'Good morning,' she said, straightening her back. 'Leon will take your advice,' she added without preamble. 'He wants to go, but he's also afraid to leave me unprotected. And I encouraged him in that thought, God help me.'
'It's the right decision,' Russell said.
'I hope so. Come, let me give you some breakfast.' She led the way back to the house, placed the kettle on the woodstove and cut some thick slices from yesterday's loaf. A slab of remarkably solid butter was fetched from the larder, a jar of plum jam taken down from a shelf. Tea was made in a Russian-looking samovar.
All in all, it was delicious. Life was apparently possible without coffee. At least for a short time.
'How can I contact you?' Russell asked between mouthfuls of bread. 'When my brother-in-law wrote to you, the postmaster in Wartha denied that the letter had ever arrived.'
She thought for a moment. 'I will give you the name and address of a friend,' she said. 'A goy.'
She found a piece of paper and wrote it out with a slow, steady hand. 'This man is the local blacksmith. He and Leon are still friends, despite everything. Send your letter to us in envelopes addressed to him, and he will bring them to us. Leon will tell him to expect it.'
'Right.'
They sat in silence for a while, Russell sipping at the hot tea, Esther apparently absorbed in thought. 'Do you think our daughter is still alive?' she asked suddenly.
'I don't know. If she was dead, and the police had found her, then I think they would have informed my brother-in-law.'
'There is hope, then?'
'Yes.'
She ran a hand through her hair. 'There is a train to Breslau at around nine. We can hear it when the wind is from the east.'
'Your husband?'
'He is working in the field beyond the barn. He will want to say goodbye.'
They walked out to find him. He was picking cabbages, and judging by the size of the pile had been doing so for several hours.
He wiped his hands on his trousers and shook Russell's. He looked years older than he had the evening before. 'My grandfather bought this land over sixty years ago,' he said. 'He thought they would be safer close to the mountains, and he was right. We should never have sent Miriam away.'
'There was no way you could know that your brother would be attacked,' Russell told him.
Leon was not to be comforted. 'I always said my Miriam was too good for this world,' he said. 'Like an angel.'
Walking away down the dirt-track Russell could feel Esther's eyes on his back. Should he have raised her hopes? Did he have any reason to believe that Miriam was still alive?
Smoke was rising from the neighbouring farm. He thought of stopping to ask where Torsten worked, but the thought of meeting the boy's parents was uninviting. And the clues he had would be good enough. There weren't that many big stores in Breslau, and he was surprised that even one had been designed by a famous architect.
It seemed warmer than the previous day, and he hung his jacket over one shoulder. He walked swiftly, and was approaching the last crossroads, the roofs of Wartha visible across the fields, when he heard the lorry behind him. It was bumping along the dirt-track at a fair speed, belching dust into the air, and showed no signs of slowing down to spare his lungs. A blast of the horn reinforced the message.
Russell stepped onto the verge and beyond, reaching for his handkerchief to cover his mouth. The lorry lurched by, two men in the cab, two standing behind it in the open back.
Enveloped by dust, Russell heard rather than saw the lorry grind to a halt some fifty metres down the track. He saw two shapes climb down from either side of the cab, two more jumping down to the ground. All four shapes walked towards him. As the dust cleared, he saw that the driver and his mate were both wearing brown shirts. That was the extent of their uniform, but it was enough.
'Oh, fuck,' Russell murmured to himself. 'Good morning!' he said cheerily, as if these were the folks he'd most wanted to meet on such a beautiful day.
The response was less friendly. 'Where have you come from?' the driver asked. A short balding man with wide shoulders and a barrel chest, he was a good deal older than the others – around Russell's age – and he seemed to be in charge.
There seemed no point in lying. 'I've been up to the Rosenfeld farm.'
'For the night?'
'It was too late to get back to Breslau.'
'It's against the law, staying with Jews,' one of the younger men offered.
'Why were you up there?' the driver went on, ignoring his companion.
This, as Russell realized at the time, was the moment when he should have said something clever and self-exculpatory. That he was doing an article on Jews who refused to see sense and quit the Reich – something like that. But the last twenty-four hours had reduced his already limited willingness to indulge the local scum, and, in any case, the Rosenfelds deserved a bit of loyalty. 'I was telling them that their daughter is missing,' he said.
That didn't seem much of a surprise to his audience, who were presumably privy to Thomas's missing letter.
'She should have stayed here,' the same young man said with a grin. He was probably one of the gang that had intercepted Miriam on this very track, frightening the Rosenfelds into sending their daughter to Berlin.
The driver advanced a pace, close enough for Russell to smell the cabbage on his breath. 'So she's missing. What the hell is that to you?'
'Just another Jew-lover,' the other Brownshirt volunteered.
'Right,' Russell said sarcastically. 'When I could be admiring an aryan like you.'
He had time to move his head a fraction, saving his nose and teeth at his cheek's expense, but the power of the blow put him on his back. He shook his head, looked up at the four silhouettes gathered above him, and felt more than a little afraid.
'There's a good tree over there,' a voice said, compounding the effect.
'I'm an American journalist,' he said, struggling to keep his voice steady. 'And I also work for the Sicherheitsdienst in Berlin.'
'The what?'
'It's part of the Gestapo,' Russell said, somewhat inaccurately. 'Look at my papers,' he added, 'they're in my jacket.'
The driver picked up the jacket, rifled through the pockets, and examined Russell's journalistic accreditation. 'This says nothing about the Gestapo or the…Sicher-whatever-it-was.'
Russell decided it was time to get to his feet. 'You can ring their HQ at 102 Wilhelmstrasse,' he said, as he rose. 'Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth. He'll tell you.'
'Why would a Gestapo agent be visiting Jews?'
'Why do you think? Their daughter may be mixed up with enemies of the Reich…'
'Miriam Rosenfeld?!?'
'You know a lot about the Jewish opposition groups, do you?' Russell asked scathingly, risking another assault. 'It's very unlikely,' he admitted in a kinder tone. 'But we have to be vigilant.'
The driver still looked unconvinced. 'Get up on the lorry,' he said. 'You are coming with us.'