“It’s the perfect time. Where did your encounter with Benz and Max take place?”

“Red Square.”

“In Moscow?”

“No.”

“Munich?”

“It’s a club.”

“Would it be open now?” “Sure.”

“Show me.” Arkady picked up a jacket. “I’ll tell you all about the war and you tell me about Benz and Max.”

Tommy gulped down a brave breath. “If Max was still with Liberty, you couldn’t get a word—”

“Have you got a car?”

“Sort of a car,” Tommy said.

Arkady had never ridden in an East German Trabant before. It was a fiberglass tub with tail fins. The sound of its two cylinders was a syncopated popping. Fumes flowed not only from the exhaust but from a kerosene heater that sat on the car floor between his feet. They drove with the front windows rolled down; the rear windows were glued shut. Every time an Audi or Mercedes passed, the Trabant bobbed in its wake.

“What do you think?” Tommy asked.

“It’s like being on the road in a wheelchair,” Arkady said.

“It’s more an investment than a car,” Tommy said. “The Trabi is a piece of history. Except for being slow and dangerous and polluting, it’s probably the most efficient piece of technology in the world today. It goes fifty miles an hour and it’ll run on methane or coal tar—probably even on hair tonic.”

“Sounds more Russian.”

In truth, however, the Trabant made Arkady’s Zhiguli look like luxury. It made a Polish Fiat look good.

“Ten years from now this will be a collector’s item,” Tommy promised.

They had reached the outer city, a black plane where stakes of light led to different autobahns. When Arkady twisted to see whether anyone was following, the seat almost snapped beneath him.

“The whole German-Russian thing is so incredible,” Tommy said. “Historically, with the Germans always moving east and the Russians always moving west, and then you add Nazi racial laws, making all Slavs into Untermenschen only good for slaves. Hitler on one side, Stalin on the other. Now, that was a war.”

His face was creased with a new grin of pride and camaraderie. He was a lonely man, Arkady realized. Who else would ride around late at night with a Russian investigator? When a tank truck approached in the passing lane, engulfed the air and roared by, the Trabi vibrated violently in the shock wave and Tommy glowed with pleasure.