The snow had stopped. It had been packed into ice by the tyres, and the traffic was slow and quiet. Half-way along the Kurfursten-strasse a street bollard lay smashed and they ere towing the car clear; rusty water steamed as it poured from the radiator.

Above the roofs the sky was black and the stars close. It was easy to see tonight that the earth was a star too, adrift in a void; a fur collar gave little protection against the thought.

I had left the box a minute before Pol so that when he went down the main staircase in the throng he couldn't see me. I had kept back by the wall on the balcony to get a good look at his face in the mirror above the stairs. I compared it with his photograph and asked for a plain envelope on my way past the box-office. In the street I put the photograph inside and addressed it to Radio Eurosound, posting it, unstamped, in the box at the kerbside.

It was fifteen minute's walk to my hotel on dry pavements. Tonight it took just short of thirty. The ice crackled underfoot. Only four of my cover men were within sight, picking me up at the Neukomodietheater and tailing at a distance. They worked well but they were useless because the system was useless. Once inside a theatre you were meant to be safe, but Pol could have easily been one of the adverse party and could have slipped a knife into me and no one the wiser. Useless.