After he’d gone I sat around and took the Lord’s name in vain a lot, which only raised my blood pressure. Then Bruno came back with my Murattis and I had to smoke one right away and also take a bite of the bottle of Korn I had in my desk drawer. Then I told him what von Frisch had told me and he cursed a lot and took a drink, too. We must have looked like a couple of priests on holiday.

“This isn’t a case,” he said, “it’s an unfolding political scandal. Take my advice, boss; leave it alone. You might as well look for Amelia Earhart as try and help this old Fridolin.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it. If you ask me, you’d be putting your head in the lion’s mouth, with little prospect of getting it back with both ears. This is just the Nazis consolidating their grip on power. First the Reichstag fire, then the Night of the Long Knives when they murdered Ernst Röhm and the SA leadership, and now this—the emasculation of the army. It’s just Hitler’s way of telling the Wehrmacht that he’s in charge. You know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he makes himself the new minister for War. After all, who else is there?”

“Göring?” I murmured, not quite believing it myself.

“That fat popinjay? He’s already too powerful for Hitler’s taste.”

I nodded. “Yes, you’re right, of course. Too powerful and too popular with the people at large.” I shook my head. “But I have to do something. In Turkey, Captain von Frisch saved my life. But for him, there would be a large hole in my head where my brains should be.”

I’d handed Bruno the straight line for the joke and of course he did not disappoint; my business partner is nothing if not predictable, which, for the most part, is an excellent quality in a partner.

“There is a large hole in your head where your brains should be. There is if you take the captain on as a client.”

“I already did. I gave him my word I’d try to help. Like I say, he saved my neck. The least I can do is try to save his.”

“Look, Bernie, that’s what happens in a war. It doesn’t mean anything. Saving someone’s life was just common courtesy in the trenches. Like giving a man a light for his cigarette. If I had ten marks for every bastard’s life I saved I’d be a rich man. Forget it. He probably has. It doesn’t mean anything, Bernie.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No. All right. I don’t. So, how about this instead? Survival then was just a matter of luck, that’s all. Why pay it any regard now?”

I picked up my hat.