He was going home. The thought was so sudden, so full of emotion, that he had to stop and lean against the hall wall. Men passing looked curiously at him, and he pushed himself away from the wall and went into the men’s room. Like everything else in Nuremberg, the toilet belonged in a palace. The commode was raised on a marble pedestal, the sink was chipped marble, shaped like a shell. He ran water and looked at himself in the gilt-framed mirror over the sink. He looked sick and old, nothing like he had the last time he saw his wife, and he wondered how she’d react to this face.

He was smoothing water through his black and gray hair when it hit him that they weren’t sending him home because he’d waited longer than was sane for a man who’d never be found. They were sending him home now . . . tonight. . . because they’d caught Speiser at last, and they were afraid he’d find him and kill him before the Tribunal could hang him.

Abrams was half-­drunk when Bianco tracked him to the club. They were showing Grapes of Wrath for the third time and a bunch of officers sat in the club lobby, drinking and waiting for the movie to start.

Abrams sat alone, threading his fingers through his beard, drinking. He looked away when he saw Bianco, but Bianco came to the table and sat down.

“They got Speiser, didn’t they?”

Abrams closed his eyes. “How’d you know?”

“Just figured it out.”

Abrams said thickly, “They found him in a basement, in Munich. Munich. You’d think he’d have gotten farther in all this time. Still, he’s lucky it was us, not the Russians.”

“Why?” Bianco asked. “They’d hang him higher?”

Abrams finished his drink without answering.

“Did you believe what I told you today?” Bianco asked.

“I guess so,” Abrams said. “Yes, I did. Yes.”

Bianco grabbed Abrams’s hand; officers at nearby tables noticed and looked away, embarrassed.

“Let me see him,” Bianco said, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice. “It means everything to me. If you believed me, you know I won’t hurt him. Let me see him.”

They looked into each other’s eyes. Abrams looked away first.

“I can’t . . .” he said.

Bianco squeezed his hand. “I won’t have a second’s peace if you don’t. Not for the rest of my life.” Bianco was whispering, but the pleading in his voice was raw. He felt Abrams’s hand go limp in his.

“You swear you won’t hurt him?” he asked.

“I swear,” Bianco said.

Then Abrams said, “I want to hear what he says. What those men did.”

“Okay,” Bianco said.

Abrams thought another minute, but Bianco knew he had him. Then Abrams said, “It’s my ass if they find out.”

“Do you care?”

“No,” Abrams said, “I don’t.”