Surrounded by the Havel and its lakes, Potsdam wasn’t much more than an island. And I couldn’t have felt more lonely if I’d been marooned on some desert atoll with a solitary palm tree and a parrot. For more than a hundred years the town had been the headquarters of the Prussian army, but it might as well have been the headquarters of the Girl Guides for all the help the army was going to give me. I was about to become the prisoner of Count von Helldorf and there was nothing anyone could do about it. One of the buildings in Potsdam was the palace called Sanssouci, which is French for “without care.” I was a long way from a state of mind like that.

As we drove past another castle and a parade ground, I caught a glimpse of a street sign. We were on Priest Strasse, and I was beginning to think I might have need of one as we turned into the courtyard of the local police praesidium.

Entering the building, we went up several flights of stairs and along a cold, dimly lit corridor to a handsomely appointed office with a nice view of the Havel, which I recognized only because there was an even more handsomely appointed motor yacht floating on it just below the leaded window and lit up like a ride at Luna Park.

In the office, a tree was burning in an open fireplace where you could have roasted a whole ox. There were a big hanging tapestry, a portrait of Hitler, and a suit of armor that looked about as stiff as the man standing beside it. He was wearing the uniform of a police general and an air of aristocratic superiority, as if he should have preferred that my shoes had been removed before I was allowed to walk on his park-sized Persian rug. I suppose he was about the same age as I, but there the similarity ended. When he spoke, his tone was careworn and exasperated, and he gave me the impression I had caused him to miss the beginning of an opera or, more likely in his case, a queerish cabaret turn. On a log cabin of a desk, a backgammon set was laid out for a game, and in his hand was a little leather cup containing a pair of dice that every now and then he would rattle nervously, like some mendicant friar.

“Please sit down,” he said.

The man in the leather coat pushed me into a seat at a meeting table and then pushed a pen and a sheet of paper toward me. He seemed to be good at pushing things. “Sign it,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked

“It’s a D-11,” said the man. “An order for protective custody.”

“I used to be a cop myself,” I said. “At the Alex. And I never heard of a D-11. What does it mean?”