I let the boy go. By now all of them were looking contrite. They were looking less like Hitler Youth and more like a group of schoolboys. I had them where I wanted them now. I might have been handling a squad back at the Alex. After all, cops do all the same stupid juvenile things that schoolboys do, except the homework.

“All right. We’ll say no more about it this time. And that goes for you, too. Tell no one about this. No one. Do you hear? This is an undercover operation. And the next time you feel inclined to take the law into your own hands, don’t. Not everyone who looks like a Jew really is a Jew. Remember that. Now go home before I change my mind and run you all in for assaulting a police officer. And remember what I said. There’s a vicious murderer at work in these woods, so you’d best stay away from here until you read that he’s been caught.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll do that, sir.”

I walked back to the little group of tents on the edge of the lake. The light was beginning to fade. The bullfrogs were opening up shop. Fish were jumping in the water. One of the Jews was already casting a line at a widening ripple. The man with the hat wasn’t badly injured. He was smoking one of my cigarettes to steady his nerves.

“What did you say to get rid of them?” asked the Turk.

“I told them all you were undercover cops,” I said.

“And they believed you?” asked Mrs. Charalambides.

“Of course they believed me.”

“But why?” she said. “It’s such an obvious lie.”

“And when did that ever stop the Nazis?” I nodded at the boat. “Get in,” I told her. “We’re leaving.”

I fetched my last cigarette from behind my ear and lit it from a piece of firewood that the Turk brought to me. “I think they’ll leave you alone,” I told him. “I didn’t exactly put the fear of God in them. Just the fear of the Gestapo. But to them that probably means more.”

The Turk laughed. “Thanks, mister,” he said, and shook my hand.

I untied the rope and climbed into the boat alongside Mrs. Charalambides. “That’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few years,” I said, starting the engine. “To lie like you mean it. As long as you can convince yourself of something first, no matter how outrageous, there’s no telling what you can get away with these days.”

“And I thought you had to be a Nazi to be that cynical,” she said.