“It’s a nice day,” I said. “I thought I’d go to the English Garden. Have an ice cream. Pick some flowers.” That was what I felt like doing. Something ordinary and innocent and outdoors where you didn’t breathe the smell of men all day. I kept thinking about Gebauer, younger than me and facing life in prison, unless the bishop and the cardinal came through for him and the others. What wouldn’t Fritz Gebauer have given for a fistful of ice cream and a walk to the Chinese pagoda? “How did you make out with the Amis?” I asked Korsch, stabbing a cigarette into my mouth, and scarping a match along the underside of my desk drawer. “Anything on Janowska and Warzok?”

“Apparently the Soviets set up a special commission of inquiry into the camp,” he said.

“Isn’t that a little unusual? Why’d they do something like that?”

“Because while there were German officers and NCOs running the camp,” said Korsch, “it was largely Russian POWs who had volunteered for service with the SS who did most of the killing. I say most and I mean most. With them it was all about numbers. Killing as many as they could as quickly as possible because that’s what they were told to do, on pain of death. But with our old comrades, the officers, it was something else. For them killing was a pleasure. There’s very little in the file about Warzok. Most of the witness statements are about the camp’s factory commandant, Fritz Gebauer. He sounds like a right bastard, Bernie.”

“Tell me more about him,” I said, feeling my stomach turn into a pit.

“This sweetheart liked to strangle women and children with his bare hands,” said Korsch. “And he liked to tie people up and put them in barrels of water overnight, in winter. The only reason he’s doing life for what happened at Malmedy is that the Ivans won’t let the witnesses come to the American Zone for a trial. But for that, he’d probably have been hanged like Weiss and Eichelsdorfer, and some of those others.”

Martin Weiss had been the last commandant at Dachau, and Johann Eichelsdorfer had been in charge at Kaufering IV—the largest of the camps near Landsberg. Knowing that the man I had spent the morning with, a man I had considered to be a decent sort of fellow, was, in reality, as bad as these two others left me feeling disappointed not just with him, but also with myself. I don’t know why I was so surprised. If there was one thing I had learned in the war it was that decent, law-abiding family men were capable of the most bestial acts of murder and brutality.

“Are you still there, Bernie?”

“I’m still here.”