Declare

the bar up. Nevertheless Hale felt by now like a visitor to a high-security prison, nervous about doing anything that might make it hard to get out again.
    Directly ahead was a stark black-on-white sign announcing the border of the United States Sector, and it was with relief that Hale put the car into first gear and drove toward it. The American soldiers wore khaki uniforms with white helmets and belts and holsters, and one of them waved Hale to a shed like a toll booth.
    “Where you headed, Mr. Conway?” he asked after looking at Hale’s travel order and handing it back through the rolled-down window.
    “I’m supposed to—” Hale’s voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat before trying again. “I’m supposed to meet a Hubert Flannery, of the SHAEF, at the U.S. Sector Headquarters.” SHAEF was the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
    “That’s on the Zehlendorf, straight ahead and turn left on Onkel Tom Strasse, no joke. Don’t turn right at all, and if you go more than six miles, stop, you’ve missed it. Don’t drive around the city without looking at a map—most of the streets lead into the Soviet Sector. They’re not all barricaded and patrolled, and if you drift across with any incriminating items on you, like a newspaper or money, you’ll have a very bad time getting back out. Enjoy your stay.”
    “Jesus. You too.”
    Many of the brick buildings he drove slowly past were hollowed and roofless and missing walls, with stairs leading nowhere anymore and windows that opened on the sky from any angle. The center lanes of the streets were clear pavement, but where gutters and sidewalks must once have been were shoulder-high piles of broken masonry, from which old women were picking up bricks two at a time and loading them into horse-drawn wagons. Hale was careful to watch his odometer and to avoid any right turns, and he wondered if Elena, who had disappeared into the world that crowded so close here, was still alive.
    Flannery was a big, red-faced man who smelled of juniper berries; and when he closed the door to his office after Hale had stepped inside, he intensified the juniper smell by pouring Gordon’s gin into two fragile china teacups, one of which had not been dry.
    “Drink up,” he said cheerfully. “Mithridates principle, right? Accustom yourself to the poison in advance, and after that nobody can harm you with it.”
    Hale nodded and drank half of the cup in one gulp.
    “Oh, you’re bound for immortality,” Flannery said. “So Jimmie says your cover is fertilizers—chemistry and agriculture. I’ll make an appointment for you with Sandy Bennett, that’s Sanford Bennett on our agricultural staff. He’s safely out of town until after the weekend, and tomorrow I’ll erase it from his calendar, but for these twenty-four hours you can mention the appointment and his secretary will back you up. Your boss was already onto her today to get some fly-spray. And say you intend to talk to Fred Cav anaugh— he’s in charge of repatriation and refugees. You can claim to want to hire Displaced Persons from the Fluchtlingstelle refugee center at Marienfelde, it’s in this sector.”
    “Good Lord, I don’t want forced labor!”
    “For the fertilizer factory you’re not even going to start up, right—live your cover. It’d be seen as a mercy, though, if you wanted Soviets who’ve been German prisoners of war. We’ve been repatriating them, by force—we had a crowd of Russian soldiers who were captured by the Germans in ’42, and we had to tear-gas ’em to get them into the eastbound train cars to go back home. Eleven of them actually managed to kill themselves, rather than return. I gather Moscow doesn’t look kindly on Communists who’ve been too long in the West, even if the time was spent in prison camps.”
    Again Hale thought of Elena. The gin was suddenly as sour as varnish in his mouth, and he put the teacup down on the desk.
    “You’re going to be walking around?” asked Flannery.
    Hale nodded. “I—expect so.”
    “Here.” Flannery crossed to a closet, and after unlocking a padlock on a hasp he opened the closet door and handed Hale two cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes. “Easiest thing is don’t carry money at all. A pack of cigarettes is worth, very roughly, five dollars, clean currency anywhere in the city. As a favor to Jimmie Theodora, the United States will part with some smokes—but if you need actual cash, I can’t requisition