A door led through to a large room, in which several camp beds had been set up. There was water, cans of food and a bucket toilet. For illumination there were candles, matches, and a railway headlamp. ‘It’s only for a few days,’ Leissner said apologetically. ‘And it should be safe. The only way in is the one we used – the old station entrance was bricked up before the First War. A comrade will stand guard in the tunnel – if you need anything, just go down and tell him. The army might decide to flood the tunnels by blowing up the roof where it passes under the Landwehrkanal, but that wouldn’t be a problem for you. Not for long, in any case. You wouldn’t be able to get out until the waters went down again, but you’d still be fine up here.’ He lit one of the candles, and dribbled wax onto to the tiled floor to hold it upright. ‘There,’ he said, ‘just like home.’ It was almost light when Paul awoke. He had spent most of the last twelve hours under their tank, catching up on the sleep he was owed. Ivan’s planes had provided several unwanted alarms, but his own thoughts hadn’t kept him awake, as had happened all too often of late. And he knew he had Uncle Thomas to thank for that. It was incredible how calming simple decency could be.
He slid himself out from under the Panzer IV’s exhaust, and found that a light rain was falling. He clambered up the low embankment behind which the tank was positioned, and walked across to the promenade parapet. The dark waters of the Dahme slid north towards their meeting with the Spree, and a host of shadows were streaming across the Lange Bridge. All German, all civilian, as far as he could tell.
Looking round for Werner, he saw the boy walking towards him with a mug of something hot, and had a sudden memory of ’Orace, the breakfast-serving batman in many of the Saint books. He had loved those stories.
‘There’s a canteen in Köllnischerplatz,’ Werner said, offering him the mug, ‘but they’ve run out of food.’
Church bells were ringing away to the west, faint and somehow sad. As they listened to the distant tolling, Paul realised that the sounds of war had died away. Could peace have been declared?
Seconds later, a machine-gun opened up in the distance, leaving him absurdly disappointed.
‘Do you believe in God?’ Werner asked.
‘No,’ Paul said. His parents had both been convinced atheists, and even his conservative stepfather had never willingly set foot in a church. In fact, though it pained him to admit it, one of the things his younger self had most admired about the Nazis was their contempt for Christianity.
‘Me neither,’ Werner said, with far too much assurance for a fourteen-year-old. ‘But my mother does,’ he added. ‘My granddad was a chaplain in the First War. He used to say that people always behave better when they believe in something more powerful than themselves, so long as that something isn’t other people.’
‘Words of wisdom,’ Paul murmured.
‘He was a clever man,’ Werner agreed. ‘He used to tell me bedtime stories when I was really young. He just made them up as he went along.’
The eastern sky was lightening, the drizzle easing off. There were men at work under the bridge, Paul noticed. Planting charges, no doubt. He was still watching them when a Soviet biplane flew low up the river, and opened fire with its machine-gun. Several men dropped into the sluggish current, but Paul couldn’t tell whether they’d been hit or simply taken evasive action. At almost the same moment the first shells of an artillery barrage also hit the water, sending up huge plumes of spray. They had no doubt been aimed at the western bank, and he and Werner made the most of their luck, hurrying for cover while the Soviet gunners fine-tuned their range. They were still scrabbling their way under the tank when a shell landed on the stretch of promenade which they had just abandoned.
The barrage, which only lasted a few minutes, set a pattern for the rest of the day. Every half-hour or so the invisible Soviet guns would launch a few salvoes, then fall silent again. In between time, Soviet bombers and fighters would appear overhead, bombing and strafing whatever took their fancy. The only sign of the Luftwaffe was a sorry-looking convoy of ground personnel, who had been sent forward to the fighting front from their plane-less airfields.
The German tanks, guns and supporting infantry were well dug in, and there were, for once, few casualties. As far as Paul could tell, the German forces in and around Köpenick were strong enough to give Ivan at least a pause for thought. There were more than a dozen tanks, several of them Tigers, and upwards of twenty artillery pieces of varying modernity. If Paul’s tank was anything to go by, they were all likely to be low on fuel and shells, but Ivan couldn’t know that. And if he wanted to find out, he first had to cross a sizable river.
The bridge was finally blown in mid-afternoon, the centre section dropping into the river with a huge ‘whumpf’. It was neatly done, Paul thought – the Wehrmacht had certainly honed a few skills in its thousand-mile retreat. Russell’s watch told him it was almost seven o’clock – he had slept for nine hours. He didn’t regret it – he had needed the rest, and the middle of the day seemed far too dangerous a time to be wandering the streets. After dark seemed a much better bet, although Leissner might have other advice. Now he came to think about it, the Reichsbahn man might be reluctant to let him go. He would have to persuade Leissner that Varennikov was the one that mattered, the prize the Red Army would be hoping to collect.
He fumbled around for the matches and lit a candle. The Russian kept on snoring, which wasn’t surprising – he’d had even less sleep than Russell over the last few days. After Leissner had left them that morning, Varennikov had asked Russell over and over whether he thought they could trust the Reichsbahn official. Was there any reason they shouldn’t? Russell had asked him. There was, it turned out, only one. The man was a German.
Internationalism had not, it seemed, taken root in Soviet soil.
Feeling hungry, Russell drank some cold soup from one of the billy- cans. Its tastelessness was probably its primary virtue, but he certainly needed some sort of sustenance.
Taking the candle with him, he descended the spiral staircase. The flickering went ahead of him, and the lookout was already on his feet when Russell reached the platform. Leissner was either very efficient or very determined not to lose his prize. Or both. He probably had hopes of an important post in a new communist Germany.
‘I need to talk to Comrade Leissner,’ Russell said.
The man thought about that for several moments. ‘Wait here,’ he said eventually, and disappeared up the tunnel.
He returned five minutes later. ‘You can go up to his office. You remember the way?’
Russell did.
Leissner was waiting at the top of the stairs. He ushered Russell into the office, and carefully closed the door behind them. ‘Just habit,’ he explained, seeing Russell’s face. ‘Only a handful of people came in today, and they’ve all gone home. For the duration, I expect. It can’t be long now,’ he added with a broad smile. ‘It really is over.’
Not quite, Russell thought, but he didn’t say so. He had only known this particular comrade for a few hours, but his expectations of the Soviets were likely to be somewhat overblown. Leissner had probably joined the KPD in the late 1920s when he was still a teenager, and spent the Nazi years concealing his true allegiance. His looks would have helped – blonde hair, blue eyes and a chiselled face were never a handicap in Nazi Germany – but living a double life for that length of time could hardly have been easy, and he would certainly have become adept at deception.
But, by the same token, a life spent down the enemy’s throat provided one with few opportunities to learn about one’s friends. For men like Leissner, the Soviet Union would have been like a long-lost father, a vessel to fill with uncritical love.