IX

Ted Grosswald, Bob Macmillan, and Franklin Rendell had traveled from their homes across the United States to Alta Vista and then from Alta Vista to London where the trail of Patton Harcourt had gone cold. Now, they sat in a pub on a spring afternoon drinking beer and wondering if this was all really worth it.

“I want to look her in the face before I do it,” said Bob, who had always been the one to egg the other two on. Even when they had been in basic training together it had been clear he would be the leader, and when difficult jobs arose, he would step up and do them.

“You know murder is a crime over here, too,” said Ted.

“You getting cold feet?” said Bob.

“Not cold feet exactly,” said Ted. “I just think we ought to be careful. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in some English prison.”

“Nobody’s going to prison,” said Bob. “Look, she’s on the lam, for some reason or other. Maybe she got wind we were on the move, I don’t know, but whatever the reason, it works to our advantage.”

“How do you figure that?” said Franklin. He had sat silently sipping his beer most of the evening, but Ted and Bob knew him well enough to know that behind that silence his mind worked a mile a minute. If Bob could be trusted to dive headfirst into a problem Franklin would carefully weigh all available information to come up with the best solution.

“Nobody knows where she is, right?” said Bob. “So if we find her and take care of business, no one will know where to look for her.”

“But we don’t know where she is,” said Ted.

“True,” said Bob.

“What I don’t understand is this,” said Franklin. “The going theory in Alta Vista was that something in her past caught up to her so she went into hiding. But we’re the thing in her past. So who put those bullet holes in her house? Who is she running from? Figure that out and maybe we’ll know where she’s going.”

“Maybe we’re not the only people who have a score to settle,” said Ted.

“All I know is this,” said Franklin, draining his glass. “If something doesn’t change by this time tomorrow, I’m going home.”

“We’re on the brink,” said Bob. “After all that time of her hiding out up in those mountains, we’re on the brink. I can feel it.”

“I think that’s three pints of beer and jet lag you feel,” said Franklin, pushing back his chair and standing up. “I’m going to go take in a few sights. I’ll see you soldiers in the morning.”

Whether she called it PTSD or shell shock or anything else didn’t matter. Whatever term you used or didn’t use it meant that you would freak the fuck out on occasion because the army put you in a situation no human being should ever have to face. Kandahar, the knife in the knee, the suicide vest in the windowless room—that had been the situation for Patton. The moment she flashed back, her mind turned dark and her pulse rushed and her mouth got so dry she couldn’t swallow. Ironic, she thought, that she could be completely calm under gunfire in her own kitchen, but sitting in the back seat of a parked van brought on the churning stomach and the double vision. Small, dark spaces, the shrink had said. The first thing you can do is avoid small, dark spaces. Easy for her to say. What if you’re forced to spend a few hours with a needy old flame and a friendly assassin hiding in a Munich parking garage? Then how do you avoid small, dark spaces?

“I need to go for a walk,” said Patton, after gritting her teeth for two hours.

“A walk?” said Ruthie. “We’re supposed to be hiding out, aren’t we? And you need to go for a walk?”

“Yes,” said Patton sharply as she opened the door, “I need to go for a walk. Is there part of that sentence you don’t understand?”

“I just . . .” Ruthie recoiled from Patton’s venom, looking chastised and confused.

“Let her go,” said Nemo quietly. Patton didn’t understand how a man who had spent so little time in the company of other people could so quickly comprehend her feelings. It had taken him one glance at her face in the murky light that came in through the open door to flash her a look of complete understanding. “Just keep your cap pulled down, don’t look up at any CCTV cameras, and be back by dusk.”

“And you’re going to just leave me here with him?” said Ruthie.

“You’ll sleep better without me,” said Patton, and then, already feeling the terror starting to ebb away just from the simple act of deciding to leave, she added, with a wink, “You never did get much sleep with me around, anyway.”

Following Nemo’s advice, Patton kept her hat pulled as low as it would go and hung her head so that no one, and no CCTV camera, would get a good look at her. This meant her impression of Munich was mostly of sidewalks and shoes. She wandered the streets for a couple of hours, noting her path carefully so she would be able to return to the van. She eventually emerged onto a wide grassy square and could not resist a quick glance up.

On the two sides stood the neo-classical behemoths of a pair of museums—the Staatliche Antikensammlungen and the Glyptothek and in front of her stood the grand city gate, or Propyläen. She had arrived at the Königsplatz, one of the great plazas of Munich. Here, Patton shouldn’t have felt the sense of doom that descended upon her in the dark confines of the van lifting. She was surrounded by a wide-open space and huge, beautiful buildings; the sky behind the Propyläen blazed with reds and oranges as the sun set over Munich, and only a few other pedestrians shared this vast, stunning space.

But her mood only darkened, and the fiery sunset did nothing to help. As soon as she saw the sky against the Propyläen her memory began to play a film on which she enhanced the original black and white with the colors before her, the colors of flame and fire. She had watched that film for the first time in middle school and several times thereafter, including in a class on military history that she took after joining the Army. It had been taken in Berlin on May 10, 1933, but the same thing had happened that night in cities across Germany, including in Munich here in the Königsplatz—university students and Nazi officials burning tens of thousands of books. Patton almost thought she could feel the heat of those flames that had tried to, in the words of the oath that the students took, “destroy and combat subversive and un-German literature.”

Patton had loved books since her second-grade teacher had read the class From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. She had taken classes in the library school as an undergraduate and, if there had been such a thing as a minor in library science, she would have added it to her math degree. She knew as much about the topic as most people with a master’s degree in the subject.

The Holocaust, when she first encountered its history in middle school, revolted her, made her sick to her stomach. Yet those crimes against humanity had not, Patton thought, been crimes against her. She was, after all, as lily white as they came. Not until later did she discover the extent to which Nazis had murdered homosexuals. But the book burnings she took personally. And now she stood on the site of one such burning and could not clear her mind of those images in the newsreel of German students delighting in the destruction not just of books but of ideas. She was sure that, if it had been written before 1933, her beloved childhood favorite would have been tossed into those flames. After all the author, E. L. Konigsburg, was Jewish.

Patton turned on her heels and walked out of the plaza as fast as she could without breaking into a run. Twenty minutes later, back in the van, despite the growing darkness and the confined space, she actually felt safe. She did not say anything to Ruthie or Nemo about where she had gone, but she leaned against Ruthie and held her hand and cried for a few minutes. Then she drew a deep breath, sat up, and said, “Let’s go get the motherfuckers.”

“We do make every effort to ensure that we have properly traced the provenance of the books we return,” said Ingrid. “I’m very sorry if we made a mistake in your case. As you can imagine, it can be very difficult to prove ownership of a book after eighty years.”

“Yes, but it’s not only my book that was returned incorrectly. I spoke with several other people who received books from Columbia House with the same inconsistencies, the same forged inscriptions, even the same handwriting in those inscriptions.”

“That certainly is a mystery,” said Ingrid.

Jean found this conversation frustrating. Whatever she said Ingrid simply nodded sympathetically and responded in meaningless platitudes. It was like trying to pin down an American politician in the midst of a scandal. But she wasn’t about to give up this quickly after having come so far.

“I don’t believe it is a mystery,” she said. “I believe that you forged those inscriptions knowing full well those books did not belong to the people you sent them to.”

“That’s a bold accusation to make to a philanthropic woman in her own kitchen,” said Ingrid. “Do you have any proof?”

“I have images of four different books,” said Jean, “all stolen from libraries, all with forged inscriptions, and all given away by you. I wonder how many of these books are stolen.” She pointed to the bookcase that covered one wall of the sitting room.

“You think I would steal books?”

“All the Columbia House books I traced had been stolen from libraries here and in Prague.” Jean could see in a flash that she had struck a nerve. Though the look of panic that crossed Ingrid’s face lasted only an instant before being replaced with her previous implacable calm, Jean had confronted enough students about plagiarism to know when she had shaken her opponent.

“Would you pardon me for just a moment,” said Ingrid, pulling her phone out of her slacks pocket. “This infernal thing keeps vibrating and I need to turn it off.” She tapped twice on the screen, then set the phone down on the table. “Now, where were we?”

“You were about to explain why you have been giving away stolen library books in an effort to convince me not to call the police.”

“The police? I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“It certainly won’t,” said a voice from behind Jean.

“Jean Simpson, this is my associate Gottfried Bergman.”

Jean had never come face-to-face with the barrel of a gun and her first thought when she turned to see Gottfried leveling a pistol at her was that the opening reminded her of a train tunnel. Then she pictured a train speeding out of it and exploding into her forehead and she thought for a moment she might lose control of her bowels.

“I wonder if you might come with me, Miss Simpson,” said Gottfried with a sweetness that belied the threat of his weapon.

“I . . . I . . .” Jean tried to stand, found that her legs had turned to jelly, and fell back into the chair.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Ingrid impatiently. “Do I have to do everything around here?” She shoved her chair back from the table, stood, and grabbed Jean by the arm, yanking her upright. Jean stumbled forward as Ingrid pulled her toward the door to the basement, Gottfried keeping the gun trained on her the whole time. “Down!” shouted Ingrid as Jean teetered on the brink of the steep wooden staircase.

Jean steadied herself with the bannister and managed to make it to the bottom of the steps. She emerged in a large square room, lit with the glow of several computer screens and three bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. In the far corner a man brushed a few strands of hair out of a woman’s face.

“Can you two keep your hands off each other for five minutes?” snapped Ingrid.

Dietrich stepped away from Eva and walked up to Jean, standing uncomfortably close and staring at her face. “So this is our volunteer for Operation Waistcoat.”

“I’m not a volunteer for anything,” said Jean, who had started to regain her nerve.

“Have a seat,” said Ingrid, ignoring Jean’s comment. She nodded toward an uncomfortable-looking ladder-back chair in the corner opposite the computers.

“No, thank you,” said Jean.

“I said have a seat!” shouted Ingrid, spitting at Jean. In another instant, the two lovers had each grabbed one of Jean’s arms and forced her into the chair. Gottfried stepped toward her, the gun still trained on her face. She should have listened to Peter, thought Jean. She should have called the police first. But who knew that someone who stole library books would be a . . . a what? What was Ingrid Weiss? A kidnapper? A terrorist? Jean had no idea, and that, more than anything else, even more than the gun in her face, frightened her. If she didn’t know Ingrid’s game, she couldn’t play.

“What do you want?” said Jean as calmly as she could manage.

“She just came to us?” said Gottfried, switching to German and ignoring Jean.

“We followed her here,” said Eva, stepping forward. “She went to Dachau first and then she came here.”

“I rather doubt you followed her the whole time,” said Ingrid. “But that is not our concern at the moment. The question is, what do we do with her?”

“She’s perfect for Operation Waistcoat,” said Dietrich. “She came here of her own accord, the surveillance footage is already uploaded to the external server, and according to Gottfried, we have enough money now to relocate to the Fox’s Den. Operation Waistcoat turns a problem into an advantage.”

“And the money will pour in,” said Gottfried.

“Soon money will not be a problem anyway,” said Ingrid.

“Yes,” said Dietrich, “but until then it could come in handy.”

“Very well,” said Ingrid. “Will it fit her?”

Dietrich smiled what Jean could only think of as an evil grin as he said, “It’s adjustable.”

“Excellent,” said Ingrid. “Now we just need to wait to hear from Karl and Erich.”

Jean did not speak enough German to follow the whole conversation, but she caught bits and pieces—enough to be both puzzled and concerned.

The message came quicker than they expected but what they did not know, what they could not know, was that the message had been sent not by Karl and Erich but by an English-speaking cab driver whom Nemo had paid €1,000 to drive to Odelzhausen, just northwest of Munich, turn on Karl and Erich’s phone, and send a message to Weiss that translated roughly, “They got off the train in Stuttgart. Now in a car heading to final destination—Berchtesgaden. Meet us there for intercept and completion of Projekt Alchemie. HH.” The cabbie would type the message in German, and deliver the phone to Berchtesgaden, the small town on the German-Austrian border where Adolf Hitler had built his Eagle’s Nest retreat. There he would type one more message and then he would go about his business, €1,000 for the better. It was the easiest money he had ever made.

“I always thought it would be Berchtesgaden,” said Ingrid.

“We can be there in less than two hours,” said Dietrich.

“But we’ve been there a dozen times looking,” said Eva. “What makes you think this time will be any different?”

“Because this time we will know where to look,” said Ingrid, smiling. “In a few hours Projekt Alchemie will succeed. I only wish the great Reichsführer Himmler could be here to see his dream realized. Now we will prove him right and the Aryan will be supreme once more.”

“What do we take with us?” said Gottfried.

“We take weapons, explosives, and your hard drive,” said Ingrid. “Plus our bags. There’s no time for anything else.”

“But what about the books and the—”

“It needs to look like we weren’t here,” said Ingrid, “not like we packed up. Besides, once the money starts rolling in, it won’t make a difference.”

“You’re sure this will work?” said Eva.

“Operation Waistcoat will absolutely work,” said Dietrich. “Projekt Alchemie is more a leap of faith.”

“It’s time to leap,” said Ingrid.

Five minutes later they had filled the trunk of Ingrid’s BMW with every piece of weaponry in the house along with the four bags they always kept packed for this possibility. Gottfried had removed one laptop and an external hard drive that kept all their files, then set in motion the program that would wipe the memory of everything he left behind. Dietrich had used a can of black spray paint to leave some evidence on the garden wall.

“Are you sure we’re not forgetting anything?” said Eva as Ingrid started the car and backed toward the street.

“Anything we’ve forgotten we can buy,” said Ingrid. “Nothing is irreplaceable.”

It wasn’t until they were halfway to Berchtesgaden that she realized those words were not exactly true. She had left behind one irreplaceable item. She had purchased it as a way to feel closer to Heinrich Himmler, the man for whom her grandfather had worked, and who had begun Projekt Alchemie. Late at night, when sleep would not come, Ingrid would leaf through the pages of the ledger—a list of all the books in Himmler’s secret library of the occult. She had, of course, obtained copies of nearly every book on that list that mentioned alchemy and read them all carefully, but they had shed no light on Himmler’s secret project. And naturally she had made a digital copy of the ledger. Still, she loved the physical feel of the book, a book that Himmler himself had held and used again and again. She liked to run her finger down those columns and imagine that library and the great man himself pulling a book off the shelf and sitting by the fire as he read. Now the ledger sat on her bedside table fifty miles away. She would miss that means of communing with Himmler, but now was no time for sentimentality. The Reichsführer himself had set them on the road to Berchtesgaden and soon they would realize his dream and Projekt Alchemie would change the world.

Nemo, Ruthie, and Patton had parked at the end of the street and saw the lights go out at Ingrid Weiss’s house. A few moments later, a black BMW pulled out from behind the house and disappeared in the opposite direction.

“They took the bait,” said Nemo.

“It can’t be that easy,” said Ruthie.

“It’s not,” said Patton. “But give me a half hour and I can make it a lot easier.”

They had assumed that Weiss did not work alone and would not leave her lair unguarded. But Patton would set up a surveillance system that would give them infrared eyes inside the house, allowing them to pinpoint anyone left behind and monitor their movements. As uncomfortable as she had been earlier in the stuffy back seat of the car, she now felt almost exhilarated. She was in her element, doing what she had trained to do and doing it well.

Her first priority was to remain hidden from whomever was inside. They did not want to sacrifice the element of surprise when the time came to breach the house. But Patton was a master at spotting security cameras (of which there were three outside the house) and staying out of their line of vision. They might have to come into view of one camera when they entered the house, but that would give anyone monitoring only a split-second warning. She hadn’t done this in years and she loved it—climbing walls and slinking through shrubbery to place her equipment as close to the house as she could. At the back she found a small window to the basement that had been painted over on the inside—the perfect place for an infrared detector to spot anyone hiding down there. She placed two more detectors in the garden, one of them in a tree to get a good scan of the top floor. She also placed several microphones at strategic points. She might not be able to hear every word spoken inside the house, but she would hear enough. Thirty minutes later, back in the van, she pulled up the feeds from her equipment on an iPad. She did not see what she expected.

“That’s weird,” she said.

“What is?” said Nemo.

“It looks like we have just one person still in the house.”

“Good news for us,” said Nemo. “Should be pretty easy to neutralize one person. Where is he?”

“He or she,” said Patton pointedly, “is in the basement. But they’re not moving.”

“So sitting at a desk or something?” said Ruthie.

“In a chair, I’d guess from the position,” said Patton, “but not typing or writing or talking on the phone, or even reading.”

“How can you tell?” said Nemo.

“Look,” said Patton, pointing to a glowing red shape on the screen. “No movement at all. I’ve been watching for five minutes now and nothing.”

“Asleep?” said Ruthie.

“It’s an awfully strange position to sleep in,” said Patton.

“So somebody is passed out in a chair,” said Nemo. “Who cares? We go in, we neutralize someone who is already basically neutralized, we find the book, and we get out. It’s an easy job.”

“That’s what worries me,” said Patton, “and it should worry you. You know as well as I do that no job should be this easy. Somebody wants us to think this is a simple job.”

“Maybe it’s not a person,” said Ruthie.

“It’s hard to reproduce a human heat signature,” said Patton. “It just concerns me.”

“OK,” said Nemo, “your concern is noted. I’m concerned, too, but I’m not calling off the operation just because I’m concerned. Clearly they are up to something, but so are we, and we’ve been one step ahead of them the whole time. So we go in cautiously, we look out for trip wires and booby traps, and as long as that heat signature in the basement doesn’t move, we take our time.”

“Look,” said Ruthie, pointing to the iPad. “It’s moving.” The head and shoulders of the glowing red figure on the screen shifted slightly from side to side. “Maybe they woke up.”

“Let’s go,” said Nemo. “Before they come upstairs.”

Nemo eased the van into the drive from which the BMW had emerged and they armed themselves with the antique weapons Alex Lansdowne had provided. Patton climbed the wall again, but this time pressed the button on the inside that opened the back gate. Nemo had brought a set of lock picks from his apparently bottomless black bag of goodies, but they proved unnecessary. The back door was unlocked.

“Not a good sign,” said Patton, as they stepped into the kitchen.

“You start looking around for that book,” said Nemo to Ruthie. “Patton and I will go downstairs and take care of that heat signature.”

The house was pitch dark, with blinds and curtains keeping even the dim lights of Döbereinerstrasse from penetrating its rooms. Nemo had given Ruthie a flashlight and she stepped into the sitting room to find two large cases of books. It might take some time to locate the ledger, she thought, and she began scanning the shelves.

It took only a minute for Nemo and Patton to discover the door to the basement stairs. Weapons drawn, they decided to risk flipping on the light switch. Whoever was down there had been sitting in the dark for quite a while, so maybe the light would blind them long enough for the two of them to get downstairs. As soon as the stairs flooded with light, they heard a weak voice.

“Oh my God, who’s there? Help me, please help me.”

“Doesn’t sound too threatening,” said Nemo as they descended the stairs, guns drawn.

“Why is she speaking English?” hissed Patton.

Nemo leaped around the corner at the foot of the stairs, ready to fire if necessary, then lowered his gun when he saw a disheveled woman zip-tied to a wooden chair and looking at him with a desperate expression.

“Not exactly the SS,” said Nemo, almost laughing as Patton entered the basement behind him. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Jean Simpson,” she said. “They all left. They left me here. I don’t know how much time I have. You have to help me.”

“What do you mean you don’t know how much time you have?” said Nemo, casually looking around the room. “If ever a place looked like a super villain’s secret lair, this is it.”

“Help me, please,” said the woman, beginning to cry.

“It’s OK,” said Patton, crossing slowly toward the woman. She still thought this whole thing might be a trap, and she certainly wasn’t going to trust this woman, but the zip ties were pulled tight, so it seemed safe to at least pretend to offer her consolation. “We can help you.” She laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder and felt her trembling. This was no cold-blooded killer, she thought.

“I’m not sure you can,” said Jean. “And I’m not sure how much time you have.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” said Nemo, turning from his examination of the room.

“Open this jacket,” said Jean, “and you’ll see why.”

Patton immediately stepped away. Now it sounded like a trap.

“Open it, please,” said Jean, and Patton thought she sounded both honest and genuinely panicked.

“Oh for God’s sake,” said Nemo. “Open the fucking jacket.” He walked across the room and pulled open the windbreaker the woman was wearing.

“Fuck,” said Patton, the blood draining from her face as she fell backward into a chair by the computer table.

“What’s that?” said Nemo. “What the hell is that?”

Jean didn’t respond, only wept more openly. Patton merely repeated, in a soft voice, “Fuck.”

Ruthie could find nothing resembling the ledger in the bookcases in the sitting room or anywhere else downstairs. A large desk and a filing cabinet both had locked drawers, and she supposed she might get some help from Nemo in opening them, but for the time being she would search the rest of the house. She climbed the stairs, all the while hearing Patton’s voice in her head saying, No job should be this easy.

The upstairs consisted of two monastic bedrooms and a shared bath. One of the rooms looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time; the other was clearly where Ingrid Weiss slept. The bedcovers were rumpled; a paperback book lay open, spine up, on the dresser; a robe hung on the back of the door; and a pair of slippers sat on the floor by the bed. And there, on the bedside table, lay a worn, clothbound ledger with a faded gold swastika on the cover. No job should be this easy, but this one was. Just because Patton had been in the military and Nemo was some sort of killer didn’t mean their paranoia always translated into reality, thought Ruthie as she picked up the book. She opened the ledger and saw immediately that this was what they had come for. Page after page contained one column with the titles of books—even in German, she recognized enough words to identify them as titles—and another column of numbers. And at the top of the first page, centered above the initial entries, read the words “Heinrich Himmler Bibliothek.” The Library of Heinrich Himmler. Ruthie whisked up the volume and raced down the stairs and back to the kitchen where the door to the basement stood open.

“I’ve got it,” she shouted. “I’ve got it. Let’s get out of here.” When no one answered she started down the basement stairs, a little more cautiously than she had rushed down from the bedroom. No job should be this easy. Maybe Patton had been right. Maybe something had gone wrong. Maybe the others were gone or dead. But when she reached the bottom step and turned the corner, shakily holding the pistol she had withdrawn from her pocket on the way down, she saw Nemo standing in the middle of the room and Patton sitting in a chair—both apparently perfectly healthy. And then Patton said, “Fuck.”

Alta Vista had proved a great place to avoid flashbacks to that room in Kandahar. Patton had had no trouble staying out of windowless rooms and other dark or close spaces. And she certainly didn’t encounter any explosive vests in the rural North Carolina mountains. It could have stayed that way, she thought, if Nemo hadn’t dragged her into all this. Now she struggled to breathe and felt her heart racing. Her vision blurred and a sound that no one else heard pounded in her head—the sound of gunfire and shouting and fear and death.

The man with the knife in his knee did not stir, but the younger one, the one in the suicide vest, smiled at the three Americans. They had no idea how the vest was triggered. True, they had zip-tied his hands, but there could be a timer or a remote trigger.

“Patton, get out of here,” said Bailey.

“I’m not leaving just because I’m a woman,” said Patton.

“It’s not because you’re a woman, for fuck’s sake,” said Bailey. “It’s because you understand the intel. Get out of here and stay alive and radio in those coordinates.”

“But can’t we all—” said Patton.

“Go!” shouted Bailey, who had his rifle trained on the boy in the vest.

Feeling violently ill, Patton did not stay to argue. Clearly Bailey had a plan and if the vest hadn’t detonated in the past hour, maybe he had time to execute it. The light had begun to fade outside, which worked to her advantage as she crawled out of the house, looking for any sort of cover. A hundred feet away, a Humvee lay on its side, smoldering—probably the victim of an IED. She saw no one else in the street, though she suspected snipers were watching. Most of the gunfire seemed to come from the next street over. Gripping her rifle in one hand and her radio in the other, she made a dash for it, skidding into the shelter of the vehicle as bullets exploded into the dirt behind her. Two dead Americans lay next to the Humvee, but she had no time for mourning. Safe for perhaps a minute or two, she felt her adrenaline kick in and she radioed the coordinates of the village that the man in the suicide vest had given up.

The strike would come soon, she thought. In the meantime, she watched for Bailey and Thomas to emerge from the house. Though it seemed like hours since she left them, it had only been about ninety seconds. She risked a peek out from behind the Humvee and was suddenly thrown backward by a shock wave. The house exploded in all directions, sending a shower of rubble over Patton. A ball of fire rolled out into the street and the air filled with dust so thick she could see only a few feet. She fell back behind the Humvee, cowering from the bricks and stones that fell around her. Then, silence. All gunfire ceased and Patton heard only a high-pitched ringing in her ears. The dust began to settle and again she looked out from her hiding place. In the middle of the street lay Bailey. He, at least, had made it out. She put down her gun and crawled toward him. He was a big man, but Patton was strong—she could drag him to the relative safety of the Humvee. But when she arrived at Bailey’s side, she saw what she had not seen in the distance in the fading light and dusty air. Only the top of Bailey’s body had escaped the house. The explosion had torn him neatly in half. Then everything went black.

When Patton woke up, she was in a hospital in Germany and they still hadn’t told her the worst part.

“We just leave her, right?” said Nemo, sounding uncertain for the first time since Patton had met him.

“Don’t leave me,” said Jean. “Please, God, don’t leave me.”

“What’s going on?” said Ruthie.

“You want to field that one?” said Nemo, but Patton could not form words at the moment and only breathed rapidly, feeling the room start to spin.

“No?” said Nemo. “Well, Patton here is having some sort of severe panic attack which, if I’m not mistaken, has something to do with PTSD.”

“What makes you say that?” said Ruthie, rushing to Patton’s side and taking her hand.

“Because I have the same problem,” said Nemo. “Only I have a different trigger. Patton’s trigger is apparently explosive suicide vests.”

“Why would she be triggered by a—”

“Yeah, the second part of what’s going on is that Miss Jean Simpson here is wearing a vest that could reduce this whole house to dust and splinters at any moment. I think that gets you caught up.”

“Well . . . well shouldn’t we do something?” said Ruthie, pulling away from Patton and edging back toward the stairs.

“You got any suggestions?” said Nemo.

“I don’t know,” said Ruthie. “Diffuse it or something.”

“OK, I’ll just use my extensive expertise from years on a bomb squad to diffuse it. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“You were on a bomb squad?” said Ruthie.

“No, I wasn’t on a fucking bomb squad!” said Nemo. “Jesus, don’t they have sarcasm in England?”

“What do we do?” said Ruthie.

“You leave,” said Patton. She had used her focusing exercise to think about the waterfall near her house in Alta Vista—the sound of the water splashing against the rocks, the way the sun sifting through the trees sparkled in the droplets and the birds sang overhead. She stood up slowly, still feeling unsteady, and took a step forward. “Do you have the ledger?”

“Yes,” said Ruthie, holding up the book. “I have it.”

“Then take it and go. Both of you,” said Patton. “We can’t leave her here alone, so I’ll stay with her.”

“Like hell we can’t leave her alone,” said Nemo. “Besides, you’re the librarian. You’re the one who knows about books. This is a search for a rare book now and you’re the expert.”

“We can’t leave her,” said Patton, making eye contact with Jean Simpson who pleaded with her silently.

“Maybe the thing doesn’t even work,” said Ruthie.

“Maybe,” said Nemo darkly. “But Ingrid Weiss doesn’t strike me as someone who would make that kind of mistake.”

“Go,” said Patton. “While you still can.”

“No,” said Nemo, pulling out his gun and pointing it at Patton. “You go. I’ll stay here with her.”

“Oh, now you’re going to be noble?” said Patton.

“Go,” said Nemo calmly. “Go now or I’ll blow your fucking head off.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the van, tossing them to Ruthie. “Get out of here.”

“Is there anything you can do?” said Jean between sobs.

“Go,” said Nemo. “I’ve got this.”

Ruthie grabbed Patton by the hand and yanked her toward the stairs. Patton gave one last look at Nemo, then followed Ruthie up and out of the house. As soon as the cool night air hit her face, Patton felt steadier. The attack hadn’t passed, not by a long shot, but she could at least function in the short term.

“Give me the keys,” she said.

“Are you sure you’re OK to drive?” said Ruthie.

“Give me the goddamn keys,” said Patton. She needed to feel some modicum of control, even if it was only driving the van.

“Fine, fine,” said Ruthie, handing over the keys to the van. In another minute, Patton was pulling out into the street and easing the van to the end of the block and around a corner. There she turned off the engine and tried to regulate her breathing, her hands still on the wheel.

“What are we doing?” said Ruthie.

“We’re waiting,” said Patton.

“But he said . . .”

“We’re waiting,” Patton repeated. “Give him ten minutes. You can time it if you like. Ten minutes and then we go.”

But they didn’t have to wait ten minutes. Three minutes later a great boom shook the van and a flash of light lit up the street. A second later, a fireball rent the night air where Ingrid Weiss’s house had been a moment before. Patton felt immobility overtaking her, but she forced it away, battling with everything that she had to start the engine as bits of glass and splinters of wood rained down on the van. It was Kandahar all over again.

“Did it work?” said Ingrid, as she navigated the car toward Berchtesgaden.

“Give me a minute,” said Gottfried. “I just detonated a few seconds ago.”

“If it didn’t work, it’s not my fault,” said Dietrich. “Everything was rigged properly.”

“If it didn’t work, we’re going to have a very unhappy woman in the basement when we return,” said Eva.

“If we return,” said Ingrid.

“We’ll have to return,” said Eva. “We can’t have her spouting off to the police, and they’re bound to find her sooner or later.”

“All I know is I rigged the explosives correctly,” said Dietrich. “If Gottfried screwed up the communications, that’s not my fault.”

“Why do you just assume Gottfried screwed up the communication?” said Ingrid.

“I don’t,” said Dietrich, “I’m just saying . . .”

“It worked,” said Gottfried with a hint of triumph in his voice.

“Are you sure?” said Ingrid.

“I planted a seismic detector in the bushes across the street in case we ever did this,” said Gottfried. “Ran it off the neighbors’ Wi-Fi. The second I hit ‘detonate’ that thing went off the charts.”

“Brilliant!” said Ingrid. “No more Jean Simpson and no evidence of the true nature of Columbia House.”

“Plus,” said Eva, “you are now the sympathetic victim of a terror attack. Your house blown to bits just because you were trying to help out the descendants of Holocaust victims.”

“How long do we wait before we send the message to the police?” said Gottfried.

“I think we should wait a couple of hours at least,” said Ingrid.

“Why?” said Eva. “An explosion like that, the police will be on the scene in minutes and the press won’t be far behind. The last thing we want is for them to find their own evidence instead of using ours.”

“She’s right,” said Dietrich. “We tell them where to look, and that’s where they’ll look.”

“OK, send it now,” said Ingrid.

“You sure it won’t seem suspicious?” said Gottfried. “Coming so soon.”

“How long has it been?” said Ingrid.

“Six minutes,” said Gottfried.

“And you’re sure you can send it so they can’t trace our location?”

“Absolutely,” said Gottfried.

“Give it ten minutes,” said Ingrid. “Then do it.”

Patton sat behind the wheel of the van shaking as the pages of books, some of them in flames, fluttered down around them. She could feel blackness closing in on her and Ruthie’s screaming in the back seat didn’t help. Lights flicked on in the houses nearby and doors opened. She could dimly hear shouts over the ringing in her ears and Ruthie’s ruckus.

“Stop it,” said Patton as calmly as she could muster, but Ruthie seemed not to hear.

“Oh God, oh God, that woman,” she shouted. “What do we do? What do we do?”

“You stop it,” said Patton, more forcefully this time. In a situation where she had no control, trying to control Ruthie might yank her out of the fog and back to reality. Nothing would remove the blackness, but maybe she could unfreeze herself if she could just get Ruthie to shut up. When the hysterics continued, she picked up her Luger off the seat, turned around, and pointed it squarely at Ruthie.

“If you don’t shut the fuck up,” she said, “I swear to God I will waste you.” She meant it, too. At that moment, she needed something or someone to shoot, and Ruthie made a convenient target. But Ruthie must have seen the earnestness in Patton’s eyes. Instantly her screams stopped, and while she continued to breathe like some sort of panting dog, Patton could deal with that a bit more easily. In the midst of her panic and darkness and the eruption of her horrific past into her bizarre present, Patton barely detected something else bubbling up in her psyche. It took her a moment to isolate with all the psychological background noise, but once Ruthie had quieted down she realized something surprising—she felt sad that Nemo was dead. Not just sad, but almost brokenhearted.

How had she become emotionally attached to a man hired to kill her friend, who had more blood on his hands than some of the terrorists she had hunted, who had committed cold-blooded murder right in front of her? It wasn’t love, this thing she felt for Nemo, but it might be affection, or perhaps attachment was a better word. In spite of his ruthlessness, he had treated her well; he had protected her when he could have easily left her behind to protect himself. With him gone, she wasn’t sure what happened next. Did she and Ruthie continue the search for Projekt Alchemie? Did they try to find item AL1533 in Himmler’s library and keep working to outfox Ingrid Weiss? Or did she drive to the nearest airport and fly home and forget this entire mess, including the mess of her feelings for Ruthie, which, she realized as she lowered the gun, were far more complicated than she had suspected.

The renewed banging on the van made it hard to think. How was debris still falling several minutes after the explosion, thought Patton. And why wouldn’t it stop so she could think. But the banging didn’t stop, and then Ruthie started back up again.

“Jesus Christ, aren’t you going to open the door?”

“What do you mean?” said Patton.

“The door! He’s banging on the door.”

“Who’s banging . . .” And then Patton looked up and saw Nemo’s face, twisted in the most beautiful fury, pressed against the window of the front passenger door as his fist pounded against the van. The flood of joy crashing into the darkness that had enveloped her was almost more than she could take and for a few seconds, she couldn’t move. Then, as she reached for the door handle to let him in, another realization crashed over her. He had not been noble or selfless, he had left that poor woman to be blown apart.

She paused for a moment, but when Ruthie shouted, “For God’s sake let him in,” Patton reluctantly opened the door.

“Help me,” said Nemo, as soon as the door opened.

“Oh just get in,” said Patton. “Honestly I can’t even look at you right now after you let that woman . . .”

“Look,” said Nemo, “can we save whatever bullshit you’re upset about for later and get this lady in the van.”

“Get the lady?” Patton did not comprehend at first. Her overloaded brain couldn’t keep up with the sudden shifts in reality. But then she saw that Nemo had Jean Simpson draped over his left side. Conscious, alive, Jean Simpson, who looked unable to walk by herself, but otherwise quite unexploded.

Before Patton could move, Ruthie jumped out of the van and helped Jean into the back. In another moment, the doors slammed and Nemo collapsed into the passenger seat. “Are you OK to drive?” he said.

Patton couldn’t answer the question. She couldn’t speak. For a few seconds the only sound in the van was the gradually slowing breathing of Nemo, Jean, and Ruthie. Then Patton realized she had been holding her breath, gulped in some air, and felt her vision clearing.

“I said are you OK to drive?” said Nemo, more gently this time.

“I think so,” said Patton.

“Then get us the hell out of here.”

Patton drove. She had no idea where, but she drove. No one spoke for several minutes until finally Ruthie asked, “What happened back there?”

“I just cut the damn vest off her and hoped for the best,” said Nemo. “I guess whoever wired her up wasn’t expecting a rescue party.”

“Jesus,” said Ruthie. “That was . . . daring.”

“Thank you,” said Jean softly. “Thank you.”

“Ah, it was nothing,” said Nemo. “All in a day’s work.”

“Good for you,” said Patton, allowing relief and something approaching respect for Nemo to creep into her. She smiled and turned to him briefly. “Fucking good for you.”

“Who are you people?” said Jean, in a slightly stronger voice.

“We just drive around and look for people who need rescuing,” said Nemo.

“No, seriously,” said Jean.

“Do you have the ledger?” said Nemo.

“Yes,” said Ruthie. “I’ve got it right here.”

“So what does it say? What is item AL1533?”

“I haven’t looked yet,” said Ruthie. “Let me see if I can find it.” Ruthie began to flip through the ledger, squinting to read the entries in the light of the streetlamps.

“What is that?” said Jean.

“Just a list of old books,” said Ruthie.

“You scared the hell out of me back there,” said Patton to Nemo, speaking for the first time since she started driving. Her pulse had almost returned to normal, and although she still felt a hint of dark terror in her gut, she felt more like a functional human being than she had since they first saw the vest on Jean.

“Not upsetting you wasn’t exactly my first priority,” said Nemo. “And you managed to make the van almost impossible to find. God only knows how many neighbors saw me lugging Jean around looking for you.”

“You’re the one who told us to go.”

“Out of the house, I told you to go, not out of the damn neighborhood.”

“You might want to be a little more specific next time. Besides, we were barely a block away,” said Patton, and then, most unexpectedly, she laughed.

“What the hell is so funny?” said Nemo. But Patton made no attempt to explain. How could she? She had no intention of admitting that arguing with Nemo made her happier than she thought possible so soon after a traumatic episode. She wished they could keep sparring for hours, but Ruthie interrupted the discussion.

“Here it is,” said Ruthie. “Number AL1533. My German isn’t perfect, but I think it says, ‘Medieval alchemical scroll after George Ripley, circa 1550.’ ”

“What does that mean, ‘medieval alchemical scroll’?” said Nemo.

“That part I understand,” said Patton. “But who is George Ripley? And what does he have to do with Himmler?”

“What is that book?” said Jean, who seemed to be recovering her strength. “What are you looking at and why are you talking about a Ripley Scroll?”

“Wait a second,” said Nemo, turning toward Jean. “You know about this Ripley guy?”

“I’m an art historian,” said Jean, “so certainly I know about Ripley Scrolls.”

“Who did you say you were again?” said Nemo.

The van was stopped at a red light, and Jean suddenly found three faces staring into hers. She wanted nothing more than to be in a deliciously comfortable bed at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, rather than in the back of a van driving through the empty streets of Munich in the dead of night. Ingrid Weiss had wanted her dead; these strangers had saved her—was that reason enough to trust them and to become involved in whatever they were doing?

“I wonder if you could just drop me at the train station,” said Jean. “I’m supposed to be in Vienna tomorrow for a conference.”

“Afraid we can’t do that,” said Nemo. “Ruthie here will tell you—once you see our faces, you pretty much have to come along with us.”

“It’s true,” said Ruthie.

“Listen,” said Patton. “We look after our own and you are one of our own now. If you don’t trust Nemo after he risked his life to save you, you must not trust anyone.”

“Your name is Nemo?” said Jean.

“As far as you know,” said Nemo.

“As far as anyone knows,” said Patton.

The light turned green and Patton drove forward, her attention still on the stranger in the back seat. “I’ve seen medieval scrolls,” she said. “In some classes in library science, rare books, that sort of thing. But I’ve never heard of George Ripley.”

“Have you ever heard of Peter Byerly?” said Jean.

“Sure,” said Patton. “He’s a legend in rare books. Discovered that Shakespeare manuscript, right?”

“OK, so you do know something about books,” said Jean, sounding satisfied. “Fine. George Ripley was an English alchemist. Lived in the fifteenth century, I think. I don’t really know much about him, but there are these scrolls called Ripley Scrolls—mostly made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and supposedly copied from the same original, although they show a lot of variation. I was always sort of vague on the exact connection to Ripley himself, because for me the point was the artwork. Each scroll is, I don’t know maybe fifteen feet long when you completely unroll it. And they’re full of these amazing color illustrations showing things like how to make gold out of lead and how to make the Philosopher’s Stone. The secret to eternal life. All that sort of thing. Of course the science is bunk, but the art is exquisite.”

“Is that all we’re chasing?” said Nemo. “Some medieval crackpot’s idea of how to live forever?”

“There has to be more to it than that,” said Patton.

“Where can we find these scrolls?” said Nemo.

“Most of them are in the British Library in London or the Bodleian in Oxford. There are a few in other rare book libraries in the US. I read something about one that went missing before the war, but I don’t think there are any in private collections.”

“But didn’t you say they’re all different?” said Ruthie.

“There are variations, yes,” said Jean.

“So we don’t just need to see some Ripley Scroll, we need to see this one,” said Ruthie, tapping her finger on the ledger.

“The one that went missing before the war,” said Nemo with a smile.

“How exactly are you going to find it if it’s gone missing?” said Jean.

“We know who the last owner was,” said Patton. “If that’s any help.”

“Who was it?” said Jean.

“Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler,” said Patton.

“In that case,” said Jean, sitting up and looking fully alert for the first time since she escaped Ingrid Weiss’s house, “I know where it is. We need to go to Prague.”

To: Bavarian State Police

From: Ingrid Weiss, Columbia House, Munich

When the recent terrorist attack on my house and the headquarters of the charitable organization Columbia House was carried out, I was lucky enough not to be at home. My associates and I are now in hiding and in fear for our lives. However, I am able to provide the authorities with some information about the attack. Several days ago I received a threatening phone call from a woman calling herself Jean Simpson of Ridgefield, North Carolina, USA, who seemed to want to interfere with the charitable work of Columbia House. It is not unusual for us to receive such calls from anti-Semitic or white supremacist groups, and I did not give the matter any thought. Like all such calls, we logged it carefully and added a photograph, taken from social media, to the record. We believe that Simpson was the bomber responsible for the attack on Columbia House. Our security system took a photograph of her on our doorstep a few hours ago. This photograph was automatically uploaded to our secure off-site server and is attached to this message. When we investigated Jean Simpson after her phone call, we discovered she had been traveling in Europe with a woman named Patton Harcourt, an American wanted for questioning in the murder of Art Handy. The attached photo of Patton Harcourt is from her military file several years ago. We will forward any more information we uncover in our own investigation through our secure email server.

“Isn’t Simpson dead?” said Eva.

“Yes,” said Ingrid, “and they’ll figure that out quickly enough. They’ll assume she was the bomber and be that much more inclined to believe the rest of the message.”

“And they’ll go off hunting for Harcourt,” said Dietrich.

“Even if she had nothing to do with Simpson,” said Eva.

“Exactly,” said Ingrid. “And with the police hunting her all across Europe, we can be free to execute Projekt Alchemie.”

“Karl’s phone has stopped moving,” said Gottfried, who was in the back seat lit by the glow of his laptop.

“Are they at the Eagle’s Nest?” said Ingrid. Hitler’s mountaintop retreat had been turned into a restaurant, but rumors about a vast network of tunnels in the mountain below had persisted for years. Surely, she thought, the decrypted message would help them find their way into the mountain and to the secrets it hid.

“No,” said Gottfried, sounding puzzled. “They’re at a place called the Hotel Edelweiss. He said the woman and the assassin checked in and he and Erich are going to get a room and grab some sleep. He says to watch the front of the hotel and meet them in the morning.”

Ingrid smiled. “How much farther to Berchtesgaden?” she said.

“About twenty miles,” said Dietrich.

“Park across the street from the hotel,” said Ingrid. “We can take turns sleeping. In a few hours Projekt Alchemie will be complete.”

At a modest hotel near Paddington Station, Ted was the first one of the three downstairs for breakfast when the story ran on the TV in the corner of the breakfast room. Because he hadn’t had his coffee yet, he didn’t pay much attention. A terrorist bombing in Munich, anti-Semitism a suspected motive. He thought nothing of it as he loaded his plate with eggs and sausage at the buffet. The news went on to yesterday’s decline in the FTSE precipitated by the failure of trade talks between someone and someone else. Ted didn’t care. He just wanted food and caffeine. He had finished two cups of coffee and most of his eggs when Bob and Franklin came skidding into the room, looking like they had raced each other down the stairs instead of waiting for the world’s slowest elevator.

“Did you see the news?” said Bob, taking a chair, picking up one of Ted’s sausages with his fingers, and chomping a bite off the end.

“That’s my breakfast,” said Ted.

“No time for breakfast,” said Bob. “We’re going to Munich.”

“Why the hell would we go to Munich?” said Ted.

“He didn’t see the news,” said Franklin. “You should watch the news.”

“Here, here it is,” said Bob, pointing to the television. And there, in the center of the screen, against the background of the smoldering remains of a house, was a photograph of Patton Harcourt wearing her army dress uniform. Below her on the screen, under the banner “Breaking News” read the words: “American Patton Harcourt Wanted in Munich Bombing.”

“Holy shit,” said Ted. “Is that . . .”

“That’s her,” said Bob.

“Why the hell would she blow up a house in Munich?”

“I have no idea,” said Bob. “But she finally made a mistake. We’ve got forty minutes to get to the airport.”