Wehner I have some sympathy with him, I have to admit. They skinned me alive for my exile.

Schmidt You were a Communist. You got your hands dirty. You were part of the great train-wreck of German history like all the rest of us. Even our chirpy friend here from Berlin, no doubt. What, seventeen at the end of the war, Herr Guillaume?

Guillaume Eighteen.

Schmidt Hider Youth? Boy soldier?

Guillaume Of course. Anti-aircraft. Like you.

Wehner All of us on the train, except the great man himself.

Schmidt On the boat to Norway instead.

Wehner He leaves here each night and he turns back into a Norwegian. The German Chancellor - and he speaks Norwegian with his wife and children.

Schmidt He came back in 1945 wearing Norwegian uniform.

Wehner Those beloved Berliners of his scrabbling like pigs in the dirt for scraps, and where was the great man? Sitting at table with the Occupation forces, eating with commandeered silverware off commandeered china. His hands as clean as ever.

Schmidt This is Willy's great strength. He's not quite one of us. He doesn't quite understand what all the rest of us understand.

Kretschmann (with Guillaume) You look as if you could do with a spoonful or two of the red medicine yourself.

Guillaume They've got Karl Schiller out of Economics and Finance. Trapped him into resigning. Helmut's taken them both over.

Kretschmann One step closer to the throne.

Guillaume Also things are a little bleak at home.

Kretschmann Christel?

Guillaume Silences. Tears.

Kretschmann I'm so sorry.

Guillaume She seems to have been doing a little spying on her own account.

Kretschmann This is the secretaries?

Guillaume Etcetera.

Kretschmann You've told her it's purely professional?

Guillaume Etcetera, etcetera. It's the profession that's finished us. She gets homesick, Arno. Don't you ever feel a sudden longing to be over there again?

Kretschmann Of course.

Guillaume It comes at the oddest moments.

Kretschmann Those quiet grey streets. That blessed dullness.

Guillaume That simplicity.

Kretschmann We smuggled you back a couple of times.

Guillaume Like a returning ghost. Sworn to silence and invisibility. Eavesdropping on my own absence.

Kretschmann So West Germany has not proved to be the paradise that so many of our fellow-citizens think it is.

Guillaume She wants a divorce, Arno.

Kretschmann She can't have one. Mischa won't let her. We need you as a couple. And think about Pierre.

Guillaume I think about him all the time.

Kretschmann Your Sunday mornings at the airport together.

Guillaume Even that's just the cover for a letter drop.

Kretschmann Every coin has two faces.

Guillaume If I'm arrested . . .

Kretschmann Why should you be?

Guillaume It can't go on, Arno! Not for ever! And when they arrest me they'll arrest Christel.

Kretschmann Pierre would be looked after. I promise you.

Guillaume He's only fifteen. He wouldn't understand.

Kretschmann It would all be explained to him.

Guillaume I wake sometimes at night, and I feel a sick dread creeping through my body.