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Geli stared at him in fury, flushing red. “I forgot,” she hotly said. “We have the highest standards of decency to uphold.” And then she took the sketch and ran to her room, volcanically slamming the door.

In silence Hitler dithered with his strudel, his gaze flying about in distraction until he formally excused himself and carried his whining contrition down the hallway.

She finally settled on a white ciré satin dinner dress by Mainbocher with a silver headband adorned with a white feather, though she thought it all wasted as she sat in a theater box with Hoffmann and Amann in their tuxedos, watching the fun others were having on the floor below them. Max Amann’s hair seemed no more than a fallen leaf on his head, and he’d shaved off his Hitler mustache on Hitler’s orders, so she was suddenly aware that his nude upper lip was as long as his foreshortened nose. She coldly asked, “How old are you, Max?”

“I’ll be forty in November.”

“Are you sure you’re not older?”

“War changes you,” Amann said.

“And you, Heinrich?”

Hoffmann finished popping a magnum of champagne, and reported that he was forty-five. “We’re both short, too,” he said. “We’re both unattractive to you. And we already know we’re spoiling your evening.”

She said, “I’m hard to read, aren’t I? I have subtle ways.”

“I have a daughter,” Hoffmann said.

She saw a pretty woman who was wearing only an eye mask and a man’s striped tie around her waist. She saw a naked man painted in gold. A fan dancer was entertaining fraternity boys in their booth. She heard Hoffmann shout, “Ernst!”

Ambling to their theater box was Captain Ernst Röhm, who’d just returned from Bolivia where he’d been schooling mercenaries in the art of war. Röhm smiled at her like they were old friends, and she presumed he felt that way because he’d been a friend and mentor to Hitler since 1919, one of the few men with whom her uncle ever used the familiar “Du” for “you.” She disliked him at once. Röhm was wearing the SA uniform at a fancy dress ball, for one thing, and he was a squat, fat, fanatical soldier with short brown hair, tiny eyes, and a flushed, round, piggish face made even uglier by the fact that the bridge of his nose had been shot off on the eastern front, and his left cheek had been cruelly torn by a Russian bullet. His shirt collar seemed to be choking him, and his handshake was moist as he told her, “So you are the famous niece. I have wondered if we would ever meet.”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve been hiding.”

“Oh no?”

“Won’t you join us for some champagne?” Amann asked.

Röhm did so, stiffly, as if he still carried a sword, and the former sergeant, Max Amann, who was all accounting and ambition, switched chairs to confer with him.

She couldn’t fathom the men’s fondness for Röhm, for she’d heard from Putzi Hanfstaengl, who hated him, that Röhm was an occultist who flaunted his predatory interest in boys, loved bloodshed and the heat of battle, and had many hatreds: Jews, Communism, Christianity, democracy, anyone in the officer corps above the rank of major, civilians in general, and females of any age. With the financial support of the Reichswehr and rich industrialists, she’d been told that Röhm had formed, just before the putsch, a civilian defense force of one hundred thousand former soldiers to crush any opposition and assassinate politicians, and a few years later he’d fled to Bolivia—she’d heard there was a threat of blackmail—and had only agreed to return to Germany when Hitler offered him the post of chief of staff of the Sturmabteilung.

Röhm finally turned to Geli. “And how is Leo?”

She was perplexed that they’d met, but then recalled her brother’s visit for Reich Party Day in January 1923. She said, “Leo’s fine. He’s a schoolteacher in Linz now.”

Röhm smiled with insinuation. “Of boys? What a pleasurable job that must be.

“Ernst!” Hoffmann said. “Manners.”

“And Emil Maurice?” Röhm asked.

“I haven’t seen him in months.”

Röhm seemed to sink into his flesh with satisfaction. “I have. Driving for the leader.”

“Really?”

“Really. A forgive-and-forget situation.”

With sarcasm she said, “Uncle Adolf is famous for those.”

Amann frowned at her until Röhm offered, “Emil told me you’re a model now.” And then Amann smiled.

Who else had seen her uncle’s sketches? Was she lewdly talked about at his Stammtisch? Her face hot with embarrassment and betrayal, she found that Hoffmann was finishing his flute of champagne, and she fervently asked him, “Shall we dance?”

“Why not?” he said.