HE WAS STANDING STILL; EVERYTHING AROUND HIM WAS moving. He saw filing cabinets, typewriters, scuffed hardwood floors. The agent pressed the phone to his ear and nodded in response to what the voice on the other end was saying. Josef had said who he was, why he’d come, and now he stood still and waited. It hurt to breathe. Each shallow breath seemed to glue his ribs together.

He tried to calm himself down, telling himself he was still a free man, they hadn’t immediately arrested him after Lauren’s tip-off. Clearly they weren’t thinking of him as a criminal. She had mentioned “contacts,” nothing more, thank God. He heard hurried steps coming down the hallway, and his heart started racing again.

“Joe Klein?”

A man with a white mustache had appeared in the doorway. He gestured with his hand, and Josef followed him into a room down the hall. It wasn’t a cell, wasn’t an interrogation room, just a friendly looking office with a couch by the window.

The agent turned around to face him, and now he saw a man around fifty years old, facial features sagging from the eyebrows down, like a face made of melted wax. The smile that lifted the features lent him a gentle and wise air. “Agent Ettinger.” He shook Josef’s hand, gestured toward the couch, and offered him a cigarette.

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you,” said Josef.

“Wir sind nicht die Gestapo,” Ettinger said. We’re not the Gestapo. He smiled. Josef gave a tentative smile back.

Ettinger switched back to English. “All right, so tell me. When did they first contact you?” His legs were crossed. A notebook rested on his knee. He pulled out a fountain pen.

Josef hesitated. Was this a trap? Did he need a lawyer? He continued not to say anything, until finally Ettinger said, “Listen, Joe, we’ve known about you for about a year. Ever since you went shopping at the electronics store on Cortland Street.”

Ettinger took a drag on his cigarette and watched him. His heart started pounding, and he tried not to let it show. “I’m not one of them. I was forced into it.”

“You asked for a quarz with enough transmitting range to reach Europe. Did no one tell you how to go about it a bit less obviously?”

“I need a lawyer, don’t I?”

“No, just go ahead and tell me what happened,” Ettinger repeated.