Karolin felt the same. She and Lili were close enough to share secrets, and Karolin had confessed that her marriage had been a mistake. She was not miserable with Odo, but nor was she in love with him. He was kind and gentle, but not sexy: they made love about once a month.

So the holiday group was six people. Werner, Carla, and Lili took the bronze car and Karolin, Odo, and Alice went in the white one.

It was a long drive, especially in a Trabi with a 600 cc two-stroke engine: six hundred miles all across Czechoslovakia. The first day took them to Prague, where they stayed overnight. When they left their hotel, on the morning of the second day, Werner said: “I’m pretty sure no one is following us. We seem to have got away with it.”

They drove to Lake Balaton, fifty miles long, the largest lake in Central Europe. It was tantalizingly close to Austria, a free country. However, the entire border was fortified by one hundred fifty miles of electric fence, to prevent people escaping from the workers’ paradise.

They pitched two tents side by side at a campsite on the southern shore.

They had a secret purpose: they were going to meet Rebecca.

It was Rebecca’s idea. She had spent a year of her life looking after Walli, and he had succeeded in giving up drugs. He now had his own apartment near Rebecca’s in Hamburg. In order to care for him, she had turned down a chance to stand for the Bundestag, the national parliament; but when he got well the offer had been renewed. Now she was an elected member, specializing in foreign policy. She had traveled to Hungary on an official trip, and seen that Hungary was deliberately attracting Western holidaymakers: tourism and cheap Riesling were the country’s only means of earning foreign currency and reducing its massive trade deficit. The Westerners went to special, segregated holiday camps, but outside the camps there was nothing to stop fraternization.

So there was no law against what the Francks were doing. Their trip was permitted, and so was Rebecca’s. Like them, she was coming to Hungary for a budget holiday. They would rendezvous as if by accident.

But the law was merely cosmetic in Communist countries. The Francks knew there would be terrible trouble if the secret police found out what they were up to. So Rebecca had arranged everything clandestinely, through Enok Andersen, the Danish accountant who still frequently crossed the border from West Berlin to East to see Werner. Nothing had been written down and there were no phone calls. Their greatest fear was that Rebecca would somehow be arrested—or even just kidnapped by the Stasi—and taken to a prison in East Germany. It would be a diplomatic incident, but the Stasi might do it anyway.

Rebecca’s husband, Bernd, was not coming. His condition had deteriorated and his kidneys were malfunctioning. He was working only part-time, and could not travel far.