up. She walked through into the living room, and a few seconds later the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra were easing into 'I'll never smile again'.
She reappeared in the archway. 'Come dance with me.'
Betrayals on offer
'Lunch at the Adlon?' Ralph Morrison asked, as he and Russell reached the pavement outside the Foreign Ministry. It was a miserable day, a thin mist of rain hanging in the air.
'Why not?' These days most Americans were persona non grata in most of Berlin, but the Adlon Hotel remained a welcome exception.
'Another hour I'll never get back,' Morrison complained, as they walked up Wilhelmstrasse. 'I even found myself missing that bastard Schmidt this morning. At least he lies with some panache. That idiot Stumm, well, what can you say?'
'If they really have taken Kerch, that's bad news,' Russell said. 'Puts them too damn close to the Caucasus oilfields.'
'I know.'
'Did you get any more on Udet? None of my contacts would tell me anything.'
'Oh yes. He shot himself all right. And left a note blaming Goering - "Oh Iron Man, why have you deserted me?" or some such rubbish. Why do fighter aces never grow up?'
They reached the Adlon entrance and walked through to the restaurant. Gestapo technicians had invaded the hotel a few months earlier and planted hidden microphones everywhere, but over the intervening weeks most had been discovered by the staff, and the guests discreetly warned. Morrison and Russell headed for an area of the large room that was generally considered safe. There was no chandelier directly above their table, and the latter's underside was clear.
Russell had got to know Morrison quite well since his arrival some six months before, as Jack Slaney's replacement. A burly Mid-Westerner in his mid-thirties, Morrison had arrived knowing little about Germany, but he had inherited most of Slaney's excellent sources, and proved a quick learner. If he sometimes appeared even more cynical than his predecessor, that was probably because reporting from Berlin no longer bore any relation to traditional journalism.
The ritual with scissors and ration tickets completed, the two men sipped at what passed for beers in Hitler's triumphant capital. 'I did pick up another story in my trawling,' Russell admitted. 'I was talking to a German friend this morning, a journalist. Apparently the editors of all the big city dailies were called in to Promi yesterday, and told to lay off the winter clothing story. The official line is that it's all waiting at the railheads for distribution, but the trains are in chaos so who knows when they'll get there, and they're worried that the troops will write home and tell their families that nothing's arrived and they're all freezing to death. So no one's supposed to mention the subject, and there's a complete ban on pictures of soldiers in their summer uniforms.' Russell laughed. 'Photographers have been sending back too many pictures of Red Army men in thick coats guarded by shivering Germans in denim.'
Morrison shook his head in amazement. 'Have they really been that incompetent?'
'You bet. The astonishing thing is that they're still advancing. Stalin must be matching them balls-up for balls-up.'
Their lunch arrived, boiled cabbage and potatoes with a few suspicious-looking pieces of sausage. If this was what the Adlon was serving, God help the rest of the Reich.
'The thing about the Nazis,' Russell went on, 'is that everything's short term. They gabble on about thousand-year Reichs but they don't do any real planning. There's a fascinating article in the Frankfurter Zeitung this morning about the importance of infantry in the Russian campaign. Well, it's not fascinating in itself, but the fact of it is. An article like that would have been inconceivable a couple of months ago - all anyone wanted to talk about were the panzers and the Luftwaffe. Short-term weapons, weapons that win quickly, blitzkrieg . And I think that whoever wrote that article has realised that blitzkrieg has
She reappeared in the archway. 'Come dance with me.'
Betrayals on offer
'Lunch at the Adlon?' Ralph Morrison asked, as he and Russell reached the pavement outside the Foreign Ministry. It was a miserable day, a thin mist of rain hanging in the air.
'Why not?' These days most Americans were persona non grata in most of Berlin, but the Adlon Hotel remained a welcome exception.
'Another hour I'll never get back,' Morrison complained, as they walked up Wilhelmstrasse. 'I even found myself missing that bastard Schmidt this morning. At least he lies with some panache. That idiot Stumm, well, what can you say?'
'If they really have taken Kerch, that's bad news,' Russell said. 'Puts them too damn close to the Caucasus oilfields.'
'I know.'
'Did you get any more on Udet? None of my contacts would tell me anything.'
'Oh yes. He shot himself all right. And left a note blaming Goering - "Oh Iron Man, why have you deserted me?" or some such rubbish. Why do fighter aces never grow up?'
They reached the Adlon entrance and walked through to the restaurant. Gestapo technicians had invaded the hotel a few months earlier and planted hidden microphones everywhere, but over the intervening weeks most had been discovered by the staff, and the guests discreetly warned. Morrison and Russell headed for an area of the large room that was generally considered safe. There was no chandelier directly above their table, and the latter's underside was clear.
Russell had got to know Morrison quite well since his arrival some six months before, as Jack Slaney's replacement. A burly Mid-Westerner in his mid-thirties, Morrison had arrived knowing little about Germany, but he had inherited most of Slaney's excellent sources, and proved a quick learner. If he sometimes appeared even more cynical than his predecessor, that was probably because reporting from Berlin no longer bore any relation to traditional journalism.
The ritual with scissors and ration tickets completed, the two men sipped at what passed for beers in Hitler's triumphant capital. 'I did pick up another story in my trawling,' Russell admitted. 'I was talking to a German friend this morning, a journalist. Apparently the editors of all the big city dailies were called in to Promi yesterday, and told to lay off the winter clothing story. The official line is that it's all waiting at the railheads for distribution, but the trains are in chaos so who knows when they'll get there, and they're worried that the troops will write home and tell their families that nothing's arrived and they're all freezing to death. So no one's supposed to mention the subject, and there's a complete ban on pictures of soldiers in their summer uniforms.' Russell laughed. 'Photographers have been sending back too many pictures of Red Army men in thick coats guarded by shivering Germans in denim.'
Morrison shook his head in amazement. 'Have they really been that incompetent?'
'You bet. The astonishing thing is that they're still advancing. Stalin must be matching them balls-up for balls-up.'
Their lunch arrived, boiled cabbage and potatoes with a few suspicious-looking pieces of sausage. If this was what the Adlon was serving, God help the rest of the Reich.
'The thing about the Nazis,' Russell went on, 'is that everything's short term. They gabble on about thousand-year Reichs but they don't do any real planning. There's a fascinating article in the Frankfurter Zeitung this morning about the importance of infantry in the Russian campaign. Well, it's not fascinating in itself, but the fact of it is. An article like that would have been inconceivable a couple of months ago - all anyone wanted to talk about were the panzers and the Luftwaffe. Short-term weapons, weapons that win quickly, blitzkrieg . And I think that whoever wrote that article has realised that blitzkrieg has
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