They were allocated rooms, which contained nothing but a single bed along with a small table and a hard-backed chair and a handbasin. ‘Sorry about the lack of creature comforts, folks,’ Helms had said. ‘The Russians stripped the city before we arrived. Took everything of value back to Moscow. Heavy machinery, whole factories, vehicles, furniture from places like this, the lot. They see it as reparations, or what our forefathers would have called the spoils of war. But try the Wiesbaden bureau if you get the chance, Tom. That’s a sight more comfortable. We’ve taken over the Henkel fizzy wine factory and some fine local villas. Germany’s answer to champagne flows like water. Also a little R and R at the five-star Hotel Nassauer Hof for OSS and CIC guys. Not quite so well provisioned here yet.’

‘We’ll manage,’ Wilde said.

‘You’ll find this little bar the cosiest place. So make full use of it. Better stay around here at night. Out there in the big bad remains of a once great city, there are some desperate people: Soviet deserters, unreconstructed Nazis who haven’t had their fill of killing, black marketeers, looters, whores and thieves. One thing they all have in common is that they’ll shoot you or shiv you for the price of a cigarette. And there’s no shortage of serious weaponry on the streets.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘On the positive side, the Soviets have done a good job getting things moving. Electricity, clean water, basic rationing. The problem starts after dark when the desperate and the dispossessed come out and defy the curfew. It’s kill or be killed. The people stink. They haven’t seen soap in months and their clothes are in shreds. And in the worst of the heat, the gardens and canals reek of corpses.’

Heck said he was tired and would go straight to bed, but Wilde stayed down in the bar and had a couple more whiskies with his old colleague. They talked about the situation in the new Berlin, split four ways since early July, about the atomic bombs that had ended the war in Japan a few days earlier, and Stalin’s desperation to acquire a nuclear weapon of his own. On a lighter note, Helms told Wilde that their brilliant friend Julia McWilliams from the London bureau had hooked up with fellow OSS operative Paul Child in Ceylon and the rumour was they would be marrying.

Wilde was delighted. ‘About bloody time a good woman nabbed the old boy. They’ll make a wonderful couple.’

‘They’ll get fat,’ Helms said, laughing.

‘Fat and happy.’ Wilde laughed too, then yawned. ‘Well, I think it’s finally time to hit the sack.’