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Gutterer pushed back his chair and stood up; he was shorter than me by a head, but walked like he was a meter taller. “Come with us, Miss Ballack. You can help make up an audience for the captain.”
    We walked toward the door of the vast, uncultivated acreage he called an office.
    “Is that wise?” I asked. “After all, my speech—there are some details about the murders committed by Gormann that might be unpleasant for a lady to hear.”
    “That’s very gallant, I’m sure, but it’s a little late to be thinking about sparing poor Miss Ballack’s feelings, Captain. After all, it was she who typed your speech, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes, I suppose so.” I looked at Gutterer’s secretary as we walked. “I’m sorry you had to read some of that stuff, Miss Ballack. I’m a little old-fashioned that way. I still think murder is a subject best left to murderers.”
    “And the police, of course,” said Gutterer without turning around.
    I thought it best to let that one go. The very idea of policemen who’d killed more people than any lust murderer I’d ever come across was as challenging as watching a hopped-up Achilles failing to overtake the world’s slowest tortoise.
    “Oh, that’s all right,” said Miss Ballack. “But those poor girls.” She glanced at Gutterer for just long enough for me to know that her next remark was aimed right between her boss’s shoulder blades. “It strikes me that murder is a little like winning the German State Lottery. It always seems to happen to the wrong people.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    “Where are you going to make this speech, anyway?” asked Gutterer.
    “There’s a villa in Wannsee that the SS use as a guesthouse. It’s close to the IKPK.”
    “Yes, I know it. Heydrich invited me to a breakfast meeting he held there in January. But I couldn’t go, for some reason. Why was that, Miss Ballack? I forget.”
    “That’s the conference that was supposed to be held back in December, sir,” she said. “At the IKPK. You couldn’t go because of what happened at Pearl Harbor. And there was already something in the diary for the date they supplied in January.”
    “You see how well she looks after me, Captain.”
    “I can see a lot of things if I put my mind to it. That’s my trouble.”
    We went along the corridor to a handsomely appointed cinema theater with seats for two hundred. It had little chandeliers on the walls, elegant moldings near the ceiling, plenty of tall windows with silk curtains, and a strong smell of fresh paint. As well as the screen there was a Telefunken radio as big as a barrel, two loudspeakers, and so many stations to choose from they looked like a list of lagers in a beer garden.
    “Nice room,” I said. “A bit too nice for Mickey Mouse, I’d have thought.”
    “We do not show Mickey Mouse films in here,” said Gutterer. “Although it would certainly interest you to know that the leader loves Mickey Mouse. Indeed, I don’t think he would mind me telling you that Dr. Goebbels once gave the leader eighteen Mickey Mouse films as a Christmas present.”
    “It certainly beats the pair of socks I got.”
    Gutterer glanced around the cinema theater proudly.
    “But it is a wonderful space, as you say. Which reminds me. Tip number one. Try to acquaint yourself with the room where you’re to make your speech, so that you will feel comfortable there. That’s a trick I learned from the leader himself.”
    “Is that so?”
    “You know, if I’d thought about it, we could have filmed this,” said Gutterer, giggling stupidly, “as a sort of training film for how not to be a public speaker.”
    I smiled, took a long hit on another cigarette, and blew some smoke his way, although I would have much preferred a hot round from a tank gun.
    “Hey, Professor? I know I’m just a stupid cop but I think I’ve got a good idea. How about giving me an even chance to succeed before I fall flat on my face? After all, you said yourself, I’ve