Snow, sleet, and freezing rain poured down on us that evening as we parked Werner’s car in a dark unpaved lot and made our way down a cluttered alley littered with paper and illuminated by a naked streetlight bulb.

Werner knocked at the metal blast shield that served as Heim’s front door. I noticed that the other two windows set into the concrete wall of the structure were covered by blast shields also. Werner told me that Heim lived in constant terror of retribution from the Israelis because—even though he did serve some time in an Allied prison—there are many who believe he was involved in activities far more heinous than merely being Hitler’s main adjutant for coordinating art thefts.

After several minutes, Heim came to the door and after some difficulty pushed back the protective barrier and welcomed us.

The phrase “stooped but unbowed” characterized Heim precisely. At first glance, he looked like a street derelict, dressed as he was in two overcoats and a layered succession of sweaters and shirts. But Heim’s eyes still shone a bright pale icy blue that could have served as a poster child for Hitler’s virile Aryan superman.

He showed us into the room where he conducted his research, and, once we were seated amid the prodigious clutter of papers, solicitously placed threadbare blankets over our knees lest we get cold. The bomb shelter was not heated. Meyer began to talk with Heim as I, with a novice’s grasp of the German language, listened. Heim and Werner spoke for a few minutes about their progress in trying to locate some of the original scores of the composer Wagner, which had disappeared during the war. This search is Werner’s passion. They talked for a while about the authenticity of Hitler’s diaries, which had just surfaced. Heim said that he had read parts and felt they were genuine.

The conversation then turned to me and my attempts to track down missing pieces of art As part of my research, I had put my talents as a former investigative reporter to work, not only in gathering material for the novel, but also in keeping my eyes open for some find that might serve as the basis for a good magazine article or even a nonfiction book.

We talked only a few minutes before Heim began to speak fondly of Frederick Stahl, the painter favored by Hitler and other Nazis mentioned in this book. Heim quickly grew misty-eyed as he remembered Stahl and, I suppose, the old days. He spoke of the beauty of Stahl’s work and of how Hitler treated the artist as if he were a brother, or perhaps a surrogate father.

By now, he had begun to include all of us in the room each time he used the word wiser, the German familiar form for “us,” but which meant more: something that could be roughly translated as “our circle.” I grew increasingly uncomfortable as he expanded his use of the word to refer to his Nazi comrades and even to the Fuhrer himself. This was not part of a crowd to which I wanted to belong.