“Why am I telling you this? Let me explain. When I moved into this building, I felt kind of uncomfortable at the idea that I might be breathing the same kind of office air as the folks who developed that poison gas. So I resolved to find out about it for myself. And I discovered that it really wasn’t true that I. G. Farben had had very much to do with that gas. I also discovered that back in 1929, the U.S. Public Health Service was using Zyklon B to disinfect the clothes of Mexican immigrants and the freight trains they were traveling in. At the New Orleans Quarantine Station. Incidentally, the stuff is still being manufactured today, in Czechoslovakia, in the city of Köln. They call it Uragan D2 and they use it to disinfect the trains that German POWs have been traveling on. Back to the Homeland.

“You see, Herr Gunther, I have a passion for information. Some people call that sort of thing trivia, but I do not. I call that truth. Or knowledge. Or even, when I’m sitting in my office, intelligence. I have an appetite for facts, sir. Facts. Whether it’s facts about I. G. Farben, Zyklon B gas, Mackie Messer, or Erich Mielke.”

I sipped my coffee. It was horrible. Like stewed socks. I reached for my cigarettes and remembered that I’d smoked the last of them in the car.

“Give Herr Gunther a cigarette, will you, Phil? That was what you were after, was it not?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Scheuer lit me with an armor-plated Dunhill and then lit one for himself. I noticed the shields on his bow tie were the same as the ones on the Chief’s, and I assumed they shared more than just a service, but a background, too. Ivy League, probably.

“Your letter, Herr Gunther, was fascinating. Especially in the context of what Phil here has told me and what I’ve read in the file. But it’s my job to discover how much of it is fact. Oh, I’m not for a moment suggesting that you’re lying to us. But after twenty years, people can easily make mistakes. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“Very fair.”

He regarded my undrunk coffee with vicarious disgust. “Horrible, isn’t it? The coffee. I don’t know why we put up with it. Phil, get Herr Gunther something stronger. What are you drinking, sir?”

“A schnapps would be nice,” I said, and glanced around as Scheuer fetched a bottle and a small glass from inside the sideboard and placed it on the desk. “Thank you.”

“Coaster,” snapped the Chief.

Coasters were fetched and placed under the bottle and my glass.

“This table’s made of walnut,” said the Chief. “Walnut marks like a damask napkin. Now, then, sir. You have your cigarette. You have your drink. All I need from you are some facts.”