“Ah, the gentleman awakes. Slept well?”

“I’m six hours behind you.”

The look on Carl’s face shows incomprehension.

“The time difference. For me it’s still the middle of the night.”

“Here. I haven’t drunk out of it yet.” Carl hands him a cup. Josef drinks, if only so as not to offend him. “If we hadn’t had that coffee of yours, Josef, seriously, I wouldn’t have been able to run this business. I need coffee. I need coffee more than anything in the world!”

He stops, looks Josef up and down. “Don’t you want to put some clothes on?”

“I have clothes on.”

“A set of sweaty pajamas. We’re in the kitchen, my dear man!”

Edith turns around and stirs a pot.

“Beg your pardon,” says Josef.

“Edith left some clothes in your room for you. Come, I’ll show you,” and with that he pushes Josef out of the kitchen.

In the room, in fact, are a pair of suit pants, a white shirt, a jacket, and a pair of underwear. It’s clear that they’re Carl’s clothes. They’re the same height, five foot three. It should all fit.

Carl looks out the window as Josef peels off the pajamas. The pants are a bit big at the waist; he has to fasten the belt as tight as it will go. As he’s buttoning up the shirt, he hears Carl say, as if from far away, “So all right, let’s hear it.”

“What?”

“What are you doing here all of a sudden? How is it possible to just hop on a plane that takes you from New York to Frankfurt? How do you have the money for something like that?”

“For the FBI it’s no trouble at all, Carl.”

He thought the mere mention of it would shut him up. But Carl asks, “FBI? What’s that?”

“It’s the American federal police.”

He starts to roll his sleeves up. Then stops in the middle of doing so and rolls them back—it could be that Carl finds rolled-up sleeves as improper as pajamas in the kitchen.

“Did you commit a crime?” asks Carl.

“After 1941, after Germany declared war against the United States, it was a crime just to be German.”

He buttons the cuff of his left sleeve. Then the right. Carl stares at him. Clearly waiting for further explanation.

“There were just five of us Germans left on Ellis Island. Five enemy aliens. Plus a few Italians and one Japanese guy. They didn’t want to have to keep the island in operation just for our sake.”

Carl nods and looks over to the door; Edith is calling.

“The customers are waiting.” As he leaves he claps Josef on the shoulder. It feels like he’s been marked.