“Not for a while,” Walli replied. “Unless they escape, too.”

“My father would never leave. He loves his buses.”

“They have buses in the West.”

“You don’t know him.”

Walli did know him, and Karolin was right. Her father was as different as could be from the clever, strong-willed Werner. Karolin’s father had no political or religious ideas and cared nothing for freedom of speech. If he lived in a democracy he probably would not bother to vote. He liked his work and his family and his pub. His favorite food was bread. Communism gave him everything he needed. He would never escape to the West.

It was twilight when Walli and Karolin reached Strelitzer Strasse.

Karolin became increasingly jumpy as they walked along the street toward where it dead-ended at the Wall.

Ahead Walli noticed a young couple with a child. He wondered if they, too, were escaping. Yes, they were: they opened the door to the yard and disappeared.

Walli and Karolin reached the place, and Walli said: “We go in here.”

Karolin said: “I want my mother with me when I have the baby.”

“We’re almost there!” Walli said. “Through this door there’s a yard with a hatch. We go down the shaft and along the tunnel to freedom!”

“I’m not scared of escaping,” she said. “I’m scared of giving birth.”

“You’ll be fine,” Walli said desperately. “They have great hospitals in the West. You’ll be surrounded by doctors and nurses.”

“I want my mother,” she said.

Over her shoulder Walli saw, four hundred yards away at the corner of the street, the man in the brown canvas coat talking to a policeman. “Shit!” he said. “We were followed.” He looked at the door, then at Karolin. “It’s now or never,” he said. “I have no choice, I have to go. Are you coming with me, or not?”

She was crying. “I want to, but I can’t,” she said.

A car came around the corner, traveling fast. It stopped beside the policeman and the tail. A familiar figure jumped out of the car, a tall man with a stoop: Hans Hoffmann. He spoke to the man in the brown coat.

Walli said to Karolin: “Either follow me, or walk quickly away from here. There’s going to be trouble.” He stared at her. “I love you,” he said. Then he dashed through the door.

Standing over the hatch was Cristina, still wearing the head scarf and the gun in her belt. When she saw Walli she threw the iron doors open. “You may need that gun,” Walli said to her. “The police are coming.”

He took one look back. The wooden door in the wall remained shut. Karolin had not followed him. Pain twisted in his stomach: it was the end.

He scrambled down the steps.

In the cellar the young couple with the child were standing with one of the students. “Hurry!” Walli yelled. “The police are coming!”

They went down the shaft: mother first, then child, then father. The child was slow on the ladder.