Ridgeway took another look at the photograph. “Why the fascination? This Stahl doesn’t seem to be that much of an artist.”

She smiled. “There are many who share your feelings, Mr. Ridgeway. The Fuhrer, though, wasn’t one of them. Hitler, you may know, wanted more than anything else in the world to be an artist, a painter. He was turned away from the best art academies and spent years in near poverty trying to peddle his works among the patrons of cafés and bistros in Vienna.”

Rebecca Weinstock stood, stretched her legs. Ridgeway toyed with his coffee mug, spinning it in half turns as he watched his strange morning visitor.

“The world might well have never suffered through its bloodiest epoch so far in history,” she resumed after she sat down again, “if someone had just let little Adolf into art school.”

“That’s fairly well known,” Ridgeway said, impatience in his voice. “What does it have to do with Zoe and this … Stahl painting?”

“Patience. I haven’t come all this way to waste your time. That period in Hitler’s life had two specific consequences for you, and your wife.

“First, it drew Hitler’s sympathy to another struggling Aryan artist—Stahl—and it made him determined to prove his artistic merit to the world, by whatever means it took. He saw in Stahl someone like himself, a struggling artist of skill but no particular genius.”

“Are you saying Hitler was a good artist?”

“He was a competent craftsman who probably could have made a good career today as a commercial or graphic artist But another Rembrandt? Hardly. And neither was Stahl. Hitler adopted Stahl, introduced him to Nazi society. They were pleased that not all of the artists in Germany were Jews or exiles.…

“The second consequence for you of Hitler’s failed art career,” Rebecca continued, “concerns his passion for building the world’s largest and finest museum. The Fuhrermuseum, as it was to be called, would be built in his hometown of Linz, Austria. To fill this museum’s collection, Hitler created a special task force in the SS called the Sonderauftrag Linz. The task force had to make sure the best art, antiques, statuary, relics, icons, coins—whatever—were taken from public and private collections in occupied countries. The art came from all over Europe by the boxcarload to Munich to a central collecting point. Later in the war the art was moved out of Munich to old castles and salt mines where it would be safe from Allied bombardment.”

She paused and leaned toward Ridgeway. “The estate near Kreuzlingen that your wife visited was filled with pieces of art that had disappeared into the Nazi art machine. Most of it made its way across the border from Germany with SS officers who used the art to buy silence, food, lodging, and transportation away from the Allied tribunals.”

“Jesus!” Ridgeway didn’t believe in the old Ludlum fantasies of geriatric Nazis stalking the world, but he did believe that millions of dollars’ worth of art could make murder seem inconsequential.