Gotovina allowed himself a thin smile of something close to admiration. “They’ve been very effective. The number of old comrades assassinated by the Nakam is between one and two thousand. We know this because some of our Vienna group managed to catch one of them and, before he died, he told them what I just told you. So you see, it’s the kikes you have to be careful of now, Herr Gunther. Not the Brits, or the Amis. All they care about is communism, and on occasion, they’ve even helped to get our people out of Germany. No, it’s the Jew boys you have to worry about, these days. Especially the ones who don’t look like Jew boys. Apparently the one they caught and tortured in Vienna, he looked like the perfect Aryan. You know? Like Gustav Froelich’s better-looking brother.”

“So where does all this leave my client?”

“Weren’t you listening, Gunther? Warzok’s dead. If he was still alive he’d be doing the tango and that’s a fact. If he was there, she’d have heard, believe me.”

“What I mean is, where does all that leave her in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church?”

Gotovina shrugged. “She waits a while longer and then petitions for a formal judicial process, to determine whether or not she is considered free to enter into a second marriage.”

“A judicial process?” I said. “You mean with witnesses and stuff like that?”

Gotovina looked away in disgust. “Forget it, Gunther,” he said. “The archbishop would have my collar if he knew even a tenth of what I just told you. So there’s no way I’m ever repeating any of this. Not to a tribunal of canon law. Not to her. Not even to you.” He stood up and stared down at me. With the sun behind him he looked hardly there at all, like a silhouette of a man. “And here’s some free advice. Drop it now. Drop the whole case. The Comradeship doesn’t like questions and they don’t like sniffers—even sniffers who think they can get away with it because they once had a tattoo under their arms. People who ask too many questions about the Comradeship end up dead. Do I make myself clear, sniffer?”

“It’s been a while since I was threatened by a priest,” I said. “Now I know how Martin Luther felt.”

“Luther nothing.” Gotovina was beginning to sound more irate. “And don’t contact me again. Not even if David Ben-Gurion asks you to dig a hole in his garden at midnight. Got that, sniffer?”

“Like it came from the Holy Inquisition with a nice little ribbon and a lead seal with Saint Peter’s face on it.”

“Yeah, but will it stick?”

“That’s why it’s lead, isn’t it? So people stay warned?”