“He had it ordered, on room service. You hit a cop, you get trouble. I didn’t hit you, did I?”

“Not yet.”

“With these hands? I couldn’t hit my own knees.” I yawned inside the hood. “No, really, that’s it. I’ve had enough of this. Now that I know what you want, that makes it easier for me keep my peep. Regardless of the legalities or illegalities of this situation—”

“You are in a place where there is no law. We are the law. You want to piss yourself, then go ahead and make yourself comfortable. Then see what happens to you.”

“I’m beginning to understand—”

“I sure hope so, for your sake.”

“You enjoy playing Gestapo. It’s a little bit of a kick for you, doing it their way, isn’t it? Secretly, you probably admire them and the way they went about extracting teeth and information.”

They came close to me now, raising their voices beyond what was comfortable to hear.

“Fuck you, Gunther.”

“You hurt our feelings with that remark about the Gestapo.”

“I take it back. You’re much worse than the Gestapo. They didn’t pretend they were defending the free world. It’s your hypocrisy that’s offensive, not your brutality. You’re the worst kind of fascists. The kind that think they’re liberals.”

One of them started knocking at my head with the knuckle on his finger; it wasn’t painful so much as annoying.

“When are you going to get it into that fucking square head of yours—”

“You’re right. I still don’t understand why you’re doing this when I’m perfectly willing to cooperate.”

“You’re not meant to understand. When are you going to understand that, asshole? We want more than your willingness to cooperate. That implies you have some choice in the matter. When you don’t. It’s up to us to assess your level of cooperation, not you.”

“We want to know that when you’re telling us the truth there’s absolutely no question it could ever be anything else. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Which means that we’ll decide when you need a rest, when you need to go to the lavatory, when you see the light of day. When you breathe and when you fart. So. Tell us some more about Erich Mielke. Did he go to Hamburg or Rostock?”

“With Mielke senior safely in custody, myself and another detective caught the first train to Hamburg.”

“Why you? Why not someone else? Why were you so central to the investigation? Why not leave it to the Hamburg police?”