oberst Molders was killed earlier today in a flying accident. In Breslau, on his way to today's funeral. I have no other details at present.'
The room seemed stunned. Molders had been one of Nazi Germany's more acceptable heroes, and there was something ridiculously sad about dying on the way to someone else's funeral. Another dead man on his son's wall, Russell thought. Poor Paul. Later that evening, Effi sat at a beautifully-laid dining table in the most exclusive district of Grunewald, sipping the best wine she had tasted in several months, listening to her host and a fellow dinner guest enthuse over the latest cinema attendance figures. As a celebrity of sorts, she had rarely lacked for such invitations, but in pre-war times she had politely refused ninety-five per cent of them, and took John with her when she chose to accept. Once the war began, however, she and John had realised how much secret information could be leeched from such gatherings of the rich and influential, and those percentages had been reversed. So, since his presence, as a foreigner and journalist, tended to inhibit her companions, she almost always went alone. Effi had no intention of selling her body for secrets, but flattery and flirting were something else again.
This particular evening, she had realised on meeting her fellow guests, was unlikely to provide anything more than a good meal. Her hosts were Max and Christiane Weinart, he a personal friend of Goebbels and leading shareholder in the Babelsberg studio, she an ex-starlet who had caught her future husband's attention in a film extolling the joys of physical exercise. The other five guests were the camera manufacturer Alfred Hoyer and his wife Anna, two hotshots from the Ministry of Propaganda named Stefan and Heinrich, and a blonde young actress whom she had never met, Ute Fahrian. Effi guessed that Weinart and the Hoyers were in their mid-fifties, Ute in her mid-twenties, and everyone else in or around their thirties. She hoped the food would make up for the conversation, which had turned to the growing problems of actually getting films made. Promi, conscious of rising attendances and the opportunity they represented, had set a target of a hundred a year, but this year, as last, it was unlikely to be met.
The first of several courses arrived, and over the next hour Effi concentrated on the food, speaking only when spoken to. There were vegetables other than potatoes to be eaten, and they hadn't been boiled or fried in chemicals. The meat, which tasted suspiciously like real beef, came with a richly succulent sauce. The bread wasn't battleship grey; the butter was a pale, unthreatening shade of yellow. Her fellow actress kept glancing wide-eyed round the table, as if she could hardly believe such food still existed, but the others clearly took such quality sustenance for granted. Most Berliners might be suffering from skin rashes, yellowing eyes, biliousness and appalling flatulence, but how would her fellow diners know that? They wouldn't be using the U-Bahn, their servants would be doing the shopping, and they'd all have their own private air raid shelters. As John had said the other evening – if the RAF ever worked out how to hit a military target, the war would pass the rich by.
Her anger, she realised, was in danger of spoiling her meal. She concentrated on the Black Forest gateau which had just been placed in front of her.
Still engrossed in the world of films, the men were now talking about the Die Grosse Liebe, and the political row it had unleashed. The movie starred Viktor Staal and Zarah Leander as a Luftwaffe pilot and the woman he meets and sleeps with while on leave. Some people at Promi had apparently considered this theme a little too daring for public consumption, and senior Luftwaffe figures had condemned Staal's character as reflecting dishonour on their service. Goering, on the other hand, had reportedly asked what else a Luftwaffe officer was supposed to do on leave. Weinart, Hoyer and the two Promi men could all see his point.
Stirring her small but wonderfully fragrant cup of black coffee, Effi decided to give them something real to play with. 'I've been asked to play a Jewess,' she announced at the first convenient moment, 'and I must admit to being torn.'
Ute Fahrian let out a heartfelt 'Oh', shook her blonde curls, and said: 'I'm glad I'll never have to face that problem!' Then, as if suddenly hearing her own words, she flushed deeply. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean…'
'Don't distress yourself, 'Effi said. 'I can hardly deny that, in outward appearance, I could pass for a Jewess.'
'Some Jewesses are very beautiful,' Alfred Hoyer said gallantly, raising an expression of faint surprise from Christiane Weinart.
'It is a dilemma,' Anna Hoyer said with the slightest of ironic smiles. She was brighter than she looked, Effi decided. And drinking more than she should.
'If we wish to make films that reflect real life in our country then we need Jewish characters,' Weinart insisted.
'And we can't have them played by real Jews,' his wife chipped in.
'Of course not,' Stefan agreed. 'If you decide to take the part,' he told Effi with a smile, 'then I suggest you give interviews explaining how hard it was for you, but how satisfying you found the experience. Emphasise how difficult it was for you, a German actress, to create a convincing Jew, but how necessary it is for the good of the Reich that the Jewish peril be realistically presented in films.'
'Yes, that sounds right,' Weinart agreed.
'Mmm,' Effi said.
'The people will admire you for your honesty,' Stephan went on, 'and thank you.'