“Real estate records in the courthouse,” said Patton. “But it’s not open on Sunday.”

“I don’t exactly want to talk to the county clerk,” said Nemo. “We’ll break in. I suppose there’s an alarm . . .”

“We don’t have to break in,” said Patton. “I have a key.”

“You have a key? Who the hell are you?”

“Patton Jackson Harcourt, director of the Alta Vista Public Library.”

“You’re a fucking librarian? I doubt that.”

“Doubt all you want,” said Patton. “It’s true. You want to tell me who you are?”

“You can call me Nemo.”

“Okay. The library’s in the same building as the courthouse,” said Patton, “and I have a passkey and the security code.”

“I don’t like to count on luck in my business,” said Nemo, “but it’s nice when it comes along.”

“What is your business?” said Patton.

Nemo did not answer.

january 1937

“I am a strong believer in the doctrine that, in the end, only good blood can achieve the greatest, enduring things in the world.”

Along with the masses around him, Storm Trooper Helmut Werner cheered the speaker, giddy with the thrill of being in his presence for the first time. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, stood on the rostrum addressing a gathering of the organization Helmut was so proud to have joined. He had passed every test Himmler had devised to screen out those of weaker blood—his hair, eyes, skull measurements, and height all indicated pure Aryan blood, free of foreign or Jewish corruption.

“I shall not accept people,” said Himmler, “whom I expect to quit, to complain, to become disloyal and traitors, to have bad soldierly manners and the like at the moment of political tests, because of the nature of the composition of their blood.”

To the casual observer, Helmut may have seemed almost indistinguishable from those around him. They all wore the same black uniform, they all stood tall and broad-shouldered with gleaming blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. But even among his pure-blooded brothers, Helmut was determined to distinguish himself.

“We must clearly realize that Bolshevism is the organization of the subhumans, it is the absolute foundation of Jewish sovereignty.”