Peter’s yellow jacket was whipping around him in a breeze that came off the field. He held his pistol low. “Then who should show up but your friend in the Trabi. I thought, here’s a poor bastard from East Germany. No one drives a Trabi anymore if they can avoid it. Sometimes you see them near the old border, but not here. Ten minutes later he comes out of the pension with you. It made more sense that you had an Ossie as an accomplice.”

“An ‘Ossie’?”

“East German. He picks the victim, you show up with a phony letter from the consulate. I called in the plate number, but the car belongs to a Thomas Hall, American national, Munich resident. Why would an American drive a Trabi?”

“He says it’s an investment. You followed us?”

“It wasn’t difficult. Nothing else was as slow.”

“So what are you going to do?” Arkady asked.

The wonderful thing about a German face was that the agony of thought played so clearly on it. Even in the dim light from the highway, Peter looked torn by fury on one side and by curiosity on the other. “You’re a good friend of Hall’s?”

“I never met Tommy before last night. I was surprised to see him tonight.”

“You and Hall went to a sex club together. That sounds friendly.”

“Tommy said he’d seen Benz there. The women at the club said we should look here.”

“You never talked to Hall before last night?”

“No.”

“You never communicated with him before last night?”

“No. What are you getting at?” Arkady asked.

“Renko, this morning you gave me a fax number to find. I did. The machine belongs to Radio Liberty. It’s in the office of Thomas Hall.”

There were surprises left in life after all, Arkady thought. Here he had spent the evening with an apparent innocent, only to discover his own stupidity. Why hadn’t he checked the Liberty numbers himself? How many other pieces of information had he brushed off his lap?

“Do you think you can catch up with Tommy?” Arkady asked.

Peter wavered, and Arkady watched with interest to see which way he would go. The German stared back so intently that Arkady thought of the old stage routine of one man pretending to mirror the other.

Finally Peter said, “Right now, the only thing I’m certain of is that I can catch a Trabi.”

They returned by the same route Tommy had taken but at a different speed. Peter wound the BMW up to two hundred kilometers, as if he were driving on a familiar racetrack in the dark. He kept glancing at Arkady, who wished he would keep his eyes on the road.

“You never mentioned Radio Liberty at the bank,” Peter said.

“I didn’t know Liberty was involved. It may not be.”