Sanderson wheeled his car through a quick three-point turn, and his foot went down hard as he accelerated in a completely different direction.

*   *   *

In the predawn hours that Wednesday, Slaton swept through Bayreuth, Wagner’s final resting place, and farther on skirted Nuremburg, witness to both the swaggering beginnings and ignominious end of Hitler’s depraved Nazi Party. He arrived at the Munich outpost of EuroCamper Rentals at 8:21 in the morning.

Slaton steered through a double-sided gate that no one bothered to guard, and saw a parking lot with perhaps twenty recreational vehicles similar to the one he was driving. Finding an empty slot at the front, near what looked like a small office, Slaton backed the camper in deftly—as any professional driver would.

He took the keys in hand, pulled the routing card from the rearview mirror, and walked toward the office with a weary stride that was not contrived. He pushed through a squeaking metal door into a paintless and beaten room. One wall displayed a poster of a camper like the one he’d just parked, the unit in the picture considerably cleaner, and presented with a smiling family in an otherwise vacant Alpine meadow. The only other thing here that could be called a decoration was a monthly calendar, the October offering a voluptuous woman whose naked body was covered strategically by red and brown leaves, her tanned haunch nestled against the logo of a brake rotor manufacturer. A space heater in one corner was working hard but losing the battle, an ominous sign in early October, and behind a counter Slaton saw a big man sitting on a high stool. His hair was wild and his face grooved, the sort of deep wrinkles that implied not only cigarettes and alcohol, but every vice known to God and earth. The proprietor was leaning on the rough countertop and watching something on a tiny TV.

The man looked up, said nothing, and held out his hand. Slaton gave him the key and the delivery routing card.

“Where is the rest of the paperwork?” the man demanded in German.

German was a language Slaton struggled with, especially after years of neglect, but it hardly mattered. He could decipher the puzzle-like compounds well enough to understand commands, and he could respond with ill-phrased answers as well as any recent immigrant. In his current guise—delivery driver for a rental company—he reckoned that a formal command of the language would only inspire unwanted attention.

Slaton shrugged helplessly. “They give me nothing else.”

The man snorted, and asked, “Did you hit anything?”

“No.”

“Did you put gas in it?”

“Yes, sure.”

“You have the receipt?”