“Here’s me thinking this is East Prussia,” I said, “when the true state we’re living in turns out to be Denial.”

Hennig snorted with contempt, put his hand on my shoulder, which I didn’t much like, and walked me over to the fireplace, where a log the size of a wild boar was sizzling quietly, just like my temper. From the mantelpiece he took down an amber box and flipped it open.

“Smoke a cigarette, Bernie,” he said quietly. “Take the edge off your tongue.”

I took one, lit it, and tried to stay inside myself for a few minutes longer.

He smoked one, too. I even lit the match for him. For a while all we did was blow smoke at each other. It was beginning to look as if we could get along really well.

“When the pathologists examine your dead body,” said Hennig, “they’ll probably find you had an enlarged mouth.” He sighed wearily. “Nineteen forty-five, and you still haven’t learned that you should talk only when words are safer than silence.”

“I’m not going to change my mind about my girl,” I said.

“You don’t have a mind. Not to speak of. For a Fritz in intelligence, you’re very fucking dumb. I thought the same back in thirty-eight. You were dumb to get mixed up in that business with von Fritsch. You must have known how it would all play out. Sure you did. An idiot could have seen how that was going to end. Himmler himself gave the orders to frame that fucking general. You were dumb to take that case.”

“I took it because Captain von Frisch was my commanding officer in the Great War. And because I loved him.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. You were dumb. Principles are for people who can afford to have them, not for you and me. You were lucky to walk away from that case with your fingernails.”

“Maybe. But I’m still not going to help you now.”

“Yes, you are,” he said. “And here’s why, dumbhead.”

He collected a file off the desk and handed it to me—a thin blue file on the cover of which was the official stamp of the Saint Elizabeth Hospital on Ziegelstrasse, and the name of Irmela Louise Schaper. I didn’t have to open it. I already knew what was in it.