“Just the case notes on one of your protégé’s patients,” I said, closing the file.

“Hands on top of your head again,” he said.

“As doctors, I think they’re lousy,” I said. “All of their patients have a nasty habit of dying.” I was trying hard to control my anger, but my ears were burning. I hoped he would put the color in them down to the cold. I wanted to beat his face to a pulp but I could only do that if I avoided getting shot.

“That’s a price worth paying,” he said.

“Easy to say when you’re not the one paying it.”

“Nazi POWs?” He sneered. “I don’t think anyone is going to miss a few sick krauts.”

“And the guy who you brought to Dachau?” I asked. “Was he one of those Nazi POWs, too?”

“Wolfram? He was expendable. We picked you for the same reason, Gunther. You’re expendable, too.”

“But when the local supply of sick Nazi POWs dried up? They started using incurable patients in Munich’s mental hospitals. Just like the old days. They were also expendable, huh?”

“That was stupid,” said Jacobs. “A risk they didn’t need to take.”

“You know, I can understand them doing it,” I said. “They’re criminals. Fanatics. But not you, Jacobs. I know you know what they did, during the war. I saw the file in the Russian Kommandatura, in Vienna. Experiments on concentration camp prisoners? A lot of them were Jews, just like you. Doesn’t that bother you just a little?”

“That was then,” he said. “This is now. And more importantly, there’s tomorrow.”

“You sound like someone I know,” I said. “A die-hard Nazi.”

“It might take another year or two,” he continued, leaning back against the wall, relaxing just enough to make me think I stood half a chance. Maybe he hoped I would go for him, so he had the excuse to shoot me. Assuming he needed an excuse. “But a malaria vaccine is something much more important than some misplaced sense of justice and retribution. Have you any idea what a malaria vaccine might be worth?”

“There’s nothing more important than retribution,” I said. “Not in my book.”

“It’s lucky you feel that way, Gunther,” he said. “Because you’re going to play the starring role in a little court of retributive justice, right here in Garmisch. I don’t think you Germans have a word for it. We call it a kangaroo court. Don’t ask me why. But it means an unauthorized court that disregards all normal legal procedures. The Israelis call them Nakam courts. Nakam meaning ‘vengeance.’ You know? Where the verdict and the sentence come within a minute or two of each other.” He jerked his gun up in the air. “On your feet, Gunther.”

I stood up.

“Now come around the desk, into the corridor, and go ahead of me.”