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slept noisily.
    Just after 1.30 a.m. Lehrer declined to draw on a hand. Felsen thought for a full three minutes and drew two which he looked at and laid face-down on the table. He moved 200 RM into the centre of the table. Lehrer matched him and raised him 400 RM. Felsen likewise matched and raised. They stopped and checked each other. Lehrer was trying to find the light, the narrow crack, the hairline fissure that was all he needed. Felsen knew then that his strongest card wasn't face-down on the table in front of him and allowed himself a tiny smile in the pit of his stomach. It was enough for Lehrer who matched Felsen and raised him 1000 RM. Felsen moved his remaining 500 RM into the centre and drew a block of 5000 RM out of his pocket and threw it on top.
    Wolff was up to his chest at the table burning holes in the green baize. Hanke and Koch shut up. Fischer stopped snoring.
    Lehrer smiled and drummed the table with his fingers. He asked for a pen and paper. He pushed his remaining 2500 RM into the centre and wrote a note for 2500 RM.
    'I think we should see each other now,' he said.
    'You first,' said Felsen, who'd have been happy to go on.
    Lehrer shrugged. He turned over four aces and a king. Koch was gritting his teeth with fury at how Felsen had bought the job from under him.
    'Well, Felsen,' said Wolff.
    Felsen turned over his draw cards first. The seven and ten of diamonds. Wolff sneered but Lehrer leaned forward. The next two cards were the eight and nine of diamonds.
    'I hope that last one's not a jack,' said Lehrer.
    It was the six.
    Lehrer tore his tunic off the back of his chair and left the room.
    Perhaps, thought Felsen looking at the deflated men leaving around him, that had been a step too far. Beating four of a kind with a low straight flush—that could be seen as humiliation.

    The sleet had turned back to snow. Then it became too cold for snow and the air froze still. The black ruts in the white roads iced over and the staff car taking Felsen back to Berlin fish-tailed its way up Nürnbergerstrasse.
    Felsen tried to tip the driver, who refused. He limped slowly up the stairs to his apartment. He let himself in, threw off his coat and hat and slapped his money on the table. He poured himself a brandy, lit a cigarette and, despite the cold, stripped off his jacket and hung it off the back of a chair.
    Eva was asleep in a wool coat, a blanket over her legs, on the chaise longue. He sat in front of her and watched her eyes fluttering under their lids. He put his hand out to touch her. She woke up with a small cry that sounded as if it came from the night rather than her throat. He took his hand back and gave her a cigarette.
    She smoked and stared at the ceiling and stroked his knee without thinking about it.
    'I was dreaming.'
    'Badly?'
    'You'd left Berlin, I was on my own at a U-bahn station and where the tracks should have been there were crowds of people looking up, as if they were expecting something of me.'
    'Where'd I gone?'
    'I don't know.'
    'I doubt I'll be going anywhere after tonight.'
    'What did you do?' she asked, mother to small boy.
    'I cleaned them out.'
    Eva sat up.
    'That was stupid,' she said. 'You know Lehrer ... he's not so nice. You remember those two Jewish girls?'
    'The ones who got washed up in the Havel ... yes, I do, but that wasn't him was it?'
    'No, but he was there. He was the one who'd ordered the girls.'
    'He knew about me too,' said Felsen sipping the brandy. 'He knew about me and Susana Lopes. How do you think he knew that?'
    'It's the nature of the regime isn't it?'
    'It was years ago.'
    'It was a totalitarian state before the war too,' she said, swinging her knees round to between his legs and taking the brandy glass from him. 'Is that why you beat him at cards?'
    'What do you mean?' he asked, annoyed to have sounded defensive.
    'You were jealous, weren't you? I can tell,' she said. 'Of him and Susana.'
    Her hands found the front of his trousers and rubbed the thick