I shook my head and lit a cigarette. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“We’re your friends, Gunther.”

“With American friends, who needs enemies?” I pulled a face. “Look, gentlemen, I’ve had American friends before. In Vienna. And there was something about the experience I didn’t like. Even so, I knew their names. And mostly this is a given with the people who claim to be my friends.”

“You’re taking this way too personally, Gunther.”

“Nothing’s been broken that can’t be fixed. We can do this. I’m Mr. Scheuer and this is Mr. Frei. Like we said before, we work for the CIA. At a place called Pullach. You know Pullach?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s the American part of Munich. Where you kennel all of the tame German shepherds who look after the flock for you in this part of the world. General Gehlen and his pals.”

“Unfortunately, those dogs are not coming to heel the way they used to,” said Scheuer. He was the one with the pipe. “We suspect Gehlen made a private deal with Chancellor Adenauer and that the Germans are about to run their own show from now on.”

“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.”