“Thanks for agreeing to this meeting,” I said, placing a packet of Lucky Strikes and some matches on the table between us. “Smoke?”

Gebauer glanced around at the soldier who remained with us. “Is it permitted?” he asked, in English.

The soldier nodded, and Gebauer took a nail from the packet and smoked it gratefully.

“Where are you from?” asked Gebauer.

“I live in Munich,” I said. “But I was born in Berlin. I lived there until a couple of years ago.”

“Me, too,” he said. “I’ve asked to be moved to a prison in Berlin, so that my wife can visit me, but that doesn’t appear to be possible.” He shrugged. “But what do they care? The Amis. We’re scum to them. Not soldiers at all. Murderers, that’s what we are. It’s fair to say that there are some murderers among us. The Jew killers. I never much cared for that kind of thing myself. I myself was on the western front, where Jew killing was of little importance.”

“Malmedy, wasn’t it?” I said, lighting one for myself. “In the Ardennes.”

“That’s right,” he said. “It was a desperate fight. Our backs were really against the wall. It was all we could do to look after ourselves, let alone a hundred surrendering Amis.” He inhaled deeply and looked up at the green ceiling. Someone had done a good job of matching the paint on the walls and the floor. “Of course, it doesn’t matter to the Amis that we had no facilities for taking prisoners. And no one thinks for a minute to suggest that the men who surrendered were cowards. We wouldn’t have surrendered. Not a chance. That’s what the SS was all about, wasn’t it? Loyalty is my honor, wasn’t it? Not self-preservation.” He took a hit on the cigarette. “Aschenauer says you were SS yourself. So you would understand what I’m talking about.”

I glanced at our American guard, uncomfortably. I hardly wanted to talk about having been in the SS in front of an American MP. “I really wouldn’t like to say,” I said.

“You can speak quite freely in front of him,” said Gebauer. “He doesn’t speak a word of German. Few of the Amis in here do. Even the officers are too lazy to learn. From time to time you get the odd intelligence officer who speaks German. But mostly they don’t see the point of it.”

“I think they feel that it would demean their victory to learn our language,” I said.

“Yes, that might be true,” said Gebauer. “They’re worse than the French in that respect. But my English is improving all the time.”

“Mine, too,” I said. “It’s a sort of mongrel language, isn’t it?”