“If he wants to get back into business for himself, I’m the best hope he has,” David Goldfarb said.

“I’ll tell him you said so,” Monique answered. “He will know better than I how far to trust you.”

Goldfarb paid for lunch with crisp new Reichsmarks. He stayed even more thoroughly a gentleman than Dieter Kuhn had, and seemed to have to remember to wave as he rode off on his bicycle. Unlike the SS man, he wore a wedding band, but experience had taught Monique how little the lack of one had to do with anything.

Once she’d got back to her block of flats, she sighed as she lugged her bicycle upstairs. Maybe, just maybe, she could get some work done. But when she opened the apartment door, she let out a gasp. Dieter Kuhn was sitting on the sofa.

“Bonjour, Monique,” he said with a pleasant smile. “Now, what did the damned kike have to tell you?”

David Goldfarb was astonished to discover how much he liked Marseille. He liked the weather, he loved the food, and the people-even the Germans-were nicer to him than he’d expected. What the Germans would have done to him had he been one of theirs rather than one of the Queen’s was a question on which he preferred not to dwell.

He hadn’t lived in such luxury as at Le Petit Nice before. It wasn’t even his money. That made him spend it less recklessly, not more, as it might have with a lot of men. He didn’t need to be extravagant to have a good time, and so he wasn’t.

Three days after he’d had lunch with Monique Dutourd-who was, without a doubt, the most interesting professor he’d ever met-the telephone in his room rang as he was trying not to cut his throat while shaving. “Hello?” he said, getting shaving soap on the handset as he held it to his mouth.

A man spoke in the language of the Race: “I greet you. Meet me tomorrow at midday behind the old synagogue. Do you understand? Is it agreed?”

“It shall be done,” Goldfarb said, and only then, “Dutourd?” He got no answer; the line was dead.

Maybe it was a trap. In fact, the odds were depressingly good it was a trap. That had nothing to do with anything. David had to stick his head into it. If he went home without doing whatever he could to get the ginger dealer out from under the Germans’ muscular thumbs, his family would regret it. Group Captain Roundbush hadn’t said so in so many words, but he hadn’t needed to, either.

With a camera slung around his neck, dark glasses on his nose, and a preposterous hat shielding his head from the Mediterranean sun, Goldfarb hoped he looked like a man on holiday. He walked along the hilly streets of Marseille, peering down at a city map to make sure he didn’t get lost.

When he found the synagogue on Rue Breteuil, he grimaced. Rank weeds grew in front of the building. The boards nailed across the door had been in place long enough to grow grainy and pale, except for the streaks of rust trailing down from the nailheads. More boards kept men without better homes from climbing through the windows. Vandals-or, for all David knew, Nazi officials- had painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on the bricks of the front wall.

Passersby gave Goldfarb curious looks as he kicked his way through the weeds toward the back of the synagogue. He ignored them. Not least because he proceeded as if he had every right to be doing as he did, the passersby stopped paying attention to him almost at once. In the Greater German Reich, no one questioned a man who acted as if he had the right to do what he was doing. Basil Roundbush had told him it would be so, and it was.

Other buildings huddled close on either side of the synagogue. In their shadows, the weeds did not flourish quite so much. Behind the closed and desecrated shrine, though, they grew even more vigorously than in front, growing almost as tall as a man. Anything or anyone might be lurking there. Goldfarb wished for a pistol. Softly, he called, “Dutourd?” For good measure, he tacked on an interrogative cough.

The weeds stirred. “I am here,” a man answered in the language of the Race. He did have a pistol, and pointed it at Goldfarb. Under his beret, his sad-eyed face was nervous. “Did anyone follow you here? Anyone at all? Germans? Males of the Race? Were you careful?”

“I think so,” Goldfarb answered. “I am not a spy. I am a soldier, and not so used to sneaking here and there.”

“Then you may well die before your time,” Pierre Dutourd remarked. He took from his belt a gadget probably of Lizard manufacture. After glancing at it, he relaxed a little. “I do not detect any electronics planted in or aimed at this place. That means-I hope that means-no one is listening to us. Very well, then-say your say.” Even speaking the Lizards’ language, Dutourd sounded like a Frenchman.

“Good,” Goldfarb said, though he wasn’t sure how good it was. “My friends back in Britain want to see if they can return you to doing business for yourself. They do not think you should have to subordinate yourself to the Reich.” The Race’s language was made for distinguishing subtle gradations of status. The relationship Goldfarb described was one of menial to master.

Dutourd caught the shade of meaning and grimaced at it. “They do not treat me quite so badly as that,” he said, then paused and shook his head. “They say they will not treat me so badly as that. Whether it proves true remains to be seen.”

“Anyone who trusts the Germans-” Goldfarb began.

“Trust them? Do I look like such a fool as that?” Pierre Dutourd sounded offended. “But I did and do trust the Race to kill me if I did not have the Reich protecting me. And so…” He shrugged. Still aiming the pistol in David’s general direction, he pointed with his free hand. “What can your English friends do to keep me going without the Germans and without getting myself killed?”

Goldfarb would have asked exactly that question had he worn Dutourd’s shoes. It was a question for which he had no good answer. He did his best to disguise that, saying, “They will do whatever proves necessary to keep you afloat.”

Dutourd’s lip curled. “As the Royal Navy did at Oran, when your ships opened fire on and sank so many of the ships of France? Why should I trust Englishmen? With the Germans and with the Race, one is always sure of what one gets. With the English, who can say? I sometimes think you do not know that yourselves.”

“We can give you money,” Goldfarb said. “We also have good connections with the Lizards. They can help take the pressure off you.”

“A likely story,” Dutourd said, unconvinced. “Next you will tell me of a tunnel from London to Marseille, so the Germans will not be able to tell what ginger you bring me. If these are the best stories you can tell, better you should go back to England.”

“These are not just stories,” Goldfarb said. Miserable frog, he thought. He’s lived under the Nazis so long, he’s used to it. Aloud, he went on, “My cousin in Jerusalem is Moishe Russie, of whom you may have heard. Did Monique tell you that?”

“Yes, she told me. And my cousin is Marie Antoinette, of whom you may have heard,” Dutourd answered. “More lies. Nothing else.”

Goldfarb pulled out his wallet and displayed a picture he carried in it. “Here is a photograph of Cousin Moishe and me. I should very much like to see a photograph of you and Cousin Marie.”

Pierre Dutourd bared his teeth in something close to a smile. “I must say that I have not got one with me. If you are a liar, you are a thoroughgoing liar. I know of this Moishe Russie, as who with a hearing diaphragm”-using the Lizards’ language could produce some odd images-“does not? I am surprised to find his cousin, if you are his cousin, working with the ginger smugglers, I must also say.”

“Why?” Goldfarb asked. “If you think I love the Race, you are mistaken. My empire might have beaten Hitler. Thanks to the Race, that did not happen. And Britain is not a friendly home for Jews any more.”