Berlin. Somewhere in the 30’s.

The champagne sparkle of the ‘20s was gone now; vodka and suspicion replaced it.

The little comforts vanished. Money was worthless.

Luxuries were unobtainable. Well, almost. You had to pay a price. You had to be willing.

October, just after four in the afternoon. A beautiful pale woman sits alone at a café; orders a meal she can’t afford. The signal does not come.

A waiter hovers; she orders coffee. He shrugs, goes inside.

Finally, the signal comes. Without eating, without paying, without the valise of military documents she came in with, she leaves.

She pretends not to see the British agent coming, pretends not to notice his cologne. He bumps into her shoulder, hard. The only thing she feels is the envelope, thick with money, in her hand.

An hour later she emerges from a shop wearing a jacket she’d stared at in the window forever, the one she’d nearly spent the rent money on.