At a modest hotel near Paddington Station, Ted was the first one of the three downstairs for breakfast when the story ran on the TV in the corner of the breakfast room. Because he hadn’t had his coffee yet, he didn’t pay much attention. A terrorist bombing in Munich, anti-Semitism a suspected motive. He thought nothing of it as he loaded his plate with eggs and sausage at the buffet. The news went on to yesterday’s decline in the FTSE precipitated by the failure of trade talks between someone and someone else. Ted didn’t care. He just wanted food and caffeine. He had finished two cups of coffee and most of his eggs when Bob and Franklin came skidding into the room, looking like they had raced each other down the stairs instead of waiting for the world’s slowest elevator.

“Did you see the news?” said Bob, taking a chair, picking up one of Ted’s sausages with his fingers, and chomping a bite off the end.

“That’s my breakfast,” said Ted.

“No time for breakfast,” said Bob. “We’re going to Munich.”

“Why the hell would we go to Munich?” said Ted.

“He didn’t see the news,” said Franklin. “You should watch the news.”

“Here, here it is,” said Bob, pointing to the television. And there, in the center of the screen, against the background of the smoldering remains of a house, was a photograph of Patton Harcourt wearing her army dress uniform. Below her on the screen, under the banner “Breaking News” read the words: “American Patton Harcourt Wanted in Munich Bombing.”

“Holy shit,” said Ted. “Is that . . .”

“That’s her,” said Bob.

“Why the hell would she blow up a house in Munich?”

“I have no idea,” said Bob. “But she finally made a mistake. We’ve got forty minutes to get to the airport.”

SECTION FOUR: PRAGUE

ZSQWE FEQCR ZONJL KJGK

SECTION FOUR:
PRAGUE

X

X

Jean had a vague idea, from maps she had looked at earlier in the week, that Prague was northeast of Munich and so, since Nemo insisted they stay off the grid as long as possible, Patton took the first highway she could find marked Norden and hoped for the best. Jean had explained her investigations into Columbia House and how she had discovered that Ingrid Weiss had been giving away books she had stolen from libraries, fobbing them off as Nazi loot being returned to its rightful owners.

“I knew she was bad news from the minute I got that book in the mail,” she said. “And when I found out some of the books she had stolen, including the one she sent me, came from the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague, I started reading up on it, and I came across an article about how Himmler’s occult library had been discovered there a few years ago.”