Willi walked out of the church foyer.
“I have the feeling I should come with you, von Wachtstein,” Karl said. “To make sure you don’t run off at the mouth.”
“Do what you think you have to do,” Peter said, and walked quickly to catch up with Willi.
After a moment, Boltitz trotted after them.
The table where they had been sitting was, surprisingly, still available. As soon as they had taken seats, the waiter reappeared.
“A bottle of your finest schnapps, Herr Ober,” Willi ordered. “Actually, a bottle of your best cognac would be better.”
“Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.”
“The old man hated schnapps,” Willi said. “But he did like his cognac.”
Peter and Karl didn’t reply.
“Did you know him, U-boat?” Willi asked.
“I did not have that privilege, Herr Hauptmann,” Karl said.
“I thought maybe you did,” Willi said. “Since you both work for Canaris. And if you’re going to keep calling me ‘Herr Hauptmann,’ take a walk.”
“Are you going to stop calling me ‘U-boat’?” Karl asked.
Willi considered the question for a moment. “Probably not,” he said with a smile. “I have a tendency to name people, don’t I, Hansel? And U-boat seems to fit you, U-boat.”
Willi reached in his trousers pocket and came out with a stuffed and well-worn wallet. He searched through it, came out with a photograph, and handed it to Boltitz.
“The late Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner,” Willi said.
Karl looked at it for a long moment, then handed it back.
“When did it happen?” Willi asked.
“Nineteen April,” Peter said, “about quarter to ten in the morning.”
He looked at Karl defiantly, but Karl said nothing.
The waiter delivered a bottle of Martel cognac and three brandy snifters, and began to pour as Willi returned his father’s photograph to his wallet.
“I’ll be damned,” Willi said. “Here’s another moment in time captured on film.”
He took another photograph from his wallet and laid it on the table.
It showed Leutnant Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and Leutnant Wilhelm Johannes Grüner, both wearing black leather flight jackets, onto which were pinned second lieutenant’s insignia and Iron Crosses. They were standing under the engine nacelle of a Messerschmitt ME-109, holding between them the bull’s-eye fuselage insignia torn from a shot-down Spitfire.
“A momentous occasion, Hansel,” he said. “The day before we were enlisted swine, and here we are as commissioned officers.”
“I remember,” Peter said. “France. Calais, I think. Or maybe Cherbourg. Nineteen-forty.”
Did I shoot that Spit down? Peter wondered. Or did Willi? Or was that piece of fuselage fabric just one of the half dozen around the officers’ mess and we picked it up to have the photo taken?
“The Old Man was more pleased to see that goddamn officer’s pin on my epaulet than he was with the Iron Cross.”
“Mine, too,” Peter said. “It really bothered him when he had to say, ‘my son, the sergeant.’”
Willi chuckled. “You’re an academy man, right, U-boat?” Willi challenged. “You never served as an enlisted swine?”