'Who do we contact when we get there?'
'I'll tell you that this evening. The overnight express for Danzig leaves at eight-thirty, and we will find a way to get you there before then.'
'How?'
'I don't know yet. Your papers will be for a husband and wife, by the way. Herr and Frau Sasowski. Werner and Mathilde.'
'What happened to them?' Russell asked.
'They committed suicide after the Gestapo killed their son.'
More dead people, Effi thought. They were being lifted out of Germany by the arms of the dead.
'Married at last,' Russell said to her, as Andreas and the photographer walked away across the warehouse floor.
She put an arm round his waist and leant her head on his shoulder. Andreas had brought water with him, enough to last them the day. There was still some food, but neither of them felt hungry, and they spent most of the daylight hours curled up on the folded rug, drifting in and out of uneasy sleeps. Russell had wondered whether one of them should stay awake, and decided there was no point. If the Gestapo roared up outside, there would be enough time to follow through on their pledge of the night before. More than enough.
Strange as it seemed, Effi felt safer by day. The night might hide them, but not from fear or surprise, whereas daylight, which rendered them visible, also seemed redolent of life – the distant sounds of unloading elsewhere in the docks, the ships' horns like mournful animals seeking a place to rest. If this was where her life ended, in a derelict corner of a city she had never seen before, then she wanted her final moments in the light, conscious of every last cobweb that hung from the ceiling, of every piece of rubbish which the breeze blew along the warehouse floor.
Dying in darkness would be so… so completely wrong.
She thought about the Ottings and what they must be going through, and struggled to conceal her own sense of dread.
Andreas returned soon after six. 'All the entrances to the docks are being watched,' he announced with his usual smile. 'The roads and ferries.'
'So how will we get out?' Russell asked calmly, wondering what the young man had up his sleeve this time.
'By boat,' Andreas said triumphantly. 'A small boat will come to the quay outside at seven. It will take us out of the docks, and up the Oder to a small landing stage close to the railway station. You will only have a five-minute walk. That's good, eh?'
Russell admitted it sounded so.
Andreas handed over their new documentation, which looked convincing enough. Had they still been alive, Werner and Mathilde Sasowski would have been fifty-four and fifty-two, roughly the ages which he and Effi looked in the photographer's grainy pictures. There were no obvious signs that the latter had just been added to the frayed and grimy papers.
'And here are your tickets,' Andreas added, handing them across.
'How much do we owe you?' Russell asked, reaching for his wallet. It seemed like weeks since he'd spent any money.
Andreas made a gesture of refusal. 'We didn't pay for them,' he said. 'Now, once you reach Riga, you must go to 16 Satekles Street – it's near the station – and ask for Felix. You must tell him that you have a message from Stettin. Have you got all that?'
Russell repeated it.
'Good. Now all we all have to do is wait.' He looked at his watch. 'Forty-two minutes.'
Effi asked Andreas about himself. How long had he been a painter? Was he married?
He wasn't married and he wasn't a painter – the van was his father's. He had worked in the docks since he was sixteen, and been a Party member almost as long – since 1932, in fact. Both his uncles had been killed the following year, one in a street fight and one in a concentration camp. So had many others. But the Party was still strong in Stettin, and particularly in the docks. Seven iron carriers had been sabotaged over the last two years, all sent to the bottom of the Baltic with explosives which the Gestapo and their sniffer dogs had failed to find. Things were certainly bad at the moment, but the cells had all shut down – 'like the compartments of a U-boat'. A few would be prised open, but most would survive. And after the war… well, Effi would return to a communist Germany, and make a movie about her own escape and the comrades who helped her. 'We will all play ourselves,' Andreas decided.
At five minutes to seven they walked out onto the darkened quay, Andreas guiding them to a ladder of iron rungs which led down to the water. The faintest of lights was already visible in the mouth of the basin; as it grew steadily nearer, the low purr of an engine became audible. With Andreas carrying their bag they all climbed down towards the water, waiting in a vertical queue for the boat to draw up alongside. It was a simple skiff with a one-man crew – a wizened old man who nodded a greeting from his seat by the tiller.
He gently opened the throttle and turned the craft back towards the dock entrance, running parallel with the barely visible quayside wall. He had extinguished his faint light, Russell noticed. Now that he was carrying illicit cargo, hitting something probably seemed a much better bet than being noticed. Russell asked Andreas whether the Gestapo had patrol boats.
'They borrow the Navy's,' he whispered back. 'But only one after dark. Usually. It's better that we don't talk,' he added. 'It carries further than you think.'
The wall to the right disappeared as their basin merged with the next, the one where they'd seen the ship being unloaded on the previous evening. Peering through the gloom Russell thought he could make out two large ships, but no lights were showing, either aboard or on the adjoining quay.
The channel narrowed again as they neared the junction with the Oder, and the water grew choppier, rocking the small boat from side to side. As they turned into the river, the opposing current seemed strong enough to stop them, and Russell had a nightmare vision of being stuck in the same spot until morning. But suddenly, for no reason that he could see, the pressure eased and the skiff resumed its steady progress, albeit more slowly.
He knew from previous visits that the Oder was about a hundred and fifty metres wide, but only the near bank was visible, a long quayside at which several small ships were berthed. There were lights in some of them, and on the quay behind them, but Russell hoped and guessed that their boat would be impossible to see against the darkness of the opposite bank.
A lighted shape appeared ahead, running across his line of vision. It was a tram, he realised, crossing the river. The bridge took form as another smaller light glided across, and as they neared the central piers a match flared above them. It was a man lighting a cigarette, and he was looking down at them.
Gestapo, was Russell's first thought.
'It's downstream,' the man said, loud enough for them to hear.
'The patrol boat,' Andreas explained as they passed under the bridge. Russell breathed a sigh of relief, and asked himself why the comrades hadn't been this well organised when the government of Germany was still up for grabs. The boatman kept to the centre of the stream, out of sight from either bank. There was a surprising amount of traffic along the western side – trams, lorries, even the occasional private car – but no silhouetted pedestrians. The Nikolai Kirche rose out of the gloom, and soon they were passing under the other bridge connecting central Stettin with its Lastadie suburb. Even though he felt wracked with tension, Russell could see something magical in this journey, as they moved unseen through the heart of a living city.
The railway bridge loomed ahead, and beyond that the dark shapes of islands in the river, another bridge, and the long roof of the station rising above the western bank. The boatman steered them into a narrow channel, cut the motor, and drifted the skiff up to a small landing stage. 'This is it,' Andreas said unnecessarily, using one hand to hold the boat against the wooden staging. 'The station is over there, and there are steps up to the bridge at the other end of the path.'
'Thank you,' Russell said, shaking his hand. He offered the boatman a nod of gratitude.
Effi reached over and gave Andreas a quick hug. 'We'll make that film,' she said.
'Good luck,' he told them.
'And you.'
Andreas pushed them off, and the boat put-putted off into the darkness.
The steps were easy to find, and the bridge devoid of traffic. As they walked across to the Stettin side, Russell could feel his muscles tightening. The station was bound to be watched. Were their papers and disguises good enough?
'We must act like ordinary travellers,' he said, as much to himself as to her. 'Look confident. Do what ordinary travellers do. No skulking in the shadows.'
'Yes, husband,' Effi said.
They walked across the Schwedter Ufer and into the station. The small concourse was quite crowded, mostly with soldiers and sailors in uniform, which was probably fortunate. Their train, according to the departure board, was on time.
'The buffet,' Russell said. As they walked across the concourse, he saw no sign of a checkpoint at the tunnel entrance which led to the platforms. There might, of course, be guards waiting at each flight of stairs.
They found a table. The smell of food was inviting, but the queue was long and there was not much more than half an hour until their train's departure. 'Shall we go up now or wait?' he asked her.
'Let's leave it till the last minute,' she said, getting up again. 'I have to spend some time in the ladies.'
'I'll be here.' He watched her walk away, marvelling once again at how well she aged her movement, then leant over to gather an abandoned newspaper from the adjoining table. After using the toilet, Effi stopped to examine her face in the long mirror behind the washbasins. There hadn't really been enough make-up left to work with, and she seemed to be getting younger again.
A middle-aged woman two basins down was staring at her in the mirror. 'Aren't you Effi Koenen?' the woman asked with barely suppressed excitement.