Franklin and Patton heard Ingrid’s truck start up and pull back into the road. Their job was simple—slow down the truck as much as possible. Nemo had a thirty-minute head start and the cargo in his truck shouldn’t take much longer than that to unload. Still, they wanted to avoid any awkward meetings of the two vehicles, and of course the Germans needed to arrive after 3:00 a.m. The first forty miles of the drive to Zurich was on a two-lane highway and Franklin planned to drive at a snail’s pace in front of the truck, speeding up and weaving erratically when the road straightened and provided a possible passing zone. By the time they were a mile outside of Saulgrub the truck had caught up and within another mile the driver had begun to show his impatience, flashing his high beams and blaring his horn as Franklin crept along at twenty-five miles an hour. If all went well, by the time they reached the four-lane highway, they would have bought Nemo another twenty or thirty minutes and insured that Weiss’s truck did not arrive at the bank too soon.

All did not go well.

At the first stretch of straight road, just a few miles into the drive, the truck engine roared behind them and, even though Franklin was driving the van astride the center line, the Mercedes came bearing down on them, one wheel throwing up dirt and gravel from the roadside. It happened too quickly for Franklin to react, and besides, he didn’t want to cause an accident. They wanted this truck to get to Zurich, not to turn over in a ditch and dump its load where the next passing police officer would see it. So Franklin swerved back into his lane, and watched as the taillights of the truck faded into the darkness ahead of them.

“Should I try to pass them and get back in front?” said Franklin.

“It would look pretty suspicious,” said Patton. “The whole idea is they need to not know anything funny is going on. I’ll call Nemo and warn him and we’ll just hope he got enough of a head start.”

“Tell him this guy drives like a maniac,” said Franklin, feeling a drop of sweat slip down his forehead. “Nemo better speed.”

12:45 a.m.

Bob and Alex had been a quarter mile behind the truck when it passed Franklin and Patton. They had passed the van and fallen in behind the truck but, like Patton, had concluded that any attempt to pass the speeding truck and then slow down would arouse suspicion. So they followed at a respectful distance.

“I wonder if we should warn Nemo?” said Alex.

“Patton probably already did,” said Bob, “but why don’t you try just in case.”

“Patton told me,” said Nemo when Alex called. “I’m driving this damn thing as fast as I can.”