Clouds fly across the night sky. The moonlight shines in the truck’s metal finish. Carl is standing next to him. “Well, you’re off to a good start. Here, your bag.”

Josef laughs. Then they embrace again. They know this is the last time they’ll see each other; granted, they thought the same thing twenty-five years ago, but this time it really will be. For a small-time businessman from the Rhineland there’s no reason to ever go on vacation in South America.

“Write us along the way whenever you can. Promise?”

“I promise.”

He can feel an intensity of emotion and has to shut himself off to it, or else he’ll start blubbering again. “Now drive!” says Josef and starts walking across a field. The crop has been harvested. The soil is black, rich; it stinks a little. “This thing’s not going to end well,” Carl calls after him. “Bad seeds grow tall,” Josef calls back, looking ahead toward the woods, tears in his eyes. This is crazy, he tells himself. You wanted out of Neuss, out of the little Klein family prison. And now you’re crying. Because now you’re free.

He turns around. Carl is still standing there; he raises his hand and waves. Josef raises his hand and waves back.

Then he plunges into the wood. Quiet envelops him; he hears only the snapping of twigs under his feet. The gap in the border, the smuggler route, runs along here. They bent over the map, shoulder to shoulder, like they once had as young men over the map of Manhattan. This time drawing a line through Aachen, rural roads, the forest, and on the other side Belgium, Eupen the closest town. If he keeps going straight, he’ll be in Belgium in half an hour. He doesn’t have a visa for Belgium. “Not a chance. They’ll be able to tell in an instant that your passport’s a fake,” Dörsam had said. But he does have one for Argentina. “That you can risk.”

It’s eight o’clock. Faint light falls through the treetops; he can hardly see a thing. An autumn wood. He smells the peaty earth and something like gunpowder, lubricating oil, iron. He trudges over roots and tree trunks, panting, but doesn’t give himself any time to stop and rest. He’s afraid of what he’ll hear, sounds that are more than the echo of his own and that could turn his legs leaden with fear.

He’s relieved when the forest opens up to fields. Now he’s in Belgium. A needling rain has started to fall. He turns up his coat collar, pulls his hat down lower over his forehead. The lights of a town glow on the horizon. The Belgian guards seem to have been watching him for some time. They step into the road and plant themselves in front of him. “Papers?”

He shows them his new papers.