“Bullshit,” Bianco cried. “There wasn’t an ounce of cream left in Germany.” Abrams laughed and they shook hands.

“What was I going to talk about?” Abrams said shyly. June said something about dinner and left them alone. He hadn’t been Abrams’s friend, they barely knew each other, but Bianco was enormously glad to see him. They examined each other, openly, kindly. Bianco realized that Abrams was dressed to go with a Packard, in the new look, with narrow shoulders and lapels and thin-­legged trousers. He looked taller than Bianco remembered, much handsomer; and Bianco wished he had something better on than his old hunting jacket and plaid shirt, he wished he was in uniform. During dinner he admitted it to Abrams and Abrams said he’d only been back a week and hadn’t had a chance to miss being a captain yet. Over dessert, coffee, and whisky, he told Bianco that Pearce’s diverticulitis got so bad they sent him home. He also told him that the trials were more unpopular than ever and they were even having trouble finding judges. Finally, after they took the bottle of whisky into the living room to sit in front of the fire, and June had said good night and gone upstairs, Abrams told Bianco that Speiser had been tried in August, found guilty, and hanged at Spandau two weeks ago.

“That’s why I’m here in a way. I saw him the day they hanged him; he asked me if I would ever see you again and I said I might, and he said, ‘Tell the major not to forget that the men from 554 were still alive.’ ”

As soon as Abrams said that, Bianco felt a grim, perverse satisfaction. The store, the Christmas tree, the decorations were a lot of fussy shit; the peace and sense of belonging they were supposed to give was specious. Somehow, and for all time, Bianco thought, Speiser had had the last word.

Part One: Roger Hawkins

PART ONE: ROGER HAWKINS

1

Chapter 1

Adam Levy stopped at the top of the subway stairs. It was dark, the street was empty, and Adam was a little scared. He’d been in Minnesota for four years, teaching philosophy at a small college on the edge of the northern wilderness, and he had to get used to Brooklyn and the neighborhood all over again.

His father still lived on the next block; his father’s shul, where Adam had been bar mitzvahed and married, was still on the corner of Nostrand, but most of the people he’d known were gone, and the ones who’d taken their place spoke Spanish, let their children rove the streets in gangs, and had turned the once neat street into a slummy-­looking block with litter in the gutters and ranks of broken-­down cars lining the curbs. Still, he told himself as he looked up the long empty block, they belonged here as much as he did.