Our route back into the center of Berlin took us along Bismarck Strasse. At a tram stop just short of the Tiergarten, Mielke spun around in his seat and said, “That was Elisabeth.”

I slowed the car to a halt and Mielke waved over a handsome-looking brunette. As she leaned in the window of the car I caught a distinct whiff of sweat, but I didn’t hold that against her on a hot day. I was feeling kind of warm myself.

“What are you doing here?” asked Mielke.

“I was fitting a dress for a client who’s an actress at the Schiller Theater.”

“That’s a job I’d like,” I said.

The brunette shot me a smile. “I’m a seamstress.”

“Elisabeth, this is Kommissar Gunther, from the Alex.”

“Are you in any trouble, Erich?”

“I might have been, but for the Kommissar’s enormous bravery. He chased off some Nazis who were planning to give me a kicking.”

“Can I give you a lift somewhere?” I asked the brunette, changing the subject.

“Well, you could drop me anywhere near Alexanderplatz,” she said.

She climbed into the backseat of the car and we set off east again, along Berliner Strasse, across the canal and through the park. At first I jealously supposed that the brunette was involved with Mielke, and she was, although not in the way I had supposed; it seemed that she had been a close friend of Mielke’s late mother, Lydia, who also had been a seamstress, and after her death, the brunette had tried to help Mielke’s widowed father to bring up his four children. Consequently Erich Mielke seemed to regard Elisabeth more like a big sister, which suited me just fine. That year I was keen on handsome brunettes, and there and then I resolved to try to see her again, if possible.

Ten minutes later we were approaching Bülowplatz, which was Erich Mielke’s preferred destination, being the location of the KPD headquarters in Berlin. Occupying a whole corner of one of the most heavily policed squares in Europe, Karl Liebknecht House was a noisy indication of what all buildings might look like if the lefties ever got into power, each of its five stories decorated with more red flags than a dangerous beach and several bromide slogans in large white capital letters. If architecture is frozen music, then this was a partly thawed Lotte Lenya telling us we must die and not to ask why.

Mielke slid down in the passenger seat as we entered the square. He said, “Drop me around the corner, on Linien Strasse. In case anyone sees me getting out of your car and thinks I’m a spy.”

“Relax,” I said. “I’m in plain clothes.”

He laughed. “You think that will save you when the Revolution comes?”

“No, but it might save you this afternoon.”