The street wasn’t well lit, but the empty alley was forbidding. There was a light near the end, and I followed it all the way back. The lighted area turned out to be a loading dock, but it was empty. I stepped inside and followed it to the end. Another alley was to my left, this one filled with blue and red dumpsters. If Klaus wanted to murder me and dispose of my body, this was his chance. I took a deep breath, and my nose immediately regretted it, but I plunged ahead.

Up a small set of stairs near the end of this alley was a metal door with two lights above it. An unmarked buzzer was on the wall. I pressed it and waited. There was a buzz from inside, and I pressed the door; it swung open.

Inside was almost as forbidding. I pushed past the velvet blackout drapes into a dimly lit room. There were two men standing behind a wooden bar.

“I’m having dinner with Klaus von Strohm,” I said in English.

“Take the stairs to your right,” one of the men answered. “He’s waiting for you.”

That thought echoed ominously in my head as I followed the narrow staircase up. After the desolation of the street and alleyways, I wasn’t prepared for the buzzy dining room. It looked boxy and industrial, but it had been painted white, with silver orbs dangling from the ceiling. Cylindrical lights and candles illuminated the space, and metal pipes ran from ceiling to floor, reflecting the glow. The only art was a giant framed poster with ficken—fuck—written in the center.

Klaus was waiting on a red velvet banquette. A smile stretched across his face as I approached. He stood, taking my hand. “My dear Theo, it has been too long. It is good to see you looking so well.” His smile faded. “I offer you my deepest condolences about your wife. I only met her at your wedding, but she was such a lovely young woman.”

“Thank you.”

I looked him over as we sat down, oddly isolated in our quiet corner of the busy restaurant. Klaus was—as far as I knew—the closest thing my father had ever had to a friend. They were roughly the same age—in their early seventies now—and while their personalities were dissimilar on the surface—my father gregarious, Klaus the saturnine former Stasi cop—they were united in being total bastards.

“How did you know where I was staying?” I asked.

“Come on, Theo. Don’t I get to be a little bit mysterious?” He was dressed in what I was positive was once a bespoke gray Hugo Boss suit, but it sagged on his frame. Klaus had been close to three hundred pounds at one point, but he had downsized. I wondered how voluntary that was; he looked frailer than I’d ever seen him.