11.

“Ach, ja, this is just a diversion, this story of yours,” Albert Speer says. “A diversion.”

He’s recently been visiting my dreams. So vivid, in a kind of hypercolor, as if I am more than really there.

In my dream, Albert Speer and I are standing together at the edge of a garden attached to a country house. It’s summer. The slow hum of fat bees, and golden butterflies cruising by.

“How do you say, Herr Ryan, you make a diversion? Do I say that correctly? My English is technical but nicht idiomatisch.”

In my dreams Albert Speer always worries about his English, and yet he seems to understand everything, even what isn’t said.

“Ja, das habe ich auch getan.”

“I did that, too, Herr Ryan. I made diversions. I distracted my inquisitors. I kept changing the subject. I told them about my childhood. I showed them pictures of my family. I showed them plans for buildings. I talked about everything except the Hitler time. Die Hitlerzeit. I had a soft look in my eyes. Goering was such a fool—all that bluster, as if he believed he could intimidate the Americans. I knew better.”

He cups his hands together behind his back and bends into his thought.

“Wars are never our fault, are they, Herr Ryan?”

“But Albert,” I say. I always call him Albert in my dreams, as if he’s my uncle. “I wasn’t in a war. I avoided the war.”

Albert Speer’s smile is both wise and ironic.

“Ach, Herr Ryan, wars could not be fought without people like you. Those who go along with everything, who do what they’re told. The Cult of Cooperation. You were the bedrock of Adolf Hitler. We needed you. It was people like you who guarded the prisoners in the concentration camps. Of course you had your doubts. Who wouldn’t? But, you: you were a good soldier, weren’t you? You got a medal—isn’t that what you told me? You did what you were told.”

“What choice did I have, Albert? I did the best I could.”

“Ach, ja. ‘What can any of us do?’ we say as another box of bullets is shipped to the front.”

He shakes his head.

“I always liked that word ‘front,’ ” Speer goes on. “I got so I wondered where the ‘back’ was. What’s behind all this, I wondered as I sat in prison.”

He paused, looking at me.

“But, Albert, you were one of the leaders. People followed your orders, didn’t they?”

He’s not listening to me.

“Ach ja,” Albert says, “so many wars, and no one’s to blame.”