“Well, here’s a sorry sight.” Tommy Ottinger, from Mutual, extended his hand. “When did you blow in?”

“Hey, Tommy.” Even balder than before, as if all his hair had migrated down to the trademark bushy mustache.

“I didn’t know you were here. You back with Murrow?”

Jake sat down, nodding hello across the table to the congressman, sitting between Ron, clearly on caretaking duty, and a middle-aged MG officer who looked exactly like Lewis Stone as Judge Hardy.

“No broadcasting, Tommy. Just a hack.”

“Yeah? Whose nickel?”

“Collier’s.”

“Oh,” Tommy said, drawling it, pretending to be impressed, “in depth. Good luck. You see the agenda? Reparations. You could nod off just thinking about it. So what do you know?”

“Not much. I just got in. Took a ride through the city, that’s all.”

“You see Truman? He went in this afternoon.”

“No. I saw Churchill, though.”

“I can’t use Churchill. They want Truman-how’s he doing? I mean, how the fuck do I know? He hasn’t done anything yet.”

Jake grinned at him. “Make something up. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

The serving man placed the soup in front of him, looking surprised when Jake thanked him in German.

“You know what he said today? In Berlin? ‘This is what happens when a man overreaches himself.’”

Jake thought of the miles of debris, reduced to the lesson for the day. “Who’s your source? Jimmy Byrnes?”

“Sounds just like Truman, don’t you think?”

“It will, if you use it.”

“Got to fill the air somehow. You remember.”