“As if you don’t know,” I said. “Open up, or we’ll kick the door in.”

“All right.”

The head disappeared, and a minute or so later we heard the door open and we ran upstairs as if we actually believed there was a chance we might still apprehend Erich Mielke. In truth, neither of us thought there was much hope of that happening. Not in Gesundbrunnen. It was the kind of area where children were taught how to stay one step ahead of the cops before they learned long division.

At the top of the stairs, a man wearing trousers and a pajama jacket admitted us to a little flat that was a shrine to the class struggle. Every wall was hung with KPD posters, notices of strikes and demonstrations, and cheap portraits of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Marx, and Lenin. Unlike any of them, the man standing in front of us at least looked like a worker. He was around fifty, stocky and short, with a bull neck, a receding hairline, and an advancing waist. He stared at us suspiciously with small, close-set eyes that were like diacritical marks inside a naught. Short of wearing a towel and a silk dressing gown, he couldn’t have looked any more rough and pugnacious.

“So what does the Berlin polenta want with me?”

“We’re looking for a Herr Erich Mielke,” said Heller. His punctiliousness was typical. You didn’t get to be a counselor in the Berlin police without paying attention to detail, especially when you were also a Jew. That was probably the ex-lawyer in him. That was the part of Heller I didn’t care for—the punctilious lawyer. The stocky little man in the pajama jacket didn’t seem to like it either.

“He’s not here,” he said, barely concealing a smirk of pleasure.

“And who are you?”

“His father.”

“When did you last see your son?”

“A few days ago. So what’s he supposed to have done? Hit a policeman?”

“No,” said Heller. “On this occasion, it seems that he’s shot and killed at least one.”

“That’s too bad.” But the man’s tone seemed to suggest he didn’t think that it was too bad at all.

By now the resemblance between father and son was all too obvious to me, and I turned and walked into the kitchen just in case the temptation to hit him grew too strong for me.

“You won’t find him in there, either.”