The safer move would be to stay out of the Kino and nurse his beer at the bar. With an unpleasant premonition gnawing at him, Curtis emerged from the darkened theater and took a place at the bar. At six forty-five, a carpenter with his toolbox in hand and sawdust on his overalls came in, ordered beer, and drank it slowly, ignoring the entrance to the Kino and glancing occasionally at the street door, as if waiting for a friend. Arthur Curtis studied the man intently. The premonition grew sharp, but it took him too long to isolate the source.

The sawdust was what troubled him, he realized at last. German workmen were precise. They swept up at the end of every day. They would never step out in public covered in sawdust, even hurrying home from work, and this one wasn’t hurrying. He was barely touching his stein to his lips.

Art Curtis downed his beer, nodded a casual farewell to the barmaid, and pushed through the front doors into the street. He breathed in the evening air and glanced around the bustling neighborhood of shops and tenements.

As luck would have it, Hans Reuter was early. He was walking fast, his head down, either unconcerned that he was being followed or hoping like an ostrich that what he couldn’t see couldn’t hurt him.

Curtis made a lightning decision and took a huge chance that his initial glance at the street had correctly picked up no shadows.

Reuter flinched as Art Curtis took his arm.

“Let’s walk, instead.”

“Why?” asked Reuter. But his hunger for the money gave him no choice but to let Curtis set their course.

“We can transact our business in half a minute. Give me the name. I’ll give you the money, and we can go our separate ways.” Run our separate ways was what he meant—in his case, straight to the French border, the hell with the office. But telling Reuter they were under observation was no way to make him take a chance.

“His name?”

“They call him ‘the Monkey.’”

Isaac Bell had called him an acrobat. “What’s his real name?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t pay for ‘I don’t know,’” Curtis shot back, scanning the street ahead and behind. He saw workmen homeward bound, shoppers with groceries, couples holding hands converging on the Kintopp. Oddly, there were no cops.

“He’s an Army officer.”

“That much I knew already.”

“You didn’t know he was a general major,” Reuter replied smugly.

“His rank means nothing without a name,” Curtis lied. If it was true, such a high rank would narrow the possibilities to a handful.

“Would you accept a description?” Reuter asked.

“It’d better be precise.”