“That,” said Mrs. Cramer, “would have been wrong. Don’t you understand—he was frail, and sick. We knew that he’d never be fit for any kind of job. But my husband had saved a good deal of money, enough to last us a long time, so there wasn’t—he’d invested it in stocks, too—any need for Adam Junior to worry.” She looked at the men. “Why, if I’d encouraged him, the way you say, he’d have gone out in the world and failed! I wanted to shield him from that. Any decent mother would have done the same.” She folded her hands tightly. “Can you blame me for wanting to protect my only child?”

“No, Mrs. Cramer,” Driscoll said. “I don’t blame you. I don’t blame anyone for anything.”

“I did what I thought was best.”

“Of course.” Driscoll walked to the door and motioned to Link. “Thank you very much for your time,” he said. “We’ll send you a copy of the story.”

Mrs. Cramer sat quietly on the couch. “If you see him,” she said, “tell him he can still come back. If he wants to.”

Driscoll nodded and closed the door.

He and Peter Link got into the car and did not speak until they had pulled out into the flow of traffic.

Then Driscoll looked over at his friend and smiled. “Well?” he said.

“Well what?”

“What do you think of our little dictator now?”

Link loosened his collar. “Christ, I don’t know,” he said. “With a dame like that for a mother . . . At the moment, I’m confused.”

Driscoll laughed. “That’s the trouble with this goddamn job, Linker,” he said. “It muddles your thinking. A couple of hours ago we hated the guy’s guts. He was a pure son of a bitch, that’s all. Everything was nice and clear and tidy. Right? Well, nothing has changed. He’s still raising hell in the South and he’s still a pure son of a bitch. But—it isn’t so nice and clear and tidy any more, is it?”

Link was silent. He fingered his camera.

“You know something?” Driscoll said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I was in Nuremberg during the trials. It was a great assignment. All of the monsters: Schacht, Speer, Streicher, GÖring, all of them; going to get the works. You’re not too young to remember those trials, are you?”

Link shook his head. “I read about them,” he said.