He asked Moll Robbins if she'd prefer another chair. She was sitting in the chair with the broken springs and had sunk considerably into it. She waved him off, eager to hear why he'd asked her to drop by.

"I'm still the chief skeptic in this enterprise."

"I remember your saying."

"Do you remember Glen Selvy? The man who was here the night I first mentioned the Berlin film."

"Yes."

"The man bidding on behalf of a certain someone."

"I remember," she said.

"That certain someone's been in direct contact with me."

"Lloyd Percival."

Lightborne sat back, stroking the side of his jaw.

"You've been active."

"On and off," she said.

"I was surprised when you said you hadn't finished the series."

"I got sidetracked."

"But you're back with it."

"It would seem."

"Then I'm glad I called," he said. "It's my feeling that a journalist on the scene tends to advance whatever is meet and just in a given situation."

"Hip hip."

"Of course my own role must be handled circumspectly. This isn't Lightborne the dealer in erotic junk, outgoing and colorful. This is a source close to the situation. This is a wellplaced source. My name mustn't see print."

"I give the usual assurances."

"This footage is arousing mighty appetites. Let me tell you, I've been turning it in my mind. The utterly compelling force of the man. He wasn't impotent, you know, despite earlier claims to that effect."

"Hitler, you mean."

"He had a remarkable impact on women. They sent him love letters, sex poems, underwear. His motorcades, women hurled their bodies at his car. Like a pop hero. Some modern rock 'n' roller. Women threw themselves beneath the wheels."

"Surface affection," Moll said.

"Girls were constantly offering to yield their virginity to him. We see his speeches, where women fell into states of hysteria. We see collective frenzy. He had hypnotic powers over women. I think this is clear."

"You're suggesting there's some basis."

"The rumors have never specified the old boy," he said.

"You're building a case."

"Think of the value such footage would have. And the man with whom I originally discussed this matter, I recall him clearly stating that I wouldn't be disappointed in the identities of those who appear."

"Dead, I recall your saying."

"This matter is fraught with every kind of pressure. I myself have put certain forces to work. I've also taken action to deflect attention. I feel "more secure now, people knowing there's a journalist in the vicinity."

"How do people know?"

"I think they know."

"You feel they have ways of knowing."

"They know. I think they know."

He turned off one of the two lights in the room. Moll decided her chair was in fact uncomfortable and pushed up out of it, moving to a metal folding chair near the bookcase.

"He had youthful fantasies about a blond girl in Linz," Lightborne said. "There were other blonds later who were more than fantasy. He may have had an eye for blonds. Also an eye for actresses. His niece of course. An all-consuming affair. When you get serious with nieces, this is suggestive of a deep fire in the man." Pause. "He made drawings. He sketched her parts. At close range."

"That showed bad taste."

Lightborne made a worldly gesture.

"Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp and porn."

"But wasn't he in terrible shape at the end? Totally spaced on medication."

"My point exactly," Lightborne said. "I've made that point. He was enfeebled. I think it was his right arm, shaking wildly. They were using leeches for his blood pressure. He'd aged shockingly."

"You concede this is evidence against."

"I 'insist on it," he said. "I'm advancing theories largely for my own delectation. I admit. I'm making noises, merely."

"I never thought of him as a lover."

"Not your type."

"In addition to which I have to say I don't really understand why droves of people would pay money to see some gray old staticky footage of a funny-looking man running around naked, even if he was who he was."

"I've made that point. It's a vital question. _Who cares?_ Yet I'm getting vibrations from all over. People with money and power. Forces are collecting around this thing, jumpy footage or not. You look a little bored, Miss Robbins."

"Not at all," she said. "It's just that I don't see what the appeal is. It's a little distasteful, frankly. Not that I'm above such things, Mr. Lightborne. But, really, all this activity for what?"

"Because it's him. Hitler. The name, the face. All the contradictions and inconsistencies. It would take an hour to list them."

"All great men. We know about great men and their public and private selves."

"Very furtive mind. Many doors locked. Hints, whispers of unnatural sexuality. Hush-hush even today. Women associated with Hitler tended to commit suicide or at least to attempt it. After his death, women all over Germany killed themselves. Suicides unnumbered."

"Are you trying to depress me?"

"The bunker was an interesting mix. You had secretaries, orderlies, SS guards, kitchen staff, so on. There were women brought in off the streets by and for the SS men. You had visitors from military units. There was a drunken revel, a sex thing, in the SS rooms. How many people involved I don't know."

"Maybe that's it. The footage."

"They thought he was dead. They were celebrating. But he didn't do it till later. True, maybe that's it. But I'm holding out hope for better."

"The old boy himself."

"We live in curious times," Lightborne said reflectively.

He thanked her for coming and promised to keep her closely informed. They walked through the darkened gallery toward the door. Moll bumped into a table and Lightborne apologized, asking her to remain there while he turned on a light. She noticed he didn't go for the wall switch but instead walked to a corner of the room to turn on a small lamp, the bulb perhaps twenty-five watts.

"It's getting so I don't like well-lighted rooms, or talking on the telephone. I never had a suspicious nature. Old age, I guess. First signs of deterioration."

"You've got a long way to go, Mr. Lightborne, I would judge."

"First signs."

"We're all a little wary."

He nodded, standing in the dimness. She recalled the first night she'd been here, the room getting progressively darker as he went around turning off lights, giving her clues to Selvy's destination that night.

"Go into a bank, you're filmed," he said. "Go into a department store, you're filmed. Increasingly we see this. Try on a dress in the changing room, someone's watching through a one-way glass. Not only customers, mind you. Employees are watched too, spied on with hidden cameras. Drive your car anywhere. Radar, computer traffic scans. They're looking into the uterus, taking pictures. Everywhere. What circles the earth constantly? Spy satellites, weather balloons, U-2 aircraft. What are they doing? Taking pictures. Putting the whole world on film."

"The camera's everywhere."

"It's true."

"Even in the bunker," she said.

"Very definitely."

"Everybody's on camera."

"I believe that, Miss Robbins."

"Even the people in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery in April 1945.

"Very definitely the people in the bunker."

"You believe that, Mr. Lightborne."

"I have the movie," he said.

He'd moved gradually to the end of the room, about twenty feet from the source of light, standing against a blank wall, suddenly disproportionate in shape, an illusion sustained by his own shadow on the wall behind him. His body seemed tiny. He was all head.

"Have you looked at it?"

He moved toward her a step or two, as though to whisper, a strange gesture considering the space between them.