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Strasse.
    â€˜Is he always so cryptic?’ I asked.
    â€˜We were the cryptic boys,’ said Hoover.
    Strasse snorted and hauled himself off to the toilet.
    Hoover refused to be drawn. ‘It was a long time ago.’ He asked who I worked for. I told him I was researching for a private source.
    Hoover grunted. ‘Sniffing around old Nazis, also known as scraping the barrel.’
    â€˜Who’s Willi Schmidt?’
    â€˜Who was Willi Schmidt.’
    I obliged by repeating the question in the past tense, but all he would say was that Willi had been a shoe salesman.
    â€˜A shoe salesman? How do a shoe salesman, an SS officer, and an American from Belgium fit together?’
    â€˜Beats me,’ said Hoover, refusing to budge. I said it sounded like Willi Schmidt had done the old Harry Lime trick of faking his death.
    He looked at me wearily. ‘It was a coincidence. The guy on TV was some owner of a chemical plant that got burned down. He had the right height for Willi, that’s all.’
    When Karl-Heinz returned, Hoover announced that he had bad jet lag and wanted to go. Strasse dismissed the notion, ordered more schnapps, and washed down a handful of pills with a swill of wine. The mixture turned him bugeyed. He stared at me for so long I thought he was about to have another stroke, then he banged on the table and announced, ‘I was a black dossier man.’
    I asked what that meant. After a long deliberation, Hoover said that Karl-Heinz had worked for Himmler. ‘Didn’t you, Karl-Heinz?’
    Karl-Heinz looked irritated and smug at the same time.
    â€˜Top dog Nazi,’ said Hoover. ‘Karl-Heinz kissed the Reichsführer’s ass on many occasions.’
    â€˜Worked for Himmler how?’ I asked Strasse.
    Hoover answered, ‘Horse buyer for the SS. Wasn’t that your official title?’
    Strasse nodded. ‘Eighty-seven years old, and I still ride every day!’
    â€˜You old bullshitter, you haven’t been in a saddle in years,’ Hoover said with affection. He gave me a blank look. Perhaps the alcohol was doing its work. ‘Karl-Heinz was in the business of selling Jews.’
    I humoured him, saying I had thought the Nazis had been in the business of getting rid of Jews.
    Strasse shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read in history books.’
    â€˜Is he one of those guys who says nothing happened?’ I asked Hoover.
    Strasse gave an angry snort and grabbed my lapel. ‘I was there.’
    We eyeballed each other as Hoover watched. Two old men who had been in tough situations. Finally Strasse let go and pinched my cheek. ‘Ransoming Jews was an insurance plan for when the war was lost. “Look, we saved Jews!”’ He shrugged. ‘Cynical times, my young friend.’
    â€˜It saved your neck,’ said Hoover.
    I asked what Hoover’s job had been. ‘Just a runner. A go-between.’
    â€˜You were Willi’s shadow,’ said Strasse.
    â€˜Not really.’
    â€˜Willi was running you.’
    â€˜So were you.’
    Strasse turned to me. ‘Joe worked for everyone, didn’t you, Joe?’
    Hoover drew a line with his hand, as if to say enough.
    â€˜Cynical times?’ I asked.
    â€˜Not as cynical as what happened afterwards,’ said Strasse.
    â€˜He means we all ended up working on the same side,’ said Hoover.
    â€˜Which one was that?’ I asked.
    Strasse gave a mock salute. ‘U.S. intelligence.’ He nudged me in the ribs and said, ‘No questions asked!’
    He wouldn’t say what had earned him his black dossier. We all ended the meal too drunk to talk straight. But they still had the edge, and managed to stiff me with the bill.

Hoover
    FRANKFURT
    IT WAS WAY TOO LATE, but still early evening in Florida, and more than once that night I asked myself: ‘What am I doing?’ The time and distance between leaving Englewood and