“Long enough to do what I need to do,” I said. “They used to give it to Luftwaffe pilots during the war. When they were exhausted. They were flying and they didn’t even need a plane.”

“All right,” he said, folding away the red ladies. “But if you wander off or tip over don’t expect me to handle the porterage. Sick or not you’re still a big man, Gunther. Josef Manger couldn’t pick you up. Not if his Olympic gold medal depended on it. And another thing. From what I’ve heard, that ox-blood is apt to make a man gabby. But I don’t want to know, see? Whatever it is that you’re hatching, I don’t want to know. And the minute you tell me, I’ll feel free to brush you off. Clear?”

“As clear as a half bottle of Otto,” I said.

Stuber grinned. “It’s all right,” he said. “I didn’t forget.” He took a half liter of Fürst Bismarck out of his pocket and slipped it under my pillow. “Just don’t drink too much of that stuff. Grain schnapps and an armful of ox-blood might not mix too well. I don’t want you throwing up in my taxi like some stinking Popov.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Faxon.”

“I’m not worried about you. If I look like I’m worried about you it’s because I’m worried about me. It doesn’t look like it, but there’s a big difference, see?”

“Sure, I understand. It’s what the shrinks call a gestalt.”

“Yeah, well, you’d know more about that than me, Gunther. From what I’ve heard so far, you probably want your head examined.”

“We all do, Faxon, my boy. We all do. Haven’t you heard of collective guilt? You’re as bad as Joseph Goebbels, and me, I’m just as bad as Reinhard Heydrich.”

“Reinhard who?”

I smiled. It was true, Heydrich had been dead for more than seven years. But it was just a little disconcerting to discover Stuber had never heard of him. Maybe he was younger than I had supposed.

Either that or I was a lot older than I felt. Which hardly seemed possible.

TWENTY

TWENTY