like a goddamn Picasso.” Tony sorted through a stack of newspapers in German, French, English, and something Cyrillic Ian couldn’t read. “Take a night off. I’ve got a redhead in Ottakring, and she has a knockout roommate. Take her out, tell her a few stories about throwing back shots with Hemingway and Steinbeck after Paris was liberated—”
“It wasn’t nearly as picturesque as you make it sound.”
“So? Talk it up! You’ve got glamour, boss. Women love ’em tall, dark, and tragic. You’re six long-lean-and-mean feet of heroic war stories and unhappy past—”
“Oh, for God’s sake—”
“—all buttoned up behind English starch and a thousand-yard stare of you can’t possibly understand the things that haunt me. That’s absolute catnip for the ladies, believe me—”
“Are you finished?” Ian drew the sheet out of the typewriter, tipping his chair back on two legs. “Go through the mail, then pull the file on the Bormann assistant.”
“Fine, die a monk.”
“Why do I put up with you?” Ian wondered. “Feckless cretinous Yank . . .”
“Joyless Limey bastard,” Tony shot back, rummaging in the file cabinet. Ian hid a grin, knowing perfectly well why he put up with Tony. Ranging across three fronts of the war with a typewriter and notepad, Ian had met a thousand Tonys: achingly young men in rumpled uniforms, heading off into the mouth of the guns. American boys jammed on troopships and green with seasickness, English boys flying off in Hurricanes with a one in four chance of making it back . . . after a while Ian couldn’t bear to look at any of them too closely, knowing better than they did what their chances were of getting out alive. It had been just after the war ended that he met Tony, slouching along as an interpreter in the entourage of an American general who clearly wanted him court-martialed and shot for insubordination and slovenliness. Ian sympathized with the feeling now that Sergeant A. Rodomovsky worked for him and not the United States Army, but Tony was the first young soldier Ian had been able to befriend. He was brash, a practical joker, and a complete nuisance, but when Ian shook his hand for the first time, he’d been able to think, This one won’t die.
Unless I kill him, Ian thought now, next time he gets on my nerves. A distinct possibility.
He finished the report for Bauer and rose, stretching. “Get your earplugs,” he advised, reaching for his violin case.
“You’re aware you don’t have a future as a concert violinist?” Tony leafed through the stack of mail that had accumulated in their absence.
“I play poorly yet with great lack of feeling.” Ian brought the violin to his chin, starting a movement of Brahms. Playing helped him think, kept his hands busy as his brain sorted through the questions that rose with every new chase. Who are you, what did you do, and where would you go to get away from it? He was drawing out the last note as Tony let out a whistle.
“Boss,” he called over his shoulder, “I’ve got news.”
A trapdoor opened in Ian’s stomach, a long drop over the bottomless pit of rage. He put the violin back in its case, slow controlled movements. “I didn’t give you that file.”
“It’s the one at the back of the drawer you look at when you think I’m not paying attention,” Tony said. “Believe me, I’ve read it.”
“Then you know it’s a cold trail. We know she was in Poznań as late as November ’44, but that’s all.” Ian felt excitement starting to war with caution. “So what did you find?”
Tony grinned. “A witness who saw her later than November ’44. After the war, in fact.”
“What?” Ian had been pulling out his file on the woman who was his personal obsession; he nearly dropped it. “Who? Someone from the Poznań region, or Frank’s staff?” It had been during the first Nuremberg trial that Ian caught die Jägerin’s scent, hearing a witness testify against Hans Frank—the governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland, whom Ian would later (as one of the few journalists admitted to the execution room) watch swing from a rope for war crimes. In the middle of the information about the Jews Frank was shipping east, the clerk had testified about a certain visit to Poznań. One of the high-ranking SS officers had thrown a party for Frank out by Lake Rusalka, at a big ocher-colored house . . .