Near midnight Rogan pulled the wire attached to the steering wheel. This would cut off the air and feed carbon monoxide into the trunk. In thirty minutes or less the Freisling brothers would be dead. Rogan now drove toward the Berlin railway station.

But after fifteen minutes Rogan stopped the car. He had intended to kill them as they had tried to kill him in the Munich Palace of Justice, without warning and still hoping for freedom. He had meant to slaughter them like animals, but he could not.

He got out of the car, went around to the back, and banged on the trunk lid. “Hans . . . Eric,” he called. He didn’t know why he used their first names, as if they had become friends. He called out again, in a low urgent voice, to warn them they were going into the eternal darkness of death, so that they could compose whatever souls they had, say whatever prayers possible to make themselves ready for the black void. Again he banged on the trunk, louder this time, but there was no answer. He realized suddenly what must have happened. In their drugged condition they had probably died shortly after Rogan had switched to the carbon monoxide. To make sure that they were dead and not shamming, Rogan unlocked the trunk and raised the lid.

Evil they had been, no loss to the world, but in their last moments they had found some spark of humanity. In their final agony the two brothers had turned to each other and died in each other’s arms. Their faces had lost all slyness and cunning. Rogan stared at them for a long time. It was a mistake, he thought, to have killed them together. Accidentally, he had been merciful.

He locked the trunk and drove on to the railway station. He swung the car into the vast car park, filled with thousands of vehicles, and parked it in the section he thought most likely to remain filled, near the east entrance. Then he got out of the Mercedes and started toward his hotel. As he walked he let the keys to the Mercedes slip out of his hand and into the gutter.

He walked all the way back to the hotel, and so it was nearly three in the morning before he let himself into his hotel suite. Rosalie was waiting up for him. She brought him a glass of water to take with his pills, but Rogan could feel the blood pounding in his head, louder and louder. The familiar sickish, sweet taste was in his mouth, and then he felt the fearsome spinning vertigo, and he was falling . . . falling . . . falling. . . .