Ettinger made a note for the first time. Then he looked up and stared at him for a long time. “Did you really believe that?”

Josef thought about it. He no longer knew what he believed last year. He had tried to get through it somehow, that he remembered. “I don’t know anymore what I believed last year.”

“I can help jog your memory. You attended Nazi rallies. You’re a member of the Christian Front. And you printed inflammatory materials.”

There was a pounding at his temples. A droning sound issued from the high white walls, as if they were pressing in on him. The tastes of coffee and nicotine on his tongue, each intensifying the other. He felt like he was going to throw up.

“Why aren’t you arresting me?”

“Then others will step up to take your place. It’s better we keep an eye on the situation and keep it under control. That’s why we’d like you to deliver the radio.”

Josef nodded.

“And we want you to keep working with them.”

“I don’t understand. Why keep working?”

“No matter what happens. Maintain contact with them. Inform us of anything new that comes up. You can do that, can’t you?”

“I don’t know. Can I think about it?”

Ettinger sighed, handed him a card. “If you help us, you can start to make up for what you’ve done. Make the right decision.”

He said goodbye and shook Josef’s hand. A colleague escorted Josef out of the building. He would have preferred to have been led to a cell. To somewhere dark. Deep. No thoughts. Nothing more.

* * *

In the subway he took the wrong train. He noticed it after two stops. He got out and took the train to Brooklyn. He felt deeply exhausted. Not even the concern that someone could have seen him going to the FBI had any effect on him. An hour later he was ringing Lauren’s doorbell. Standing in a well-tended front garden with rose bushes and a pergola covered with creeper vines.

An old woman with labored breathing, Lauren’s landlady, opened the door and nodded toward the stairs.

Lauren was sitting in her room. She plucked at her neckerchief, seemed to be maintaining a respectful period of silence, as if her status were no longer clear. He put his arms around her, but more like how one would comfort a child. Then he sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette.

“Please, tell me about it,” she said.

He looked out the window, but he didn’t see anything, just sank ever deeper into himself.

Tell her about it? That wasn’t him at all. He wasn’t that man, the man who sat here and had to tell her about the FBI.

“So no arrest,” she said softly.

“No arrest.”

“And instead?”

“Keep my spot so that nobody steps up to replace me.”