“The commissioner says you look much better,” said Oltramare. “And I must say, I agree.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Bömelburg. “Much better. Yesterday can’t have been easy for you, Gunther. All that traveling when you were clearly not yourself. It’s commendable that you wanted to come at all, under the circumstances. I shall certainly say so to Colonel Knochen when I make my report in Paris. What with the good news I just had from Commissioner Matignon, this is turning out to be a very good day. Don’t you agree, Kestner?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What good news is that?” I asked, smiling with Toulouse-colored optimism.

“Why, that we’ve got the Jew who assassinated vom Rath,” said Bömelburg. “Grynszpan.” He chuckled. “Apparently, he knocked on the door of the prison here in Toulouse and asked to be let in.”

Oltramare was laughing, too. He said, “Apparently he speaks very little French, had no money, and thought that we might be able to protect him against you fellows.”

“The stupid kike,” muttered Kestner. “I’m on my way to the prison now. With the Commissioner and Monsieur Savigny. To organize Grynszpan’s extradition back to Paris and then Berlin.”

“The Führer wants a trial, apparently,” said Bömelburg. “At all costs there must be a trial.”

“In Berlin?” I tried not to sound surprised.

“Why not in Berlin?” said Bömelburg.

“It’s just that the murder took place in Paris,” I said. “And it was my understanding that Grynszpan’s not even a German citizen. He’s a Pole, isn’t he?” I smiled. “I’m sorry, sir, but sometimes it’s hard for me to stop being a cop and thinking about little things like jurisdiction.”

Bömelburg wagged his finger at me. “You’re just doing your job, old fellow. But I know this case better than anyone. Before I joined the Gestapo I was with our foreign service in Paris, and I spent three months working on this case. For one thing, Poland is now a part of the Greater German Reich. As is France. And for another, the murder took place in the German Embassy here in Paris. Technically, diplomatically that was German soil. And that makes a big difference.”

“Yes, of course,” I said meekly. “That does make a big difference.”

Certainly, it had made a big difference to Germany’s Jews. Herschel Grynszpan’s murder of a junior official in the Paris embassy in November 1938 had been used as an excuse by the Nazis to launch a massive pogrom against Germany’s Jews. Until the night of November 10, 1938—Kristallnacht—it was almost possible to imagine that I still lived in a civilized country. The trial was certain to be the kind the Nazis liked: a show trial, with the verdict a foregone conclusion. But if Bömelburg was being honest, at least Grynszpan wasn’t about to be murdered by the roadside.