I leaned to one side and retched for almost a minute. And I marveled that such a sound could come from my body. It was the sound of a living creature turning itself inside out. While this was going on, Reles walked away, with a look of distaste on his knuckle of a face. When he returned, Dora was beside him. She was wearing her fur coat and a matching fur hat, carrying a glass of water.

She carried it to my lips and helped me to swallow. When the glass was empty I nodded genuine thanks and tried to appreciate my situation. I didn’t appreciate it very much. My hat, coat, and jacket were gone, and my head felt as if it had been used for the Mitropa cup final. And the pungent smell of Reles’s large cigar was turning my stomach. I was in a tight spot. I had the awful feeling in a whole crowd of awful feelings that Max Reles was planning to give me a practical demonstration of exactly how Erich Goerz had disposed of Isaac Deutsch’s dead body. I couldn’t have been in a tighter spot if I’d been a starving dog chained to a high-speed railway line.

“Feeling any better?” He sat down on the pile of concrete blocks. “It’s a little early for that, you might think. But I’m afraid that the way you are feeling now is likely to be as good as it gets, for the rest of your life. In fact, I can guarantee it.”

He relit his cigar and chuckled. Dora leaned on the rail of the boat and looked out into what appeared as a limbo, in which we were floating like lost souls. Standing with his fists on his hips, Krempel looked ready to hit me anytime he was asked.

“You should have listened to Count von Helldorf. I mean, he couldn’t have been more explicit. But, no, you had to be Sam fucking Spade and stick your cornet where it wasn’t wanted. I just don’t get that. Really, I don’t. You must have appreciated that there was just too much money involved, and too many important people getting a big fat slice of the Black Forest cherry cake called the Olympic Games for anything to be allowed to spoil that. Certainly anything as easily disposable as you, Gunther.”

I closed my eyes for a minute.