“Oh, it’s you,” I said, raising my hat. “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on. Then again, I expect a lot of people say that to you, sweetheart.”

She stood up, slapped my face, and was going to slap it again, only Krempel caught her wrist and twisted it.

“Go and fetch the car,” he told her.

“Yes,” I said. “Go and fetch the car. And hurry up. I want to fall down and pass out.”

Krempel had me propped against the wall like a steamer trunk. I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again she was gone. He shifted me out of the suite and along to the top of the stairs.

“It’s all the same to me how you go down these stairs, Gunther. I can help you down or I can push you down. But if you try anything, I can promise that you’ll be holding on to thin air.”

“Grateful to you,” I heard myself mumble, thickly.

We arrived at the bottom of the stairs, but I don’t know how. My legs belonged to Charlie Chaplin. I recognized the Wilhelmstrasse door and thought it was sensible of him to choose this way out of the hotel at that time of night. The Wilhelmstrasse door was always quieter than the one on Unter den Linden. The lobby was smaller, too. But if Krempel had hoped to avoid our meeting anyone I knew, he failed.

Most of the waiters at the Adlon had a mustache or were clean-shaven, and only one, Abd el-Krim, wore a beard. His name wasn’t Abd el-Krim. I didn’t know his real name, but he was Moroccan, and people called him that because he looked like the rebel leader who had surrendered to the French in 1926 and was now exiled to some shithole of an island. I can’t answer for the talents of the rebel, but our Abd el-Krim was an excellent waiter. Being a Mohammedan, he didn’t drink and eyed me with a mixture of shock and concern as, with one arm draped around the lintel that was Krempel’s shoulders, I lurched toward the exit.

“Herr Gunther?” he said in a voice full of solicitude. “Is everything all right, sir? You don’t look well.”

Words emptied out of my slack mouth like saliva. Perhaps saliva is all they were. I don’t know. Whatever I said didn’t make any sense to me, so I doubt that it would have made any sense to Abd el-Krim.

“He’s had too much to drink, I’m afraid,” Krempel told the waiter. “I’m taking him home before Behlert or either of the Adlons sees him like this.”

Abd el-Krim, dressed to go home, nodded gravely. “Yes, that is best, I think. Do you need any assistance, sir?”

“No, thanks. I’ve a car waiting for us outside. I think I’ll manage.”