Patton looked out the window at the Netherlands slipping by below them. It was a clear day, and she could see a patchwork of colors as they flew ten thousand feet over the tulip fields. They had stowed the fruits of an excursion into London behind the seats of the six-passenger Beechcraft. Along with the cache of Wehrmacht weapons and ammunition from Alex Lansdowne was a black duffel bulging with cameras, microphones, and a tablet—everything Patton needed to run a surveillance operation, all purchased at a store in West London. Nemo had also retrieved €50,000 and a pistol from a safe deposit box in Kensington. Ten thousand of those euros paid for this bumpy flight to a field outside Munich. The noise of the engine made conversation difficult, and the tiny cabin threatened to bring on a bout of her claustrophobia. She would have gladly given up the view of the tulip fields in exchange for a different mode of travel.

Their campaign of disinformation had begun as soon as they arrived in London and Nemo insisted that Patton use her credit card to buy a train ticket.

“I thought you said they would be tracing my credit card,” said Patton.

“That’s the whole point. If you buy one ticket to Munich they’ll think I’m out of the picture. You book a train for early this afternoon and they won’t expect you in Munich until tomorrow. Meanwhile, we take a private plane from an airfield outside London and we’ve got the whole night to set up our surveillance net.” “Private plane” had sounded nice when Nemo first said it. The reality, thought Patton, as the plane hit another patch of turbulence, was anything but luxurious.

At a public computer terminal in the Paddington Library, Patton had used her credit card to book a ticket on the Eurostar to Paris and a connecting train to Munich, arriving about nine o’clock the next morning. “I hope they can hack that,” she said.

“We’ll give them a little help,” said Nemo. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and switched it on.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to use those,” said Ruthie.

“This isn’t mine,” he said.

“The cell phone of Fritz and Franz?” said Patton.

“Got it on the first guess,” said Nemo. “And Erich gave me the code to unlock it. I tried it while you were buying your tickets.”

“Erich didn’t give us any code,” said Patton. “All he said was something about . . .”

“About the Fourteen Words,” said Nemo. He held out the phone and let Patton and Ruthie watch as he keyed in the numbers 1-4-1-4 and the screen sprung to life. “And here,” he said, “is a strand of text messages to ‘I. Weiss.’ ”

“We could probably find out all sorts of things on that phone,” said Ruthie.