“Sure it is. If it was any bigger, we’d have to hunt for clues like they do in the stories. You’d have a magnifying glass and a hunting hat and a definitive collection of cigarette ends.”

Von Sonnenberg stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “Who says I don’t?”

“This information you had from the FBI. Any chance you kept a copy?”

“Let me tell you about being the Interpol liaison officer, Bernie. It’s extra sauerkraut. I’ve got plenty of meat and potatoes on my plate already, and what I don’t need is extra sauerkraut. I know it’s on the table because Ida tells me it is. But mostly it’s her that eats it, see? And the fact is that she wouldn’t keep a copy of Luther’s ninety-five theses unless I told her to. So.”

“So now I’ve got two reasons to go to Würzburg.”

“Three, if you include the wine.”

“I never did before.”

“Franconian wines are good,” said von Sonnenberg. “If you like your wines sweet, that is.”

“Some of these provincial Gestapo officers,” I said. “They can be anything but sweet.”

“I haven’t noticed their big-city counterparts assisting old ladies to cross the road.”

“Look, Erich, I hate to give you more sauerkraut, but a letter of introduction from you or even a telephone call would straighten this Gestapo man’s tie for him. And keep it straight while I was squeezing his eggs.”

Von Sonnenberg grinned. “It’ll be a pleasure. There’s nothing I like better than clipping the tails on some of these young pups in the Gestapo.”

“I think that’s a job I’d be good at.”

“Maybe you’ll be the first person who ever enjoyed going to Würzburg.”

“That’s always a possibility.”

Chapter 27

27

I READ HER LETTER ON THE TRAIN TO WÜRZBURG.

Adlon Hotel, No. 1 Unter den Linden, Berlin

My dearest Bernie,

It grieves me more than words can tell you that I cannot be there to say good-bye in person, but I’ve been told by someone from the police chief’s office in Potsdam that you won’t be released from prison until I have left Germany.

It looks as if this has to be for good, I’m afraid—at least for as long as the Nazis are in government, anyway—as I’ve also been informed by someone in the Foreign Ministry that I won’t be given a visa again.

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve been told by an official in the Propaganda Ministry that if I publish the newspaper article I was planning to write and call upon the AOC to boycott the German Olympiad, then you could find yourself in a concentration camp; and since I have no wish to expose you to this kind of threat, you can rest assured, my dear Bernie, that no such article will now appear.