In the days after the war, Yost said his father sent word to the right people that he was interested in buying the art that many of the SS were using to barter their way to freedom. He also hinted that he had connections that would get former Nazis with the right amount of money to safe places. With two other friends who had been through similar experiences, the senior Yost invited the fugitive Nazis to his shop for the purpose of examining their stolen works of art. While Yost examined the works, the visitors were taken to a room and executed by Yost’s two associates.

The macabre scheme had worked for nearly a decade. Secrecy had always been on their side. Nazis came to them one by one, by referral and word of mouth. And when a fugitive disappeared and was never seen again by his former associates, they all assumed that Yost had again succeeded in getting one of the Kameradren to safety.

The system broke down in July 1949 when two former SS Oberleutnants showed up at the door of the shop and demanded that they both be processed together. One of them smelled a rat and managed to escape. Since then, the younger Yost had explained, his father had been in danger from men who—though now themselves too old to kill—were wealthy and powerful enough to hire the best of killers.

Yost had returned as many of the works of art as he could to the original owners, but many of them remained unclaimed, their owners dead or untraceable. The orphan works had allowed his father to expand the business from a modest framing shop to an exclusive art gallery.

“These are his favorites,” Yost said, stopping at the end of the hall and raising his arms in a motion that took in the art on the walls. “He always kept the best of the orphan pieces for himself.”

Seth stopped and opened his mouth to speak, but Yost turned quickly and opened a door at the end of the hallway. “Please step in.”

Seth stepped through the doorway into a book-lined study. Puddles of yellowish light illuminated a large library table carpeted with opened books and pads of notes, their pages partially covered in a small, shaky but still precise handwriting.

At the far end of the room, sitting in a wing-backed chair in front of a welcoming fire that burned in a marblemantled fireplace, rested an old man, his blanket-covered legs propped up on an ottoman. His chair was separated from an identical one to his left by a low piecrust table cluttered with books, papers, and a decanter half filled with amber fluid. The old man was reading a thick hardcover book.

“Father?” Yost called out from the door. The old man in the chair laid the book in his lap and turned toward them.

“Yes, Jacob?”

“Your visitor. Mr. Ridgeway.”

The elder Yost adjusted his glasses as he looked up at Seth and blinked several times.