Ingrid had spent ten minutes on the phone with Alexandr, her source at the National Library of the Czech Republic. She had visited the library several times to examine books from Himmler’s library and gotten to know Alexandr well enough that he recognized her voice as soon as she called. She had never told him that she owned Himmler’s library catalog and she never let him see her refer to the digital copy of the register she kept on her iPad. She came to the library, she said, to try to understand the scope of Himmler’s collecting and to trace where some of his books had come from. She had no intention, she said, of forcing the library to return books that had been stolen, but if she could trace the provenance of some of Himmler’s books, she would certainly share that information with Alexandr. Then, when his back was turned, she would steal one or two old volumes to be “returned” to their “rightful owners” by Columbia House.

She had long suspected that the secret to Projekt Alchemie was buried somewhere in Himmler’s collection of occult books, but with eleven thousand volumes to examine and no idea what to look for, she had no chance of discovering anything useful without the message her grandfather had told her about. Still, it came as no surprise when Dietrich suggested that their next destination should be Prague. What did come as a surprise was his specificity.

“We need to find something called a Ripley Scroll at the library in Prague,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“A source,” said Dietrich.

“Trustworthy?” said Ingrid.

“Absolutely,” said Dietrich.

And so, when the library in Prague opened, Ingrid had called Alexandr to confirm that there was something called the Ripley Scroll in the Himmler collection. An hour later, Alexandr had rung back to say that not only did the collection contain such a scroll, but that a man and a woman had come to examine it. So Ingrid had turned the car toward Prague.

By the time Nemo and Jean got back, Patton and Ruthie had dressed and Patton had returned her attention to the television and the coverage of the Munich bombing.

“Couldn’t find anything to do in your own room?” said Nemo as he sat down on the end of the bed.

“We’ve got a problem,” said Patton.

“I’ll say we’ve got a problem,” said Nemo. “Somebody else has been asking about the Ripley Scroll and I’ll bet you a thousand bucks it’s Ingrid fucking Weiss.”

“This is a different problem,” said Ruthie, nodding toward the television screen. “Three ex-soldiers are hunting Patton.”

Nemo picked up the remote and snapped off the television. “What do you mean they’re hunting her?”

“They want to kill me, OK,” said Patton. “And they’ve tracked me as far as Munich.”