“Now I’m sure he’s lying,” said Shlomo, and pushed me into the grave. “Eichmann is dead.” He spat into the grave beside me and worked the slide on his automatic. “I know because we killed him ourselves.”

The grave was only a couple of feet deep and the fall didn’t hurt. Or at least I didn’t feel any pain. I was too cold. And I was talking for my life. Shouting for it.

“Then you killed the wrong man,” I said. “I know, because yesterday I spoke to Eichmann. I can take you to him. I know where he’s hiding.”

Shlomo leveled the gun at my head. “You lying Nazi bastard,” he said. “You’d say anything to save your own skin.”

“Put the gun down, Shlomo,” commanded Zvi.

“You don’t really buy that crap, do you, boss?” protested Shlomo. “He’ll say anything to stop us shooting him.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” said Zvi. “But as the intelligence officer of this cell, it’s my job to evaluate any information that comes our way.” He shivered. “And I refuse to do that on a mountainside in the middle of winter. We’ll take him in the house and question him some more. Then we’ll decide what to do with him.”

They frog-marched me to the house, which was deserted, of course. I guessed it must have been rented. Either that or Henkell did not care what happened to it. For all I knew, the documents I had signed in Vienna, at Bekemeier’s office, had transferred all of Gruen’s wealth to the United States. In which case the two of them would be set up nicely for a good long while.

Aaron made some coffee, which all of us drank gratefully. Zvi threw a blanket over my shoulders. It was the one that had been on Gruen’s legs while he had sat in his wheelchair, pretending to be a cripple.

“All right,” said Zvi. “Let’s talk about Eichmann.”

“Just humor me a minute,” I said. “And let me ask the questions.”

“All right.” Zvi looked at his watch. “You have exactly one minute.”

“The man you shot,” I said. “How did you identify him?”

“We had a tip-off it was him,” said Zvi. “And he wasn’t surprised to see us. Nor did he deny that he was Eichmann. I think he would have denied it if he’d been someone else. Don’t you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Did you check his teeth? Eichmann has two gold plates, from before the war. They would certainly have appeared on his SS medical record.”

“There was no time,” admitted Zvi. “And it was dark.”

“Do you remember where you left the body?”