She kept talking, Jurgen listening.

“I told you the siege began in June 1941? My husband Fadey became a blockade runner like Rhett Butler. Slip out of Odessa and cross to Turkey, neutral at that time, and return with guns and food supplies. Turkish wine also, I couldn’t drink. Fadey was with elements of the Soviet fleet. Stukas dove on them and sank two destroyers, Bezuprechnyy and Besposhachadnyy, also a tugboat and Fadey’s ship. He put out to sea and I never saw him again, my husband, taken from my life.”

Jurgen waited a few moments.

“The Germans killed your husband?”

“Or was it a Soviet gunboat sunk his ship?”

“I was told your husband was a Polish cavalry officer, killed in action.”

“That’s the story they gave me. I arrive in Detroit the widow of a Polish count no less, who met his end heroically, fighting tanks with horses. I come with social position, one that’s more acceptable than the widow of a Black Sea gunrunner. I asked at the spy school if the count knew what he was doing. They wouldn’t say. I asked if there was such a person. They still wouldn’t tell me. On my passport I’m Vera Mezwa Radzykewycz, Countess. Do I look royal?”

“Indeed,” Jurgen said. “But the widow of a gunrunner isn’t a bad story. It could have attracted support.”

“I told you I was contacted in Budapest by Sally D’Handt, a turncoat Belgian who became a spy for the Germans. Now she recruits for military intelligence, gathers lost souls into the Abwehr. You’ve heard of Sally? She’s famous.” Jurgen shook his head as Vera said, “Blond hair like Veronica Lake’s, very theatrical. She told me with great solemnity it was a Soviet gunboat that sank my husband’s ship. She said they were ordered to because the repulsive Josef Stalin didn’t trust anyone.”

“Did you believe that?”

“The Soviets were always at us. Sally asked if I had ever been to America. Yes, when I was a girl. Would I like to go back now, during the war? I said I would love to. Now the turncoat Belgian cunt actually made tears come to her eyes, she’s so moved. Close to crying as she tries to smile to show her joy that I agree to come here. It’s the look Joan Fontaine gives Cary Grant in Suspicion when she realizes he loves her. Or, the look that says the moment the camera stops rolling she and Cary will be in her dressing room fucking each other’s brains out. It’s that kind of look on Miss Gestapo’s face as she murmurs, ‘Vera, you are exactly the woman we need to gather intelligence from the very arsenal of our enemy, the city of Detroit.’ Or did she say, ‘the so-called Arsenal of Democracy’? Now I’m not sure.”

Vera shrugged in her loose sweater. Now she decided to have another cigarette.

“From Budapest I came to Detroit by way of Canada. I took the place of an agent who turned in her own spy ring once the FBI began picking on her, Grace Buchanan-Dineen. She called herself ‘Grahs’ and was the only agent I know of, besides Ernest Frederick Lehmitz, who used invisible ink in messages to her contacts. Lehmitz reported on ships leaving New York for Europe until he was caught and sent to prison.”

Jurgen said, “Was this Grahs’s house?”

Vera smiled. “That would be funny, wouldn’t it? The German spy house. No, Grahs lived downtown, on the river. I was given the house on a lease that runs until June of this year-”

“You have only two months?”

“Wait. I was given a five-thousand-dollar bank account and a thousand a month to cover expenses.”

“That sounds rather generous.”

“Last year it was reduced to five hundred a month. This year the checks have stopped coming, the last one was in February.”

Jurgen took a cigarette from the dish. Vera reached toward him snapping her lighter.

“You’re out of funds?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What will you do?”

She looked at Bohdan. “We talk about it.”

“Constantly,” Bo said, pouring a vodka. “I tell Vera to become a rich man’s concubine and I’ll be the eunuch.”

“You’re not German,” Jurgen said to her. “Why are you working for German Intelligence?”

“She hates Russians,” Bo said.

“I dislike them. The only part of this war I don’t mind,” Vera said to Jurgen, “you and the fucking Russians killing each other. I’ll tell you something. In 1940, ’41, all the young grenadiers in newsreels looked sexy to me. You were attractive, proud of yourselves, you had ideals you believed in. You sang, you marched, you sang while you marched. I remember thinking this was very bad light opera. But the upbeat mood of it was catching. I liked the purity of it, a new Germany full of healthy young men and women with Nordic features and platinum hair. In that crowd I knew I’d stand out like a film star. But, did I want to trade one police state, Stalin’s, for another? Have to be so careful of what I say? How can I look at the super-Nazis goose-stepping down the street and not think them ludicrous? I thought, Well, the Germans are a strong, self-willed people, they won’t stand for Adolf and his gang too long, having the Gestapo in their lives. After the war it will change back to the way it was.”

“What about the killing of Jews,” Jurgen said, “do the people accept it?”

“They turn their heads.”

“But they know about the death camps.”

“They can only wait until Germany is beaten and Adolf is tried before a world court. Everyone knows the end is coming. I hear: we can’t win. We should settle for peace now and try it again in ten years. I hear: America will demand unconditional surrender. Germany will have to give up the land it stole, the countries. Give up everything, or the Russians will be turned loose on them.”

Jurgen was shaking his head. “We won’t have a choice.”

“I try to rationalize,” Vera said, “how can I work for this war-loving, Jew-baiting Führer? I see a story about Henry Ford and learn he’s critical of Jews. He warns of the international Jewish conspiracy, which I take to mean communism, what else. We know he’s opinionated. Henry Ford believes sugar on grapefruit causes arthritis. But in his factory he’s a genius. Why is he so against Jews, as a race? I think he resents Jews because they tend to be smart. He knows that some of them, like Albert Einstein, are even smarter than he is. He won’t admit it so he condemns all of them as a race.”

“I read about Ford,” Jurgen said, “before the war and was quite surprised.”

“My point is, there are a variety of prejudices against Jews. Henry Ford was a pacifist while America was neutral,” Vera said. “He refused to build aircraft engines for England. Two years later he’s producing an entire four-engine bomber, a Liberator, every hour of the working day. It’s what they’re doing at Willow Run, putting together more than one hundred thousand different parts to make a bomber. To make a Ford sedan took only fifteen thousand parts. That’s the kind of information I store in my poor brain. The Willow Run plant is more than a half mile long. It’s put together with twenty-five thousand tons of structural steel. Ninety thousand people have jobs in that one plant. At Chrysler, on the other side of Detroit, they make tanks by the thousands. Packard and Studebaker make engines for planes, and Hudson makes antiaircraft guns to shoot down the other side’s planes. Nash does engines and propellers and General Motors makes some of everything America needs to make war. They can produce three million steel helmets”-Vera snapped her fingers-“like that, at a cost of seven cents each.”

“Now we have to admit,” Jurgen said, “we didn’t come close to judging them correctly, as an opponent.”

“Your Führer was too busy strutting before the world to notice,” Vera said. “Do you know what I’ve been doing, what my contacts used to ask for? They wanted the names and locations of companies that produced light metals. They believed if we could destroy all the aluminum plants in America they wouldn’t be able to produce bombers. They wanted me to stop the Allies from bombing Germany. They’re going crazy over it, bombs dropping on them twice a day. Abwehr Two are the saboteurs. They were told in directives, ‘For God’s sake, cut the fucking source of power to the plants. Turn them dark, quick.’”