‘They’ve picked up a signal,’ said the man. ‘Our radio man says you’re to come up at once, before we lose it.’
With his feet effervescing from pins and needles, Hunyadi hobbled after the man, following him up to the firing deck.
It was dawn. Mist blanketed the city, punctured here and there by monstrous cobras of smoke where buildings had caught fire.
Men, stripped to the waist, were washing the soot from their faces in a bucket of water. One man was busy painting another white ring around the barrel of the gun.
The radio operator beckoned him over. ‘We have a signal on one of the frequencies you gave us.’ He took off his headphones and handed them to Hunyadi.
Hunyadi pressed one of the cups to his ear and heard a series of faint beeps, divided into sets of five.
‘Definitely some kind of code,’ remarked the operator.
Hunyadi nodded in agreement.
‘The signal is strong,’ the radio man continued, ‘but I have no way to pinpoint its location.’
‘You let me worry about that,’ replied Hunyadi. ‘Just tell me if the signal cuts out.’ On the flak tower’s telephone network, he put in a call to the Plotzensee power station, which managed the western districts of the city. Earlier in the day, Hunyadi had contacted each of the four major power stations in the city, with orders to wait for his call, at which point they would cut electricity to the entire district under their control. ‘Now,’ he commanded.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ said a voice at the other end.
‘Now!’ shouted Hunyadi. Through a pair of binoculars, he watched a carriage of the city’s S-Bahn electric-railway system grumble to a halt at the edge of the western district. People came out of their houses and looked around.
‘Anything?’ he called to the radio man.
‘Still transmitting,’ came the reply.
Over the next minute, Hunyadi put in three more calls to other power stations scattered across the city. The Humboldt station, in the north of Berlin, had been hit by incendiary bombs during the raid and was already suffering a black-out. The rest, in turn, cut their power for five seconds before switching it back on again.
Such losses of electricity were not uncommon in a city constantly struggling to repair bomb damage. Some power cuts lasted for days.
It was only when the Rummelsburg station, which governed the eastern district of the city, cut its electricity that the radio man called out that the transmission had ceased abruptly.
Five seconds later, Rummelsburg switched the power on again.
‘Nothing,’ said the radio operator.
‘Wait,’ ordered Hunyadi.
Seconds passed.
Then, suddenly, the radio man called out, ‘He’s back! He’s back!’
Hunyadi walked to the eastward-facing corner of the platform and looked out towards the Friedrichshain Park, the sprawling cemetery and the Baltenplatz circle in the distance, as if to glimpse the signals, rising like soap bubbles into the morning sky.
‘Congratulations, Inspector!’ called the radio man. ‘Whoever you are looking for, he is as good as in the bag.’
But Hunyadi’s face betrayed no sign of satisfaction. As far as he was concerned, his work was only just beginning.
After travelling along the pot-holed forest trail for half an hour, the Field Police truck carrying Kirov and Pekkala emerged from the woods and pulled out on to the highway leading into Berlin. The road was wide and empty and scattered with burnt-out vehicles, which slowed their progress considerably. In the distance, they could make out several towns, their black church spires propping up the egg-shell-white sky.
By mid-morning, they finally reached the outskirts of Berlin.
Here, they saw the first signs of the Allied bombing campaign, which had reduced much of the city to ruins. They could smell it, too – a damp sourness of recently extinguished fires, mixed with the eye-stinging reek of melted rubber.
Pekkala watched crews of women and old men pulling yellowy-grey bricks out of the wreckage of destroyed houses, loading them into wheelbarrows and carting them away. The dust of these pulverised structures so coated the clothing and the faces of these clean-up crews that they seemed to be made of the same dirt as the bricks. It gave the impression of some vast, wounded creature, slowly piecing itself back together. As Pekkala looked out at the ruins, which stretched as far as he could see in all directions, such a task seemed all but impossible. The Red Army, with its terrible desire for vengeance, had not even set foot inside the city yet. And if the defenders of Berlin were anything like the boy who sat before them now, there would be nothing left at all by the time the fighting was over.
The truck turned sharply off the road, and pulled into a courtyard where several other vehicles stood parked against a high wall, on which pieces of broken glass had been embedded in a layer of cement.
‘Welcome to the Friedrichsfelde Reform School,’ said Andreas, ‘which is now the headquarters of Major Rademacher.’
They piled out into the courtyard.
Berthold and Andreas marched the two men into the building.
Major Rademacher was eating his lunch, which consisted of a pickled egg and a raw onion, sliced and mashed together upon a slice of pumpernickel bread. He washed this down with some powdered milk, which he swilled from an oval-mouthed canteen cup.
It irritated the major to eat meals so hopelessly cobbled together by his adjutant, Lieutenant Krebs, who doubled as his cook, his house cleaner and his valet. He could not blame Krebs for his choice of food. To have found an onion was a triumph, and an egg, even if it was pickled, was nothing short of miraculous.
But he was still in a bad mood about it and, when the two half-trained Field Police privates arrived with their latest set of prisoners, they were doomed to feel his wrath.
Rademacher shoved his plate of food aside, snatched the Hungarian identity books from Berthold’s outstretched hand. He glanced at them and then tossed them back on to the desk, where Andreas had carefully laid out the guns belonging to Pekkala and Kirov, like duelling pistols ready for selection. ‘What are you doing to me?’ he groaned. ‘I send you out to catch deserters and this is what you bring me? Two Hungarian shoe salesmen?’
‘The captain . . .’ Andreas began.
‘Oh, shut up!’ ordered Rademacher. ‘You always blame everything on him.’
‘But it’s his fault,’ protested Berthold. ‘He told us to bring them to you.’
‘What you have done’, explained Rademacher as if addressing children even younger than they were, ‘is provide these . . . these . . . what the hell is a rude name for Hungarians?’
‘I don’t think there is one,’ said Andreas.
‘It’s bad enough just being Hungarian,’ added Berthold.
‘Well, all you have managed to do’, continued Rademacher, ‘is provide them with a taxi service into the city, using up valuable fuel in the process.’ As he paused for breath, Rademacher’s gaze snagged upon the pistols. He snatched up the Webley and brandished it towards Kirov and Pekkala. ‘What the hell were you planning to shoot with this, anyway? Elephants?’ Disgustedly, he tossed it back on to the desk.
‘What should we do with them?’ asked Berthold.
‘How should I know?’ demanded Rademacher. ‘They’re not my problem.’
‘We could hang them,’ suggested Andreas.
‘No, you idiots!’ boomed Rademacher. ‘Just get them out of here and then get out, yourselves.’ With the movements of a magician, he waved his hands over the guns on his desk, as if to make them disappear before their eyes. ‘And take these with you!’
Kirov and Pekkala retrieved their papers, holstered their guns and then the four men shuffled quickly out into the hallway.
Rademacher pulled his plate back in front of him. For a moment, he stared at the pulp of egg and onion smeared upon the dirty-looking bread. Then, with a growl, he shoved it away once again.