Maria did not contradict Jasper. He was one hundred percent correct. She decided to deflect him. To give herself a moment to think, she watched a low-loader go by bearing a long missile with a French flag painted on its side. Then she said: “You’re missing a better story.”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. That accusation was not often leveled at Jasper Murray. “Go on,” he said in a tone of mild amusement.

“I can’t talk to you on the record.”

“Off it, then.”

She gave him a hard look. “So long as we’re clear on that.”

“We are.”

“Okay. You probably know that some of the advice the president has been getting suggests that Gorbachev is a fraud, glasnost and perestroika are Communist flummery, and the whole charade is no more than a way to trick the West into dropping its guard and disarming prematurely.”

“Who gives him this advice?”

The answer was the CIA, the national security adviser, and the secretary of defense, but Maria was not going to run them down when talking to a journalist, even off the record, so she said: “Jasper, if you don’t know that already, you’re not the reporter we all think you are.”

He grinned. “Okay. So what’s the big story?”

“President Bush was inclined to accept that advice—before he came on this trip. The story is that he has seen the reality on the ground here in Europe, and has altered his view accordingly. In Poland he said: ‘I have this heady feeling that I’m witnessing history being made on the spot.’”

“Can I use that quote?”

“You may. He said it to me.”

“Thanks.”

“The president now believes that change in the Communist world is real and permanent, and we need to give it guarded encouragement, instead of kidding ourselves that it isn’t really happening.”

Jasper gave Maria a long look that, she thought, had in it a measure of surprised respect. “You’re right,” he said at last. “That is a better story. Back in Washington the Cold Warriors, like Dick Cheney and Brent Scowcroft, are going to be mad as hell.”

“You said that,” Maria said. “I didn’t.”

• • •

Lili, Karolin, Alice, and Helmut drove from Berlin to Lake Balaton, in Hungary, in Lili’s white Trabant. As usual, it took two days. On the way Lili and Karolin sang every song they knew.

They were singing to cover their fear. Alice and Helmut were going to try to escape to the West. No one knew what would happen.

Lili and Karolin would stay behind. Both were single but, all the same, their lives were in East Germany. They hated the regime, but they wanted to oppose it, not flee from it. It was different for Alice and Helmut, who had their lives in front of them.

Lili knew only two people who had tried to leave: Rebecca, and Walli. Rebecca’s fiancé had fallen from a roof and been crippled for life. Walli had run over a border guard and killed him, a trauma that had haunted him for years. They were not happy precedents. But the situation had changed now—hadn’t it?