He picked up one of the teddy bears and lifted it to his nose, like a hound trying to raise a scent. “It’s curious,” he said. “The way you can smell them on their toys. It’s so evocative of them. Kind of like Proust, really.”

I nodded. I’d heard a lot about Proust. One day I was going to have to find an excuse not to read him.

“I know what Montalban thinks,” he said. “He thinks Fabienne is already dead.” Von Bader shook his head. “I just don’t believe that.”

“What makes you think not, Baron?”

“You would call it a hunch, I suppose. Easier to spell than intuition. But that’s how it is. If she was dead, I’m quite sure we would have heard something by now. Someone would have found her. I’m certain of it.” He shook his head. “Since you were once a famous detective with the homicide police in Berlin, I imagine Montalban’s asking you to work on the assumption that she’s dead. Well, I’m asking you to assume the opposite. To assume that perhaps someone-someone German, yes, I think that must be true-is hiding her. Or keeping her against her will.”

I opened another drawer. “Why would someone want to do that? Do you have enemies, Herr Baron?”

“I’m a banker, Herr Hausner. And as it happens, a damned important one. It might surprise you but bankers do make enemies, yes. Money or the getting of money always brings enemies. There’s that. And then there’s what I did during the war to consider. During the war, I worked for the Abwehr. German military intelligence. Myself and a group of other German-Argentine bankers helped to bankroll the war effort on this side of the Atlantic. We funded a number of German agents in the United States. Without success, I’m sorry to say. Several of our most prominent agents were caught by the FBI and executed. They were betrayed, but I’m not sure by whom.”

“Could someone blame you for that?”

“I don’t see how. I had no operational involvement. I was just a money man.”

Von Bader was making eye contact with me now. Plenty of it.

“I’m not sure how relevant any of this is to my daughter’s disappearance, Herr Hausner. But there were five of us. Bankers funding the Nazis in Argentina. Ludwig Freude, Richard Staudt, Heinrich Dorge, Richard von Leute, and me. And I only mention this because late last year Dr. Dorge was found dead on a street here in Buenos Aires. He’d been murdered. Heinrich was formerly an aide to Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. I take it you’ve heard of him.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I said. Schacht had been the minister of economics and then president of the Reichsbank. In 1946, he had been tried for war crimes at Nuremberg and acquitted.

“I’m telling you all this so you’ll know two things in particular. One is that it’s perfectly possible my previous life has caught up with me in some-some unfathomable way. I’ve received no threats. Nothing. The other thing is that I’m a very rich man, Herr Hausner. And I want you to take me seriously when I say that if you find my daughter, alive, and bring about her safe return, I’ll give you a reward of two million pesos, payable in whatever currency and whatever country you choose. That’s about fifty thousand dollars, Herr Hausner.”

“That’s a lot of money, Herr Baron.”

“My daughter’s life is worth at least that much to me. More. Much more. But that’s my business. Your business is to try to collect that two million pesos.”

I nodded thoughtfully. I guess it must have looked like I was weighing things up. That’s the trouble with me. I’m coin-operated. I start thinking when people offer me money. I start thinking a lot more when it’s a lot of money.

“Do you have any children, Herr Hausner?”

“No, sir.”

“If you did you would know that money’s not that important next to the life of someone you love.”

“I’m obliged to take your word for that, sir.”

“You’re not obliged to take my word for it at all. I’ll have my lawyers draw up a letter of agreement regarding the reward.”

It wasn’t what I’d meant, but I didn’t contradict him. Instead I took a last look around the room.

“What happened to the bird in the cage?”

“The bird?”

“In the cage.” I pointed at the pagoda-sized cage on the tall table.

Von Bader looked at the cage almost as if he had never looked at it before. “Oh, that. It died.”

“Was she upset about it?”

“Yes, of course she was. But I don’t see how her disappearance could have anything to do with a bird.”

I shrugged.

“I have a fourteen-year-old daughter, Herr Hausner. You don’t. As a result, and with all due respect, I think I can honestly say I know more about fourteen-year-old girls than you do.”

“Did she bury it in the garden?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Perhaps your wife does.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t ask her about it. She’s upset enough about things as it is. My wife holds herself responsible for the death of the bird. And she’s already looking around for reasons to blame herself for our daughter’s disappearance. Any implied suggestion that these two events might be connected would only add to the sense of guilt she’s feeling about Fabienne. I’m sure you understand.”

That might just have been true. And maybe it wasn’t. But out of respect for his two million pesos I was prepared to let the bird go. Sometimes, to take hold of the money, you have to let go of the bird. That’s what they call politics.

We returned to the sitting room, where the baroness had started crying again. I’ve made a close study of women crying. In my line of work it comes with the truncheon and the handcuffs. On the eastern front, in 1941, I saw women who could have won Olympic gold medals for crying. Sherlock Holmes used to study cigar ash and wrote a monograph on the subject. I knew about crying. I knew that when a woman is crying it doesn’t pay to let her get too close to your shoulder. It can cost you a clean shirt. Tears are, however, sacred, and you violate their sanctity at your peril. We left her to get on with it.

AFTER WE LEFT the von Bader house, I insisted the colonel and I go to Recoleta Cemetery. We were, after all, very close. I wanted to see the place Fabienne had been visiting when she disappeared.

Like the Viennese, rich portenos take death very seriously. Enough to spend large sums of money on expensive tombs and mausolea. But Recoleta was the only cemetery I’d ever been where there weren’t any graves. We went through a Greek-style entrance into what was a little city of marble. Many of the mausolea were classically designed and looked almost habitable. Walking around the neat and parallel stone streets was like touring some ancient Roman town swept clean of its human inhabitants by a cataclysmic natural disaster. Looking up at the bright blue sky, I half expected to see the smoking crater of a volcano. It was hard to imagine a fourteen-year-old girl coming to such a place. The few living people we saw were old and gray. I expect they had the same thought about me and the colonel.

We got back in the car and headed for the Casa Rosada. It was a while since I’d driven a car. Not that anyone would have noticed. I had seen worse drivers than portenos, but only in Ben-Hur. Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman would have felt quite at home on the streets of Buenos Aires.

“Nice and handy for the president to have his secret police headquartered in the Casa Rosada,” I said, catching sight of the distinctive pink building again.

“It has some advantages. Incidentally, you’ve already seen the boss. The youngish man in the pinstripe suit who was with us when you met Peron? That’s him. Rodolfo Freude. He’s never very far away from the president.”

“Freude. Von Bader mentioned a banker called Ludwig Freude. Any relation?”

“Rodolfo’s father.”

“Is that how he got the job?”

“It’s a long story, but yes, in effect.”