‘What is the situation for civilians with regard to movement between our sector and the Soviet sector?’ he asked, wincing as he saw nothing but rubble-strewn ground where one of his favourite bars had once been.

‘Everyone knows what the demarcation lines are, but there’s nothing very visible about them. Just large notices on all the major thoroughfares, saying that you are now leaving the British—or French, or American, whichever it might be—sector of Berlin. It isn’t hindering anyone’s movements. People are wandering all over the city trying to trace family and friends.’

The nearer they got to the centre of the city, the greater the number of poorly dressed women they saw, working in gangs on the ruined buildings. Bent double, they ceaselessly salvaged bricks, knocking the mortar off them and then passing them hand to hand in a long chain until the woman at the end of the line stacked them into a horse-drawn cart.

‘The Germans call them Trümmerfrauen,’ the young officer said. ‘It means rubblewomen, sir. They’re paid in potatoes.’

‘Yes, Lieutenant. I know what Trümmerfrauen means.’ For a brief moment, Max wondered what the lieutenant’s reaction would be if he were to tell him he’d been born in the city; that his father was a Berliner; that his cousin was Claus Remer of the giant House of Remer steelworks in the Ruhr.

They were approaching Lützowstrasse and his heart began hammering somewhere up in his throat. Was he right in trying to seek out Lotti before he sought out Ilse? All he really wanted was to get the awkward explanations over with. Instinct told him he wasn’t going to be proved wrong in his reading of the new situation that existed now that Ilse was a widow—and that someone he still cared for so very, very much, was going to be savagely hurt was something that was crucifying him.

‘Lützowstrasse, sir,’ the lieutenant said, veering into the street that had once been so familiar.

It wasn’t familiar now.

The houses and shops were mere shells, a mockery of what they had once been. The house in which Lotti and her friends had once shared a flat was blackened by fire, its top floor and a side wall missing.

His hands clenched into fists. It didn’t mean Lotti had died in the conflagration. When the building had been hit she would most likely have been in a shelter. That’s what he told himself—and he told himself with all the power of persuasion he possessed.

‘Can we continue on to headquarters now, Major Remer?’ the lieutenant asked, an edge of anxiety in his voice. They were going to be massively late meeting up with the colonel and he didn’t want to be the one carrying the can for it.

‘Yes, but I’ve another address I want you to drive to first.’ With tension almost at breaking point, he gave the address of the apartment Ilse had shared with Nicholas.

At last he was going to see her again.