Declare

a sort of reference point in Berlin, a cornerstone for a wall they might build one day. It’s a heavy stone, and we’ve tracked the lorry carrying it all the way from Moscow, and it was in Warsaw yesterday, trundling steadily west.” Theodora was nodding as he stared out through the windscreen. “The Crown needs you to note with precision exactly where they plant the stone.”
    Hale’s breath was shallow. “Is it—by any chance—a big, rough, rectangular stone, with a loop carved at one end?”
    “Ah, good lad, you’ve done your prep this time, unlike the job with the radio magazines back in our youths. Yes, and you won’t by any means be the only man in town observing this… undertaking. Some will be acting as security for it, some trying to impede it. You just note, and be careful not to be seen noting. When it appears to be starting up, you instantly go into total evasion procedures, am I understood?”
    “Total evasion procedures when it starts up,” said Hale obediently. “Understood.”
    The safe house was one of a row of apartments across a gravel yard from the road. The building had not been bombed, but a hole had been cut into the stucco wall to fit a stovepipe through, and when they had got inside and locked the door, Hale saw that a wood-burning stove had been moved in to replace the prewar central heating. An unshaded electric lamp threw stark shadows on the grimy white walls.
    Theodora pointed at one of two cots by the boarded-over window. “That’s yours. I’m turning in right now, but I’ll give you your reading material and show you where the Scotch is. The alarm is set for six.”
    At seven the next morning, Hale sat in the driver’s seat of the Renault, fluttering the throttle pedal to keep the cold engine from stalling. Two cups of hot coffee and a couple of biscuits sat heavily in his stomach, and he was acutely aware of the German automatic pistol that was fitted up among the springs of the passenger-side seat.
    Theodora was leaning against the driver’s-side window frame and breathing a sour smell of coffee at him. “Your passport and travel order are solid,” the older man said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about at the checkpoints. Now on the autobahn?—remember, don’t stop, and don’t take any less than two hours covering the hundred miles—the guards at the first checkpoint will radio ahead, and if you go too fast you’ll be in trouble. If you break down, stay by the car, and you’re not allowed to go more than fifteen feet off the pavement in any case. If you haven’t arrived in Berlin in four hours, I’ll hear from my SHAEF chum, and I’ll—send someone looking for you, if possible.” The gravel crunched as Theodora stepped back. “Gute Fahrt,” he said dryly.
    It was German for Have a good trip . “Oh, the same to you,” said Hale, letting out the clutch and then steering the car toward the road that led to the border. The sky was blue behind the smokeless factory chimneys, with only a few clouds mounting in the east.
    As Theodora had predicted, Hale had no difficulties with the border checkpoint guards. They waved him to a halt with submachine guns, but when he had got out of the car and gone into their shack, they simply wrote down his name and stamped his American travel orders. “Okay,” one of them said in English, pulling the lever that lifted the bar outside.
    The autobahn beyond was a wide, two-lane highway, and the cherry and pine and birch trees on either side were soon a blur of varying shades of green as Hale shifted up to the prescribed eighty kilometers per hour. Long stretches of the median between the eastbound and westbound lanes had been cemented over, but it wasn’t until Hale noticed heavy black skid-marks on one stretch of it that he realized that these paved expanses had been the makeshift, last-resort airstrips of the Third Reich.
    German-language signs stood on posts on the roadside shoulder and hung from the overpasses, but they all appeared to be pro-Soviet propaganda— ONE BERLIN , and AMERICANS GO HOME , and one in English: ORDER THE INVESTIGATORS OF WAR TO PUT A STOP TO!
    Hear hear, thought Hale.
    At the Gleinecker Bridge over the Havel, in the southwest suburbs of Berlin, he slowed for the second Soviet checkpoint and braked to a stop while two guards pointed submachine guns at the grille of his car; but the soldier in the guard shack had clearly been expecting Hale, and only glanced at his papers before waving