“Yes, and we could also make it easy for them to follow us,” said Nemo. “But if we send them a quick message and then turn it off again . . .”

“Then they’ll think Fritz and Franz are following me on a train to Munich,” said Patton.

“Exactly,” said Nemo. He told Ruthie what to type and she did her best to render his message in German, then turned off the phone. “That should keep them busy,” he said.

Ruthie sat next to Patton and, as they had crossed over the English coast, she had slipped her hand into Patton’s. Patton had not resisted, nor had she let go. She didn’t know if what she felt for Ruthie was latent affection or simply a desperate need for human connection in a time of crisis. Either way, Ruthie’s soft, cool hand calmed her nerves and swept a little wave of fondness over her.

She felt a twinge of guilt about how she had manipulated Ruthie back in Bletchley. She had seen right away that Ruthie still carried, if not a torch, certainly a candle for her, and she had had no qualms about using that fact to her own advantage. But she did have pleasant memories of that summer in Boston. Patton had joined the army a few months later, and while Ruthie was not the last woman she had slept with, she was the last woman she had spent night after night with, the last woman she had lain awake next to all night in the cool summer air. She had no illusions about pursuing a relationship with Ruthie when this was all over, but she allowed herself, as the plane bounced her up and down, to indulge in a fantasy that—once they had solved the mystery of Projekt Alchemie and Nemo had disappeared back into the ether—she and Ruthie might spend a few days together at some remote hotel in the Alps, rediscovering what had made that summer in Boston so special.

Nemo did not sleep, though he suspected the others thought he was dozing. He closed his eyes and slowed his breath and tried to think about only what he needed to think about. Why did he suddenly care so much about something? Since the day he had walked away leaving a dead body in the kitchen and Jack in the bedroom, he had cared about nothing but himself. A career that required him to be invisible also required him to insulate himself from the rest of humankind, to disconnect from anything that might awaken feelings of compassion or concern. But now those feelings had been awakened, and he feared they might be his undoing. He should be concentrating on the most basic task at hand—find and eliminate Ingrid Weiss to send a message that no one double-crossed Nemo. Yet again and again he found that thought slipping away, replaced by a desire to protect Patton—Ruthie, too, but especially Patton.