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prepared. He excused himself and disappeared behind a sliding door.
    It was absolutely silent.
    Then he came back, signed the receipt for the watches and the tea bowl, took the tray with him, and left me alone again. The casket remained unopened.
    ·    ·    ·

    Tanata was a small man and looked desiccated somehow. He greeted me in the Western fashion, seemed in a good mood, and told me about his family in Japan.
    After a time, he went to the table, opened the casket, and lifted out the bowl. He held it at the base with one hand and turned it slowly before his eyes with the other. It was a matcha bowl, in which gleaming green tea powder is beaten with a bamboo whisk. The bowl was black, with a glaze over its dark body. Such bowls were not turned on a wheel, but shaped by hand, and none of them resembled any other. The most ancient school of pottery signed its ceramics with the character raku. A friend had once told me that ancient Japan lived on in these bowls.
    Tanata placed it carefully back in the casket and said, “The bowl was made for our family by Chojiro in 1581.” Chojiro was the founder of the raku tradition. The bowl stared out of its red silk like a black eye. “You know, there has already been a war over this bowl. It was a long time ago, and the war lasted almost five years. I’m glad things went quicker this time.” He let the lid of the casket snap shut. It echoed.
    I said the money would also be repaid. He shook his head.
    “What money?” he asked.
    “The money in your safe.”
    “There wasn’t any money in there.”
    I didn’t understand him at first.
    “My clients said—”
    “If there had been any money in there,” he interrupted me, “it might have been untaxed.”
    “Yes?”
    “And since a receipt would have to be presented to the police, questions would be asked. When the charges were presented, I never admitted that the money had been stolen.”
    We finally agreed that I would inform the police of the return of the bowl and the watches. Naturally, Tanata did not ask me who the criminals were, and I didn’t ask about Pocol and Wagner. Only the police asked questions; I was able to invoke the attorney-client privilege to protect my clients.
    Samir, Özcan, and Manólis survived.
    Samir received a call inviting him and his friends to a café on the Kurfürstendamm. The man who met them was polite. He showed them Pocol’s and Wagner’s dying minutes on his cell-phone display, apologized for the quality of the images, and invited the three of them to share some cake with him. They didn’t touch the cake, but the next day they returned the 120,000 euros. They knew what was proper, and paid an additional 28,000 euros “for expenses”; it was all they could raise. The friendly gentleman said it really wasn’t necessary, and took the money.
    Manólis retired, took over one of his family’s restaurants, got married, and settled down. They say there are pictures of fjords and fishing boats in his restaurants, and Finnish vodka, and that he’s planning to take his family and move to Finland.
    Özcan and Samir turned to drug dealing; they never stole anything again that they couldn’t classify.
    Tanata’s cleaning lady, who’d provided the tip that triggered the robbery, took a holiday in Anatolia two years later; she’d forgotten the whole thing long ago. She went swimming. Although the sea was calm that day, she hit her head on a rock and drowned.
    I once saw Tanata again at the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin; he was sitting four rows behind me. When I turned around, he saluted me amicably but silently. Six months later, he was dead. His body was taken back to Japan, the house in Dahlem was sold, and his secretary also returned to his homeland.
    The bowl is now the centerpiece of the Tanata Foundation Museum in Tokyo.

Postscript

    When Manólis met Samir and Özcan, he was under suspicion for drug dealing. The suspicion was unfounded, and the court-ordered wire tap was