“He suffers from an upset stomach,” Walter said. “At times so do I.”

“Gas,” Vera said. “Quiet, but telling.”

“At one time he was a devout Catholic,” Walter said. “So was I. He believed that allowing oneself to be sexually aroused by women, who by their nature could not control themselves, was to be avoided before marriage. So did I.”

Jurgen said, “I can’t see Heinrich with a woman.”

As Walter was saying, “Heini’s wife, seven years his senior, gave him a child, a daughter. I’m told he first noticed Marga-who referred to the Führer’s exterminator as ‘my naughty darling’- because of her beautiful blond hair. The woman I married was much younger than I and, unfortunately, quite immature. Honig also had blond hair. My one regret is that she did not provide me with a son before she walked out of my house.” Walter paused. “I saw Honig the other night, the first time in five and a half years.” He said, “She looked the same as I remembered her. Perhaps her hair was more blond.” He stopped and stared into the room at his audience: Jurgen and Vera, Bohdan and Dr. Taylor, Joe Aubrey in an armchair by himself. Walter continued, saying, “Heini believed in unconditional devotion to duty. So do I.” He paused and was thoughtful as he said, “Why did I believe for so long we were identical in every way, one of us an imprint of the other?”

“Because you wanted to believe it,” Jurgen said.

“Because I wanted to believe I have a destiny as meaningful as Heini’s, who has set out to eliminate a race of people from the world by means of Sonderbehandlung, a special treatment, murder in the gas chamber. First in Europe, then comes here and turns his Einsatzgruppen on America, his death squads. They say, now that Heini is head of the SS and the Gestapo, Reich Minister of the Interior, Reich Minister of Home Defense, head of military intelligence, Germany’s chief of police, he must follow the Führer as the next master of the Third Reich. But think about it. Would the Führer in his wisdom choose the most hated man in the world to succeed him? A man so detested he would be rejected even by the Nazi Party? Heini has said people may hate us, but we don’t ask for their love, only that they fear us. He tells his SS, we must discuss the plan for extermination, but never speak of it in public. He said they can look at a thousand corpses in one place, mounds of dead bodies the result of their work, and know they remain good fellows. Heini is responsible for the murder of Jews, Romas, priests, homosexuals, Communists, ordinary people, in numbers estimated to exceed, easily, ten million.”

Vera and Jurgen watched him, not saying a word.

“I cannot,” Walter said, “compare my destiny to Heini’s. I have in mind the extermination of only one man.”

He turned to the dining table and began looking through pages from magazines and sheets of notepaper.

“Himmler,” Vera said.

“You’re joking.”

“Walter is Himmler’s ghost double, his doppelganger. When someone’s doppelganger appears it means the someone he looks like is going to die. It happened with my husband, Fadey. The day I learned he went down with his ship, Bo was trying on one of Fadey’s suits, very loose on him. He put on Fadey’s hat the way Fadey wore it and was impersonating him, the gruff way he spoke.”

“And Fadey walked in.”

“Not this time. Fadey never saw Bo mimic him, but I think Bo was still his doppelganger.”

Jurgen nodded toward the dining room and Vera turned her head to see Walter in his black suit and pince-nez ready to continue.

“I have photographs and my notes here, and a map you can look at later if you want. What I intend to do is assassinate the president of the United States-”

“Frank D. Rosenfeld,” Joe Aubrey said and started laughing, putting it on. He said, “Walter, how you gonna do it, sneak in the White House?”

“The Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia,” Walter said. “I have learned Roosevelt has been there since March thirtieth, resting, restoring his energy. I was counting on him remaining in Warm Springs through the twentieth of this month, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, but I’m going to move the date of the assassination to the thirteenth. Once I’m successful, the name Walter Schoen will have a place in American history to rival that of John Wilkes Booth.”

Jurgen said, “Who’s John Wilkes Booth?”

“And will be remembered longer,” Walter said, “than the name of the man who murdered ten million. I say this not in a boastful way.” Walter paused and said, “What was his name again?” Walter smiled and turned it off.

“Who was the one he’ll be as well known as?”

“Booth,” Vera said. “He shot Abraham Lincoln. Ask Walter how he’s going to do it.”

Joe Aubrey was already saying to Walter, “How you gonna get near him with Secret Service and marines all over the place? You know Rosenfeld’s been going there for twenty years? See if that warm mineral water-why they call it Warm Springs-always eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit day or night. See if it’ll help his poliomy’litis ease up. You know he wears steel braces on his legs, has ’em painted black, or he wouldn’t be able to stand up, like he does from the ass end of a train, the observation car. There’s a lot of people go down there for the water. I been to the springs, it isn’t fifty miles from Griffin, up on Pine Mountain.”

He said to Walter, “Even before you told me, I had an idea you were after Rosenfeld. You come visit and get me to fly down there. All this time you’re scouting the area.”

He said to the others, “You can get in trouble you fly over the Little White House. They warn you, get out of here. You don’t leave fast I’m told they shoot you down.”

Joe Aubrey turned to Walter again. “How you gonna do it, buddy, show up in an iron lung? You don’t halt when they tell you, you’ll hear machine-gun rounds dingin’ off your breather. Walter, tell us how you plan to assassinate the man.”

“I’m going to rent a small plane,” Walter said, “fill it with dynamite, light the fuse, dive straight down like a Stuka into the Little White House and blow it up.”

No one in the room spoke.

Jurgen and Vera were sitting up now. Jurgen said to her, “He’s going to kill himself.”

Vera raised her voice. “Walter, why do you wish to end your life?”

“It’s my gift to the Führer.”

“Please, what has the Führer done for you?”

Joe Aubrey said, “I taught Walter to fly in my Cessna after he pestered me to death. Now he tells us he wants to be the only Ger-man-American kamikaze pilot in World War Two, so people will remember him, Walter the Assassin. Walter, you ever hear about the Jap kamikaze pilot that survived? Chicken Nakamura?”

Vera said to Jurgen, “What’s today, the eleventh,” and to Walter, “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll fly down with Joe. I’m counting on my friend to get me the dynamite and rent a plane, since I don’t have a license.”

Vera got up from the sofa and went to Walter, wanting to touch him. She put her hand on his shoulder. Walter staring at her through his pince-nez, submissive, sad? Perhaps confused. She said, "Walter, if you could fly your plane to Moscow and use it to kill the Evil Dwarf, ahhhh, it would be a gift for humanity. The world would rejoice, even the Bolsheviks. Trust me, Walter, it’s true. But to kill the president of the United States, now, the war in its final, what, weeks? What would be the good of it?”

“I told you,” Walter said, “it’s my gift to the Führer.”

“You want him to show his appreciation?”

“It isn’t necessary.”

“Give you the Knight’s Cross posthumously. Or to a member of your family, your sister who never speaks?”

“Knowing I’ve served the Führer will be enough,” Walter said.

“But will Adolf appreciate your gift, the Red Army about to descend on him? What happens to your meat business, your slaughterhouse?”