“Recognize that number?” The other Ami—the one wearing the glasses—had short gray hair and looked like any college professor. The arms of the glasses were too short for his head, and the hooks stood off his ears so that they looked like two small umbrellas. Maybe the glasses were too small for his face. Or maybe he’d borrowed them. Or maybe his head was abnormally large to accommodate all the abnormally unpleasant thoughts—most of them about me—that were in it.

I shrugged. My mind was a blank.

“Of course you do. It’s the Führer’s cell. Where you’re eating your food is where he wrote his book. And I don’t know which I find more disgusting. The thought of him writing down his poisonous thoughts, or you eating with your fingers.”

“I’ll certainly try not to let that thought spoil my appetite.”

“By all accounts, Hitler had an easy time here in Landsberg.”

“I guess you weren’t working here back then.”

“Tell me, Gunther. Did you ever read it? Hitler’s book.”

“Yes. I prefer Ayn Rand. But only just.”

“Do you like Ayn Rand?”

“No. I think Hitler would have liked her, though. He wanted to be an architect, too, of course. Only, he couldn’t afford the paper and the pencils. Not to mention the education. Plus he didn’t have a large enough ego. And I think you’ve got to be pretty tough to make it in that world.”

“You’re pretty tough yourself, Gunther,” said the one with the glasses.

“Me? No. How many tough guys do you have breakfast with when they’re naked?”

“Not many.”

“Besides, it’s easy to look tough when you’re wearing a bag over your head. Even if it does get you wondering what it might be like to have nothing under your feet.”

“Anytime you want to find out for sure, we can help you.”

“Sure, you can take Klingelhöfer’s place for the rehearsal.”

“We were here when they executed those five war criminals in June ’fifty-one.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got an interesting scrapbook.”

“They died quite calmly. Like they were resigned to their fate. Which was kind of ironic when you remember that’s what they said about all those Jews they murdered.”

I shrugged and pushed away my empty breakfast tray. “No man wants to die,” I said. “But sometimes it just seems worse to go on living.”

“Oh, I think they wanted to go on living, all right. Especially the ones who applied for clemency. Which was all of them. I read some of the letters that McCloy received. They were all predictably self-serving.”

“Ah, well,” I said. “That’s the difference between me and them. It’s just impossible for me to be self-serving. You see, I fired my own self a long time ago. These days I try to manage on my own.”