Bömelburg took a bite of the flask and offered it to me. “Swallow?”

“That’s the best thing I’ve heard since I got into this tin pigeon.”

On the ground at Bayonne Airport there were four bucket wagons waiting for us, six SS storm troopers, and the French lawyer. The SS were good-humored and full of smiles, the way men are when they’ve won a war in less than six weeks. The lawyer had a big nose, thick glasses, and hair so curly it was almost absurd. To me he seemed like a Jew, but nobody was asking. Either way, he was jumpy and nervous. He lit a cigarette inside the lapel of this jacket to keep the wind off his match, and smoke billowed out of his sleeve.

It was a real bestiary that drove east from Biarritz. Something from the pages of Hesiod, with me in the leading bucket and moving at speed, as if the beauty of the French countryside meant not a thing to any of us. On the road we saw demobilized French soldiers, who regarded us with neither hostility nor enthusiasm. We also saw piles of abandoned military equipment—rifles, helmets, ammunition boxes, even a few pieces of artillery. Just beyond the village of St. Palais we crossed the demarcation line into what was Vichy France. Not that there was much love for the French so close to the Spanish border, as Chief Inspector Oltramare—who spoke better German than I had supposed—now told me:

“The bastards hate us French even more than they hate you Germans,” he said. “They don’t speak much French. They don’t speak much Spanish. I’m not even sure they speak Basque.”

Several times we overtook a family car heaped with luggage heading east along the main road to Toulouse.

“Why are they fleeing?” I asked Oltramare. “Don’t they know about the armistice?”

Oltramare shrugged, but as we overtook the next car he leaned out of the bucket and asked the occupants where they were going; and when these answered he nodded politely and crossed himself.

“They’re from Biarritz,” he said. “They’re going to Lourdes. To pray for France.” He smiled. “For a miracle, perhaps.”

“Don’t you believe in miracles?”

“Oh yes. That is why I believe in Adolf Hitler. He’s the one man who can save Europe from the curse of Bolshevism. That is what I believe.”

“I suppose that’s why he signed a deal with Stalin,” I said. “To save us all from Bolshevism.”