“Now, if I had to guess about the contents of those bags,” said Patton, “I’d say that one of them at least has a cell phone that our late friends used to communicate with Weiss. We will use that phone to convince Weiss it’s worth her while to leave home.”

“I never would have thought of that,” said Alex.

“This is not my first time sending misinformation to the enemy,” said Patton.

“They did it during World War II all the time,” said Ruthie.

“If we are really up against a group of Aryan supremacists who have a chance at obtaining massive wealth using Nazi secrets,” said Nemo, “this still is World War II. Now, we have no idea what this message means until we find that catalog, but we have to convince Weiss that we do know and that wherever we’re headed is the site of . . . of whatever she’s looking for.”

“The secret to manufacturing gold?” said Ruthie doubtfully.

“Something like that,” said Nemo, leaning over the map. “So we need someplace that’s close enough to Munich to tempt her to come after us herself, and also believable as a place the Nazis would keep a hidden secret.”

“There,” said Alex, pointing to a spot on the map southeast of Munich and right on the Austrian border. “Berchtesgaden.”

When Jean Simpson landed in Vienna, she would have to decide whether to go first to Munich or Prague. She had already reached a librarian at the National Library of the Czech Republic who was willing to meet with her but had had no such luck at the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Still, Ingrid Weiss lived in Munich, and more than anything, Jean wanted to confront the owner of Columbia House and ask her just what she meant by sending people stolen library books and passing them off as Nazi loot.