“He doesn’t care for your little friends, Heinrich,” said Jacobs. “And I can’t say that I blame him. I hate the little bastards. I have nightmares that one of them will get out and bite me.”

“I’m sure they have more taste than that,” I said.

“Which is why we need more money. For better isolation chambers and handling facilities. An electron microscope. Specimen holders. New slide staining systems.” All of this was directed at Major Jacobs. “To prevent just such an accident from happening.”

“We’re working on it,” Jacobs said and yawned ostentatiously, as if he had heard all of this many times before. He took out a cigarette case and then seemed to think better of it under Henkell’s disapproving eye. “No smoking in the laboratory,” he murmured, slipping the cigarette case back into his pocket. “Right.”

“You remembered,” said Henkell, smiling. “We’re making progress.”

“I hope so,” said Jacobs. “I just wish you’d remember to keep a lid on all of this.” He had one eye on me when he said this. “Like we agreed. This project is supposed to be a secret.” And he and Henkell began to argue again.

I turned my back on them and leaned over an old copy of Life magazine that was lying on the bench, next to a microscope. I flipped the pages, giving my English a little exercise. Americans looked so wholesome. Like another master race. I started to read an article titled “The Battered Face of Germany.” There was a series of aerial pictures of what German towns and cities looked like after the RAF and U.S. 8th Air Force had finished. Mainz looked like a mud-brick village in Abyssinia. Julich, like someone had experimented with an early atomic bomb. It was enough to remind me of just how total had been our annihilation.

“It wouldn’t matter so much,” Jacobs was saying, “if you didn’t leave papers and documents lying around. Things that are sensitive and secret.” And so saying he removed the magazine from my eyes and went through the double glass doors back into the office.

I followed him, full of curiosity. So did Henkell.

Standing in front of the desk, Jacobs fished a key chain out of his trouser pocket, unlocked a briefcase, and tossed the magazine inside. Then he locked it again. I wondered what was in that magazine. Nothing secret, surely. Every week Life magazine was sold all over the world, with a circulation in the millions. Unless they were using Life as a codebook. I’d heard that was the way things like that were done these days.

Henkell closed the glass doors carefully behind him and uttered a laugh. “Now he just thinks you’re crazy,” he said. “Me, too, probably.”

“I don’t give a damn what he thinks,” said Jacobs.