I poured a glass and emptied it in one swallow.

Krempel shook his head. “Let’s forget we’re in the Adlon, shall we? From the bottle, if you don’t mind. I don’t have all night.”

“Care to join me?”

He took a short step forward and hit me hard across the face. It wasn’t hard enough to knock me off my feet. Just off my vocal cords.

“Cut the dialogue and drink.”

I put the neck of the tall stoneware bottle to my lips and gulped at it like it was water. Some of it tried to come back up, but I gritted my teeth and didn’t let it. Krempel didn’t look like he had the tolerance to wait for me to puke. I sat down on the edge of the bath, took a deep breath, and drank some more. And then some more. As I lifted the bottle a third time, my hat fell into the empty bath, but it might as easily have been my head. It rolled under the dripping tap and remained on its crown, like a large brown beetle on its back. I reached down to get it, misjudged the depth of the bath, and fell in, but without dropping the schnapps bottle. I think if I had broken it, Krempel would have shot me then and there. I took another swig from the bottle to reassure him there was plenty of alcohol left in it, grabbed my hat, and crushed it back on top of my already swimming head.

Krempel regarded me with no more feeling than if I’d been a dried-up loofah, and sat down on the toilet lid. His eyes were two puffy slits, as if they’d been bitten by a snake. He lit a cigarette, crossed his long legs, and let out a long, tobacco-flavored sigh.

Several minutes passed. They were idle ones for him, but for me they were increasingly hazardous and intoxicated. The booze was strong-arming me into spineless submission.

“Gerhard? How would you like to make a lot of money? And I mean a lot of money. Thousands of marks.”

“Thousands, is it?” His body twitched as it expelled a derisive laugh. “And this from you, Gunther. A man with a hole in his shoe who gets the bus home. When you’ve got the fare.”