"What happened to Dr. Rothstein?"

"Nothing more than I told you."

"We sent the homicide people along. Did they get your report?"

"No. They can have it later. I wanted to see this place."

The two laboratory-assistants were here, looking shaken. The raid had been quick and not too thorough: some of the culture-canisters had been knocked on to the floor and their glass was smashed. A sergeant was gathering the last of the research-files for taking away.

The pattern was clear enough. Phoenix had known Solomon Rothstein. They had suspected him of doubling with them and had said nothing. Possibly they had found out that he had been working with me in the last months before the capitulation. Certainly they had tested him within these final twenty-four hours: I knew that. And they had not only tapped my phone; they had tapped his. Then, when they heard him say that he was coming to see me, they were certain, and they went into action. There had been no one close enough to his laboratory to catch him as he left, so they'd had to pass the orders to the man in Room 303. If he hadn't already had the rifle they would have taken it to him. (But I think he already had the rifle because it might have been policy at any time to pass him an order to kill, with myself as the subject.) And even before he had reached the Schonerlinde-strasse they'd ordered the search of his laboratory, because they knew that I'd go there hoping to find out what vital thing it was that he hadn't been able to tell me.

I looked at the broken glass. Glass, broken, looks so irredeemable. It is one of the few things that we can never mend.

"Have you found anything?" I asked the captain. He was looking at me intently, and said:

"He was your friend?" So I was showing it.

I said: "Yes. Have you found anything?"

"These files. A few other papers."

"Nothing special?" I knew he was baulking me because his training had told him never to talk to strangers, even when they were sent to liaise with him by an intelligence directive.

He was still watching me. I stared him back. At last he said: "This."

It was an oblong box about fifteen by thirty centimetres, black-painted metal with two grimp seals. A strip of paper was secured along the top side with transparent tape. In the event of my death please send this container by airmail to my next-of-kin: Isaac Rothstein, 15 Calle de Flores, Las Ramblas, San Caterina, Argentine. To be opened by himself personally. S. R.

I said: " Are you going to mail it?"

"It won't be my decision but I doubt it. We shall probably send for Isaac Rothstein to come and open it in our presence." He passed the container back to the sergeant.

"We are leaving now, Herr Quiller. Do you want to make any inquiries of your own?"

"No. I'll read the report you're given by these two people when they've been fully questioned."

They drove to the Z-polizei bureau in their car; I followed in the VW. The traffic was heavy. Night had come, and the city was dining out to celebrate the thaw. I couldn't be certain there was no tag, but it wasn't important. They were closing right in on me now.

The homicide office had apparently put out a dragnet for me in the last hour and I was asked to go over there and make my report on the shooting. It took ten minutes. They read it and kept me a full hour trying to probe my background. I kept strict hush. In the end I got bored and said:

"If you can't get enough clues out of Room 303, try the Potsdamer-strasse laboratory. Try my own room at the Prinz Johan as well if you like – they'll have had the paper off the walls by now."

This appeared to interest them. "Are you returning there yourself?

"Yes."

"Then we can send someone with you."

"Why not?"

Then the phone rang and he listened a minute and passed the receiver to me. It was Captain Stettner of the Z-polizei.

"Will you please come over, Herr Quiller?"

"I've just been there."

"This is very important."

I said I would go over. The homicide man was annoyed, because his bureau and the Z-polizei were out of gear with each other. Their fields overlapped and they were constantly thrown into each other's pitch. They thus looked for every chance of making the situation worse so that sooner or later some administrative top kick would be obliged to define their provinces more clearly. People like me were useful as a ball to lob about.

"You are not returning with us to the Hotel Prinz Johan, Herr Quiller?"

"No."

"But you have just said -"

"The phone call was urgent. I'm officially in liaison with the Z Commission. Simple as that, Herr Inspektor."

It was a ten-minute drive. I put the VW into the reserved parking area outside the Z Bureau and noticed an ambulance there. Captain Stettner was still in his office, with the five men who had gone to the laboratory: the three members of the emergency-squad who had gone there first, and the two men he had taken along with him. They all had their left sleeves rolled up.

He was looking worried. "It's been discovered that one of the smashed canisters contained virulent bacteria of the group -" he looked at the doctor, wanting to get it right.

"Verlanzickerpocken. "He broke another capsule while the nurse cleaned the next arm. "It isn't serious. No question of quarantine. But precautions are indicated."

I took off my coat. The taint of ether was in the air. "What about the people who raided the place?"

"I have arranged for periodic radio and television warnings," Stettner said. "The evening papers will also carry stop press announcements." He watched the hypodermic lance into my arm. "The Medical Association and all hospitals are being contacted immediately by cable and telephone, so that if anyone goes to a doctor or a hospital asking for inoculation the police can be called in to question them." He put his jacket on and spoke to the doctor. "There is no need for any special instructions? We may continue our work as usual?" There are people who, physically courageous, have nevertheless a horror of infection. He was one.

"You can forget about it. If you notice a rash round the genitals in fourteen days, report for medical attention."

He signed for the nurse to pack up the kit. I left soon after them. The evening Bourse would be on the air in thirty-five minutes; it would take fifteen to reach the hotel.

The route led past a stretch of the Wall that I always tried to avoid, but tonight it was quicker for me to go that way. On the pavement below the Wall there were wreaths and dead flowers, because at this point there was a cemetery on the other side, and people tried to throw their tributes over in remembrance of dead relatives in the Eastern Zone.

Passing the place, my sense of oppression increased and I had to make a deliberate effort not to think about Solly, and the look of surprise that he had died with. He had heard my shout, and the bunch of keys had just missed his face, so that he had died surprised, not hearing the shot. With a breech-pressure of twenty tons per square inch a rifle bullet travels faster than sound. It had drilled his head.

Southwards through Kreuzberg I checked the mirror, saw nothing, and re-checked, and finally got bored. It didn't matter if there was a tag. The game had passed beyond that stage.

On my right stood the Schinkel Monument, floodlit, dominating the city, a shining beacon in the night. What did it say? This is Berlin. Where and what was Berlin? The capital of a some-time hell on earth, split by a wall and writhing, as a cut worm writhes.

A set of lights changed to red, to green, to red again, and I hadn't moved off on the green. Some bastard was blaring behind me with his horn. Too tired to get out and bash him. Green again. Shove off. Automaton. Birds are winged things, men are wheeled things.