Then – in an instant, as she reached the edge of the high plateau – the veil lifted. Here, the view was other-worldly, heart-stopping. She imagined this might be what it would be like to suddenly land on another planet. More gnarled, giant figures, but here hewn and weathered by nature from rock rather than grown from seed. Far below, the snaking waters of the Elbe. Between the two – the valley and plateau – swirled up columns of mist, dancing to their own silent tune and adding to the ethereal feel.

She saw him then. The man she was supposed to meet. Stasi Oberstleutnant Klaus Jäger. Jäger the Hunter. Yet when he’d contacted her asking for this meeting, his voice had held an unusual haunted tone, almost that of a frightened man. Like her, in the past few years he’d had to suffer the ignominy of a demotion of rank. But he was still a powerful man. Though at this moment it looked as though nature could overpower him in an instant, silhouetted as he was on the crenelated viaduct, spanning the sheer drop to the Elbe Valley below.

It took Müller a few minutes to reach him, winding down a circuitous path. Then she began the walk across the bridge itself. She knew it was him from his familiar haircut – the one that looked like that newsreader on the BRD’s nightly bulletin. A few years ago, in the early 1970s, that cut of shoulder-length, sandy-brown hair had been the height of fashion. Now it was distinctly passé, as – perhaps – was Jäger himself.

Only when she got nearer, and the man turned – no doubt hearing her footsteps echoing against the valley walls below – did she realise something was wrong. Very wrong.

This wasn’t Jäger. Just someone dressed exactly like him, probably wearing a wig from the Stasi’s disguise box. Instinctively, she began to reach to her shoulder holster.

‘Freeze!’ shouted the man, drawing his own handgun. A Makarov. She was close enough to recognise it. So even though it wasn’t Jäger, he almost certainly was a Stasi agent. ‘Put your hands above your head, Comrade Müller.’

She did as she was told, but at the same time glanced round to see if there was an escape route, back along the way she’d just come.

There wasn’t. Another man was blocking the other end of the bridge. And he too held a raised gun.

But this was someone she did recognise. The English businessman from the Interhotel in Dresden. Only clearly, he wasn’t a businessman at all.

Finally, the penny dropped.

She’d just walked into a trap.

She was in its jaws – both sides determined to stop her solving this case.

But there remained one important question to which she didn’t know the answer.

Was she the bait?

Or the prey?

Chapter 1

1

Dresden, East Germany

February 1982