Declare

until it eventually guttered out, and Hale and Elena weren’t aware of any of it. But an hour before dawn the rain stopped, and a wind from the north rattled the window frames and opened the clouds so that moonlight silvered the old cobbled street and the gable roofs, and Hale and Elena wrapped themselves in blankets to get up and stand in the moonlight by the window, and for a little while they watched the red and green wingtip lights sweep overhead and on past them as Western airplanes descended for landings at Tempelhof.
    Elena whispered in French, “I’ll say it now, while it’s still not immediate: Good-bye, Andrew, my love.”
    “I will not say it ever,” he told her, leading her back away from the window.
    At dawn Elena got dressed and went away to meet Cassagnac, and Hale put on his damp clothes and walked through the slanting sunlight north, back to the square by the Brandenburg Gate.
    He hung well back past the western curbing of the square, by the sawed-off tree stumps on the south side of the Charlottenburg Chaussee, but he was able to see red-striped wooden barricades around the patch of wet cement that now covered the shell-crater in the pavement; and he surreptitiously made sketches from several vantage points, indicating the locations of landmarks, so that Theodora would know precisely where the anchor stone had been installed.
    Of course the truck, with its flat tires and crushed roof, had been towed away during the night, and from this southern position Hale could see no evidence of lumber—or bones—up at the north end of the broad square, where he remembered the boat overturning. His head throbbed with a mild hangover as he panted in the cool morning air, and he was already beginning to wonder how much of what he seemed to recall could really, literally, have happened.
    In a rubble-strewn alley he dropped the Walther pistol down the well of a broken drainage pipe—and then there was no reason to linger. During the walk southwest to the SHAEF U.S. Sector Headquarters, past gutted houses and curbside cooking fires and old women loading broken masonry into wagons, he tried to decide what report he would make to Theodora.
    He reclaimed the Renault from the American lot and finally used some of his German marks to refill the petrol tank, and then he drove carefully back down the southwest segment of highway, past a brief view of green woods and the broad sunlit lakes of the Havel River, to the U.S. Sector gates and the Russian checkpoint at the outskirts of Berlin. In the Russian guard shack a taciturn Soviet soldier checked the Conway name and passport number against a posted list, then sighed and stamped the travel order. Hale got back into the idling car and drove on, out of Berlin.
    Soviet military lorries passed him in both directions during the two-hour drive west, but he resisted the surprisingly strong impulse to race out of the Russian territory; and before slowing for the final checkpoint at the Helmstedt border crossing, he wiped the sweat from his face and managed to breathe deeply and slowly. A number of German diesel lorries were halted on the shoulder so that the loads could be checked, but when the checkpoint guard looked at Hale’s stamped travel order, he simply waved, and the barrier was lifted.
    Hale drove through, into the British Zone of conquered Germany. Abandoned brick warehouses fronted the street, and on the nearest curb stood a figure in an overcoat and a homburg hat—Hale recognized Theodora even as the figure began waving. Hale pulled over, and Theodora opened the door and climbed in, setting his hat on his lap.
    “Don’t talk,” the gray-haired man told him shortly, “the Americans probably miked the car. Just drive straight ahead here.”
    Hale nodded and let out the clutch; and when the road had led them past the last outlying farmhouses of Helmstedt to shaggy green fields, Theodora said, “This will do. Pull over to the shoulder here. I’m not flying back with you, and I might not see you again in London. You’ll give me your report now.”
    Hale nodded and steered the car onto the muddy shoulder, and when it had squeaked to a halt he rocked the shift lever into neutral and set the hand brake, and then clanked open the driver’s-side door.
    Theodora leaned forward, frowning. “I hope the report will be lengthy enough,” he said, “to make it worthwhile turning off the damned engine.” “Oh, yes, sir, of course,” said Hale, reaching back to