Silverman stood up and took off his jacket. “Mind if I open a window?” he said.

The politeness was instinctive and he started to open it anyway. Not that I could ever have jumped out; the window was barred, just like the one in my cell. Silverman stood there looking out with his arms folded thoughtfully, and for a moment I remembered a newspaper photograph of Hitler, in a similar attitude, on a visit to Landsberg after he’d become Reich Chancellor. After a moment or two he said,

“Did you ever meet a man called Otto Ohlendorf? He was a Gruppenführer—a general—in the Reich Main Security Office.” Silverman came back to the table and sat down.

“Yes. I met him a couple of times. He was head of Department Three, I think. Domestic Intelligence.”

“And what was your impression of him?”

“Intense. A dedicated Nazi.”

“He was also head of an SS task group that operated in the southern Ukraine and the Crimea,” said Silverman. “That same task group murdered ninety thousand people before Ohlendorf returned to his desk in Berlin. As you say, he was a dedicated Nazi. But when the British captured him, in 1945, he sang like a canary. For them and for us. Actually, we couldn’t shut him up. No one could figure it. There was no duress, no deal, no offer of immunity. It seems he just wanted to talk about it. Maybe you should think about doing that. Get it off your chest, as he did. Ohlendorf sat in that very chair you’re sitting in now and talked his damn head off for forty-two days in succession. He was very matter-of-fact about it, too. You might even say normal. He didn’t cry or offer an apology, but I guess there must have been something in his soul that just bothered him.”

“Some of the guys here quite liked him,” said Earp. “Up until the moment when we hanged him.”

I shook my head. “With all due respect, you’re not selling this idea of unburdening myself very well if the only reward is the one in heaven. And I thought Americans were supposed to be good salesmen.”

“Ohlendorf was one of Heydrich’s protégés, too,” said Silverman.

“Meaning you think I was?”

“You said yourself it was Heydrich who brought you back to Kripo in 1938. I don’t know what else that makes you, Gunther.”

“He needed a proper homicide detective. Not some Nazi with an anti-Semitic ax to grind. When I came back to Kripo, I had the unusual idea that I might actually be able to stop someone from murdering young girls.”

“But afterward—”

“You mean after I solved the case?”

“—you continued working for Kripo. At General Heydrich’s request.”

“I really didn’t have much choice in the matter. Heydrich was a hard man to disappoint.”

“But what did he want from you?”