In the summer of 1946, I was in Nuremberg, that half-ruined city of ghosts and lawyers. My hotel was lousy; the food was worse. The daily evidence of man’s perfidy accumulated in what I had begun to imagine as sedimentary layers, grotesque upon grotesque, and I meanwhile suffered from some stubborn, unspecific gastric illness that was melting the flesh from my bones.

Miserable and starved, I sat at the bar of my hotel one evening in July, enduring the heat through a succession of whiskey sours and American cigarettes, when a fellow showed up and asked if I could possibly direct him to Miss Eugenia Everett, the photographer. He wore the uniform of an RAF squadron commander, the same uniform Velázquez had worn, so I told him I was Miss Everett, who wanted to know?

He removed his cap and sat on the stool next to me and placed a worn, yellowing envelope on the counter between us, seam side up so I couldn’t see the name written on the back. He introduced himself as Captain Alfred Hawley and said that he had flown with a certain Captain Raoul Velázquez de los Monteros of the No. 56 Squadron in January 1945, out of the Volkel airfield in The Netherlands; did I perhaps recall Captain Velázquez?

I said I recalled him very well.

Captain Hawley said he was sorry to have taken so long to find me, but his duties with the RAF had not allowed him to pursue any personal errands until recently. He said that he had known Velázquez well during their time together at Volkel, and that about a week before his final flight, Velázquez took him aside and said he’d had a premonition of his own death, and if he should die and Hawley survive, he asked that Hawley deliver a letter to a photographer for the Associated Press named Eugenia Everett. Hawley had said of course, though he assured Velázquez that they would both survive to toast Hitler’s defeat. In any case, there was the letter. Hawley was glad to have found me and discharged his obligation to a brother officer, which had weighed heavily on him during the long, hard months since the loss of Velázquez, a tremendous flier and a damned fine chap.

I thanked Hawley and asked if I could buy him a drink, and after some hesitation he agreed. Lest you think I had any immoral intentions, let me assure you I weighed about ninety-seven pounds at the time, was sick as a dog and wan as a phantom, and fully expected to vomit up those whiskey sours as soon as I returned to the dank, shabby, gloomy garret upstairs that disgraced the name of hotel rooms everywhere. All I craved was some crumb of information about Velázquez and his last days. Hawley spoke for an hour; I won’t bore you with everything he said. Just that Velázquez had turned especially devout in his final weeks, had gone to confession almost daily, which made me glad because I did not want Velázquez to suffer long in purgatory because of me.