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went.”
    “Gunther—” Willi exerted the utmost effort to control himself. “I can’t be worried about this now.”
    “But don’t you think I should at least—”
    Back in the war, Willi recalled, when they’d penetrated enemy minefields, there was only one way to make it. One foot in front of the other, eyes locked straight ahead, exactly on the spot the next foot had to step. Anything to your left or right was superfluous, a potentially fatal distraction. Even your best friend blowing up.
    “You are to drop this matter immediately, Gunther, do you hear me!”
    The boy looked at him, astonished. It was the first time since they’d been working together Willi had raised his voice.
    “You are to find where Gina Mancuso lived, and where she worked, and whom she knew in Berlin. And nothing else.”
    Willi found Konstantin Kaparov a distraught and broken man, weeping in his hotel suite at the Adlon. He had dropped out of the Six-Day Bicycle Race, his team having hopelessly fallen behind. “I no could concentrate. I think only my Magdelena.” Willi wished he could offer some encouraging news, but all he had were questions. This time, at least, Kaparov was in a better state to answer.
    “Last time I forget to tell . . . before we go dinner, Magdelena went to doctor . . . for ankle. Very swollen.”
    “You went with her?”
    “Yes. Doctor say only sprain. No broke. Wrap in bandage. Give pills. We leave.”
    “This doctor’s name?”
    “This I am not remembering. But hotel recommend.”
    “What about the name of the club you say you dined in? Do you remember that now?”
    “I find matchbox. Was call Klub Hell.”
    Hell. Willi was familiar with it. An expensive tourist trap in the guise of one of Berlin’s great halls of decadence. Naughty floor show. Cabaret acts.
    “Also I forget last time to say. Was hypnotist performing at Klub. During act he wants volunteers for stage. Magdelena go up. Always she like silly things. And attention. Love attention.”
    “Was he able to hypnotize her?” Willi couldn’t help remembering what Rudy the doorman had said.
    “Oh, yes. Yes. Very funny. I laughing so hard. Magdelena, he has her speaking Chinese!”
    Willi knew a bit about hypnosis from his cousin Kurt, a doctor at the prestigious Berlin Center for Psychoanalysis. Kurt had been a student of Sigmund Freud himself down in Vienna and employed hypnosis in his work. He loathed shysters who used it for crude entertainment.
    “Do you recall this hypnotist’s name?”
    “The Great . . . something.”
    “The Great Gustave?”
    “Yes!”
    Most of all Kurt hated the Great Gustave, Berlin’s most famous psychic, the “King of Mystics,” who had recently made headlines—and himself preposterous in many people’s eyes—by predicting a complete Nazi takeover in 1933.
    “How was the princess after this hypnotic act?”
    “Absolutely normal,” the husband insisted. “Until, like I say, several hours later, when she puts on coat to get cigarettes.”
    Willi felt a ray of hope. So, the Bulgarian princess had been hypnotized by this Great Gustave the night she disappeared.
    Downstairs, Willi obtained the name of the doctor the princess had been referred to: one Hermann Meckel, orthopedic specialist, with an office several blocks down the Unter den Linden. A chill of astonishment flashed through him when he saw Meckel’s name on Gunther’s list of top orthopedic surgeons. Another coincidence? Was it possible? Twice now something had tied the missing princess to the Mermaid.
    The doctor’s office was extremely swank: crystal chandeliers, Persian rugs. Mahogany furnishings. Unfortunately, according to his young, attractive receptionist, he was not in this afternoon. Tuesdays he devoted to volunteer work down at the
Klinik
.
    “I see. And what
Klinik
would that be?”
    “The SA Klinik. Down by Spittlemarkt.”
    “I see,” Willi said.
    So the fancy physician was a Nazi, too.
    Over lunch in the police cafeteria,