‘Nonsense. Does no one else want to try some?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Not for me.’

Petra opened the little box.

‘Suit yourselves.’

Later, Gavriela would pinpoint that day as a turning-point, when their old friendships changed course. For Elke, it would be the commencement of a swift romance, a delirious marriage, and eventually emigration, as Florian too gained a post in Copenhagen.

For Petra it was the beginning of a different kind of tale.

Over the coming months and years, Gavriela sometimes met a lover - but only in her dreams, and though she sometimes woke with Roger’s name upon her lips, by the time she came to full wakefulness, the shards of remembered fantasy had sunk into amnesia.

It continued that way until the decade’s end, when nightmare rushed into the waking world, as German tanks began to mobilize and the warlike mood strengthened, after the horror known as Kristallnacht descended out of nowhere.

Even after Kristallnacht, there had been letters from Berlin. But as the year slipped from ’38 to ’39, the news became worse. Many of those imprisoned at first were released - save for the two thousand beaten to death during their incarceration; but then the true intention of the Nazi state revealed itself. News became darker, whispered rumours and the things that were not stated in the newspapers; and eventually, no more letters from Berlin, none at all.

Switzerland, determined to maintain neutrality, continued to run train services, though no one pretended these were normal times. It was possible, if you chose to risk it, to travel into Germany.

One morning in September, nearly a full year after Kristallnacht, Gavriela walked to the Hauptbahnhof without luggage and bought three return tickets to Berlin. As she boarded alone, she could only hope - or delude herself - that her parents would be with her on the journey back.

Dmitri awoke to the sight of pert buttocks - four cheeks, two nice little arses - bare to the air in his bed. Piotr and Ludmilla were brother and sister, and very willing. To do anything, for so little payment, but never for free.

They were in his bed, but he was alone, and always would be.

He rolled out, bare feet on the cold floor, and found the greatcoat he used as a dressing-gown. Then he pulled it on, slid open the wooden door to the hallway, and grabbed his towel and soap from the table inside the apartment’s front door. He could have washed with the pitcher and bowl in his room, but he preferred the communal bathroom.

Also, it was a test. If any of his belongings were disturbed on his return, he would take it out on Ludmilla first, then her lovely brother. And the valuable stuff was beneath floorboards, at the back of the pantry, and underneath the wardrobe, in hiding-places that amateurs were unlikely to discover.

Back in his bedroom after getting washed, his hair slicked down and tightly combed, he dressed quickly, using double knots on his shoelaces as always, because the ability to run could be a lifesaver. His twin stilettos went into their usual hidden sheaths - on his left forearm and left calf - because they could be deathbringers.

He adjusted collar studs and cuff-links, checked his reflection, ran the comb through his beard, then turned to the two naked teenagers on his bed.

‘Be out of here by nine. Take your present from the table by the door.’

Pulling on his overcoat and fur hat, he left.

The street was cold in the early morning, wide and deserted - like Paris but free of traffic, for only a few official cars ever passed along the wide boulevards. Few Muscovites would know what Paris looked like; but Dmitri was no ordinary citizen, and the comparison seemed natural to him.

There was a large M over the station entrance, and whether you pronounced it mye-tra or mé-tro, it was still the same thing, another similarity. Dmitri descended into the depths of Dobrininskya Station with his fellow commuters.

Here, the similarity to Paris ended. The walls were a yellow neo-Renaissance splendour, with a mosaic whose nearest Parisian counterpart was inside the Louvre, not an underground railway station. But Moscow’s Metro stations were palaces of the future, with crystal chandeliers and the most expensive marble, each station unique in its artistic architecture.

In a secular state, the proletariat’s faith was restricted to their descendants’ hopes for prosperity; the stations were a reminder that such mundane paradise was possible.

At Park Kultury, sometimes called Gorky Park but never officially, he alighted from the Circle Line. Coffee-coloured swirls in marble surrounded gleaming white panels; and again the chandeliers shone.

He made two interruptions to his journey, both short stops to meet informants, and finally reached Dzerzhninsky Square, where Beria’s fearsome statue frowned down upon the citizens who dared not look upon his face.

Inside Headquarters, a young lieutenant saluted and said: ‘Sir, Colonel Yavorski would like to see you now.’

‘Thank you.’

There was a samovar in the canteen full of the dark tea he needed to get his brain functional. But if the colonel said now, he expected instant compliance. Dmitri’s shoes clicked along the parquet flooring, then he knocked on the colonel’s door and slid it open.

‘Sit down,’ said Yavorski, ‘so I can thank you properly for another job well done.’

‘Sir?’

Dmitri closed the door and crossed to the hardbacked chair, while Yavorski took his place behind the heavy desk, beneath which was slung a holstered Stechkin pistol that was supposed to be a secret.

So what kind of thanks do I get today?

Inside, he smiled, though his face remained blank. He had dark impulses, betraying what he thought was right; and he had twisty impulses, driving him to betray the darkness inside him, to trick the Trickster. It gave him a love of gambling, though he despised money.

He preferred more interesting stakes.

‘I’m referring,’ said Yavorski, ‘to one of your perspicacious reports from several years back.’

There was a folder on his desk. A vindication or proof of incompetence?

Here it comes.

Yavorski tapped the folder.

‘The Nationalist Socialist movement in Germany has risen from obscurity to power, as you predicted. Although how you could guess that Hindenberg would offer the Reichschancellorship to Hitler, I have no idea. Luckily, your report was my defence.’

‘Thank you, sir. I knew that Hitler has . . . persuasive powers.’

‘Well, good. Without your report . . . I’m just glad we’re not in the regular army. Do you have any idea how many officers have been shot by our Great Leader’s order?’

‘Not exactly, sir.’

But he knew that thanks to Josef Stalin’s actions, the military was almost headless, leaving only ordinary troops who would do whatever the Great Leader said, but without the strategic and tactical experience to wage any kind of true warfare.

‘Only the British have been yelping about German rearmament, and that’s stirring things up in an interesting way, because the Great Leader despises the British above all.’

‘They are reactionary imperialists, sir.’

‘True, and this little Bavarian corporal heads the National Socialist party, but they’re the natural enemies of Bolshevism, not our allies.’

‘Allies?’

‘Premier Stalin will do the opposite of whatever the British want. That, I’m sure of.’

‘That’s . . . very interesting, Colonel.’

‘But you think the Germans will turn on us later, even if they sign a treaty of alliance?’

This was the kind of question that could make the difference between promotion and the firing-squad.