If I checked the files back at the Centre my search would be logged, and then all you need is some busybody wondering why a grunt from Main Department VI is looking at the files of nobodies from a sandy town on the edge of Berlin. There I was, standing on the ground floor of the Konsum in Königs Wusterhausen—to call the three tiny floors of this provincial shop a department store stretched my imagination too far—and demanding an audience with Citizen Dittmann. I asked to see her Ausweis and in return pulled out a mugshot of the Boss’s pretty lady and held it under Dittmann’s nose.