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which filtered in through his curtains, he noticed that the crack in his ceiling had spread. When it first appeared, back in January, after a British 10-ton bomb known as a Grand Slam had obliterated an apartment block three streets away, Misch had simply painted over the crack. One week later, the crack reappeared after another bomb, this time from an American B-17 flying daylight raids over the city, knocked out power to the entire suburb of Karlshorst. This time, Misch just left the crack alone. It was a rented flat, after all. In the weeks that followed, the crack meandered in a crooked path across the chiffon-yellow paint, travelling like a slow-moving lightning bolt from one end of the ceiling to the other. For Misch, its relentless progress seemed to take on hidden meaning. The closer it came to the opposite end of the ceiling from which it had begun, the more Misch became convinced that when it finally arrived, something momentous would take place.
    It was almost there. Holding out his arm and clenching his hand into a fist, Misch measured that the crack had only three knuckle-lengths to go before it reached its destination. What happened then had become the stuff of Misch’s nightmares which, like the crack itself across the once-clear field of yellow paint, had worked their way into his waking thoughts until it seemed as if they must consume his mind entirely.
    The phone rang again.
    Still half asleep, he tossed aside the crumpled sheets and made his way down the hall to where the phone stood on a wooden table, its battered finish partially hidden by a place mat crocheted with the red, white and black design of the National Socialist flag. The phone rested on the white circle in the middle of the flag, concealing all but the outer edges of the swastika, which jutted like the legs of a huge, squashed spider from beneath the heavy casing of the phone.
    Misch picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Hello? Who is there?’
    There was no answer. In fact, the line was dead.
    Mystified, he put the phone down again and glanced at his watch. It was 6 a.m., a full two hours before he had to report for work. That gave him another half-hour of lying in bed. Maybe he could fall asleep. Or maybe he’d just stare at the crack in the ceiling.
    Misch had almost reached the bed when the phone jangled yet again.
    Muttering a curse, he spun around and stared at it, as if daring it to make another sound.
    As the last shadows of sleep drifted from his mind, Misch realised that something was wrong. The phone wasn’t actually ringing, at least not in the way it normally did. Instead, after the initial high-pitched rattle of bells, its tone faded out almost apologetically, as if something other than an incoming call was causing the disturbance.
    At that moment, Misch felt a faint vibration through the worn-out socks he always wore to bed. It was only because he was standing still that he felt it at all. But the bells inside the telephone responded faintly and at last Misch understood that this vibration was the cause.
    But what, in turn, was causing the vibration?
    Misch walked over to the window, drew the heavy velvet blackout curtains and rested his hand against the window pane. He felt it, like a weak electric charge, trembling through his skin. It was too early in the morning for an air raid. The RAF night bombers were usually gone by about 2 or 3 a.m. and the Americans rarely arrived before noon. Besides, he had heard no sirens to indicate that he should head down to the shelter in the basement.
    And suddenly he remembered a day, back in the autumn of 1939 when, as part of an armoured column making its way across Poland, his column had passed by a huge snub-barrelled cannon being transported on its own railway tracks to the outskirts of Warsaw. In white Sutterlin-script letters as tall as a man he read the cannon’s name – Thor. That night, as Misch sat beside a fire made of willow branches, poking the embers with the