Being a detective I spotted Father Gotovina within a few seconds of going through the door. There were lots of things that gave it away. The black suit, the black shirt, the crucifix hanging around his neck, the little white halo of collar. His was not a face that made you think of Jesus so much as Pontius Pilate. The thick, dark eyebrows were the only hair on his head. The skull looked like the rotating dome roof on the Göttingen Observatory, and each lobeless ear resembled a demon’s wing. His lips were as thick as his fingers, and his nose as broad and hooked as the beak on a giant octopus. He had a mole on his left cheek that was the size and color of a five-pfennig piece and walnut-brown eyes, like the walnut on the grip of a Walther PPK. One of them picked me out like a shoemaker’s awl and he came over, almost as if he could smell the cop on my shoes. It could just as easily have been the cognac on my breath. But I didn’t figure him for the teetotaler type any more than I could picture him singing in the Vienna Boys Choir. If the Medici had still been siring popes, Father Gotovina would have been what one looked like.

“Can I help you?” he asked in a voice like liquid furniture polish, with lips stretched tight across teeth that were as white as his collar in what, among the Holy Inquisition anyway, must have passed for a smile.

“Father Gotovina?” I asked.

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“I’m going to Peissenberg,” I told him, showing the rail ticket I had bought earlier. “I wondered if you know anyone there I could stay with.”

He glanced at my ticket for only a moment, but his eyes did not miss the way the name “Peissenberg” had been altered.

“I believe there’s a very good hotel there,” he said. “The Berggasthof Greitner. But it’s probably closed right now. You’re a little early for the ski season, Herr . . . ?”

“Gunther, Bernhard Gunther.”

“Of course there’s a fine church there which, incidentally, affords a remarkably extensive and panoramic view of the Bavarian Alps. As it happens the priest there is a friend of mine. He might be able to help you. If you come by the Holy Ghost Church at about five o’clock this afternoon, I’ll provide you with a letter of introduction. But I warn you, he’s a keen musician. If you spend any time in Peissenberg he’ll dragoon you into the church choir. Have you singing hymns for your supper, so to speak. Do you have a favorite hymn, Herr Gunther?”

“A favorite? Yes, probably ‘How Great Thou Art.’ I think it’s the tune I like more than anything.”