When you’re faced with a box you know is full of secrets, you feel intimidated. It was easier for Rachel, he wasn’t expecting to find anything out of the ordinary in this suitcase. Every family has a shoebox, a folder, a suitcase like this full of papers and photographs, letters, bits of jewellery, charms and talismans. Uncle Ali has one – one of those huge trunks you take when you’re emigrating, tied up with ropes and big knots, in it there are hundreds of certificates, all the paperwork from a lifetime spent slaving at temporary jobs, there are a couple of talismans he brought back from the bled and a huge collection of grigris he bought from the Senegalese griot in Block 14. But from reading Rachel’s diary, I already knew what was in this suitcase, what horror was waiting for me. There were papers, photos, letters, newspaper cuttings, a magazine. Yellowed, tattered, stained. There was a stainless-steel watch from the last century which had stopped at 6.22 Three medals. Rachel had looked them up, the first one had the symbol of the Hitlerjugend, the Hitler Youth, the second was a medal from the Wehrmacht for bravery in combat, the third had the insignia of the Waffen SS. There’s a piece of tissue paper with a skull and crossbones, the Totenkopf, the emblem of the SS. The photos were taken in Europe, Germany probably, Papa is wearing his uniform, there are photos of him on his own and some group shots. In some of the photographs he’s very young and he and his mates are built like athletes, proud of their uniforms, happy to be alive. In others, he’s older-looking, very serious, wearing a black SS uniform. He’s leaning against a tank or posing in a huge courtyard, or sitting on the steps of some house. In one of the photos he’s wearing civilian clothes, he looks handsome and elegant, all dressed in white with a big moustache, it was taken in Egypt, he’s posing beside the great pyramid, smiling to a couple of elderly English ladies who are smiling back. There are more recent photos of him from when he was in the maquis in Algeria, wearing fatigues and a safari hat. He’s put on a bit of weight and he’s really tanned, which suits him. In one of them, he’s standing in a forest with two young guerrillas who are sitting on the ground, there are guns spread out on a blanket. He’s doing weapons training. There’s an Algerian flag on a makeshift flagpole. In another photo, he’s standing next to some tall, bony guy with a haunted look wearing battledress, smiling like his teeth hurt. Rachel figured out who the other guy was, he calls him Boumédienne, he was the leader of the maquis. There are newspaper clippings in English, French, Italian. The French article is from some magazine called Historia. I read it. It was about the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi leaders: Bormann, Göring, von Ribbentrop, Dönitz, Hess, von Schirach and that lot. It talks about the ones they captured later – Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, Klaus Barbie . . . It goes on about the ones who are scattered across the world to countries in South America, the Arab world, in Africa. It mentions Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Bolivia, Paraguay, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Rhodesia and a couple of others. There are lots of letters in German, one in French, signed Jean 92, dated 11 November 1962. You need to know code to work out what it says, because it sounds like a letter from a burglar to a fence. It reads like it’s nothing important, this Jean 92 mentions a number of valuable items recently recovered, some other items that have been traced and are likely to be recovered soon, then says that no one knows where the rest of the loot is hidden, so it must be in a safe place. He mentions a high-powered investigator called SW, some group known by the initials BJ and another one he calls N which seems to be linked to an incredibly dangerous organisation he calls M. He mentions some woman called Odessa who’s looking after the objects and having them transferred to a safe place. Rachel worked it all out, he did a lot of research. The mysterious Jean 92 signs off: HH, your star of better days. I think this is the letter that sent Rachel racing around Europe, and from there to Egypt. He talks about it a lot in his diary. But he doesn’t say everything, or maybe you need to know other stuff, stuff I don’t know yet, before you can understand.