“Fair enough, Kommissar. If I sound ungrateful, it’s because I’m not used to getting a square deal from a Berlin bull. Pork Cheeks is the kind of polyp I’m used to.”

“Pork Cheeks?”

“That swine Anlauf.”

I nodded. Captain Paul Anlauf was—among the communists at least—the most hated cop in Berlin.

I pulled up on Weyding Strasse and waited for Mielke to get out.

“Thanks. Again. I won’t forget it, polyp.”

“Keep out of trouble, yeah?”

“You, too.”

Then he kissed the brunette on the cheek and was gone. I lit a cigarette and watched him walk back onto Bülowplatz and vanish into a crowd of men.

“Don’t mind him,” said the brunette. “He’s really not so bad.”

“I don’t mind him as much as he seems to mind me,” I said.

“Well,” she said. “I’m grateful for the lift. This is fine for me here.”

She was wearing a bright print percale dress with a heart-shaped button waistline, a lacy collar, and cute puff sleeves. The print was a riot of red and white fruit and flowers on a solid black background. She looked like a market garden at midnight. On her head was a little white trilby with a red silk ribbon, as if the hat were a cake and it was someone’s birthday. Mine perhaps. Which, of course, it was. The smell of sweat on her body was honest and more provocative to me than some expensive, cloying scent. Underneath the midnight garden was a real woman with skin on every part of her body, and organs and glands and all the other things about women I knew I liked but had almost forgotten. Because it was the kind of day when girls like Elisabeth were wearing summer dresses again, and I remembered just what a long winter it had been in Berlin, sleeping in that cave with just my dreams for company.

“Come for a drink,” I said.

She looked tempted, but only for a moment. “I’d like to, but—I should really be getting back to work.”

“Come on. It’s a warm day and I need a beer. There’s nothing like spending a couple of hours in the cement to give a man a thirst. Especially when it’s his birthday. You wouldn’t want me to drink alone on my birthday, would you?”

“No. If it really is your birthday.”

“If I show my identity card, will you come?”

“All right.”

So I did. And she came. Immediately next to the police station on Bülowplatz there was a bar called the Braustübl, and, leaving my car where it was, we went in there.