I smiled. “Nothing in particular. Only the threat of extreme violence. That’s the most effective blackmail of all. The Nazis had so many ways of threatening violence to a person that it’s sometimes hard to remember that this was the German government we’re talking about and not a bunch of Chicago gangsters. If I’d refused to do what he asked—work for him—I’d have been a dead man. No question. Heydrich always got what he wanted.”

The cat blinked up at me with slow disbelief, as if questioning the truth of that assertion. Cats just know when someone is lying or, in my case, bending the truth to suit my new persona. That’s probably why I don’t own a cat.

“And did you go to Gestapo headquarters? To put your head in the lion’s mouth?”

“Yes. I met with Huber and Fehling. They were the two Gestapo officers who were charged with investigating the von Fritsch case. It was immediately clear to me that these two possessed the arrogance of men who enjoyed the full confidence of people much higher in rank than themselves—Himmler, I think, and probably Heydrich, too. As you can imagine, they were less than helpful; they certainly didn’t like the idea of their case against the general going up in smoke because Otto Schmidt was about to be proved an obvious liar. It was lucky for me that while I was there I actually saw their boss, Arthur Nebe. He didn’t speak to me, but after he’d had a word with Huber, they decided to let me go. Nebe always had a soft spot for me, so I figure it was his call. All the same, I was warned in no uncertain terms that I was forbidden to make contact with Captain von Frisch again or with the general’s legal counsel, Count Rüdiger von der Goltz. But I was always an insubordinate sort and I went to army headquarters anyway, where I spoke to another military judge—Karl Sack was his name—and put him in the picture. And it was he who informed the general’s lawyers of my captain’s willingness to give evidence against the Gestapo’s star witness, Otto Schmidt.