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when Schmalz came up to me.
    ‘May my wife and I invite the doctor to coffee?’ Schmalz had evidently dug out my title and gladly adopted it to neutralize another sibilant.
    ‘That’s extremely kind of you, Herr Schmalz,’ I thanked him. ‘But I’ll hope you’ll understand that until the end of this case, my time is not my own.’
    ‘Oh, well, another time, maybe.’ Schmalz looked downcast, but understood the Works came first.
    I looked around for Firner and found him on his way to his table with a plate from the buffet.
    He stood still for a moment. ‘Greetings, have you found out anything?’ He held his plate awkwardly at chest level to hide a red-wine stain on his dinner shirt.
    ‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘And you?’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean, Herr Self?’
    ‘Let’s imagine there’s a blackmailer who wants to demonstrate his superiority, first of all by manipulating the MBI system and then by creating a gas explosion. Then he demands ten million from the RCW. Who in the company would be the first person to get that demand on his desk?’
    ‘Korten. Because he’s the only one who could decide about sums of that size.’ He frowned and glanced instinctively at the slightly raised table where Korten was sitting with the head of the Chinese delegation, the president, and other heavyweights. I waited in vain for an appeasing remark like ‘But Herr Self, whatever are you thinking?’ He lowered his plate. The red-wine stain did its bit to reveal a tense and uncertain Firner beneath the veneer of relaxed serenity. As though I were no longer there, he took a few steps towards the open window, lost in thought. Then he pulled himself together, rearranged the plate in front of his chest, nodded curtly at me and moved in a determined fashion to his table. I went to the toilet.
    ‘Well, my dear Self, making progress?’ Korten arrived at the next stall and fumbled with his fly.
    ‘Do you mean with the case or the prostate?’
    He peed and laughed. Laughed louder and louder and had to put a hand out on the tiles to support himself, and then it came back to me, too. We’d stood next to each other like this before, in the urinals at the Friedrich Wilhelm. It had been planned as a preparatory measure for playing hookey, and then, when the teacher noticed we were missing, Bechtel was to stand up and say, ‘Korten and Self were feeling sick and went to the lavatory – I can go in quickly and check how they are.’ But the teacher checked on us himself, found us there having a great time, and, as a punishment, left us standing there for the rest of the lesson, supervised by the janitor.
    ‘Professor Barfeld with the monocle will be here any minute,’ snorted Korten. ‘Barfing Barfer, here comes Barfing Barfeld.’
    I remembered the nickname, and we stood there, trousers open, clapping each other on the shoulder. Tears sprang to my eyes and my belly hurt from all the laughing.
    Back then things almost took a nasty turn. Barfeld reported us to the headmaster and I had already imagined my father raging and my mother weeping and the scholarship evaporating into thin air. But Korten took it all on his shoulders: he had been the instigator and I’d just joined in. So he got the letter home, and his father only laughed.
    ‘I’ve got to go.’ Korten buttoned up his fly.
    ‘What, again?’ I was still laughing. But the fun was over and the Chinese were waiting.

10
    Memories of the blue Adriatic
    When I returned to the hall it was all drawing to a close. Frau Buchendorff asked how I was getting home, I couldn’t be driving with my arm.
    ‘I took a taxi before.’
    ‘I’d be glad to give you a lift, since we’re neighbours. Quarter of an hour by the exit?’
    The tables were deserted. Small knots of people formed and dispersed. The red-haired girl was still standing with a bottle at the ready, but everyone had had plenty to drink.
    ‘Hello,’ I said to her.
    ‘Did you enjoy the reception?’
    ‘The