He knew that he was looking for a tall figure with slumped shoulders—for Max. He hadn’t heard anything from either him or Ludwig since Schmuederrich had fired him. He had wanted to believe the Germans weren’t interested in him anymore—after all, in a free country like the US, in a democracy, they couldn’t force anyone to do anything.

He finished his second cigarette, and as he was about to stamp it out with his foot, there was Max, standing in front of him. He pulled him over to the wall of film posters and placed his hand on Josef’s shoulder, which caught the attention of the two girls. “A new agent has come over from Germany. His name’s Sebold and his orders are to expand the network in New York. Every contact is needed now. You have to finish building the radio for us.”

“I don’t work for you people anymore. That’s all I came here to tell you.”

Max laughed. “You’re still just as stupid as you were last year.”

There was something else he was itching to say, but it seemed more wise not to antagonize Max any further. He walked into the flood of pedestrians on Seventh Avenue and realized after a few feet that Max was following him.

He stopped and raised both hands, palms out, posing a question. Max also stopped. They looked at each other. Max followed him for another few hundred feet before he finally gave it up. Max too was just as stupid as he was last year. Germany wants peace. That’s what you said last year, and now there’s a war on—that’s what he’d wanted to say to him.

That evening he met Lauren at a diner near Manhattan General before her shift started. She hadn’t gotten the scholarship this time either. The reason, she thought, was that she came from a wealthy family. He had offered her another reason, his German background, but she thought that was nonsense.

Now Lauren was simply working more—she was going to pay for college herself. He didn’t understand her. If he were her he would go back to her parents, back to the nice hotel with the swimming pool and the dance orchestra, but he didn’t tell her that. He had just bitten into something that felt wrong and tasted wrong. It reminded him of childhood somehow, of sunny afternoons in the forest and in the field. Turning his face away, he spit the lettuce leaf he’d been chewing into his napkin. He didn’t want to look any closer, but he recognized the crushed shell of a beetle. And Lauren saw it too. “We have to tell the waiter!”

“No, Lauren. Leave it.”

“But the kitchen messed up.”

“No, they didn’t. This was intentional.”

She gave him a skeptical look.