Josef wasn’t part of the conversation. He waited for the food, and when it came, he awkwardly set about eating his stuffed cabbage, like someone who was seated at the same table quite by accident and wasn’t actually one of the party. The words “cleaning house” had been uttered; they were talking about Germany. The words sat there on the table between the bread basket and the swastikas. He wondered if he could just take off without anyone noticing. If these were the businesspeople who needed a radio operator, it would hardly be an improvement on his old job.

Just then Dr. Ritter said, “Herr Klein. What is your opinion of the New York melting pot?”

“I don’t think I have an opinion of it,” he said cautiously.

“Oh, I know Josef,” Schmuederrich jumped in. “He likes it here. Every day he gets to feel like he’s on a trip around the world.”

Laughter. But Dr. Ritter grew serious again. He had been walking around on the Lower East Side, he said, and he could hardly believe how backward life there was, in this day and age, a pure slum in the middle of a global metropolis, as if the poorest regions of Eastern Europe had just been dumped there, every one of them a criminal. It was high time this city started to fight back. Where did he live?

“In Harlem.” He always said it as if he were asking a question. Most people’s faces went blank when they heard it, tight lipped, especially women.

“You probably can’t find space anywhere else, is that it? I mean the city is bursting at the seams, especially with all the refugees from Europe.”

Josef loosened his tie and said nothing.

“And the rioting in Harlem doesn’t bother you, Herr Klein?”

“Well, nowadays there’s rioting all over the place.”

“He’s right about that,” Schmuederrich jumped in again. “Even at Madison Square Garden we had to hear insults from the anti-fascists. Right, Josef? They called you a ‘bloody bastard.’”

He was less and less happy with where the conversation was going.

“I like living there. Good food, pretty women, and the best jazz in the world.”

A derisive smile in the corner of Dr. Ritter’s mouth. Max seemed satisfied. They were competing against each other, Josef realized.

Snow was falling outside, when the door opened he could see each individual snowflake lit up brightly in the glow of the streetlamps. Washington next week, then Chicago, meetings everywhere—the firm was expanding at breakneck pace.

“He’s here,” said Dörsam softly to Dr. Ritter, and there stood a tall man about sixty years old, his shoulders dusted with snow, good-looking, like a movie star. He walked up to the table and shook everyone’s hand, even Josef’s. Josef didn’t catch the name. At the table there was a kind of awe; it was palpable.