At the Landwehrkanal there was more activity, but the smell was worse, raw sewage and corpses still floating on the water. The Russians had been here two months; had there been so many to fish out? But there they were, bodies stuck on the piles of the wrecked bridges or just suspended face down in the middle of the canal, held in place by nothing but the stagnant water. Liz had dropped her camera to hold a handkerchief over her mouth against the smell. No one said a word. Across the water, Hallesches Tor was gone.

They followed the canal toward the Potsdamer bridge, which took traffic. At one of the footbridges he saw his first men, shuffling across in gray Wehrmacht uniforms, still in retreat. He thought, inevitably, of the night he’d seen the transports set out for Poland, a big public display down the Linden, square-jawed faces out of a newsreel. These were blank and unshaven and almost invisible; women simply walked around them, not looking up.

There were landmarks now-the Reichstag in the far distance, and here in Potsdamerplatz the jagged remains of the department stores. Wertheim’s gone. A burned-out truck had been pushed to the side, but there was no traffic to block, just a few bicycles and some Russian soldiers leading a horse-drawn wagon. The old crowded intersection now had the feel of a silent movie, without the jerky rhythm. Instead, everything passed by in slow motion, even the bicycles, wary of punctures, and the wagon, plodding down a street as empty as the steppes. How many nights of bombing had it taken? Near the truck, a family sat on suitcases, staring into the street. Maybe just arrived at Anhalter Station, waiting for a phantom bus, or too tired and disoriented to go on.

“You have to feel sorry for the poor bastards,” Ron said, “you really do.”

“Who, the Germans?” Liz said.

“Yeah, I know. Still.”

They turned up the Wilhelmstrasse. Goering’s new Air Ministry, or its shell, had survived, but the rest of the street, the long line of pompous government buildings, lay in sooty heaps, their bricks spilling into the street like running sores. Where it had all started.