“My friend Elisabeth said she’d seen Mielke’s father, Erich. That he was still alive and in good health. He was in his early seventies, she said. They went for a coffee at the Café Kranzler. He said he’d been living in the DDR but that he didn’t like it. Missed the football and his old neighborhood. While Elisabeth was telling me this, it was clear she had no idea what Erich junior had been doing. Who and what he was. All she said was that Erich visits his father from time to time and gives him money. And I assumed, given who he was, that this must be in secret.”

“From time to time. How often is that?”

“Regularly. Once a month.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I might have, if you’d given me enough time.”

“Did she say where Erich senior had been living? In the DDR?”

“The village of Schönwalde, northwest of Berlin. She said he told her he had a nice enough cottage there but that he was bored in Schönwalde. It’s rather a boring place. Of course, she knew that Erich senior had been a staunch communist and so she asked him if living in the West meant he had left the party. And he said that he had come to the conclusion that the communists were every bit as bad as the Nazis.”

“She said he said that?”

“Yes.”

“You know, we checked and there’s no record of an Erich Mielke living in West Berlin.”

“Mielke’s father isn’t called Mielke. His name is Erich Stellmacher. Mielke was illegitimate. Not that the father’s using the name of Stellmacher either.”

“Did she tell you what his name is?”

“No.”

“Give you an address?”

“Stellmacher isn’t that stupid.”

“But there is something. Something you’d like to trade.”

“Yes. Stellmacher told Elisabeth the name of a restaurant where he regularly likes to go for lunch on Saturdays.”

“And your idea is? What, exactly?”

“This is your area of expertise, not mine, Chief. I was never much of an intelligence officer. I didn’t have the kind of dirty mind to be really effective in your world. I was a better detective, I think. Better at uncovering a mess than creating one.”

“I see you have a low opinion of intelligence.”

“Just the people who work in it.”

“Us included.”

“You especially.”

“You prefer the French?”

“There’s something honest about their hypocrisy and self-regard.”

“As a former Berlin detective, what would you propose?”

“Follow Erich Stellmacher from his favorite restaurant to his apartment. And lay a trap for Erich Mielke there.”

“Risky.”