Henkell laughed. “I was his prisoner. There used to be a POW camp in Partenkirchen. I ran the hospital for him. The lab was part of the hospital. The Amis have their own doctor, of course. Nice fellow, but he’s not much more than a pill pusher. Anything surgical, they usually ask me.”

“Isn’t it a bit unusual researching tropical medicine in the Alps?” I said.

“On the contrary,” said Henkell. “You see, the air is very dry and very pure. So is the water. Which makes it an ideal place to avoid specimen contamination.”

“You’re a man of many parts,” I told him.

He seemed to like that.

Just after Murnau, our road crossed the Murnauer marshes. Beyond Farchant, the basin of Garmisch-Partenkirchen opened out and we had our first view of the Zugspitze and the other Wetterstein Mountains. Coming from Berlin, I rather disliked mountains, especially the Alps. They always looked sort of melted, as if someone had carelessly left them out in the sun too long. Two or three miles farther on, the road divided, my ears popped, and we were in Sonnenbichl, just a short way north of Garmisch.

“The real action is down in Garmisch,” he explained. “All the Olympic facilities, of course, from ’thirty-six. There are some hotels—most of them requisitioned by the Amis—a couple of bowling alleys, the officers’ club, one or two bars and restaurants, the Alpine Theater, and the cable car stations for the Wank and the Zugspitze. Pretty much everything else comes under the control of the Southeastern Command of the U.S. Third Army. There’s even a hotel named after General Patton. In fact, there are two, now that I think of it. The Amis like it here. They come here from all over Germany for what they call R-and-R. Rest and recreation. They play tennis, they play golf, they shoot skeets, and in winter they ski and go ice-skating. The ice rink at the Wintergarten is something to see. The local girls are friendly, and they even show American movies at two of the four movie theaters. So, what’s not to like? A lot of them are from towns in the U.S. that are not so different from Garmisch-Partenkirchen.”

“With one crucial difference,” I said. “Those towns don’t have an army of occupation.”

Henkell shrugged. “They’re not so bad when you get to know them.”

“So are some Alsatian dogs,” I said, sourly. “But I wouldn’t want one around the house all day.”