When they stumbled back out around midnight a light shower of sleet was falling, and it took all their semi-drunken enthusiasm to steer a straight course through very dark streets to Alexanderplatz Station. The train home seemed full of other revellers, all beaming at each other and ignoring the myriad leaflets which someone had scattered around the carriage. 'A Christmas without honour' was the headline, and Russell felt no need to read the rest. At around a quarter to two on the following afternoon he and his son shouldered their way through the packed western terrace at the Plumpe to reach their habitual spot, halfway up and opposite the edge of the penalty area. Paul was in plain clothes for once, but his commitment to the Hitlerjugend was evidenced by yet another vividly bruised cheek, the alleged result of a collision with a tree while 'terrain-gaming.' Russell didn't believe the explanation, but his son seemed in a good mood, and he didn't want to spoil it by playing the nosy and over-protective father.
Instead they talked football. Hertha were playing SV Jena, and the latter's recent record suggested a difficult ninety minutes for the home team. But, as Paul jubilantly pointed out, Jena had recently seen three of their first-choice defenders drafted into the army, so the teams were probably well matched.
The home team emerged to rousing cheers and the usual chants of 'Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC!' The stadium was almost full, the crowd well wrapped and, as many a wafting breath amply demonstrated, fortified with alcohol against the cold. Mittened hands lifted loosely-packed cigarettes to chapped lips, sucked in smoke and exhaled with obvious satisfaction.
A Hertha player drafted in the previous year had just been reported killed in action, and the team were all wearing black armbands in his memory. They should probably make them part of the normal strip, Russell thought sourly.
The Jena team followed Hertha out onto the frosty pitch, several players craning their necks to examine the heavens. The sleet had stopped overnight, but a dark and ominously-coloured sky seemed heavy with more.
The game began. Paul was standing to his father's left, and when play was at that end of the pitch, Russell found himself taking surreptitious glances at his son. The boy was only a few inches shorter than he was, and seemed noticeably older each time Russell saw him. Ilse had always said that he looked like his father, but Russell couldn't see it – they had the same coloured eyes, but that was about it.
The game seemed faster than usual, as if the players were all working overtime at keeping warm. Lacking permission to hare up and down the pitch, the two goalkeepers were both walking brisk circles inside their penalty areas, occasionally stopping to run on the spot. But all the frenetic activity failed to produce a decent chance, let alone a goal, in the first forty-five minutes.
Halfway through the second period it began to snow. This seemed to galvanise both teams, who shared four goals between them in an exhilarating last ten minutes, Hertha scoring a second equaliser with only seconds remaining. 'A fair result,' Russell murmured, as the players trudged off the now white pitch.
'I suppose so,' Paul admitted. He was still staring at the players, as if willing them to return and settle the matter. 'But what good is a fair result?' he muttered to himself.
Maybe his son did take after him, Russell thought.
They headed slowly for the nearest exit, eventually emerging onto Bellermanstrasse. 'Can we come to the next game?' Paul asked.
'If I'm still here,' Russell said without thinking.
'You will be, won't you?'
'I don't know. My influence over the Japanese, American and German governments seems somewhat limited these days. I hope so,' he added, wondering as he did so whether that was true. Some small part of him wanted a clean break, for his son's sake as much as his own.
Paul walked in silence for a while, a sure sign that he was pondering an important question. 'You will come back, won't you?' he finally asked, the tone almost accusative, his voice pitched slightly higher than usual. 'After the war, I mean.'
'Of course I will,' Russell said, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. 'You won't decide to live in England or America?'
'No. I'm a Berliner. And so's my son.'
'Yes,' Paul said, as if realising that fact for the first time. 'We are, aren't we?'
They joined the crowd funnelling into the U-Bahn entrance, and waited on the densely packed platform for the next train.
'You'll be all right getting home?' Russell asked anxiously as the train neared his stop.
'Dad!' Paul said indignantly, and they both laughed. Russell stayed on the platform to watch the train leave, and saw his son's face seeking his own as the wheels started turning. It was a comforting moment, one he would treasure in the years to come.
Out on Bernauerstrasse the snow was already several millimetres thick. Daylight was almost gone, an eerily pallid darkness taking its place. A few army lorries swished their way past on the other side of the wide road; a tram clanked by on the near side, full of swaying shadows.
It took him fifteen minutes to reach Stettin Station. Behind the blackout screens that hung from the entrance archways there was just enough light to run a railway, but not that much activity. One train looked set for an imminent departure, and a steady trickle of people were heading for it. People returning home after a weekend in the capital, Russell guessed, their overloaded bags a sure sign that Berlin's shops were still better stocked than those of provincial towns like Stettin and Rostock.
No other meeting place had been specified, but it was still too early to head for the left luggage office. Entering the buffet where he and Sullivan had planned to meet, Russell saw Strohm sitting with a newspaper and beer on the far side. He was wearing a long overcoat, and had placed his hat on the table in front of him. Russell took a careful look round, saw nothing to rouse his suspicions, and walked across to join him.
Strohm gave him a quick smile of welcome and, as usual, wasted no words on pleasantries. 'The shift changes at five o'clock,' he said. 'Two men come off, and our man comes on. The Stettin train leaves at 5.10, so we'd better give him until then to deal with last-minute collections.'
'Is our man a comrade?' Russell asked in a suitably low whisper.
'Yes. He knows this is for the Party.'
'Good. I'll get myself a beer.'
He sat and sipped while Strohm read his paper and the buffet clock worked its way past the hour-mark. There were few other customers, and the only new arrivals were a pair of young army officers, who came in laughing happily and bore all the hallmarks of men starting their period of leave.
'If you ever need to contact me again,' Strohm offered, 'I nearly always take lunch at Johann's on Gartenstrasse. It's a working man's cafe, about two hundred metres from here, just past the Lazarus Hospital on the same side. I'm usually there between twelve and twelve-thirty. Just come in, get something to eat or drink, and make sure I see you. When I leave, follow me onto the street. All right?'
'All right.'
After a flurry of whistles and steam had signalled the departure of the Stettin train Strohm folded his paper, carefully placed his hat on his head, and got to his feet. 'I won't be hanging around,' he told Russell as they crossed the thinly populated concourse. 'I'll just introduce you and leave you to it.'
'Fine,' Russell agreed. He couldn't believe how loud their steps sounded. 'And thanks,' he added. Assuming the briefcase was there, he planned to examine its contents as thoroughly as the circumstances permitted, then deposit it again under a new and false name. He certainly had no intention of carrying anything home.
The left luggage office was about twenty metres down platform one, part of the long building which lined the eastern wall of the train shed. An open doorway led into a small waiting area with a wide counter. The man behind it was probably in his fifties, with a round, cheerful-looking face and a seemingly bald head under his uniform cap. A faded naval tattoo was visible on his lower right arm. Behind him, lines of luggage shelves could be seen through another open doorway.
'This is Herr Russell,' Strohm told him.
The man opened the counter-flap and gestured Russell though.
'Good luck,' Strohm said as he left.
The room behind was bigger than Russell had expected, but the shelves were far from crowded.
'When was the article deposited?' the man asked him.
'A week ago. Saturday the 29th.'
'This way then,' the man said, leading him down one aisle and turning into another. 'This is the section.'
There were several hundred items – suitcases, canvas bags, burlap sacks, even a barrel – but only a few briefcases, and Russell noticed the one on the top shelf which matched his description almost instantly. It was not locked, and the two leather straps were all that stood between Russell and the contents. He took out the sheaf of papers and scanned the one on top. The English words 'Standard Oil' stood out amidst the German.
'This is it,' he told his accomplice. The light was good enough in this corner, and he couldn't be seen from the doorway. 'Can I spend a few minutes here looking through these papers?' he asked.
The man looked doubtful, but only for a second. 'All right. But don't be too long. The bosses only make the rounds once in a blue moon, but they do make them.'
'I'll be as quick as I can.'
The man headed back to his counter. Russell pulled out a suitcase to sit down on, and started leafing through the papers. They were, he quickly realised, exactly what Sullivan had said they were. Most were carbon copies of official minutes, a meticulous recording of meetings in the year soon ending between representatives of German and American industry. The majority were unadorned, but Sullivan had added explanatory notes in a few of the margins.
Most of the big names were mentioned. Here was Standard Oil promising shipments of oil to Tenerife on Panamanian-registered tankers, making secret deals to secure patents against wartime seizure, banking German payments for oil not yet extracted from its Romanian fields. Here was Ford making sure that everyone benefited from its new French plant, with German-American messages flowing via Vichy and Lisbon, ensuring that American shareholders would get their profits from the lorries now supplying the Wehrmacht in Russia. Here were General Motors and its Opel subsidiary, communicating in secret through a Danish sub-division.
There was a lot more. Russell leafed through the pages, marvelling at how wide Sullivan's access had been, and the thoroughness with which he had made use of it. If the man hadn't loved the Nazis so much, he would have been a damn good journalist.
And then, at the bottom of the sheaf, he found it. Sullivan's ace in the hole. A journalist's dream, a people's nightmare.