<strong>Wednesday, March 13th, 1946. Sometime just before dawn. </strong><br/><div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/XIMaCb7.jpg)</div>Berlin seems to wake slowly, compared to other cities. The absence of street lights in much of the city, and the relatively few cars mean the darkness of night seems to linger. Hollowed out buildings, rubble, construction sights, and even the black-out curtains that exist in most windows give the city an empty feel.<br/><br/>But as your jeep drivers cruised down empty lanes pedestrians and even a few brave cyclists testing their steering in the ice and slush of near-Spring Berlin began to appear. Still, its nothing like Paris, or London. Before the war greater Berlin had a population over 4 million. By the end of the war it was barely 2 million, and most of them women, children, and the elderly. They say the population is up to 3 million now, but there's no way to actually count.<br/><br/>For Captain Dany Dumond each morning begins in a narrow room in Camp Cyclop, the French garrison in Reinickendorf  in the North-West of the city, in long military barracks centered around an austere airfield.<br/><br/>For Captain Wallace Aiden Burthold-Campbell each morning begins at Wavel Barracks, Wilhelmstraße, Spandau. The borough is to the west of the city, and although it has a long history it is currently best known for the eponymous prison located therein.<br/><br/>For Captain Gordon Briggs each morning begins a McNair Barracks in Lichterfelde, a borough in southwest Berlin. It is near to Templehof, the central civilian airport in Berlin, although most of its traffic is military.<br/><br/>All three officers are driven to the Kammergericht, the old Berlin courthouse, a sprawling structure with over four-hundred rooms that no longer fulfills its original judiciary role. Housing the Allied Control Council, the building is well guarded by soldiers from all four occupational forces. But the upper floors are not your destination. As each driver parks, and as identity cards are shown twice, each agent descended down a stair case to the lower levels.<br/><div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/ojChhnB.jpg)</div>Here the walls are plaster over brick, painted institutional green-grey. Your identity cards are checked again by a soldier you have seen a dozen times over the last month.<br/><div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/TSBEnSy.jpg)</div>A German woman in the uniform of the Berlin Air Safety Centre (a uniform nearly identical to the British WAC) whose offices are upstairs, unlocks the final gate from the inside and opens it for you. She is Frau Meyer, one of the cities many young widows. Greeting you in German-accented English, she locks the gate behind you and leads you to briefing room 1B. Her blonde hair is braided up, indoors she does not wear her cap. She is quite curvy, although the strict rationing which still continues means she is in no way plump. The military tunic and skirt often mute the female form, but they can do little in Frau Meyer's case. Those who pay attention to such things notice she is not wearing hose, and her black pumps are polished well, but quite worn down at the heel.<br/><br/>The Reserve Police Agency employs about a dozen women in administrative roles under the guise of clerks for the Berlin Air Safety Centre, upstairs. Frau Meyer is one of only three Germans among them.<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>Within a few minutes of each other all three of you have been guided to the briefing room. There is a percolator on a sideboard, with some of the worst coffee ever brewed slowly cooling in it. There are several tea-cups, fewer saucers, and none of them match. There is no creme or sugar.<br/><br/>There are six wooden chairs arranged in a semi-circle facing a desk. There is another chair behind the desk, and a cork board where maps of photographs can be pinned. The light in the room is provided by two bare bulbs shining under circular metal reflectors. There is one ashtray on the sideboard, and one on the desk.<br/><br/>As Frau Meyer escorts the last of you to the briefing room she gives you a quick warning on today's briefing officer.<br/><br/>"Comrade Androshenko will be with you shortly." She shuts the door and you can hear the click-click-click of her heels against the concrete floor as she heads back to her station by the gate.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Step Seven: Trust!</div><div class="spoiler_body"><br/>All three of you are in the room. You first met a month ago, and for the last few weeks you have done routine surveillance missions together in Berlin. The people you watched didn't do anything particularly interesting, but over long stake-outs on cold nights you have developed a working rapport. <br/><br/>Each of you has 1d6 to assign to one agent, and 2d6 to assign to the other agent. The more you trust an agent the better their aid will be in tests and contests. There will be opportunities to increase and decrease trust.   Please note your Trust levels on your character sheet in Kammergericht Nights: OOC Thread.</div></div><br/><br/><div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/8cwULvN.jpg)</div>As predicted, less than two minutes after frau Meyer departs, Comrade Androshenko arrives, carrying a thick manila folder. He is dressed in a cheap grey suit with a simple black tie. Although you have never seen Androshenko in a military uniform this suit may as well be the uniform of Soviet apparatchiks. He is in his sixties, probably, and wears a set of thin wire-frame spectacles. He speaks English with an Eton accent betraying no trace of his Russian background. He lights a cigarette with a wooden match, by the aroma it is a fine Turkish tobacco, something rare in Russian but rarer here in Germany.<br/><br/>"Good day gentlemen." After grabbing a cardboard box of pins from a desk drawer he begins to pin up a number of documents from the manila folder to the cork board. As he does a steady, rapid click-click-click of heels can be heard from the hallway.<br/><br/>The door flies open and Frau Meyer comes to a halt. Her face is flushed, her notable chest heaving. She holds a flimsy piece of thin paper in her hand.<br/><br/>Androshenko turns. "Frau Meyer?"<br/><br/>"Ah, Comrade, from the teletype room!" She holds the fiche out. He takes it.<br/><br/>"Yes. Thank you Frau Meyer. Dismissed."<br/><br/>As the woman closes the door Androshenko takes down the three documents he had pinned up so far. He closes the manila folder.<br/><br/>"Gentlemen. Please proceed to the morgue under St Joseph's Hospital. Talk to the coroner, a Doctor Karl Lutzow. There has been an incident."