“Ah. Not my department. We could do with a more generous budget ourselves.” They both laughed then, gentleman scientists under a stingy bureaucracy, suffering together.

Pökler understood that he had been negotiating for his child and for Leni: that the questions and answers were not exactly code for something else, but in the way of an evaluation of Pökler personally. He was expected to behave a certain way—not just to play a role, but to live it. Any deviations into jealousy, metaphysics, vagueness would be picked up immediately: he would either be corrected back on course, or allowed to fall. Through winter and spring the sessions with Weissmann became routine. Pökler grew into his new disguise—Prematurely Aged Adolescent Whiz—often finding that it could indeed take him over, keeping him longer at reference books and firing data, speaking lines for him he could never have planned in advance: gentle, scholarly, rocket-obsessed language that surprised him.

In late August he had his second visit. It should have been “Ilse returned,” but Pökler wasn’t sure. As before, she showed up alone, unannounced—ran to him, kissed him, called him Papi. But…

But her hair, for one thing, was definitely dark brown, and cut differently. Her eyes were longer, set differently, her complexion less fair. It seemed she’d grown a foot taller. But at that age, they shoot up overnight, don’t they? If it was “that age….” Even as Pökler embraced her, the perverse whispering began. Is it the same one? Have they sent you a different child? Why didn’t you look closer last time, Pökler?

This time he asked how long they were going to let her stay.

“They’ll tell me. And I’ll try to let you know.” And would there be time for him to recalibrate from his little squirrel who dreamed of living on the Moon to this dark, long-legged, Southern creature, whose awkwardness and need of a father were so touching, so clear even to Pökler, at this their second (or was it first, or third?) meeting?

Hardly any news of Leni. They had been separated, Ilse said, during the winter. She’d heard a rumor that her mother had been moved to a different camp. So, so. Present a pawn, withdraw the queen: Weissmann, waiting to see how Pökler would react. This time he had gone too far: Pökler laced up his shoes and calmly enough went out looking for the SS man, cornered him in his office, denounced him before a panel of kindly, dim governmental figures, the speech eloquently climaxing as he threw chessboard and pieces all into Weissmann’s arrogantly blinking face…. Pökler’s impetuous, yes, a rebel—but Generaldirektor it’s his kind of fire and honesty we need—