“Those are the only kind I ever shoot.” He chuckled. “Do you take me for a fool who would go up against a man with a gun? I’m a businessman, Gunther, not Tom Mix.”

He dropped the Colt on the lanyard and put his arm around Dora and pressed her fingers between her legs. The other hand still held his cigar.

Dora let Reles’s hand remain where it was as he started to rub her mouse. She looked like she was even trying to enjoy it. But I could see her mind was somewhere else. Underneath the cistern in suite 114, probably.

“The Little Rico kind of businessman,” I said. “Sure, I can see that.”

“It looks like we have a movie fan, Gerhard. How about Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea? Did you see that one? No matter. You can catch the real thing in just a few minutes.”

“It’s you who’s going to get caught, Reles. Not me. You see, I have an insurance policy. It’s not Germania Life, but it’ll do. And it kicks in the minute I’m dead. You’re not the only one with connections, my American friend. I’ve got connections, and I can guarantee they’re not the same ones you’ve been getting chummy with.”

Reles shook his head and pushed Dora away. “It’s strange, but no one ever thinks they’re going to die. Yet no matter how crowded most cemeteries look, somehow there always seems to be room for one more.”

“I don’t see any cemetery, Reles. In fact, now that I’m out here on water, you make me glad I never paid up front for my own funeral.”

“I really do like you,” he said. “You remind me of me.”

Reles took the cigarette from my mouth and flicked it over the side. He thumbed the hammer back on the Colt and pointed it at the middle of my face. It was close enough to see down the barrel, to feel the stopping power and smell the gun oil. With a Colt .45 automatic in his hand, Tom Mix could have held up the arrival of talking pictures.

“All right, Gunther. Let’s see your cards.”

“In my coat pocket there’s an envelope. It contains a couple of drafts of a letter addressed to a friend of mine. A fellow named Otto Schuchardt. He works under Assistant Commissioner Volk for the Gestapo, in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. You can easily check these names out. When I go missing from the Adlon, another friend of mine at the Alex, a detective commissar, is going to post the final draft of that letter to Schuchardt. And then your meat will be fried in butter.”

“And why would the Gestapo be interested in me? An American citizen, like you said.”