It was hot in the Zoo tower, and Paul awoke streaming with sweat from a few hours of miserable sleep. His body was stiff as a board, and there was a sharp pain in his back where the SS officer’s machine pistol had pressed against it. He forced himself painfully to his feet, and watched the bodies around him expand into the few square centimetres he had relinquished.
The smells of sweat, shit and blood – the latter emanating from the continuous activities of the operating theatre on the ground floor – permeated the entire structure, and the loudly whirring air extractors seemed incapable of shifting them. What they did do, was force everyone to shout above them, which only exacerbated the overriding sense of barely suppressed hysteria.
It was, Paul thought, as if they’d all been placed in a huge coffin. The lid was on, with only the burial to look forward to.
He had to get out.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he’d hardly eaten since the previous morning. There had to be food somewhere in the tower, or people would be even more agitated. He would seek it out, and maybe stumble across the 18th Panzergrenadiers in the process.
He eventually found the canteen he had frequented as a flakhelfer, and joined the long queue. There was only wassersuppe on offer, but it would improve the taste in his mouth. There was even a table to sit at, and after emptying the tin mug he laid his forehead on his folded arms and closed his eyes.
But sleep wouldn’t come. On first joining the army he’d slept through anything quieter than a katyusha barrage, but that knack, like so much else, had eventually deserted him.
Two seats down a young soldier with a Rhenish accent was insisting that Wenck’s Army could only be hours away. No one in his group disputed this, although some comrades were more inclined to put their faith in the imminent appearance of the long-anticipated wonder weapons. One corporal had heard rumours of bombs that could destroy whole cities, and of their intended use against London this coming weekend. When another man argued that Moscow should be the target, the corporal could only agree with him. But, sad to say, the Soviet capital was temporarily out of range.
Across the table a young army captain almost choked on his wassersuppe. ‘Bunch of fools,’ he spluttered in explanation when Paul caught his eye. The young soldiers seemed about to answer back, but were probably inhibited by the Knight’s Cross at their critic’s throat. Instead they rose in unison and made their way out, muttering indignantly amongst themselves.
Another group arrived to take their place, and were soon broadcasting their own rumours. Someone had heard that the Führer was getting married that day, to an actress that nobody had heard of. And that the actress was to going to feature on a new twenty mark note, dressed as a milkmaid.
The captain just shook his head at this one, and got up to leave. Paul thought about following suit, but where was there to go? Here he could stretch out his legs, and there was something comforting in listening to his fellow soldiers’ conversations, no matter how moronic they were.
The ones to his right were discussing the benefits of life in the flak towers. For one thing they were safe from shellfire; for another they were safe from the SS squads now combing the city for deserters. Many civilians were putting out white flags to mollify the approaching Russians, but some were acting too soon, and drawing down the wrath of the SS. Buildings had been emptied, and all their inhabitants shot.
Paul’s thoughts turned to Werner, and the red-headed Obersturmführer who had hanged him. If they both survived the war he would seek some kind of reckoning. The boy deserved a better epitaph.
He felt depression settling over him. Meeting Effi had lifted his heart, but the effect was wearing off. He found himself thinking about Madeleine, and their few weeks together. They’d shared their innermost secrets, even talked of marriage after the war, but their sexual relationship had never gone beyond passionate fumblings in the darkened Tiergarten. She had died in this building, and the chances seemed good that he would too.
He looked round the packed room and told himself to get a grip. With this many people and this much confusion there had to be some way out.
It was after five in the afternoon when Effi and Rosa climbed the staircases up to the shelter. After the initial rush the water had risen steadily for more than an hour, peaking at a point only a few centimetres beneath the rim of the platform. And then it had slowly begun to recede.
She had spent several hours pulling shocked and frightened people from the water. Most had needed no more help than that, and were soon on their way, heading up the stairs in search of sustenance and dry clothes. She reeled in the first few corpses that drifted by, but they appeared at such distressingly frequent intervals that she started letting them go. Most were children, and she ached at the thought that Rosa could well have been one of them.
Back in the shelter the SS presence seemed even more foreboding. The glint of guns was everywhere, and the children were all in Hitlerjugend uniforms. They found Annaliese in their old room, writing out a note. ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ she said when she saw them. ‘Where on earth have you been?’
As Effi told their story, she noticed the bruises on her friend’s face and arms.
‘I fell on the stairs,’ Annaliese explained. ‘Others were not so lucky,’ she added. ‘At least one child was trampled. It was insane.’ She grimaced. ‘I say that, and I was as bad as all the others.’ She managed a rueful smile. ‘I assumed you were right behind me. Anyway, I’ve given up on Spandau. There’s a last transport leaving for the Zoo Bunker when it gets dark, so I thought I might as well join it. Why don’t you come?’
‘Okay,’ Effi said without hesitation. The bunker at the Zoo towers might be terrible, but it could hardly be worse than this.
They spent the next couple of hours in a room close to the entrance. The shelter was less crowded than it had been – many long-term residents had concluded that the outside world, with all its Russian shells and soldiers, offered a better chance of survival than a last-ditch SS fortress. And if Effi was not mistaken, some of the SS felt the same. As she and Rosa waited to leave, several young supermen stopped to stroke the girl’s hair and wish them good luck, tears in their pure blue eyes.
The transport was late arriving, and it was almost nine when the call came to climb the stairs. Effi hadn’t breathed any outside air for several days, and the stars sprinkled above the shelter entrance gave her reason to smile. Potsdamerplatz, by contrast, was a wilderness of rubble. Since their vigil earlier in the week, the last facades had been torn away, and what remained bore an eerie resemblance to an ancient ring of stones.
Their lorry was pumping dark exhaust, its tailgate lowered to allow them aboard. There were fifteen of them, mostly medical staff that Effi recognised, with only a couple of hangers-on. Most seemed in high spirits, as if they were heading off on an adventure, rather than driving through shell-fire to another bastion of useless resistance.
In fact, there seemed to be a lull in the shelling. As they drove south on Potsdamer Strasse a full moon rose through the ruins behind them, and the city seemed more at peace than it had for weeks. They rattled over the hump-backed Potsdamer Bridge and turned right along the southern bank of the Landwehrkanal. Through the open back of the lorry Effi saw moonlight dancing on the gently rippling water, and the sudden eruption of flames from a building on the north bank. Another explosion followed, this one further back.
The lorry’s engine started to cough. It limped on a few more metres and then suddenly jerked to a halt.
The driver was still fending off complaints when shells began landing all around them. Everyone scrambled out of the lorry, most seeking cover between the wheels. Others crammed themselves into the nearest convenient doorway, leaving Effi, Annaliese and Rosa running for the shelter of an alley. They had only just reached it when a shell exploded behind them with an enormous ‘whumpf’, and hurried them on like a strong gust of wind. Effi turned to see another building ablaze on the far side of the canal, and a shell explode in the shallow water, sending up a huge spout for the moon to burnish. A shower of drops landed all around them.