Maxim’s was in the rue Royale, in the Eighth Arrondissement and a shrine to Art Nouveau, red velvet, and grande cuisine. Parked outside were several German staff cars, but you didn’t need to be German to eat at Maxim’s. When I went along there with Renata, Pierre Laval, one of Vichy’s leading politicians, was there; and so was Fernand de Brinon. All you needed was money—quite a lot of money—and some bismuth tablets. In 1940, Maxim’s was a good place for men and women who knew what they wanted and how to get it, no matter what the price. Probably still is.

We went through the door and were shown straight to a table—or at least as straight as the oleaginous and fawning waiter could manage.

“Can you afford this?” asked Renata, glancing over the menu with widening eyes.

“It makes me feel young again,” I said. “That was the last time I felt this poor.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“Looking for the one thing that’s not on this menu. Information.”

“About your friend Willms?”

“You know, if you keep on calling him that, even in the spirit of jest, I’m going to have to show you how much I dislike him.”

She shuddered visibly. “No, please. I don’t want to know.” She glanced around the restaurant. “I don’t see him in here.” She did a double take on Laval. “All the same, he should be. There are more snakes in here than in the whole of Africa.”

“I didn’t know you were so well traveled.”

“No, just traveled. Obviously, you haven’t seen Africa.”

“I’m beginning to think I made a mistake about you, Renata. I had the quaint idea that you were the girl next door.”

“Where my parents live, in Bern, if you’d ever met the girl next door, you know why I came to Paris.”

The maître d’ arrived with two menus and more attitude than a professor of aeronautics. Renata found him a little intimidating. Me, I’d been intimidated before, and usually by someone holding something more deadly than a wine list.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Albert, monsieur. Albert Glaser.”

“Well, Albert, it was my impression that Germany had stopped paying France war reparations, but I can see from the prices on this menu that I was wrong about that.”

“Our prices don’t seem to bother most of the other German officers who come in here, monsieur.”

“That’s what victory does for Nazis, Albert. It makes them profligate. Careless. Arrogant. Me? I’m just a humble German from Berlin who’s anxious to renew my acquaintance with a certain Monsieur Horcher. Do me a favor, will you, Albert? Go and whisper in his ear that Bernie Gunther is in the store. Oh, and bring us a bottle of Mosel. The nearer the Rhine, the better.”

Albert bowed stiffly and went away.