I shrugged. “In Cuba, I got all the American newspapers. In an attempt to improve my English. Nineteen fifty-two, wasn’t it? The investigation. When the Malden Committee recommended that the Soviets should answer a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague? Look, it’s a story I’ve been interested in for a long time. We both know the NKVD killed as many as we did. So why not admit it? The commies are the enemy now. Or is that just American propaganda?”

I fetched a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of my prison jacket and lit one slowly. I was tired of answering questions, but I knew I was going to have to open the door of my mind’s darkest cellar and wake up some very unpleasant memories. Even in a room with bars on the window, Operation Barbarossa felt like a very long way away. Outside it was a bright and sunny June day, and although it had been a very similarly warm June day when the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union, that wasn’t the way I remembered it. When I recalled names like Goloby, Lutsk, Bialy-stock, and Minsk, I thought of infernal heat and the sights, sounds, and smells of a hell on earth; but most of all I remembered a clean-shaven young man aged about twenty standing in a cobbled town square with a crowbar in his hand, his thick boots an inch deep in the blood of about thirty other men who lay dead or dying at his feet. I remembered the shocked laughter of some of the German soldiers who were watching this bestial display; I remembered the sound of an accordion playing a spirited tune as another, older man with a long beard walked silently, almost calmly toward the fellow with the crowbar and was immediately struck on the head like some ghastly Hindu sacrifice; I remembered the noise the old man made as he fell to the ground and the way his legs jerked stiffly, like a puppet’s, until the crowbar hit him again.

I jerked my thumb at the window. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything. But do you mind if I put my face in the sun for a moment? It helps to remind me that I’m still alive.”

“Unlike millions of others,” Earp said pointedly. “Go ahead. We’re in no hurry.”

I went to the window and looked out. By the main gate a small crowd of people had gathered to wait for someone. Either that or they were looking for the window of cell number seven, which seemed a little less likely.

“Is someone being released today?” I asked.

Silverman came over to the window. “Yes,” he said. “Erich Mielke.”

“Mielke?” I shook my head. “You’re mistaken. Mielke’s not in here. He couldn’t be.”