Chavasse looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was wearing a white Continental raincoat and green hat, both of which belonged to Hardt. He pulled the brim of the hat down over his eyes. “How do I look?”

Hardt slapped him on the shoulder. “Fine, just fine. There should be a lot of people leaving the train. If you do as I suggest, you’ll be outside the station in two minutes. You can get a taxi.”

Chavasse shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. It’s a long time since I’ve been to Hamburg, but I can still find my way to the Reeperbahn.”

“I’ll see you later then.” Hardt opened the door and looked out and then he stood to one side. “All clear.”

Chavasse squeezed past him and hurried along the deserted corridor. The train was coming slowly into the Hauptbahnhof and already the platform seemed to be moving past him. He passed through one coach after another, pushing past people who were beginning to emerge from their compartments, until he reached the far end of the train. As it stopped, he opened a door and stepped onto the platform.

He was first through the ticket barrier, and a moment later he was walking out of the main entrance. It was two-thirty, and at that time in the morning the S-Bahn wasn’t running. It was raining slightly, a warm drizzle redolent of autumn, and obeying a sudden impulse, he decided to walk. He turned up his coat collar and walked along Monckebergstrasse toward St. Pauli, the notorious nightclub district of Hamburg.

The streets were quiet and deserted, and as he walked past the magnificent buildings, he remembered what Hamburg had been at the end of the war. Not a city, but a shambles. It seemed incredible that this was a place in which nearly seventy thousand people had been killed in ten days during the great incendiary raids of the summer of 1943. Germany had certainly risen again like a phoenix from her ashes.