Kolb’s eyes to it. “Bamboozle the widowed mother into thinking you were a rare books expert? Take a backroom key out of the daughter’s purse while she’s off canoodling with her fiancé, so you can carve out a backdoor operation getting money out of your old National Socialist friends?” Ian shook his head. “Funny thing about Americans. They don’t care much about ex-Nazis, they get more worked up these days about the Reds. But for all their fuss about give me your huddled masses, Yanks don’t really like refugees, especially the kind who take advantage of widows and orphans.” Pause. “Like you.”
“It isn’t true,” Kolb muttered. Nina shook her head as if she’d never heard such lies.
“It is true. It’s just a question of what I decide to do about it.” Ian swallowed the scotch, grimacing. “Bloody hell, doesn’t forgery pay well enough for single malt? Tell me who you’ve helped. Whom you’ve made papers for.”
Kolb’s chin jerked, but his lips stayed pressed shut.
“You don’t seem to realize you’re in luck today.” Ian picked up the bottle, watching Kolb’s eyes go to it. “I’m not really interested in you, Fritzie. Give me some names, and I’ll forget I know yours.”
The German moistened his lips. “I don’t know any names. I come to start a new life. I wasn’t a Nazi—”
“Ich bin kein Nazi, ich bin kein Nazi.” Ian looked at Nina, setting down the bottle. “They all say that, don’t they?”
She nodded ominously, pencil flying.
“I was a member of the party,” Kolb burst out in German, suddenly talkative. “But it wasn’t like you make it sound. You had to be a party member just to get by. I was just doing my job.”
Ah, the sweet sound of justifications. Once they started to justify themselves, you were getting somewhere. Ian sat back. “What job?”
“An assessor. Rare books, musical instruments. My advice was sought.” Straightening his tie. “I examined antiques that had been gathered and sent to Austria, on the way to private collections in Berlin. That is all.”
“Gathered. That’s a nice word for stolen.”
“That wasn’t my job.” Stubbornly. “I only assessed items that came to me. Restoring anything damaged, seeing it crated for travel. I wasn’t responsible for confiscations.”
“That was someone else’s job,” Ian sympathized. “Of course. Well, a man who can spot a forgery usually isn’t too bad at making them.”
“I use my skills honestly to make a living, that’s all.”
“I want names. Who you helped. Where they are now.” Lorelei Vogt. The name was on the tip of Ian’s tongue, but he swallowed it. He didn’t want Kolb knowing there was someone specific they were looking for, if there was even the remotest chance he might warn her. He might warn her anyway that someone is sniffing for war criminals. But that was a chance they’d have to take; without Kolb they had no lead at all.
The German moistened his lips again. “I helped no one. I am hiding nothing.”
“Then you won’t object if my secretary has a look around.” Kolb opened his mouth, but Ian gave a freezing glare. “An innocent man would give his permission without hesitation.”
Kolb shrugged, sullen. “There’s nothing to find.”
“All entirely cricket, eh?” Ian said as Nina slapped her notebook down and stamped into the bedroom. Kolb looked scared, but his eyes followed Ian, not his supposed secretary. Ian’s hopes that Nina would find something incriminating began to sink.
“Have a drink,” he said instead, pouring a splash of scotch into the glass. Just enough to wet the tongue, get a drunk’s thirst really roaring, and from the eager way Kolb grabbed the glass, Ian suspected he was a thoroughgoing boozer. “Let’s go over this again. Your real name, to start. Why hide it? It’s not illegal here to take a new name. Normally you Jerries go for Smith or Jones, but I suppose given your pathetic English, you didn’t see the point in trying to pretend you weren’t German.” Ian let contempt filter into his voice. “Or maybe you just shortened your real name? Was it Kolbaum, Kolbmann? There are a lot of Jews in the antiques business, are you a Jew? Helping out the Nazis to get yourself a pass—”
“I’m not a Jew.” That pricked Kolb’s Aryan outrage as Ian had thought it would. “I’m Austrian, pure descent!”
Even a small apartment like this one took a long time to search thoroughly. Nina checked every floorboard for loose nails, every cupboard for false backs, every bedspring and dinner plate and item of clothing, as