He turned and, half upright, scrambled toward the Omphalos. Half upright turned out to be a little too high. A burst from a Soviet submachine gun slammed home between his shoulder blades. He went down with a groan, blood filling his mouth.

One hand reached for the navelstone: reached, scrabbled, and, just short of its goal, fell quiet forever. And none of the tough Russian troopers who overran the museum cared a kopek for an ugly lump of rock they could neither sell nor screw nor even have any fun breaking.

When the Omphalos seemed to stir beneath him, Hasso Pemsel wondered for a heartbeat if he was losing his mind. He hadn’t really expected anything to happen. He hadn’t really believed anything could happen. But what he believed didn’t matter, not any more. He’d mounted the stone with hope in his heart. That was enough – far more than enough.

He hung suspended for a timeless moment. What did Hamlet say? O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. That came to Hasso only later. At the time – if time was the word for this flash of existence apart from everything – he knew only that, whatever else it was, it was no dream.

And then he was back in the world again – back in a world, anyhow – and he was falling. He dropped straight down, maybe a meter, maybe two: surely no more than that, or he would have hurt himself when he landed. Or maybe not. He came down in a bog that put him in mind of the Pripet Marshes on the Russo – Polish border.

Training told. As soon as he knew he was hitting water and mud, his hands went up to keep his weapon dry. A Schmeisser was a splendid piece when it was clean, but it couldn’t take as much crud in the works as a Soviet PPSh or a British Sten.

He floundered toward the higher ground ahead. The setting sun – or was it rising? – flooded the unprepossessing landscape with blood – red light. And that was one more impossibility, because it had been the middle of the day in Berlin.