“True.” Captain Hennig sat down and took out an elegant, amber cigarette case, which he opened in front of us to reveal a perfectly paraded battalion of good cigarettes and then offered them around the table. “True. Where there’s life, there’s hope, eh?”

Irmela took one of his cigarettes and studied it like an interesting curio, and then sniffed the tobacco appreciatively. “I don’t know if I should smoke this or keep it as a souvenir.”

“Smoke it,” he said, “and take another one for later.”

So she did.

“Is this what the Gestapo is smoking these days?” I said, savoring the taste of a real nail. “Things must be better than I thought.”

“Oh, I’m not with the Gestapo anymore,” he said. “Not since the beginning of the war. I work for the Erich Koch Institute now.”

“On the corner of Tragheimer and Gartenstrasse,” said Irmela. “I know that building.”

“Since the bombing we’re rather more often found in Friedrichsberg.”

“That must be nice,” I said. “And a lot safer, too, I’d have thought.”

Erich Koch was the Nazi Party gauleiter of East Prussia, and his huge country estate at Friedrichsberg, just outside the city, was the center of his commercial exploitation of the province, which, by all accounts, was completely unscrupulous. But his authority was absolute and General Lasch was obliged to give way to Koch’s imperious demands. Even now the Erich Koch Institute in the city’s Tragheim district was being remodeled—to a princely standard, it was bruited; while, at Koch’s orders, a large number of civilian workers was soon to be put to work building an airplane runway on Paradeplatz, presumably so Koch could make a quick getaway in his personal Focke-Wulf Condor—and this at a time when there was a more pressing need to build the city’s defenses for the Battle of Königsberg that was coming as soon as winter was over. Everyone assumed it would be the spring thaw of 1945 when the Red Army made its big push against the city. Right now, everything was frozen solid. Even the Russians. It was Erich Koch who had refused to consider the comprehensive and systematic plan proposed by General Lasch for the immediate evacuation of all civilians from East Prussia and who had placed his faith in building a wall—the Erich Koch Wall—in a place and to a construction standard that was of questionable value.

“The governor isn’t in Friedrichsberg for reasons of his own personal safety,” explained Hennig, “but because that’s simply the best place to coordinate the defense of the city. It’s not just Königsberg that’s under threat but Danzig, too. Rest assured, the governor is looking after all our interests.”