While she was eating, Hans Hoffmann appeared.

Rebecca pushed back her chair and stood up. Her first thought was that he had come to kill her. She was on the point of screaming for help when she noticed the expression on his face. He looked defeated and sad. Her fear vanished: he was no longer dangerous.

“Please don’t be afraid, I mean no harm,” he said.

She remained standing. “What do you want?”

“A few words. A minute or two, no more.”

For a moment she wondered how he had managed to come from East to West Germany, then she realized that travel restrictions did not apply to senior officers in the secret police. They could do anything they liked. He had probably told his colleagues that he had an intelligence mission in Bonn. Perhaps he did.

The restaurant proprietor came over and said: “Is everything all right, Frau Held?”

Rebecca stared at Hans a moment longer. Then she said: “Yes, thank you, Günther, I think it’s okay.” She sat down again and Hans sat opposite.

She picked up her fork and put it down again. She had lost her appetite. “A minute or two, then.”

“Help me,” he said.

She could hardly believe her ears. “What?” she said. “Help you?”

“It’s all falling apart. I have to get out. The crowds laugh at me. I’m afraid they’ll kill me.”

“What on earth do you imagine I might do for you?”

“I need a place to stay, money, papers.”

“Are you out of your mind? After all you’ve done to me and my family?”

“Don’t you understand why I did those things?”

“Because you hate us!”

“Because I love you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I was assigned to spy on you and your family, yes. I dated you in order to get inside the house. But then something happened. I fell in love with you.”

He had said this once before, on the day she escaped over the Wall. He really meant it. He was out of his mind, she decided. She began to feel scared again.

“I told no one of my feelings,” he said, smiling nostalgically, as if he were recalling an innocent youthful romance rather than a wicked deception. “I pretended to be exploiting you and manipulating your feelings. But I really loved you. Then you said we should get married. I was in heaven! I had the perfect excuse to give my superiors.”

He was living in a dream world, but was that not true of the entire East German ruling elite?

“That year that we spent together, as man and wife, was the best time of my life,” Hans said. “And your rejection broke my heart.”

“How can you say that?”

“Why do you think I haven’t remarried?”

She was stupefied. “I don’t know,” she said.

“I have no interest in other women. Rebecca, you are the love of my life.”

She stared at him. She realized that this was not just a stupid story, a hopeless attempt to gain sympathy. Hans was sincere. He meant every word.