'At his trial?'
'Perhaps.'
'Do you have a date for that?'
'Not as yet.' The Hauptsturmfuhrer was showing signs of getting flustered, but not Giminich. 'You did have at least one other thing in common with Herr Zembski,' he said from somewhere behind Russell's head. 'You were both communists.'
Russell tried to look surprised. 'I had no idea Zembski was a communist. Is that what all this is about? As I'm sure you know, I left the Communist Party in 1927.' He was surer than ever that Zembski was dead, and increasingly convinced that something had turned up in their search of the studio that made them suspicious of himself. But what? The only thing he could think of was Tyler McKinley's passport photograph, which Zembski should have destroyed after replacing it with Russell's. But even if that had turned up, it wouldn't prove anything. The doctored passport had long since disintegrated in the Landwehrkanal, and Tyler might have visited Zembski himself. The men interrogating him had a lot of suspicious connections, Russell realised, but nothing to tie them together. And they were hoping that he might inadvertently provide one. This was a fishing expedition, pure and simple.
The sense of relief lasted only a few seconds. 'We also wish to talk to you about your work for the Abwehr,' Giminich said.
Russell had the feeling he'd been ambushed. 'I would need official authorisation to discuss that,' was all he could think to say.
He needn't have bothered. 'You have to admit it's a rather strange situation – an Englishman with an American passport working for German military intelligence,' Giminich said. Leitmaritz was now just sitting back in his chair watching.
'I suppose it is,' Russell agreed. 'But it was your organisation which – I suppose "persuaded" is the most appropriate word among friends – which persuaded me to do some intelligence work for the Reich, and which then passed me over to the Abwehr. With, I might add, many thanks for my services.'
'True, but your work for the Sicherheitsdienst involved operations against the Soviet Union, which I presume – despite your youthful involvement in the communist movement – you now consider our common enemy. Your work for the Abwehr must involve you in business relating to England and America, enemies of the Reich but not, presumably, enemies of yours. A conflict of interest, no?'
'My work for the Abwehr does not require me to take sides.'
'How can that be?'
'I translate newspaper articles. Hopefully the clearer the idea each side has of the other's intentions and needs, the sooner we can bring this war to an end.'
Giminich snorted. 'You consider that not taking sides? You think that peace is what Germans are hungering for? In the end perhaps, but only after victory. A premature peace could only help our enemies.'
'I cannot see how governments misunderstanding each other helps anyone.'
'That is the Abwehr view?'
'That is my view,' Russell said, with a sudden realisation of where all this was heading.
'And these are your only duties?'
Russell paused, wondering whether fuller disclosure or clamming up might prove the wiser option. Given the effect clamming up had on such people's blood pressure, and the probability that they already knew about his meetings with Dallin, he opted for a qualified version of the former. 'I sometimes act as a courier for Admiral Canaris.'
'Ah,' Giminich said, as if they were finally getting somewhere. 'Between the Admiral and who else?'
Russell shook his head sadly. 'I'm afraid you'll have to ask him that. I'm not at liberty to share such knowledge.'
'We are all on the same side,' Giminich insisted.
'Even so. I would need the Admiral's permission to share such information with you.'
There was a prolonged silence behind him, as Giminich weighed up the pros and cons of applying other, more painful, forms of pressure. Or so Russell feared. The pros were obvious, the cons hard to calculate for anyone not versed in the intricacies of Heydrich's long duel with Canaris for overall control of German intelligence. Russell sincerely hoped that Giminich was not intending to use his incarceration as a declaration of war.
'Your loyalty does you credit,' Giminich said stiffly, moving out from behind the chair, and over to the window. 'Would you like to see George Welland?' he asked over his shoulder.
'Of course,' Russell said automatically, his mind scrambling in search of an explanation for this sudden turn in the conversation. George Welland was one of the younger American journalists, a New Yorker who had grown increasingly disgusted with his Nazi hosts. He had said so often and publicly, been warned, and said so again. His final crime had been to smuggle out a story about the little-known farm in Bavaria which supplied Hitler – and only Hitler – with a constant supply of fresh vegetables. Welland's American editors had compounded this folly by attaching his by-line to the printed article, and two days later the Gestapo had been waiting at the Promi doors when the journalists were let out. Welland had not been heard of since.
Russell neither knew nor liked the young man very much, but found it hard to fault his choice of enemies.
'He's in the basement,' Giminich said – a simple enough statement, but one which did little for Russell's peace of mind. The last time he had been down there was in the summer of 1939, and on that occasion he had been visiting Effi. Then too, someone upstairs had been trying to make a point.
A Rottenfuhrer was summoned to take him down, carpet giving way to stone as they burrowed deeper. The final corridor had not changed in two years and Welland, it transpired, was locked in Effi's old cell. Hardly a coincidence, Russell guessed.
The young American was sitting on a wooden bunk. One eye was a mess of dried blood but there were no other obvious bruises. He didn't seem surprised to see Russell, and the look he gave him with the one good eye seemed more resentful than relieved. He offered a hand to shake, without getting up. Even lifting the arm made him wince.
'How are you doing?' Russell asked unnecessarily.
'Not well,' Welland said shortly.
'I can see that. Look, I was upstairs, and they asked if I wanted to see you, so of course I said yes. The Gestapo have refused to give out any information since they arrested you. The Consulate's been trying to kick up a fuss, but they couldn't even find out where you were being held. Have you been here the whole time?
'Yes, I must have been.' He massaged his forehead with his fingers. 'They take me up every day for questioning. Sometimes twice a day. Hours and hours of it.'
'What do they think you know?'
Welland's laugh was utterly devoid of humour. 'They don't think I know anything. The interrogations, the beatings – they don't have any purpose. They're just for fun.'
Russell knew why he'd been offered this meeting, but what did it mean for Welland? They would assume that Russell would report the prisoner's condition to the Consulate, that there would be more and bigger protests. Was war between the two countries so close that they no longer cared? 'I'll let the Consulate know where you are,' he said. 'Are there any personal messages you want to send?' he asked.
'My father, back in the States.'
Russell took it his notebook. 'What's his address? What shall I tell him?'
'That I'm alive. That I love him.'
'And the address?'
Welland told him, stretching out the words in such a way that Brooklyn sounded like another planet.
After writing it all down, Russell looked up to find tears streaming down the young man's cheeks. 'They'll let you go soon,' he offered. 'They've made their point.'
'You think so?' Welland retorted bitterly.
Russell had rarely felt so helpless. He reached across and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. 'We'll get you out of here,' he promised, but the hollowness of his words was reflected in the other's despairing expression.
'You'd better be quick,' Welland replied. He was still crying, and once the cell door had closed behind him Russell heard the young American begin to sob. The sound stayed with him as he walked up the stairs, and it was a struggle to keep his anger under control.
Giminich was no longer there – his point made, he had left Leitmaritz to close out the demonstration.
'You may tell the American Consulate that espionage charges are being prepared against Herr Welland,' the Hauptsturmfuhrer said. 'It does not pay to abuse the hospitality of the Reich,' he added with a pointed stare at Russell. 'Now you may go.'
On his way back down to the main entrance, Russell tried to make sense of what had just happened. The visit to Welland had obviously been arranged to scare him, but to what end? Had all the stuff about Zembski and his communist past only been used to put him off guard, make him nervous? It was much more likely, he realised, that the Zembski business had brought his name to someone's attention, and that that someone had looked through his file and seen the possibility of using him against Canaris. If that was indeed what had happened, then going down to Neukolln in search of Zembski had been a serious mistake. Serving time as a cat's-paw of competing Nazi intelligence services was no one's idea of a good time.