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said Felsen.
    Lehrer slurped his soup loudly.
    Sometimes he used a pig, other times a ram. What he didn't do was tell the truth, which was that as a fifteen-year-old, Klaus Felsen had found his father hanging from a beam in the barn.
    'A pig?' asked Hanke. 'A wild boar?'
    'No, no, a domestic pig. He slipped over in the pen and was trampled to death by a sow.'
    'And you took over the farm?'
    'Perhaps you know this already, Herr Brigadeführer. I worked that farm for eight years until my mother died. Then I sold it and joined the Fiührer's economic miracle and I've never looked back. It's not something I enjoy doing.'
    Hanke sat back after that, shoulder to shoulder with his protégé who smiled pinkly. Lehrer slurped on. He knew it all anyway. Except
for the pig, of course. That had been interesting, not true, but interesting.
    The soup bowls were removed and replaced by plates of overcooked pork with boiled potatoes and a sludge of red cabbage. Lehrer only ate it for something to do while Koch gave him the party line. He shovelled food faster and faster into his face. In a momentary lull he leaned over to Felsen and said:
    'Not married, Herr Felsen?'
    'No, Herr Gruppenführer.'
    'I've heard,' he said, nibbling at a hangnail, 'that you have a reputation with women.'
    'Do I?'
    'How does a man who's never been south of the Pyrenees speak Portuguese?' asked Lehrer, valuing his earlobe with thumb and finger. 'And don't tell me that that's what they're teaching you down in Swabia these days.'
    Lehrer arched his eyebrows in a parody of innocence. Felsen realized that Susana Lopes had moved in higher circles than even he'd known about.
    'I used to go riding with a Brazilian around the Havel,' he lied, and Lehrer's stomach grunted.
    'Horses?' he asked.

    After dinner they moved into an adjoining room. They each bought a hundred RM of chips and sat at a green baize table. The waiters moved a wooden trolley with drinks and glasses alongside, served brandies and left. Lehrer loosened off his tunic and drew on the cigar Felsen had given him, blowing the smoke on to the ember.
    The light above the table, stratified by smoke, lit only the players' faces. Koch, even pinker now with the wine and brandy. Hanke with hooded unreadable eyes, the shadow of his dark beard already showing through. Fischer with pouches under his eyes and his skin taut and scraped raw as if he'd been half the night in a blizzard. Wolff, blonde and blue-eyed, impossibly young for a Brigadeführer, in need of a duelling scar to lend experience to the face. And Lehrer, the big man, with jowls fully formed, hair grey on the wings, dark eyes, wet and glistening with the anticipation of joy and further corruption. If Eva had been there, thought Felsen, she'd have told him that this was a man who liked to spank.
    They played. Felsen lost consistently. He dumped hands which had any excitement in them and bluffed with no will to back it up. Koch lost flamboyantly. They both bought more chips and transferred them to the SS officers who showed no inclination for the process to stop.
    Then Felsen started to win. There were comments about the cards turning. Hanke and Fischer were quickly burned out. Koch was stripped clean, going down for 1600 RM. Felsen concentrated on Wolff and began to lose to the man consistently on bluffs. Felsen was down to 500 RM when Lehrer cleaned Wolff out with four of a kind to a full house. Wolff looked as if he'd been speared to his chair. Lehrer was enormous behind his stacks of chips.
    'You might wish to replenish your stocks if you want to take me on,' said Lehrer. Felsen poured himself a brandy and sucked on his cigar. Lehrer beamed. Felsen reached into his pocket and took out 2000 RM.
    'Will that be enough?' he asked and Lehrer licked his lips.
    They played for an hour with Lehrer, now stripped to his shirt, losing lightly. Wolff, out of the light, watched the game with the intensity of a falcon. Hanke and Koch colluded on the sofa while Fischer