“It’s Dr. Goebbels,” said Bömelburg. “Taking his cue from the Führer to see the sights of Paris. Here to cause trouble, no doubt.”

We were obliged to remain in our car for reasons of security until the Mahatma Propagandi had left the airport in an enormous beige Mercedes. I caught a glimpse of him as his car swept past ours. He looked like a malignant goblin on his best behavior.

When Goebbels had gone our car made for a smaller, two-engined plane that was awaiting us. I’d never flown before. Neither had Kestner or the Frenchman, and we were all a little nervous as we walked toward the plane’s passenger door. Inside the fuselage we found another Frenchman waiting for us—an older, taller man with a Lautrec beard, pince-nez, and a quiet forensic manner. He was a commissioner of French police and his name was Matignon. The younger Frenchman was even taller than his commissioner. He wore an extremely well-cut charcoal-gray summer suit and a pair of thick rose-tinted glasses. His name was Philippe Oltramare. Neither of the two Frenchmen seemed to speak much German, but that was hardly a problem with French speakers like Kestner and Bömelburg on board.

The plane, a Siebel Fh 104, started its engines as soon as we were all aboard, and that was the cue for everyone except me to light a cigarette. Following the injury to my lungs, the insult of cigarettes seemed too much to bear, and it wasn’t long before another fit of coughing had me in its grip, which prompted the others, politely, to extinguish their tobacco, and I enjoyed a smoke-free flight down to Biarritz without further irritation to my noisy breathing. I sounded like the audience at a dirty movie.

Mostly the conversation was in French, but there were several names I recognized, among them Rudolf Breitscheid, the former German minister of the interior, and Dr. Rudolf Hilferding, the former minister of finance. Both men had fled Germany after Hitler’s election. I asked Bömelburg about them.

“We think the two Rudolfs are at a hotel in Arles,” he said. “The Commissioner here has already applied for their arrest. But he seems to be encountering some local resistance.”

I was pleased to hear it. The two Rudolfs had been the leading lights of the German Social Democratic Party, which I had voted for myself. Arresting a thug like Erich Mielke was one thing, but arresting Breitscheid and Hilferding was quite another.

“We trust the Commissioner’s physical presence in Arles will overcome any opposition,” added Bömelburg, and showed me a list he had compiled of other wanted men. Mielke’s name was second from the top, underneath Willi Münzenberg, a former Comintern agent and leader of Germany’s communist exiles. Other names were less familiar to me.