“Don’t you think we’ve killed enough Russians?” I asked. “Stalin’s dead. The Korean War is over.”

“No one is talking about killing anyone,” insisted Biberstein. “But we’re still at war with the communists, whether you like it or not. A cold war, it’s true, but a war nonetheless. Look, I don’t know what you did during the war and I don’t want to know. None of us do. No one in here talks about anything that happened back then. The important thing is to remember that every man in this prison is agreed on one thing: that none of us is or was criminally responsible for his acts or those of his men because we were all of us following orders. Whatever our personal feelings or misgivings about the odious work we were tasked with, it was a Führer order and it was impossible to disobey. As long as we all stick to that story, it’s certain we can all of us be out of this place before the decade is out.”

“And hopefully, well before that,” added Haensch.

I nodded, which was misleading, because it made me look as if I cared what happened to any of them. I nodded because I didn’t want any trouble, and just because they were convicts was no reason they couldn’t give me any. The Amis wouldn’t have minded that at all. Unlike the Parole and Clemency Board, most of the MPs in Landsberg were of the opinion that we all deserved to hang; and possibly they were right. But most of the reason I nodded was that I was tired of not being liked by anyone, including myself. That’s okay when you can go and put that feeling under several milliliters of alcohol, but the bars in prison are never open, especially when you need a drink the way I needed one now. Life in most prisons would be improved by the ration of a daily tot of liquor, like the British Royal Navy. That’s not a penal theory with which Jeremy Bentham would have agreed, but you can take it to the bank.