He found it halfway through the author’s notes. His lungs protested from his excitement at the discovery and sent him into a fit of wheezing. The source was Karl Brunner. He claimed to be the driver of an important colonel of the SS in France during the German occupation. He would offer no further information on himself or persons or official positions for the author, but Alistair did not need them. He recognized the speaker as the driver for Colonel Derrick Albrecht, and knew the identity of the woman the colonel had rescued from execution. The whole conversation between John Peterson and the drunken German sergeant was laid out in black and white in the pages of the author’s journal. It told of the respect and admiration the driver had for his superior and of the colonel’s love for his beautiful French bout partner, a fencer of foil, who did not return his affections. When his superior discovered her to be a spy for the Allies, he concocted a scheme to save her from the firing squad, the plan matching almost word for word the text of the last chapter of John Peterson’s narrative. In his journal, but not in his book to protect the driver, the author had even included a paragraph in Karl Brunner’s own words: He loved her. He would have done anything for her. He even murdered for her. He poisoned a famous French author to save her from the Gestapo, an act in which I took part, but he refused to the end to implicate me to the French authorities. I was allowed to go free, but he went to prison, and the French eventually chopped off his head. After his execution, I took to bouts of drinking when the memories became too strong.

John Peterson did not mention that the woman the colonel saved from the firing squad was an American, so Alistair assumed that he believed, like the driver, that Victoria was French, thus the reason he claimed that she lived somewhere in Europe.

Alistair managed to draw in a deep breath, unmindful of the room’s stench. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he said. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

*  *  *

Brad and Chris stood before the imposing mansion once occupied by General Konrad March. “Looks the same, doesn’t it?” Brad said.

“Exactly as I remember,” Chris agreed. “I wonder if the people who live there now are the original Jewish residents or their children.”

“The owners might be if they managed to get out of Paris before they were arrested.”

“General March didn’t seem the type to live in a house confiscated from a family hauled off to the cattle cars,” Chris said.