“Before the war?” I smiled. “You don’t look old enough.”

“Oh, but I am,” she said. “Do you flatter all your clients, Herr Gunther?”

“Just the ugly ones. They need it. You don’t. Which is why I wasn’t flattering you. I was stating a matter of fact. You don’t look like you’re more than thirty.”

“I was just eighteen when I married my husband, Herr Gunther,” she said. “In 1938. There now. I’ve told you how old I am. And I hope you feel ashamed of yourself at having added a year to my age. Especially that age. For another four months, I’m still in my twenties.”

The drinks came. She had a brandy Alexander that matched her hat and jacket. I had a Gibson so that I could eat the onion. I let her drink some of her cocktail before I told her what I’d discovered. I told it straight, without any euphemisms or polite evasions, right down to the details about the Jewish assassination squad forcing Willy Hintze to dig his own grave and kneel down on the edge before being shot in the back of the head. After what she had told me in my office—about how she and her fiancé were hoping that if Warzok was alive he might be caught and extradited to a country where they hanged most of their Nazi war criminals—I was quite sure she could take it.

“And you think that’s what happened to Friedrich?”

“Yes. The man I spoke to is more or less certain of it.”

“Poor Friedrich,” she said. “Not a very pleasant way to die, is it?”

“I’ve seen worse,” I said. I lit a cigarette. “I would say I’m sorry but it hardly seems appropriate. And for a number of reasons.”

“Poor, poor Friedrich,” she said again. She finished her drink and ordered another for us both. Her eyes were looking moist.

“You say that like you almost mean it,” I said. “Almost.”

“Let’s just say that he had his moments, shall we? Yes, in the beginning, he very definitely had his moments. And now he is dead.” She took out her handkerchief and, very deliberately, pressed it into the corner of each eye.

“Knowing it is one thing, Frau Warzok. Proving it to the satisfaction of a church court is quite another. The Comradeship—the people who tried to help your husband—are not the kind to swear on anything except perhaps an SS dagger. The man I met made that quite clear to me in no uncertain terms.”

“Nasty, eh?”

“Like a common wart.”

“And dangerous.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“Yes, I suppose he did,” I said. “But I wouldn’t let it concern you at all. Being threatened is an occupational hazard for someone like me. I almost didn’t notice it.”