To the side of the restaurant facade, a blind beggar stretched out his trembling hands. Minsky was about to climb into the back of the car when he spotted the man and went back. He fished in his pocket and pulled out coins, which he placed carefully into the beggar’s palms, closing his fingers around them. He said something in German which Wilde didn’t catch, then returned to the car. ‘Come, Comrade Professor, join me in the back. I swear no harm will befall you. May I call you Tom? I already feel I know you like a brother.’

‘Where are we going?’ Wilde said as he climbed in.

‘A nice surprise trip. Wait and see.’

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

There was birdsong and the sun was emerging from behind a solitary white cloud. Mozes Heck looked up at the blue of the sky and thought it was impossible. There shouldn’t be colour in this city, not ever again. It should remain monochrome for all eternity. The grey of the concrete, the black depths of the woods and the canals, the white of the ash, the pallor of the skin, the darkness of the hearts.

He was standing in a street of rubble, outside a tenement block that had lost much of its roof and most of its windows but looked solid and inhabitable, perhaps bolstered and held up by the structures on either side. Most of the damage was on the other side of the road, where the buildings had collapsed. So this was Wolfsstrasse.

There was no sign to reveal the building’s number or name, but he had counted down the existing numbers further along the street and had no doubt that this was number eighteen. He was in Charlottenburg in the heart of the English sector. Being in civilian clothes, he had been approached half a dozen times by British soldiers who took some convincing that he was one of them, even when he showed them his ID card and paybook. One sergeant threatened to take him in to have his identity checked. ‘You ain’t no bleeding British Army lieutenant, you’re a bleeding ’Un,’ the sergeant had said. Heck had pushed the muzzle of his pistol into the sergeant’s face. ‘Maybe this will convince you?’ Only the intervention of a more senior British officer saved the situation, releasing Heck with a warning not to draw a gun on his men again.