Gunther said, “What you see and what you’ll smell are the chemical by-products of burning gasoline. It would suffocate us eventually, but it would take hours. The gas that will kill us long before that is invisible and has no odor or taste. I’ve tuned the engine to maximum efficiency for the manufacture of carbon monoxide. I’ve used this before. It works. You’ll see.”

“Listen, you idiot,” I demanded, shaking him. “Don’t you want to live?”

He straightened himself up and sat against the side of the trailer. “Of course. If I knew a way to save myself, I would. But I built this,” he said with a tinge of pride in his voice, “and I know how well I built it. Did you see on the truck, how it says ‘Landsberg, Ohio’? I painted that. I am from Ohio, but Landsberg is the prison where the Führer wrote Mein Kampf. We should,” he added, trying to convince himself, “we should be honored to end our lives in a place with such a name.” He looked about fearfully. “There is a way that great men die. So I must collect myself. And since I’m taking both of you with me, I may yet be granted a warrior’s fate in Valhalla.” He added quietly, “If there is a Valhalla.”

I rushed to the door of the truck, which Gail was already shaking and banging uselessly. “Maybe I can shoot the lock off,” I said.

From his seated position, Gunther informed me, “Ten strong men couldn’t force it open. And your bullets won’t penetrate the metal. Or didn’t you notice that the bullets I fired all ricocheted? You shouldn’t waste the ammunition. You may want to save the bullets for yourselves.”

I asked him how many bullets were in the Luger’s magazine. He said sixteen, of which we’d spent two.

Gail yelled, “Martha!”

Gunther laughed. “She is long gone. She doesn’t know how to drive a truck like this, and there’s no point in her staying around. She has much greater work to do in Berlin, and reaching there is a long and complicated route.” He groaned to himself. “The plan, if I’d not been so incompetent, was to kill the two of you in the truck, then put you together naked in the bungalow and blow out the pilot light on the space heater. We were going to scatter your clothes on the floor. It would look like you’d been having sex and been gassed in your sleep. That was the plan.” A look of concern came over his face. “Or do you think she always meant for me to die with you? We may not be found until the fair is torn down and someone wonders who belongs to this truck.”