Hearing gunshots I flinched, probably even ducked a bit, and then looked behind me. Henkell laughed. “The Amis have a skeet range on the other side of the river,” he said, walking toward the front door. “Everything you see around here was requisitioned by the Amis. They let me use this place for my work. But before the war it was the science lab for the local hospital, on Maximilianstrasse.”

“Doesn’t the hospital need a lab anymore?”

“After the war the hospital became the prison hospice,” he said, searching for his door key. “For incurably sick German POWs.”

“What was wrong with them?”

“Psychiatric cases, most of them, poor fellows,” he said. “Shell shock, that kind of thing. Not my line really. Most of them died following an outbreak of viral meningitis. The rest they transferred to a hospital in Munich, about six months ago. The hospital is now being turned into a rest and recreation area for American service personnel.”

He opened the door and went inside. But I stayed where I was, staring at a car parked across the street. It was a car I had seen before. A nice, two-door Buick Roadmaster. Shiny green, with whitewall tires, a rear end as big as an Alpine hillside, and a front grille like a dentist’s star patient.

I followed Henkell through the door and into a narrow hallway that was noticeably warm. On the walls were several photographs of winter Olympians—Maxi Herber, Ernst Baier, Willy Bognor taking the Olympic oath, and a couple of ski jumpers who must have been thinking they could make it all the way to Valhalla. The air in the house had a chemical edge to it, as well as something decayed and botanical, like a pair of wet gardening gloves.

“Shut the door behind you,” yelled Henkell. “We have to keep it warm in here.”

As I turned to close the door I heard voices and when I turned back, I found the corridor blocked by someone I recognized. It was the American who had persuaded me to dig up my back garden in Dachau.

“Well, if it isn’t the kraut with principles,” he said.

“Coming from you, that’s not much of a compliment,” I said. “Stolen any Jewish gold lately?”

He grinned. “Not lately. There’s not so much of it about these days. And you? How’s the hotel business?” He didn’t wait for my answer and, without taking his eyes off me, inclined his head back across his shoulder and shouted, “Hey, Heinrich. Where did you find this kraut? And why the hell is he here?”

“I told you.” Henkell stepped back into the corridor. “This is the man I met at the hospital.”

“You mean he’s the detective you were talking about?”

“Yes,” said Henkell. “Have you two met before?”