She smiled. ‘Not here. Not on the Kurfürstendamm. In front of the Brandenburger Tor. I will be there at six o’clock in the evening.’ She pushed herself up. ‘For one hour. Auf Wiedersehen, mein Leutnant. Until tomorrow.’

She walked out of the cellar, her skirt loose on her hips, the slender bones of her ankles swallowed in the heels of her shoes.

‘Don’t say I haven’t warned you, sir,’ Arthur said. ‘She’s trouble.’

‘No, sergeant.’ John shook his head, rubbed his hand round the circular rim of the clock. Arthur snorted, tapped the side of his nose.

‘Watch yourself.’

§

Russian soldiers patrolled the Brandenburg Gate, squinting into the late sun, with dusty boots, forage caps, rifles under their arms. These soldiers were dark, squat, looked Asian, from Turkmenistan or somewhere like that, but then, John reasoned, the USSR was a big place. It was just before six, and the evening was hot even in the late afternoon sun.

Arthur had grumbled at first. ‘I’m not going to be your bloody chaperone,’ he said, ‘while the pair of you jabber in German. Nor a bloody wallflower if you take her behind the bushes.’

‘It’ll only be an hour,’ John said. ‘Promise. I’ll buy you a beer. You know the regs as well as me. A soldier alone is fair game.’

John didn’t want to walk too close to the Russians, though he had his papers secure just in case. Arthur stood near enough to make it clear John wasn’t alone, far enough to give him space. He wasn’t sure which direction she’d be coming from or where she’d be waiting for him, so he positioned himself some yards from the tower. It was badly damaged, he could see, bullet holes and cracks. The statue of Nike was toppled, her horses hobbled, broken stumps on the pediment. More like the apocalypse, John thought, conquest, death, pestilence, famine. A suitable metaphor.

He could see through the arches to Pariser Platz and, beyond, Unter den Linden. He craned his neck but there was no sign of her. Most of the rubble had been cleared and a small band of women were sweeping the loose debris. To the right were the ruins of the Adlon Hotel. Buddleia were already poking through, profiteering from the dust like flies from a corpse. For as long as he lived, John thought, he’d never see buddleia as anything other than the opportunists of nature. A creature jumped and disappeared beneath the broken bricks and mortar. A rabbit? More likely a rat. Of course, she probably wouldn’t come, was stringing him along. Arthur would be happy. He’d give her ten minutes.