Russell told Freya about his meeting with her parents.
'How are they?' she asked, without much enthusiasm. 'They were so rotten to Wilhelm,' she added, as if in explanation. 'I still find it hard to forgive them.'
Russell shrugged. 'I'll take your word for it. All they said to me was that he was a bit of a mischief-maker.'
Wilhelm grunted with apparent amusement, but Freya's eyes blazed. 'You see what I mean! A mischief-maker! What do they expect Jews like Wilhelm to do? Just let the Nazis walk all over them?'
Russell smiled. 'I understand. I'm just the messenger. They just asked me to make sure you're all right.'
'Well, you can see that I am,' she said, and Russell had to agree. She looked tired, certainly, but there was a happy sparkle in the eyes. 'Look,' she said, relenting, 'I will write to them, tell them that we are married. Do you have their address?' She looked sheepish for a moment. 'I'm afraid I threw their letters away.'
Russell wrote it out in his reporter's notebook and tore out the page. 'I'll wire them and say you'll be writing,' he said, passing it across. 'Are you still working at the University?' he asked.
'No. At Siemens,' she said. 'As a secretary in the offices. Wilhelm works there too.'
Russell raised an eyebrow.
'The government lets them hire Jews because they're short of armaments workers,' Wilhelm told him. 'And Siemens are all in favour because they can get away with paying us next to nothing. But both of them may live to regret it. We are getting organized - Jews and non-Jews together.'
'Frau Grostein said you wanted to meet me in my journalistic capacity.'
'Yes.' He pulled a much-folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and carefully opened it up. 'Have you seen these?' he asked, passing it over.
It looked like the leaflet Russell had read on the tram. The message was different - this one concerned the recent death in a concentration camp of a prominent pastor - but the viewpoint and printing style were identical.
'Our group is responsible for these,' Wilhelm went on. 'It would be good if we could get some coverage in the foreign press. Let people know that some of us are fighting back.'
'All right, but why the foreign press?'
'Because we'll never get mentioned in the German press, and word does get back. When people come back from outside the cage they tell their friends what they've read and heard, and that gives other people hope that these pigs won't be lording it over us for a thousand years. Any news of resistance boosts everyone's morale, it really does.'
Everyone hungers after fame, Russell thought cynically, and mentally scolded himself. Who was he to judge this young man? 'I'll see what I can do,' he said. 'It'll have to be generalised, of course. I can't say I've actually been talking to the people responsible for the leaflets, or they'll want me to name names. I don't think journalistic privilege covers treason these days. But this group of yours - is it just printing leaflets?'
'It's not my group,' Wilhelm said with some asperity, 'and distribution is the dangerous part.'
'I appreciate that.'
'Good.' The young man's irritation passed as swiftly as it had risen. 'Other-wise... well, we hold discussion meetings, and we help organize support for people with no income. And we're thinking about printing a regular news sheet...'
'Any connection with the Palestine group?'
Wilhelm looked scornful. 'You don't fight race hatred by creating a state based on race. That's what the Nazis are doing.'
'Not in the same way,' Sarah Grostein interjected.
'What's the difference?' Wilhelm wanted to know.
'I think that's an argument for another time and place,' Russell said, aware that at least one other customer was watching them. An open-air cafe in Hitler's Berlin hardly seemed the ideal setting for an angry argument between communists about the future of Palestine. He turned to Freya. 'If you give me your address,' he said, 'I can give it to your parents when I wire them.'
She looked at Wilhelm, who nodded.
Russell wrote it down - one of the run-down streets off Busching Platz, if he remembered correctly. 'And I'll let you know if I can get you some publicity,' he told Wilhelm. They were all on their way back to the park entrance when he had a better idea. 'You could write something yourself,' he told Wilhelm. 'About your campaign, I mean. Your motives, how you distribute the leaflets, how you keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. Say what you want to say but make it sound exciting, even if it isn't.'
'Who would print it?'
'Send it to me, along with a covering letter saying who you are and who you represent. Not your real name, of course, but something convincing. I know - you can also send me an advanced copy of your next leaflet, and tell me to look out for other copies in a few days time. On a particular tram route, say. That'll give me all the proof I need that the article and the leaflets have been written by the same people. The creeps at the Propaganda Ministry won't be very happy, but I'll just be behaving like a responsible journalist. I got sent the piece, I checked its source, and I sent it for publication. And no, I have no idea who it came from.'
Wilhelm smiled, and looked several years younger. 'I will do it.'
'Send it to me, John Russell, care of the Adlon Hotel.'
They shook hands. Russell and Sarah Grostein watched the young couple walk off arm in arm, Freya's blonde head resting on Wilhelm's shoulder. The similarities between her past and Freya's present accounted for the wistfulness in Sarah's face, but there was also something harder there, something beyond recall. Just age perhaps, or the knowledge of what could go wrong, and how you dealt with that.
In the car she lit another cigarette, took a single puff and threw it away. 'He's a brave man,' she said eventually, 'but I don't know whether he's careful enough. What did you think of him?'
'Impressive. Young. As for careful, it's hard to say. I'm not sure it matters that much. I have a horrible feeling that survival's more a matter of luck than anything else.'
'Not in the long run.'
'Because history's on our side? Even if it is, there don't seem to be any individual guarantees.'
'No,' she agreed. 'My husband would have agreed with you. Not that he ever tried to be careful.'
As they turned into Lothringer Strasse the evening sun hit Russell squarely between the eyes, temporarily blinding him. A lorry roared past only inches away, horn blasting, before the road swam back into focus. 'There're some sunglasses in there,' he said, gesturing towards the glove compartment.
'I haven't seen anything like those before,' she said, passing them over.
'I bought them in New York,' he told her. 'They're called Polaroids, which means they're reflective. They were only invented a couple of years ago.'
'Richard and I went to New York in 1929. We were on the boat home when we heard about the stock market crash.'
'Tell me about him.'
She thought about it for the better part of a minute. 'He was a lovely man,' she said eventually. 'Temperamental, argumentative, a bit too sure of himself, but always kind. A businessmen who wrote romantic poetry. A wonderful lover.'
'That's some testament.'
She looked away, and he half-suspected tears, but when she turned back towards him her face was harder. 'I expect you're wondering how I can prostitute myself with the people who killed him.'
There was no easy answer to that. 'It must be hard,' was all he said.
'Sometimes. You know the worst thing of all? He's not a bad man. He makes interesting conversation, he makes me laugh. He represents everything I hate, but I can't hate him.' She almost laughed. 'Isn't that ridiculous?'