The little girl who’d sold him the cigarettes was pestering him to buy another packet, and in a rare moment of goodwill, he chucked a couple of coins from his pocket in her direction and watched in amusement as half a dozen children emerged from the rubble to scrap over the money.

He could head straight back to Cologne, but the consequences of that would be too serious. He just wanted to be shot of the money and put the whole sorry business behind him. Never again would he allow his uncle, or indeed anyone else, to talk him into something like this, no matter how much he agreed with the cause. Apart from anything else, his health wasn’t up to it.

He’d memorised the instructions about where he was to go if the first rendezvous didn’t work out, and reckoned he was now around five minutes’ walk from his destination. He looked around to check that no one had followed him, but he needn’t have worried. There were no Americans in uniform; just a few civilians shuffling along, all wearing more layers than usual of filthy clothing, heads bowed to avoid sharing their shame with someone they might know, and in case they should be fortunate enough to spot a cigarette end or some other treasure on the ground.

It took him longer than he’d anticipated to reach Kaiserstrasse; once there, he had to turn away from the direction of the station, so he waited in the doorway of a building that no longer existed and took time to light another cigarette, watching people walk slowly by. There was more of an edge to this area: it was the heart of the black market and there were signs of business being carried out deep inside the ruins and in the street – furtive conversations as an item was slipped from one pocket to another, money being palmed in the opposite direction. He moved along until he came to the junction with Moselstrasse, and was briefly thrown by the fact that the road ran in both directions off Kaiserstrasse, but then he spotted the sign he’d been told to look out for, crudely painted in black on what looked like the headboard of a bed.

Kartoffeln

Under the sign stood a cart piled high with potatoes, many of which appeared half rotten. Inside the remains of the building was a crudely built brick oven in which potatoes were being baked.

There’s a woman on the stall, she’ll be wearing a light blue headscarf. Ask if she’s Gertrud.

‘That’s me. What do you want?’

Tell her you want two baked potatoes to take with you for your train journey.

‘Of course: where are you travelling to?’ She was paying him a bit more attention.

Karlsruhe.

Gertrud’s bushy eyebrows lifted slightly. She’d now know he needed to contact the man called Ulrich, the one he’d failed to meet at the market on Brändström-Platz.

‘Sure, no problem, I’ll put two good ones on for you. Come over here, look at these – tell me if you think they look nice.’