The unpleasant Ilya Dvorkin had also somehow avoided punishment. He was back in Moscow and married to Volodya’s sister, Anya, much to Volodya’s regret. There was no accounting for women’s choices in such matters. She was already pregnant, and Volodya could not repress a nightmare image of her nursing a baby with the head of a rat.

After a brief leave, Volodya had been posted to Berlin, where he had to prove his worth all over again.

He looked up from his paper to see Werner walking along the street.

Werner had not changed much. He was a little taller and broader, but he had the same strawberry-blond hair falling over his forehead in a way girls had found irresistible, the same look of tolerant amusement in his blue eyes. He wore an elegant light-blue summer suit, and gold links glinted at his cuffs.

There was no one following him.

Volodya crossed the road and intercepted him before he reached the café. Werner smiled broadly, showing white teeth. ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you with that army haircut,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you, after all these years.’

He had not lost any of his warmth and charm, Volodya noted. ‘Let’s go inside.’

‘You don’t really want to go into that dump, do you?’ Werner said. ‘It will be full of plumbers eating sausages with mustard.’

‘I want to get off the street. Here we could be seen by anyone passing.’

‘There’s an alley three doors down.’

‘Good.’

They walked a short distance and turned into a narrow passage between a coal yard and a grocery store. ‘What have you been doing?’ Werner said.

‘Fighting the Fascists, just like you.’ Volodya considered whether to tell him more. ‘I was in Spain.’ It was no secret.

‘Where you had no more success than we did here in Germany.’

‘But it’s not over yet.’

‘Let me ask you something,’ Werner said, leaning against the wall. ‘If you thought Bolshevism was wicked, would you be a spy working against the Soviet Union?’

Volodya’s instinct was to say No, absolutely not! But before the words came out he realized how tactless that would be – for the prospect that revolted him was precisely what Werner was doing, betraying his country for the sake of a higher cause. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I think it must be very difficult for you to work against Germany, even though you hate the Nazis.’

‘You’re right,’ Werner said. ‘And what happens if war breaks out? Am I going to help you kill our soldiers and bomb our cities?’

Volodya was worried. It seemed that Werner was weakening. ‘It’s the only way to defeat the Nazis,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

‘I do. I made my decision a long time ago. And the Nazis have done nothing to change my mind. It’s hard, that’s all.’

‘I understand,’ Volodya said sympathetically.

Werner said: ‘You asked me to suggest other people who might do for you what I am doing.’