The National Library of the Czech Republic is housed in the old town of Prague in a huge complex called the Klementinum. Most of the buildings once belonged to a monastery, and Jean could imagine robed monks crossing the same courtyard through which Andrea now led them. They entered another building, then climbed a seemingly endless metal spiral staircase before emerging into a series of plain rooms displaying reproductions of some of the Klementinum's treasures. Andrea ushered them through a door on the side of the third room, flicked a light switch, and even Nemo found his breath taken away.

They stood at one end of the Baroque Library, an eighteenth-century Jesuit library housed in a room so beautiful that Jean struggled not to weep as they walked its length.

“The tourists are only allowed to look in from the end,” said Andrea, “but special guests can walk all the way in.”

Down the center of the marble floor stood a variety of huge globes, overhead glowed frescoes dedicated to the arts and sciences, and in between, on two levels of elaborately decorated shelves, stood thousands of ancient volumes.

“I love to visit this room,” said Andrea, “it feeds my soul.”

Jean tried to imagine the joy of walking into this room—though “room” seemed too prosaic a word to describe this glorious space—on a regular basis and came even closer to weeping.

“We can stay for a few minutes, if you have the time,” said Andrea.

“Of course,” said Nemo in a voice that Jean could swear was choked with emotion.

They stood in silence for what seemed like hours and seconds—time didn’t seem to exist in this space. Jean tried to memorize the designs in the woodwork, the intricacy of the globes, and especially the frescoes overhead. Then Andrea led them back down through the now pedestrian-seeming courtyard, back to the main part of the library, and into what she described as a “private reading room,” a space far less elegant than the Baroque Library, but still possessing a series of columned bookcases that contained volumes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Down the center of the room stood a long table, lined with cushioned chairs on either side.

They had decided that if they asked for several items, if Weiss somehow followed them, she wouldn’t know which one contained a clue. Jean thought that if one of the “books” they looked at was a Ripley Scroll, it would be the most likely to hold secrets about alchemy, but they had found several other treatises on the subject listed in Himmler’s catalog and gave Andrea a list of nine items they wished to see. She left them alone in the reading room and went to retrieve the books.

“How long do you think this will take?” said Nemo.