There were fresh placards along the Bulow-strasse and I saw Peters's name, and bought a late edition. Ewald Peters, Chancellor Erhard's chief personal security man. Only last month he'd been in London, protection for the Chancellor in case anyone threw a tomato. Now they'd arrested him. Charge: mass murder of Jews. He was a senior official in the Federal Kriminalpoliiei and responsible for the security of the Chancellor, the President of the Republic, and visiting statesmen in Bonn. How much had Erhard known? Nothing. He'd resisted pressure recently at the Party Congress, insisting on continuing the trials and refusing the plea for an amnesty that would release a score of Nazis from the cells. If he'd suspected his chief bodyguard he'd have turned the man over right away.

It was the Z Commission who'd nabbed Peters. I admired them for that – they were more bulldog than dachshund. There was already a lot of unrest inside the department, because their job was exclusively to hunt down the Nazi remnant, and since there were several Nazis in the hierarchy of their own section they risked losing promotion with every arrest they made. A very odd way to run an eisenbahn.

Yesterday they'd got Hans Krueger, West German Minister for Refugees. Charge: serving as a judge at a ‘special’ Nazi court in Poland. In a few days' time there'd be a new name on the placards, because the Z-Polizei were just now tying up the loose ends. Franz Rohm, Secretary of the Road Safety Committee. It had taken me three weeks to find him. I was pleased with that one because suicide was among my subjects and I knew Rohm would kick a chair from under him any day now. I didn't hold with capital punishment; it had been abolished in West Germany since 1949, and that was good; but these men were infectious and there was one thing worse than that they should hang it was that they should live, and infect others.