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princess would almost certainly have gone there. There was simply nowhere else. He headed toward it.
    Taking a deep breath, he passed beneath the Nazi flag and entered. Inside, a large, wood-paneled room with twenty or so wooden tables was maybe a third full. A bosomy proprietress, forty-five or fifty, was at the register going through checks, a slightly cross-eyed bleached blonde. She asked Willi what she could get him. Experience had taught when and how his Kripo badge worked to his advantage. Sometimes, such as now, he sensed it better just to hold it in reserve.
    “I’m looking for a friend of mine. A woman. I was wondering if she might have come in here the other night.”
    The crossed eyes gave him a skewed once-over.
    “What are you, an actor from Babelsberg Studios—rehearsing a spy scene? How should I know who is your friend and who isn’t?”
    “She’s about twenty-four. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Wearing a leopard coat.”
    Now the woman laughed. “A leopard coat, you say. Does this look like the kind of establishment where women wear leopard coats?”
    “She might have wandered in here from the S-Bahn station. It’s likely the only place she would have come.”
    “Listen, mister”—her voice grew a little sharper as two men in long wool coats entered—“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but this is a family restaurant. Single women don’t just wander in here, with or without leopard coats. Even from the S-Bahn station.”
    “What’s going on here, Gretel?” one of the men asked. “A troublemaker?”
    “Not exactly.” She made a sour face. “Just bothering me with stupid questions.”
    “What sort of questions?”
    Willi turned to them. Both were in their thirties, very proper looking in ties and hats. Both with silver Party pins stuck on their lapels.
    “I’m looking for a friend. She might have wandered in here Saturday night.”
    “Like the lady said.” One stepped forward with an aggressive smirk, removing his hat. He was an Aryan of the nonblond variety, dark, oiled hair brushed straight back off his forehead, with a mocking smile that revealed an exceptionally large gap between his two front teeth. “This is not the sort of place women come in unescorted. It’s a decent place. For decent Germans.”
    Willi thought he saw a doctor’s smock beneath the man’s coat.
    “Where do you think you are,
mein Herr
?” the fairer-skinned one with black eyes offered with a real sneer. “Perhaps you got out at the wrong S-Bahn stop. The Jew-damm is the other direction.”
    At this, the men and the waitress all burst out laughing.
    “Jew-damm. Ha, ha, ha! Good one. I must remember that, Schumann,” the first man said, delighted, then returned his gaze to Willi, losing the smile. “Go back to your Jew-damm. Enjoy it while you’re able.”
    Willi felt now was the time to call in his reserves.
    He broke out his Kripo badge.
    It did not produce the desired effect.
    The three seemed unsusceptible to the power of the state.
    “You think you can scare us with that?” The dark-haired one laughed, showing his teeth. “Your Jew republic with your Jew constitution. We shit on it!”
    “
Alles in Ordnung,
Josef?” A man emerged from a back door in black boots and full SA uniform, smacking a wood truncheon against a hand.
    Willi calculated he had about thirty seconds to save his skull.
    “I was merely looking for a friend,” he said with the friendliest of smiles. “But since nobody seems to have seen her . . . I’ll be on my way.”
    It broke the tension long enough for him to beat a tactical retreat. No use getting killed for this princess, logic affirmed. A minute later he was boarding the S-Bahn back for Berlin-Center.
    Schumann, one had been called. His friend with the bunny teeth—Josef.
    One way or another he’d have to get back into that friendly little tavern.
    Half an hour later, Berlin-West whirring past his eyes, he wondered, what could have possessed Princess Magdelena