“Nobody stays for long, except the MG personnel. They’re all on the second floor. One more flight. Dinner’s at seven, by the way.”

“Where do the enlisted men stay?”

“All over. Mostly barracks down in the old Telefunken factory. Some over by Onkel Toms Hutte,” he said, pronouncing it in English.

“Uncle Tom’s Hut?” Liz said, amused. “Since when?”

“Since always. Their name. They like the book, I guess.”

Jake’s room must have belonged to the daughter of the house. There was a single bed with a pink chenille spread, floral wallpaper, and a vanity with a round mirror and pink ruffled skirt. Even the blackout drapes had been backed with pink fabric.

“Sweet.”

“Yeah, well,” Ron said. “Like I said, we can switch around in a few days.”

“Never mind. I’ll just think virginal thoughts.”

Ron grinned. “That’s one thing you won’t have to worry about in Berlin.” He turned to the door. “Just leave any laundry on the chair. They’ll pick it up later.” And then, with a click, he was gone, taking his breeze with him.

Jake stared at the frilly room. They who? A house staff to fetch and carry, one of the spoils of victory. What had happened to the girl, requisitioned out of her pink cocoon? He walked over to the glass-topped vanity. A trace of powder, but otherwise cleared off, all the jars and tubes swept into some case on the way out. Idly he opened the drawers, empty except for a few publicity stills of Viktor Staal with pinholes in the corners, presumably no longer her dreamboat. But at least she’d had a room to leave. What about Lena? Did she pack her perfume bottles and compacts and get out in time, lucky, or linger until the roof caved in?

He lit a cigarette and walked over to the window, unbuttoning his shirt. The yard below had been dug up to make a vegetable garden, but the rows had become a muddy tangle, tramped over, he supposed, by the Russians foraging for food.