“Very ungrateful,” said Frei. “After all we did for them.”

“Gehlen’s new intelligence outfit—the GVL—is mostly ex-SS. Gestapo, Abwehr. Some very nasty people. Much worse than you. And it’s probably riddled with Russian spies.”

“I could have told you that seven years ago in Vienna,” I said. “In fact, I think I did.”

“So it looks like we’re going to have to start again from scratch. And that means we’re going to have to be rather more certain of the kind of people we recruit. Which is why we were so rough on you from the start. We wanted to make quite sure of who and what you are. The last thing we want working for us this time is a bunch of die-hard Nazis.”

“Imagine how we felt when we discovered that the GVL was helping to train Egyptians and Syrians for a war with the state of Israel. With the Jews, Gunther. Talk about history repeating itself. I would think a man like you, someone who wasn’t ever anti-Semitic himself, might want to do something about that. Israel is our friend.”

“You’ve got to ask yourself a question, Bernie. Do you really want to stay here and let those two jokers from the OCCWC, Silverman and Earp, decide your fate?”

“I thought you said they cleared me.”

“Oh, they did. Since then the French have put in a request for your extradition to Paris. And you know what the French are like.”

“The French haven’t got anything on me.”

“That’s not what they think,” said Scheuer. “That’s not what they think at all.”

“You have to hand it to the French,” said Frei. “Their capacity for hypocrisy is nothing short of breathtaking. France was a fascist country during the war. Even more so than Italy or Spain. But even now, they like to portray themselves as victims. To hold others responsible for their crimes and misdemeanors. Others like you, perhaps. Right now there’s a big trial under way in Paris. Your old friend, Helmut Knochen. And Carl Oberg. It’s quite the cause célèbre. Really. It’s in all the newspapers, every day.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” I said. “Those people, Knochen and Oberg, they were big fish. I was just a minnow. I never even met Oberg. So what the hell’s all this about?”

“The Brits tried Knochen in 1947. In Wuppertal. They found him guilty of the murders of some British parachutists and sentenced him to death. But the sentence was commuted and now the French want their kilo of flesh. They’re looking for scapegoats, Gunther. Someone to blame. And of course, so is Knochen. Which apparently is how your name came up. He made a statement to the French Sûreté that it was you who murdered all those prisoners from Gurs on the road to Lourdes in 1940.”

“Me? There must be some mistake.”