“Heydrich, Himmler, and several thousand officers,” said Silverman. “According to previous accounts we’ve heard, it was common knowledge after that what was going to happen when you all got to Russia. But you say you weren’t at Pretzsch, which is why the whole business of killing Jews was such an unpleasant surprise for you. So why weren’t you at Pretzsch?”

“What did you get? A sick note?”

“I was still in France,” I said. “On a special mission from Heydrich.”

“That was convenient, wasn’t it? So let me get this straight: When you joined Battalion Three One Six, on the Polish–Russian border in June 1941, it’s really your impression that your job would involve nothing more than hunting down partisans and NKVD, right?”

“Yes. But even before I got to Vilnius I’d begun to hear stories of local pogroms against the Jews because the Jews in the NKVD were busy murdering all of their prisoners instead of releasing them. It was all very confused. You’ve no idea how confused. Frankly, I didn’t believe these stories at first. There were plenty of stories like that in the Great War, and most of them turned out to be false.” I shrugged. “In this particular case, however, even the worst, most far-fetched stories were nearly all true.”

“Exactly what were your orders?”

“That our job was a security one. To keep order behind the lines of our advancing army.”

“And you did that how?” asked Silverman. “By murdering people?”

“You know, being a detective in the police battalion, I paid a lot of attention to my so-called comrades. And it turned out that a lot of these murdering bastards in the Task Groups were lawyers, too. Just like you guys. Blume, Sandberger, Ohlendorf, Schulz. I expect there were others, but I can’t remember their names. I used to wonder why it was that so many lawyers took part in these killings. What do you think?”

“We ask the questions, Gunther.”

“Spoken like a true lawyer, Mr. Earp. By the way, how come I don’t have one here? With all due respect, gentlemen, this interrogation is hardly consistent with the rules of German justice; or, I imagine, the rules of American justice, either. Doesn’t every American have a Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against himself?”

“This interrogation is a necessary step in determining if you should be tried or released,” said Silverman.

“This is what we German cops used to call an Eskimo’s fishing trip,” I said. “You just drop a line through a hole in the ice and hope that you catch something.”

“In the absence of any clear evidence and documentation,” continued Silverman, “sometimes the only way to gain knowledge of a crime is by questioning a suspect such as yourself. That’s usually been our experience with war crimes cases.”