Potsdam Station by David Downing Page A

safe overnight. But no longer than that. You must leave in the morning. I’ll try and find somewhere, but…’
    ‘Don’t bother,’ Effi interrupted. She had spent a good many sleepless nights anticipating this turn of events, and knew exactly what she intended to do. ‘We’ll get a train east, to Fürstenwalde or Müncheberg, somewhere like that, and then return as refugees. There are thousands arriving in Berlin, and half of them have lost their papers. I’ll just make up a sob story, and we’ll have new identities. I used to be an actress,’ she added in response to Aslund’s doubtful look. ‘Quite a good one.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, smiling for the first time.
    ‘How will I get in touch again?’ she asked.
    ‘You won’t,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘It can’t be long now, and I think we must all keep our heads down and hope for the best. And meet again in better times.’
    She gave him a hug, and let him out the door. As she pushed it shut behind him Effi remembered that she was meeting her sister Zarah on Friday. With any luck they would be back by then.
    ‘You won’t leave me?’ a small voice asked from across the room.
    ‘No, of course not,’ Effi said, walking across to embrace her. ‘We’ll go together.’
    ‘On a train?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I used to hear them from our shed, but I’ve never been on one.’
     
    Russell woke to the sound of a scream, but it was not repeated, leaving him unsure whether or not he had dreamed it. He felt as if he had only slept for a couple of hours, and fitfully at that. Each time he had tried to still his mind with thoughts of something pleasant, Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’ had started up inside his head, until he cried out loud in frustration.
    Breakfast arrived through the lower flap in the door, a meal as enticing as the one before it, and the one before that. But this time he actually felt hungry, and the soup tasted slightly better than it looked. What was in it was hard to tell, but whatever it was, his stomach was unimpressed, and he was soon getting used to the stench of his own waste.
    Several hours went by, and his only visitor was another prisoner, who transferred the contents of his bucket into a larger receptacle. Russell thanked the man, and received a disbelieving look in return. The smell showed no sign of fading.
    He had half expected another session with Colonel Ramanichev, and felt absurdly aggrieved at being ignored. Get a grip, he told himself. This could go on for months, or even years. They had no reason for haste – on the contrary, the longer they left him the weaker he would be. He could lie there for ever, turning soup into shit and letting the same stupid song drive him slowly nuts.
    Staring at the wall, he resisted the temptation to start scratching off days. Some clichés should be avoided.
    He wondered if his sudden disappearance had been noticed. His fellow journalists at the Metropol might be wondering where he had got to, if they hadn’t already been fed some story. Kenyon would eventually realise he was missing, and would certainly question the Soviet authorities. But would the American diplomat be able to push matters any further than that? The politicians in Washington were not going to put their relationship with the Soviets at risk for one difficult journalist, not at this juncture.
    He went through what Ramanichev had said on the previous day. He had to admit it – if you examined his story from the Soviet perspective, it did seem a trifle suspicious. Write to Stalin forgoing Berlin, and then send him a journalist who was desperate to reach Hitler’s capital – as neat a way of confirming the original message as could be imagined. Over the previous seven years Russell had met so-called intelligence people from most of the warring countries – British, American, Soviet, German – and they had all delighted in tricks like that. The fact that he was telling the truth was