“Take Sadie into your warm kitchen and lock your front door,” I said.

I hung up with Mary Bennett, stepped away from the hotel’s glass desk, and stuffed my blueprint binder into my leather travel bag without bothering to zip the main pocket.

Before calling a night taxi to the curb, the clerk at the front desk handed me a printed checkout receipt for ninety-five dollars in emergency international calls.

The Mercedes cab smelled of stale peppermint and damp wool as it sped through seven miles of empty Bavarian highway beneath cold yellow streetlights.

The driver let me out in front of Terminal 1 at Munich Airport at twenty past one in the morning.