the barrel, and I would have had to work the slide to put one up the spout and make it ready to fire. It probably wouldn't have made any difference anyway. No sooner was it in my fist than the man with the stick caught up with me and hit my wrist with it. For a moment I thought he'd broken my arm. The little gun clattered harmlessly onto the road and I almost went down with it, such was the pain in my forearm. Fortunately I have two arms, and the other drove my elbow back into his stomach. It was a hard, solid blow and sufficiently well delivered to knock some of my bowler-hatted attacker's breath from his body. I smelled it whistle past my ear, but there wasn't nearly enough of it to put him down on the ground.
The other two were on me by now. I lifted my paws, squared up to them, jabbed hard into the face of one and connected a decent right hook with the chin of the other. I felt his head shift against my knuckles like a balloon on a stick and ducked a fist the size of a small Alp. But it was no use. The walking stick hit me hard across the shoulders, and my hands dropped like a drummer's arms. One hauled my jacket down over my shoulders so that my arms were pinned by my sides, and then another delivered a punch to my stomach that scraped against my backbone and left me on my knees, throwing up the remains of my cocktail-onion dinner onto the little Beretta.
'Aw, look at his little gun,' said one of my new friends, and he kicked it away, just in case I felt stupid enough to try to pick it up. I didn't.
'Get him on his feet,' said the one with the bowler.
The biggest one grabbed me by my coat collar and hauled me up to a position that only vaguely resembled standing. I hung from his grip for a moment, like a man who had dropped his change, my hat slipping slowly off the top of my head. A big car drew up in a squeal of tires. Someone thoughtfully caught my hat as, finally, it tipped off my head. Then the one holding my collar tucked his fingers under my belt and shifted me toward the curbside. There seemed little point in struggling. They knew what they were doing. They'd done it many times before, you could tell. They were a neat little triangle around me now. One of them opening the car door and throwing my hat onto the backseat, one of them handling me like a sack of potatoes, and one of them with the stick in his hand, in case I changed my mind about going to the picnic with them all. Up close they looked and smelled like something out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch--my own pale, compliant, sweating face surrounded with a triad of stupidity, bestiality, and hate. Broken noses. Gap teeth. Leering eyes. Five-o'clock shadows. Beery breath. Nicotine fingers. Belligerent chins. And yet more beery breath. They'd had quite a few before keeping their appointment with me. It was like being kidnapped by a Bavarian brewers' guild.
'Better cuff him,' said the bowler hat. 'Just in case he tries anything.'
'If he does, I'll tap him with this,' said one, producing a blackjack.
'Cuff him all the same,' said the bowler hat.
The big one holding me by the belt and collar let go for a moment. That was the moment I ordered myself to escape. The only trouble was, my legs were not obeying orders. They felt like they belonged to someone who hadn't walked in several weeks. Besides, I would just have been sapped. I've been sapped before and my head didn't care for it. So, politely, I let the big one gather my hands in his mitts and snap some iron around my wrists. Then he lifted me up a bit, grabbed my belt again, and launched me like a human cannonball.
My hat and the car seat broke my fall. As the big one got into the car behind me, the door on the other side opened in front of my face and the ape with the blackjack put his tire-size hip beside my head and barged me into the middle. It wasn't the kind of sandwich I liked. The one with the bowler got into the front seat and then we were off.
'Where are we going?' I heard myself croak.
'Never mind,' said the one holding the blackjack, and crushed my hat on top of my face. I let it stay there, preferring the sweet, hair-oil smell of my hat to their brewery breath and the stink of something fried that hung on their clothes. I liked the smell on my hatband. And for the first time I got to understand why a small child carries a little blanket around, and why it's called a comforter. The smell in my hat reminded me of the normal man I'd been a few minutes before and whom I hoped to be again when these thugs were finished with me. It wasn't exactly Proust's madeleine, but maybe something close.
We drove southeast. I knew that because the car had been pointing east, up Maximilianstrasse, when I was pushed into it. And soon after we drove off, we crossed the Maximilian Bridge, and turned right. The journey was over a little sooner than I had expected. We drove into a garage or a warehouse. A shutter that came up in front of us came down behind us. I didn't need my eyes to know approximately where we were. The sweet-and-sour smell of mashed hops coming from three of Munich's largest breweries was as much of a city landmark as the Bavaria statue in the Theresa Meadow. Even through the felt of my hat it was as strong and pungent as a walk across a newly fertilized field.
Car doors opened. My hat was swept off my face and I was half pushed, half pulled out of the car. The three from the Forum had become four in the car and there were another two waiting for us in a semi-derelict warehouse that was littered with broken pallets, beer barrels, and crates of empty bottles. In one corner was a motorcycle and sidecar. A truck was parked in front of the car. Above my head was a glass roof, only most of the glass was under my feet. It cracked like ice on a frozen lake as I was frog-marched toward a man, neater than the others, with smaller hands, smaller feet, and a small mustache. I just hoped his brain was large enough to know when I was telling the truth. My stomach still felt like it was sticking to my backbone.
The smaller man was wearing a gray Trachten jacket with hunter green lapels and matching oak-leaf-shaped pockets, cuffs, and elbows. His trousers were gray flannel, his shoes were brown, and he looked like the Fuhrer ready to make a night of it at Berchtesgaden. His voice was soft and civilized, which might have made a pleasant change but for the fact that experience has taught me how it's usually the quiet ones who are the worst sadists of all--especially in Germany. Landsberg Prison was full of quiet-spoken, civilized types like the man wearing the Trachten jacket. 'You're a lucky man, Herr Gunther,' he said.
'That's how I feel about it, too,' I said.
'You really were in the SS, weren't you?'
'I try not to brag about it,' I said.
He stood perfectly still, almost to attention, his arms by his side, as if he had been addressing a parade. He had a senior SS officer's manner and bearing and a senior SS officer's eyes and way of speaking. A tyrant, like Heydrich, or Himmler--one of those borderline psychopaths who used to command police battalions in the far-flung corners of the greater German Reich. Not the kind of man to be flippant with, I told myself. A real Nazi. The kind of man I hated, especially now that we were supposed to be rid of them.
'Yes, we checked you out,' he said. 'Against our battalion lists. We have lists of former SS men, you know, and you are on it. Which is why I say that you are very fortunate.'
'I could tell,' I said. 'I've been getting a strong feeling of belonging ever since you boys picked me up.'
All those years I had kept my mouth shut and said nothing, like everyone else. Perhaps it was the strong smell of beer and their Nazi manners, but suddenly I remembered some SA men coming into a bar and beating up a Jew and me going outside and leaving them to it. It must have been 1934. I should have said something then. And now that I knew they weren't going to kill me, suddenly I wanted to make up for that. I wanted to tell this little Nazi martinet what I really thought of him and his kind.
'I wouldn't make light of it, Herr Gunther,' he said gently. 'The only reason you're alive now is that you're on that list.'
'I'm very glad to hear it, Herr General.'
He flinched. 'You know me?'
'No, but I know your manners,' I said. 'The quiet way you expect to be obeyed. That absolute sense of chosen race superiority. I suppose that's not so very surprising given the caliber of men you have working for you. But that was always the way with the SS general staff, wasn't it?' I looked with distaste at the men who had brought me there. 'Find some feeble-minded sadists to carry out the dirty work, or better still, someone from a different race altogether. A Latvian, a Ukrainian, a Romanian, even a Frenchman.'
'We're all Germans here, Herr Gunther,' said the little general. 'All of us. All old comrades. Even you. Which makes your recent behavior all the more inexcusable.'
'What did I do? Forget to polish my knuckle-duster?'
'You should know better than to go around asking questions about the Web and the Comradeship. Not all of us have so little to hide as you, Herr Gunther. There are some of us who could be facing death sentences.'
'In the present company, I find that all too easy to believe.'
'Your impertinence does you and our organization no credit,' he said, almost sadly. ''My honor is my loyalty.'
