“You won’t catch him,” he said defiantly. “Not now. If I know my Erich, he’s already halfway to Moscow.”

“Not nearly halfway,” I said. “And not Moscow, either, I’ll bet. Not if you say so. That means it has to be Leningrad. Which in itself means he’s probably traveling by boat. So the chances are he’ll be heading to one of two German ports. Hamburg or Rostock. Rostock’s nearer, so he’ll probably figure to second-guess us and head for Hamburg. Which is what? Two hundred and fifty kilometers? They might be there by now if they left before midnight. My guess is that Erich’s probably on the Grasbrook or Sandtor Dock at this very moment, sneaking onto a Russian freighter and boasting about how he shot a fascist policeman in the back. They’ll probably give the little coward an Order of Lenin for bravery.”

Some of this must have touched a nerve in Mielke’s changeling body. One minute his beer-swilling troll’s face was in ugly repose; the next the jaw had advanced belligerently and, growling abuse, he took a swing at me. Fortunately, I was half expecting it and I was already leaning back when it connected, but it still felt like I got hit by a sandbag. Feeling sick, I sat down hard on a soft chair. For a moment I had a new way of seeing the world, but it had nothing to do with Berlin’s avant-garde. Mielke senior was grinning now, his mouth a gap-toothed, moon-gnawing rictus, his big trench mace of a fist already heading Heller’s way; and when its orbit around Mielke’s body was complete it crashed into the surface of Heller’s skull like an asteroid, sending the police counselor sprawling onto the floor, where he groaned and lay still.

I got to my feet again. “I’m going to enjoy this, you ugly commie bastard.”