He looked across to Stanislas with an intensity that belied his frailty. “He was in the white pages; he was that sure the past was past. As he left his apartment one morning, I confronted him and told him Judgment Day had arrived. He denied everything, naturally. Then the names came: crypto-Communist, Resistance hooligan, avenging Jew, and ordered me away, or he'd call the police. I threw my hands up like he’d got me, and as I left I dropped a trail of details: the date, the fifteenth of July 1942; what he wore that night, his overcoat with its fur-lined belt; the hour he was in his office; the German officer he lectured, somebody named Kleist; those words uttered to Kleist that I’ll remember even on my deathbed, ‘We must not be squeamish.’ Suddenly his smirk vanished. He knew I had him.”
