“You talked me out of it. Maybe I won’t kill myself. I just wish I knew what was happening.”

After all that talking I was as quiet as Hegel for a spell; maybe it was for several days, weeks probably, I don’t know. I hadn’t been marking time on the wall the way you were supposed to, with six marks followed by a seventh through their middle. They stopped making those calendars after the man in the iron mask complained about all the graffiti on the wall of his cell. Besides, the quickest way to do the time is to pretend it’s not there. People pretend a lot when they’re in jail. And just when you’ve managed to persuade yourself that there’s something almost normal about being locked up like an animal, two strange men wearing suits and hats walk in and tell you that you’re being deported to Germany: One of them puts the cuffs on you and before you know it you’re on your way to the airport again.

The suits were good. The creases in their pants were almost perfect, like the bow of a big gray ship. The hats were nicely shaped and the shoes brightly polished, like their fingernails. They didn’t smoke—at least not on the job—and they smelled lightly of cologne. One of them had a little gold watch chain on which he kept the key to my handcuffs. The other wore a signet ring that gleamed like a cold white burgundy. They were smooth, efficient, and probably quite tough. They had good, white teeth of the kind that reminded me I probably needed to see a dentist. And they didn’t like me. Not in the least. In fact, they hated me. I knew this because when they looked my way they grimaced or snarled silently or gritted their teeth and gave every sign of wanting to bite me. For much of the journey to the airport there were just the white teeth to contend with; and then, after about thirty minutes, when it seemed they could no longer restrain themselves, they started to bark.

“Fucking Nazi,” said one.

I said nothing.

“What’s the matter, you Nazi bastard? Lost your tongue?”

I shook my head. “German,” I said. “But never a Nazi.”

“No difference,” said the other. “Not in my book.”

“Besides,” said the first one. “You were SS. And that makes you worse than a Nazi murderer. That makes you someone who enjoyed it.”

I couldn’t argue with him about that. What would have been the point? They’d already made up their minds about me: John Wilkes Booth would have received a more sympathetic hearing than I was likely to get from these two. But after weeks of solitary, I had an itch to talk a little:

“What are you? FBI?”

The first man nodded. “That’s right.”