A narrow stairway was blocked by pails. Peter moved them aside, climbed the stairs and tried the knob of a door built into the ceiling. A sash snapped and dust cascaded down the steps as he pushed the door open.

They pulled themselves up into the tower. The casement windows were buckled, parts of the roof fallen in, and from one corner grew a stunted linden tree, a lifelong prisoner of the tower. The view was wonderful: lakes and rolling hills reaching to Berlin, green country in every other direction. Two stories below was the balcony with the nurse in the wheelchair. She had pushed off her sandals and rolled down her stockings to her calves. She raised the leg rests and angled the chair for more direct exposure to the sun, then lolled back like Cleopatra, the cigarette in her mouth an exclamation point to total ease.

Peter said, “Ask yourself, where does an Ossie find the money to buy eighteen new cars? Or live in Munich? For a man with no history, Benz was born with impressive connections.”

“But why bother your grandfather?” Arkady asked. “What did he get except war stories?”

“Stasi was more than spies; they were thieves. They targeted people with valuable goods. People weren’t just arrested; their savings were taken as ‘reparations to the state,’ and their paintings and coin collections ended up in the apartment of a Stasi colonel. Maybe when Benz disappeared, he took something and doesn’t know quite what. There’s so much still hidden in this country. So much.”

Peter’s was a perfectly German, exquisitely logical answer to the identity of Boris Benz. It wasn’t Arkady’s answer, but he admired it nonetheless.

Peter asked abruptly, “Who is Max Albov?”

“He’s given me a place to stay in Berlin.” Surprised, Arkady tried to go on the offensive. “That’s why I was calling you. You have my passport and I can’t stay in a hotel without it. Also, I want to extend my visa.”

Peter tested a post before leaning against it. “Your passport is the leash I have on you. I’d never see you again if I give it back to you.”

“Is that so bad?”

Peter laughed, then cast his eyes over the trees. “I can imagine myself growing up here. Running in the hall, climbing the roof, breaking my neck. Renko, I worry about you. I followed you to that apartment on Friedrichstrasse yesterday. Albov arrived before I left for Potsdam and I identified him by his license. From the checking I’ve done, he’s a slippery type. A defector twice, no doubt connected to the KGB, an ersatz businessman. What could possibly bring the two of you together?”

“I met him in Munich. He offered to help.”

“Who’s the woman? She was with him in the car.”

“I don’t know.”