The American was wearing a different sports coat. This one was gray and cashmere. He wore a gray shirt, a gray woolen tie, gray flannels, and a pair of black wingtips. His glasses were different, too. These were tortoiseshell. But he still looked like the cleverest boy in the class.

“Only in my previous life,” I said. “When I was a hotelkeeper.”

“You had a hotel?”

Henkell looked as if he found the idea of that absurd. Which it was, of course.

“And guess where it was?” said the American, with amused contempt. “Dachau. About a mile from the old camp.” He laughed out loud. “Jesus, that’s like opening a health spa in a funeral parlor.”

“It was good enough for you and your friend,” I remarked. “The amateur dentist.”

Henkell laughed. “Does he mean Wolfram Romberg?” he asked the American.

“He means Wolfram Romberg,” said the American.

Henkell came along the corridor and put a hand on my shoulder. “Major Jacobs works for the Central Intelligence Agency,” he explained, guiding me into the next room.

“Somehow I didn’t figure him for an army chaplain,” I said.

“He’s been a good friend to me and Eric. A very good friend. The CIA provides this building and some money for our research.”

“But somehow it never seems to be quite enough,” Jacobs said pointedly.

“Medical research can be expensive,” said Henkell.

We went into an office with a neat, professional, medical look. A large filing cabinet on the floor. A Biedermeier bookcase with dozens of medical texts inside, and a human skull on top. A first-aid cabinet on the wall next to a photograph of President Truman. An Art Deco drinks tray with a large selection of liquor bottles and mixers. A rococo walnut writing desk that was buried under several feet of papers and notebooks, with another human skull being used as a paperweight. Four or five cherry-wood chairs. And a bronze of a man’s head with a little plaque that said the likeness was of Alexander Fleming. Henkell pointed through two sets of sliding glass doors at a very well equipped laboratory.

“Microscopes, centrifuges, spectrometers, vacuum equipment,” he said. “It all costs money. The major here has sometimes had to find several unauthorized streams of revenue in order to keep us going. Including Oberscharführer Romberg and his Dachau nest egg.”

“Right,” growled Jacobs. He drew aside the net curtain and stared suspiciously out of the office window into the back garden of the villa. A couple of birds had begun a noisy fight. There is a lot to be said for the way Nature handles itself. I wouldn’t have minded taking a sock at Jacobs myself.

I smiled. “It’s certainly none of my business what the major did with all those poor people’s stolen valuables.”

“You got that right,” said Jacobs. “Kraut.”

“What exactly are you working on, Heinrich?” I asked.