He was trying, without success, to light a large cigar in the stiffening rooftop breeze. One of the parasols, which were all closed, blew over, which seemed to irritate him.

“I always say,” he said, “that the best way to see Havana is from the rooftop of a good hotel.” He gave up with the cigar. “The National has a view, but it’s just the fucking sea or the rooftops of Vedado, and in my humble opinion, that view doesn’t begin to compare with this one.”

“I agree.” For the moment I was through needling him. I was just beginning to have my reasons for that.

“Of course, it does get a bit windy up here sometimes, and when I catch up with the sonofabitch who persuaded me to buy all these fucking parasols, I’m going to give him a lesson in what it’s like when the wind catches one of these things and carries it over the side.” He grinned in a way that made me think he meant every word of it.

“It’s a great view,” I said.

“Isn’t it? You know, I’ll bet Hedda Adlon would have given her eye-teeth for a view like this one.”

I nodded, hardly wanting to tell him that the Adlon’s rooftop had afforded the hotel patrons with one of the best views in Berlin. I’d watched the Reichstag burning from that particular hotel rooftop. And you don’t get much better views than that.

“What ever happened to her, anyway?”

“Hedda used to say that a good hotelier always hopes for the best, but expects the worst. The worst is what happened. She and Louis kept the hotel going all through the war. Somehow it always escaped the bombing. Maybe someone in the RAF had stayed there once. But then, during the Battle for Berlin, the Ivans subjected the city to a barrage that destroyed almost everything that hadn’t been destroyed by the RAF. The hotel caught fire and was all but destroyed. Hedda and Louis retreated to their country estate near Potsdam and waited. When the Ivans turned up, they looted the house, and mistaking Louis for an escaping German general, they put him in front of a firing squad and shot him. Hedda was raped, many times, like most of the women in Berlin. I don’t know what happened to her after that.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Reles. “What a story. Pity. I liked them both a lot. Jesus, I didn’t know.”

He sighed and made another attempt to light his cigar, and this time he succeeded. “You know, it’s funny you turning up like this, Gunther.”

“I told you before, Max. It’s Hausner now. Carlos Hausner.”