In his fingers he held a sheet of unfolded paper on which I recognized my own handwriting. He placed a pair of half-moon glasses on the end of his snub nose and viewed the letter with a detached curiosity. He barely read the contents before letting the note fall onto the table.

“Naturally, I’ve read this. Several times. But now that you’re here, I’d prefer it if you told me, in person, what you have written to Agents Scheuer and Frei in this letter of yours.”

“So that you can see if I deviate from what I wrote before?”

“We understand each other perfectly.”

“Well, the facts are these,” I said, suppressing a smile. “As a condition of my working with the SDECE—”

The Chief winced. “Exactly what does that mean, Phil?”

“Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage,” said Scheuer.

The Chief nodded. “Go on, Herr Gunther.”

“Well, I agreed to work for them if they permitted me to visit Berlin and an old friend of mine. Perhaps the only friend I have left.”

“She have a name? This friend of yours?”

“Elisabeth,” I said.

“Surname? Address?”

“I don’t want her involved in any of this.”

“Meaning you don’t want to tell me.”

“That’s true.”

“You met her how and when?”

“Nineteen thirty-one. She was a seamstress. A good one, too. She worked in the same tailor’s shop as Erich Mielke’s sister, which was also where Mielke’s mother, Lydia Mielke, worked until her death in 1911. It was pretty hard for Erich’s father, bringing up four children on his own. His elder daughter went to work and cooked the family meals, and because Elisabeth was her friend, sometimes she helped out. There were even times when Elisabeth was like a sister to Erich.”

“Where did they live? Can you remember the address?”

“Stettiner Strasse. A gray tenement building in Gesundbrunnen, in northwest Berlin. Number twenty-five. It was Erich who introduced me to Elisabeth. After I’d saved his neck.”

“Tell me about that.”

I told him.

“And this is when you met Mielke’s father.”

“Yes. I went to Mielke’s address to try to arrest him, and the old man took a swing at me and I had to arrest him. It was Elisabeth who had given me the address, and she wasn’t very happy that I’d asked her for it. As a result, our relationship hit a rock. And it was very much later on, I suppose it must have been the autumn of 1940, before we became reacquainted, and the following year before we started our relationship again.”

“You never mentioned any of this when you were interrogated at Landsberg,” said the Chief. “Why not?”