The skyline of Paris shone, but not as he remembered it. It was bigger, brighter, a jagged vista ready to swallow him. Already he was desperate to escape.

"These came this afternoon," Ilse said, as she sat beside him in the back seat. She cleared her throat and thrust a pile of stapled faxes at him. "And this just now, a memo from Bonn."

Surprised at this direct approach from the ministry, he leaned forward. Why all of a sudden, he wondered.

"You've read this, Ilse?" Hartmuth's eyes narrowed as he scanned the Bonn printout.

"Mein Herr…," she began.

"Ja, ja," Hartmuth said, looking straight at her. "But you are here to make sure I lobby for this trade treaty." He punched the paper. "Is that correct?"

Ilse shifted slightly but kept her head high. She pinned a stray white hair back into her thick bun. "Unter den Linden, mein Herr," she murmured.

Hartmuth shuddered. Mein Gott, she was one of them.

Now he understood why, without warning, he'd been sent to Paris. The Werewolves, descendants of the old SS, still operated in blitzkrieg style.

The Mercedes pulled into the cobblestoned courtyard of the seventeenth century Hôtel Pavillion de la Reine, tucked unobtrusively in a corner of the Marais. This part of the quartier, residence of nobility until the court moved to Versailles, once filled with rundown mansions, decrepit hôtel particuliers, had become a Jewish ghetto until Malraux saved most of the area from the wrecking ball. Gentrification had made it the trendiest address in Paris.

Hartmuth could imagine a liveried footman in powdered wig running out to greet him. But the door sprang open courtesy of a bland-faced man wearing a headset with a microphone cupped under his chin.

"Willkommen et bienvenu, Monsieur," he said.

Upstairs, Ilse disappeared into the room next door to Hartmuth's. In his suite, he stared at his luggage without unpacking and his fingers trembled as they raked through his still thick white hair. He barely felt the old scars but knew they still webbed his scalp.