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continued to repeat in his head. He’d thought himself beyond bitterness, having exchanged it for the anesthesia of spartan indifference.
    Guess it’s not working.
    An hour later, another knock came at the door. It was Wolski. “What’s with Boris Karloff?”
    Mason chuckled. “He does look like Karloff at that.” He pulled a cigarette out of the pack lying on the desk. He offered Wolski one. Wolski declined. “He’s our German police liaison,” Mason said. “Did you get anywhere with the calls about missing personnel?”
    Wolski referred to a piece of paper in his hand. “During the last thirty-six hours there remain four hundred sixty-five personnel unaccounted for. That’s just in Munich and the surrounding area.” He pointed at Mason’s report. “You finished with that thing?”
    Mason nodded. He pulled the final page of the report out of the typewriter.
    “How about a nightcap? I know a nice, quiet bar. . . .”
    “No, thanks. They’ve finally got me out of that hotel and found something more permanent. I want to get settled in.”
    “Corporal Manganella was to show you to your new quarters, but he went off duty a half hour ago. He asked if I’d take you over there.”
    Mason put out his cigarette then stood and stretched. “Yeah, why not?”
    •   •   •
    M ason and Wolski had to stop the jeep behind a line of waiting army vehicles. At the intersection, an MP conducted traffic and held up their street so a column of tanks and armored cars could cross.
    “Did they start the war again and not tell us?” Wolski said.
    They had stopped in front of an upscale hotel and nightclub miraculously unscathed by the war. It now served as the officers’ mess and officers’ club. Near the curb and positioned on either side of theentrance, Mason noticed two boys no older than ten. They were filthy, rail thin, and dressed in rags. Then he saw why they were there. The place was always busy with army and military government personnel coming and going, and each time one of them dropped a cigarette butt on the sidewalk, the boys dashed to the spot and picked it up. A small girl of five collected the butts from the boys and held them in a bundled rag. They didn’t smoke them. They collected them. Cigarettes had become the de facto form of currency on the black market for Germans, and the only reliable way to procure food and clothing. Any area frequented by U.S. soldiers and government personnel offered an ideal location to collect the butts, which were then exchanged for food at collection centers where the unburned tobacco was used to make new cigarettes.
    The jeep started to move just as an MP rushed out of the officers’ mess and chased the kids away. The kids ran across the street and dived into a hole in the wall of a destroyed building.
    Mason felt a twinge of sadness for the kids. As the jeep passed, he kept an eye on the hole. Somewhere in the rubble those kids tried to survive.
    Wolski finally pulled up the jeep in front of a brick town house. “Not bad. They’ve put me in the McGraw Kaserne. Like living on a prison block.”
    Mason climbed out of the jeep and retrieved his gear from the back.
    “Oh,” Wolski said and reached into his pocket. “Almost forgot to give you a key to the house.” He handed it to Mason. “I’ll pick you up at oh-seven-hundred.” Wolski made a cursory salute and drove away.
    The Army Corps of Engineers had yet to restore power to this block, so Mason was left in the dark, but the moon reflecting off the snow gave enough light to show that the town house stood in a row of similar town houses untouched by bombs. Like a series of capricious tornados, bombs had devastated entire neighborhoods and bypassed others, reducing one house to a pile of dust while leaving its neighbor completely unscathed. Standing here, he could almost imagine being in some corner of the world where the war had existed in only headlines or radio broadcasts. The warm light of candles