“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.”

“Oh, sure,” said Frei. “I think there has been a mistake. But that’s not going to stop the French. They’ve made a formal application for your extradition to Paris. Perhaps you would care to read Knochen’s statement?”

He reached into his jacket pocket and fished out several folded sheets of paper, which he handed to me. Then he and Scheuer stood up and moved toward the cell door.

“You read that over and then decide whether working for Uncle Sam is such a bad thing after all.”

HELMUT KNOCHEN, interviewed March 1954