Stattin Station

'What makes you think I know anything more than what I've already told you?'

Kuzorra smiled. 'A journalist who loathes the Nazis meets a journalist who loves them for unexplained reasons. And before you can say "Joseph Goebbels" the second journalist is apparently beaten to death. It's hard to believe there's no connection.'

'I didn't kill him.'

'I didn't say you did. But I do think you know more about this than you're telling me. Hence the unofficial visit. Without my new assistant.'

Russell considered. 'These are strange times we live in,' he said finally, 'when the police are asking questions off the record.'

'These are strange times.'

'Why can't it have been a robbery?' Russell asked, still prevaricating. Kuzorra smiled again. 'According to the Luftwaffe weather people it only stopped raining around two in the morning on Sunday. The body was wet underneath but dry on top when it was found an hour or so later.'

'So he was killed during that hour.'

'He'd been dead for well over twelve hours when the pathologist examined him at eight this morning.'

'Ah.'

'Ah indeed. He was killed just a few hours after your missed appointment, and placed in the park a lot later, between two and three in the morning.'

'And I don't suppose you're looking for a gang of Jewish-Bolshevik cut-throats?'

'They're thin on the ground these days.'

Russell had run out of wriggle room. 'Off the record,' he began, 'I didn't lie to you yesterday, but I didn't tell you the whole truth either. I didn't meet with Sullivan, but I did see him arrive at Stettin Station.' He paused, wondering how to explain his preliminary surveillance. 'I was a bit worried about meeting him in public,' he went on, improvising heroically. 'Sullivan was a Nazi, after all, and I could imagine him agreeing to help trap me in some sort of indiscretion. Anyway, I watched him go into the buffet and then waited a few moments to make sure that he wasn't being tailed. No one appeared, and I was just about to join him when two goons in suits beat me to it. They took Sullivan out to their car and drove off with him. I had no idea why, and I still haven't. I try and stay out of arguments between Nazis.'

'What did these men look like?'

Russell described them, and the car.

'I don't suppose you noticed the number.'

In for a penny, Russell thought. He collected the notebook from his jacket pocket, and read the number out.

'Anything else?' Kuzorra asked, once he had noted it down.

'Nothing.'

'Did Sullivan say, or hint, that he had something for you? Something material, I mean. Documents perhaps, or photographs.'

'No. But if he had brought something to show me, then presumably his killers will have it now.'

'Perhaps.' Kuzorra ran a hand across the grey stubble which passed for his hair, a personal habit which Russell remembered from their previous meetings. 'This is a strange case. While we're off the record - I presume this works both ways?'

Russell nodded, intrigued.

'The officer who was with me yesterday evening - Obersturmfuhrer Schwering - was appointed as my assistant less than two hours after Sullivan's body was found. He's on secondment from the Sicherheitsdienst. The first thing he suggested was a thorough search of Sullivan's apartment in Dahlem, and when he got there he seemed very insistent on conducting it himself. I let him get on with it, but kept an eye on him. He seemed rather put out when he didn't find anything.'

'Interesting,' Russell murmured.

'He may insist on searching this flat,' Kuzorra added.

'He won't find anything here,' Russell said flatly. Having their home ransacked by the SD was not a welcome prospect. Particularly if only Effi was here to receive them. 'I'm off to Prague this evening,' he told the detective, 'and I'll be gone for a couple of nights. So if you want to search the place, I'd be grateful if you'd do it now. '

Kuzorra gave him a lengthy stare. 'Consider it searched,' he said at last, and got to his feet. 'I'll give Schwering the car number, and tell him I got it from a witness at the station. It should keep him busy for a day or so.'

'Busy failing to trace it?'

'If it's a car from the SD pool. If it isn't, then he'll be the hero of the hour.'

'Depending on whom it does belong to. I don't envy you this particular job.'

Kuzorra paused with his hand on the doorknob. 'It beats chasing blackout robbers. And the expression on Goebbels' face when the penny finally drops should be something to behold.'

An hour or so later, Russell walked down to Zoo Station. Searching through the Volkischer Beobachter over the usual unsatisfactory breakfast, he found no mention of Sullivan's unfortunate demise. Someone had given Goebbels pause for thought, and sufficient reason for delaying his planned publicity blitz around the manhunt for Sullivan's killer. By tomorrow, Russell guessed, it would all be over. Sullivan's death would be fictionalised in a suitably edifying light, his killers on to their next mission of mercy. Kuzorra would be off the hook, and so would he.

It was a two-kilometre walk down the Landwehrkanal to the Abwehr headquarters. Yesterday's clear skies had persisted, and the low sun was frequently in his eyes as he walked south-eastwards along the towpath. It was suitably cold for December the first, and hopefully colder outside Moscow. The coal traffic seemed busier than ever, barge after laden barge puttering down the ice-edged canal towards the factories and generating stations in the north-western outskirts. The men at their helms all looked like the Ancient Mariner, dragged out of retirement in the Reich's hour of need.

With the Abwehr building looming in the distance, Russell used the Graf Spee Bridge to switch banks. As he approached the entrance on Tirpitz Ufer, he noticed the usual Gestapo Mercedes 260 parked on the opposite quay. In pre-war days foreign agents of all descriptions had lurked in this vicinity, hopeful of overhearing some useful tidbit of military information, but the real war had put paid to such boyish games, and Russell could only assume that the men in the car were Germans spying on their own countrymen.

At reception he was told to report to Colonel Piekenbrock, and for once the Section 1 chief didn't keep Russell waiting outside. Piekenbrock invited him in, sat him down and even suggested a cup of coffee. Russell accepted the latter, more in hope than expectation, and was only mildly disappointed when a pretty brunette arrived with the usual slop.

Piekenbrock gulped his down with almost inhuman gusto. 'This is Grashof,' he said, handing across a photograph. 'That was taken quite recently.'

Russell studied the picture. A tall-looking man with a gaunt face and short dark hair was standing on Prague's famous Charles Bridge, the Little Quarter and Castle rising behind him. Grashof was wearing glasses, and his lips were slightly curled in the beginnings of a smile. This is a clever man, Russell thought, and wondered what it was in the photograph that led him to that conclusion.

He handed it back.

'Your meeting will be at the Sramota Cafe. It's on the river, close to the Smetana Bridge. Grashof will be sitting on the terrace, the very last table along from the entrance. You should arrive at exactly two o'clock, with the latest issue of Signal.'

'What if it's raining? Or snowing even?'

'It's a glassed-in terrace.'

'What if someone beats us to that table?'

'They won't. This is all taken care of; you just have to be there. Greet Grashof like he was an old friend, order a coffee, sit and chat for ten, fifteen minutes. Before you arrive, you will have hidden this letter -' Piekenbrock passed a wax-sealed and unaddressed envelope across the desk '- in your magazine. Grashof will have his own copy, and it should not prove difficult to switch them over.'

'Elementary,' Russell murmured. The Admiral's penchant for the old traditions had scuppered his plan to steam the missive open. 'Will there be anything in his copy?'