Kenyon was smiling, Dallin frowning and shaking his head. 'I can't do a deal like that,' the latter said.
'Of course you can. You liked the idea when I first told you about it, and it's in your government's interest - a channel to the Abwehr would be useful, particularly if Canaris falls out even further with Heydrich. And it's in the Admiral's interests too. All you have to do is insist that I'm the man you want as the go-between. Put it in writing, and I'll deliver it. What could that cost you?'
'And when do you think you can recover Sullivan's papers?' Kenyon asked. Away in the distance a train was rumbling across the Spree bridge outside Bellevue Station.
Russell worked through a mental timetable. 'Saturday,' he suggested. 'Maybe Sunday.'
'I don't know,' Dallin said stubbornly.
As Russell had hoped, the senior diplomat was not about to be denied. 'We'll work something out,' Kenyon assured him.
Dropping in at the Adlon to check for messages, Russell found most of the foreign press corps strewn around the bar like passengers waiting for a train. Some had even taken the precaution of bringing small suitcases with them, just in case. Several were enjoying a late and decidedly alcoholic breakfast.
Around eleven forty-five they set off en masse for the Foreign Ministry, rather in the manner of schoolboys and girls resenting a disagreeable outing. The briefing proved even less enlightening than usual - with the battles in Russia and North Africa apparently still raging, all von Stumm wanted to talk about was a heinous attack by terrorists on a German officer in Paris. For once, Russell thought, the German spokesman might have got his priorities right, albeit not in the way he intended. As finite German power was spread ever more thinly across an expanding empire, an ever-swelling tide of resistance seemed inevitable.
The briefing concluded in the traditional way, with one of the Americans asking a question that the Germans either wouldn't or couldn't answer. 'Would the spokesman like to comment on Turkey's decision to accept lend-lease aid from the United States?' Ralph Morrison asked. Von Stumm looked at the table, said for the hundredth time that year that this particular question was 'not worthy of an answer', and made the usual abrupt exit, sucking minions into his wake as he swept from the chamber. There was a brief and thoroughly sarcastic ripple of applause.
The press corps adjourned to the Press Club for a long and highly alcoholic lunch, before attending their second circus of the day at Goebbels' Big Top. One of the Americans was leaving for Switzerland soon thereafter, and a farewell party had been planned for the station platform. Russell didn't know the man well, but joined his drunken colleagues in their stumbling progress to the nearby Potsdam Station. Out on the platform, the party turned into a multinational singsong, with a fine rendition of 'Lili Marlene' sandwiched between equally melodic takes on 'Swanee River' and 'Pennies from Heaven'. Several colleagues had come armed with rolls containing real sausage for the traveller, and insisted that their later consumption be suitably ostentatious - if at all possible, sizable chunks of meat should be casually jettisoned in front of watching Germans.
The whistles finally blew, and as the train moved off into the darkness the journalists all waved white handkerchiefs at their departing colleague. It was quite ridiculous, and annoyingly moving.
After sobering himself up with a strong and thoroughly disgusting coffee at the station buffet, Russell descended the steps to the U-Bahn platforms. The normal rush hours were over, but the trains were still packed, and he stood all the way to Alexander Platz, where he changed lines. The Gesundbrunnen train was almost as full, but a seat opened up after a couple of stops. He was tired, he realised, both physically and mentally. Tired of waiting for some sort of axe to fall.
Emerging from the U-Bahn terminus, he turned down Behmstrasse. Ahead of him, the dark rectangle of Hertha's Plumpe Stadium was dimly silhouetted against the clear night sky. The locomotive driver Walter Metza lived a couple of streets to the north, in one of the old apartment blocks that housed many of the local Reichsbahn workers, and Russell found the street without much difficulty. This was not the sort of area the Gestapo would visit on foot, but for Metza's sake Russell was careful to make sure that he wasn't being followed.
The woman who answered the door was initially suspicious, but managed a thin smile of welcome when he explained who he was, and swiftly ushered him inside. She was a tallish blonde in her early thirties, with one of those plain faces that would sometimes slip into beauty. As she shut the door Russell noticed a Reichspost cap hanging behind it.
'I'm his wife,' she said, squeezing past him. 'Ute.' She opened another door. 'Walter's in here.'
Metza was in an armchair, with one heavily strapped leg resting on a cushioned upright chair. The left side of his face was a mass of healing lesions, and the hair on that side of his head was still growing back. He was at least ten years older than his wife, but the two young girls examining Russell with great curiosity clearly belonged to both of them - the older one looked like him, the younger one like her. The wife quickly shooed the two girls into the other room and shut the door behind the three of them.
Russell explained who he was, who he worked for, and how he was trying to build up a picture of what was really happening in Russia before the outbreak of German-American hostilities caused his deportation. Metza nodded his understanding, and asked for reassurance that his name would not be mentioned.
'No. And I'll make damn sure that no one could deduce my source from reading the story.'
'Then fire away.'
Russell began running through the questions he had prepared. The driver answered them in a slow but confident voice, often thinking for several moments before speaking. He was, Russell guessed, one of the many workers who had benefited from the KPD's sponsorship of adult education classes in the late 1920s.
Metza had mostly been employed on the main line to Moscow through Brest, Minsk and Smolensk, which, as Russell knew, was the principal supply route for Army Group Centre. The whole line had needed re-gauging for German locomotives and rolling stock, the driver explained, and most of it had been. The continued use of Russian locomotives and rolling stock complicated matters, but those problems were proving surmountable. Others were not. Every Reichsbahn district manager in Germany had volunteered his worst workers for service in the East, and Reichsbahn equipment had proved utterly inadequate for the conditions. 'The Soviets have their steam pipes inside the boiler on their locomotives, so that they do not freeze up,' Metza explained. 'Ours are outside, and of course they do. And that's just one of the differences. Their tenders carry more water, so their water towers are further apart, too far apart for ours. There are so many problems like that. Our trains are just not built for Russian conditions.'
And then there were the partisans. 'At first we thought, "Ah, this is just a small nuisance that we'll have to get used to", but the attacks grew more frequent very quickly, and now they are a major problem. Lines are blown up, bridges too - there are so many long stretches of track running through empty forests. Not that the partisans stick to the countryside - sabotage attacks are common in cities like Minsk and Smolensk.'
'I know it's an impossible question,' Russell said, 'but how much is the Army getting of what it needs? Are there just difficulties, or is there a real supply crisis?'
Metza thought about that for a moment, idly scratching at his side where less visible injuries were presumably itching. 'In early November, when I was wounded, there were serious difficulties. And from what comrades have told me since then, I would guess that those difficulties have turned into a real crisis. Even three weeks ago the yards in Brest and Baranovichi were full of supplies which couldn't be moved, and from what I hear the blockages are now backed up as far as Warsaw.'