Rudi thought the popular media had inflated them out of all proportion. They were just couriers, and people had been couriering stuff around Europe since at least the Middle Ages, and smuggling things for considerably longer.

IT WAS SAID that if you were a criminal, a member of some tinpot political party, an agitator for a minority interest group, a drug addict, a property speculator, a forger or bootlegger of any kind, an artist, a fashion designer, a writer, underground film director, musician, or just plain crazy, Berlin was where you would eventually end up. It

The big thing in Europe these days was countries, and there were more and more of them every year. The Continent was alive with Romanov heirs and Habsburg heirs and Grimaldi heirs and Saxe-Coburg Gotha heirs and heirs of families nobody had ever heard of who had been dispossessed sometime back in the fifteenth century, all of them seeking to set up

These days, things were more complicated. Border disputes often meant that delivering mail from polity A to nation B was impossible. So people contacted Les Coureurs, and the mail got through. Sometimes the mail consisted of people for whom the passage from polity A to nation B might otherwise be impossibly delicate. Sometimes it was items which

Rudi stood looking at the closed door for a minute or so after Fabio’s departure. He was surprised to discover that, on his first live Situation, he felt like a child brought to his father’s workplace.

The train rocked and rolled slowly through grubby little industrial towns. The Fall of the Wall was just a distant misty memory now, but Eastern Europe still needed a good scrub and a lick of paint. Some of Poland’s most polluted towns had buildings of mediaeval splendour, but they were all crusted with centuries of soot.

“Purpose of visit?” asked the Hindenberger. “I’m on holiday.” The official looked at him with an expression of mild astonishment. He checked his screen again. “Estonian.” “Yes.” The Hindenberger shook his head slightly. “I only get a week’s holiday a year,” Rudi told him. “I’m a chef. If I take any time off my boss has to employ an agency chef.”

Stashing the suit in a situation like this would have been suicidal. He just had to get rid of it the best way he could. He’d dropped the suit’s electronics off a bridge into the Havel, and carried the suit itself with him to the graveyard. He’d dumped it under a bush, pulled the emergency tab, and waited for the enzymes to eat the material. It was

a face the colour of barszcz,