Let the general explain what this is all about. The general seemed to have the same idea. They sat in silence in the back seat, stared straight ahead at the busy streets, at the driver’s shaven neck, the black beret clamped on his small round head. The wire arms of his spectacles seemed to disappear into the flesh behind his tight ears. Once Miller made as if to move the rucked curtain but he sensed the general’s forbidding eyes and he dropped his hand. They were moving slowly enough for Miller to realize that they were circling and criss-crossing their own tracks. The same shops slid by, the same intersections, the same traffic policemen on point duty. The driver’s bereted head swung from side to side, from wing mirror to wing mirror. In the rear-view mirror his eyes caught Miller’s, coins of pale blue behind the wire-framed lenses. At this speed we could be in a funeral: a fucking funeral in Berlin. The car leapt forward in the gathering gloom. The driver raced through the gears.
