Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

154 Air. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

nifying glass. And then I found a small pinpoint hole in Samuel I. It took me the whole night to find the other holes, but at half past six, I had all the parts. They formed an address in Stockholm."

I looked at my friend with open admiration. He pretended not to notice and went on. "I did not waste any words this morning. I entered his cell saying, 'Good morning.,' He said 'Good morning' too. Then I said 'Best regards from Svensson in Stockholm'

He collapsed immediately, confessed everything. Of course, I had already broken him. He was supposed to gather information about the demolition in London after the Nazi bombardments. They told him to write his reports in invisible ink in the margin of innocent letters to a so-called friend in Stockholm. It might never have been detected."

"And how is he now?"

"Calm. Pretty calm. He gave me a hand and said that I had to do my duty, just as he had to do his. And he told me that from the very first moment he saw me, he saw that I had his death in my eyes. The funny thing is that he'd seen me even before I interrogated him. Apparently, three months ago some of my colleagues had taken him to the canteen for lunch when they were questioning him, and that's where he saw me sitting at a table. He says he didn't know who I was, but that I looked his way—well the way one sometimes looks at people without really seeing them. And yet at that moment, he says, he was certain that I would send him to the gallows. Strange, isn't it? Do you think it has something to do with me having been burned at the stake in the Middle Ages?"