Khristotonovna returned with a glass of hot Russian tea on a little tin tray. There was a long spoon and little bowl of sugar lumps. I thanked her and turned my attention to Heinrich Henkell’s file. This was less detailed than Gruen’s. Before the war he had been involved in Aktion T4, the Nazi Euthanasia Program, at a psychiatric clinic in Hadamar. During the war, as a Sturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS, he had been deputy director of the German Institute of Military Scientific Research and had seen service at Auschwitz, Majdanek, Buchenwald, and Dachau. At Majdanek, he had assisted Gruen in his typhus experiments, and later, at Dachau, his malaria experiments. In the course of his medical research he had amassed a large collection of human skulls of different racial types. Henkell was believed to have been executed by American soldiers at Dachau, following the camp’s liberation.

I sat back heavily in my chair. My loud sigh brought Lieutenant Khristotonovna back to my side. And she mistook the lump in my throat for something other than feeling sorry for myself.

“Tough going?”

I nodded, too choked to say anything for a moment. So I finished my tea, signed the protocol, thanked her for her help, and went outside. It felt good to be breathing clean, fresh air. At least until I saw four military policemen come out of the Ministry of Justice and climb into a truck, ready to patrol the city. Four more elephants followed. And then another four. I stayed in the doorway, watching from a safe distance and smoking a cigarette until they had all gone.