He waited till most of the audience had filed out, gazing unseeing at the fire curtain that shut off the stage. Then he stood up, shaking the creases out of his conservatively tailored dinner jacket. He slipped into his sable coat, reaching inside a pocket to turn his phone back on. Finally, he walked out of the opera house into the starry spring night. He brushed past the chattering groups and turned on to Unter den Linden, walking towards the spotlit spectacle of the Brandenburg Gate, the new Reichstag gleaming over to the right. It was a couple of miles to his apartment in Charlottenburg, but tonight he preferred to be out on the Berlin streets rather than sealed off inside his car. Like a vampire, he needed a transfusion of life. He couldn’t stand to play the social game yet, but there was an energy abroad in the city at night that fed him.

He had just passed the Soviet War Memorial at the start of the Tiergarten when his phone vibrated against his hip. Impatiently, he pulled it out. ‘Hello?’

‘Boss?’

He recognized Krasic’s deep bass. ‘Yes?’ he replied. No names on a cellphone; there were too many nerds out there with nothing better to do than scan the airwaves for stray conversations. Not to mention the various agencies of the state, constantly monitoring their citizens as assiduously as they ever had when the Red Menace still surrounded them.

‘We have a problem,’ Krasic said. ‘We need to talk. Where will I find you?’

‘I’m walking home. I’ll be at Siegessäule in about five minutes.’

‘I’ll pick you up there.’ Krasic ended the call abruptly.

Tadeusz groaned. He stopped for a moment, staring up at the sky through the budding branches of the trees. ‘Katerina,’ he said softly, as if addressing a present lover. At moments like this, he wondered if the bleak emptiness that was her legacy would ever dissipate. Right now, it seemed to grow worse with every passing day.