“I can assure you I’m perfectly serious. This one was for real. Luckily for you and me, the Haganah command heard about the plan and, pointing out the number of British and Americans who would have been killed, the Nakam was forced to abandon the plan.” Gotovina laughed his psychopathic laugh. “Maniacs. And they wonder why we tried to eliminate the Jew from decent society.”

He flicked his cigarette end at a hapless pigeon, crossed his legs, and adjusted the crucifix around his muscular neck before continuing with his explanation. It was like having a chat with Tomás de Torquemada.

“But the Nakam were not quite ready to abandon their plans to use poison on a large number of Germans,” he said. “They devised a plan to poison a POW camp near Nuremberg where thirty-six thousand SS were interned. They broke into a bakery supplying bread to the camp and poisoned two thousand loaves. Mercifully this was many fewer than they had planned to poison. Even so, several thousand men were affected and as many as five hundred died. You can take my word for that. It’s a matter of historical record.” He crossed himself and then looked up as, momentarily, a cloud crossed the sun, placing us both in a little pool of shadow, like some damned souls from the pages of Dante.

“After that they stuck to murder, pure and simple. With the help of Jews in British and American intelligence they set up a documents center in Linz and Vienna and started to track down so-called war criminals, using the Jewish emigration organization as a cover. At first they followed men as they were released from POW camps. They were easy to watch, especially with tip-offs from the Allies. And then, when they were ready, they started with the executions. In the beginning they hanged a few. But one man survived and after that it was always the same modus operandi. The shallow grave, the bullet in the back of the head. As if they were seeking to copy what all those Order battalions had done in eastern Europe.”