“The Germans?” Nemo picked up one of the metal rotors and held it in front of his flashlight, the beam glinting off the polished surface. “That guy I took down at your place—I’m pretty sure he was German.”

“You said he was ex-military.”

“Yes, but I didn’t say ex–US military. Judging from his weaponry, I’d say German is the most likely. He wasn’t carrying any ID.”

“Why would a German ex-soldier take shots at me?” said Patton. She still assumed, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that the sniper must be connected to the three people she knew actually wanted her dead, but that theory was getting harder and harder to support.

“Why would an old man try to build a German code machine from World War II?”

“Jasper fought in the war,” said Patton, unwilling to offer Nemo any more of what she knew about Jasper’s experiences. “But that doesn’t explain why he wants an Enigma machine.”

“Do you know how this thing works?” said Nemo.

“I know the basics,” said Patton. “You set the rotors to a certain starting position and wire up the plugboard a certain way—they used different starting positions and wiring configurations every day. Then you type in your message, and with each letter the rotors move to a new position and a letter lights up on here.” Patton pointed to the second set of letters above the typewriter keys. “You write down those letters, send them via Morse code, and then the person at the other end, with his machine set up the same way as yours, types it in and the original message lights up on the board, one letter at a time.”

“So all you need to decode the message is one of these machines configured the right way?”

“Yeah, but even with a three-rotor Enigma there were something like one hundred and fifty trillion possible settings. And some machines had four rotors.”

“Wouldn’t they just run it through a supercomputer or something?”

“Not in early 1940s. There were no computers to speak of. The British basically invented modern computing to help break Enigma. You see, there was this guy named Alan Turing—”

“You say this machine doesn’t work?” said Nemo, interrupting.

“It’s not finished,” said Patton. “Not enough rotors and the—”

“We’d better take it anyway. Don’t want Fritz and Franz finding it.”

“Fritz and Franz?”

“My nicknames for your Aryan buddies using your fridge for target practice.”

“Aryan? You said—”

“I said German, yeah, but the one I dropped was as blond and blue-eyed as they come. Looked like a regular Gestapo poster boy.” Nemo scooped up the Enigma machine, wires dangling from its back and underside. “Grab those rotors, will you,” he said.

Patton took the rotors off the counter and followed Nemo back into the daylight. “Slow down,” she said as he opened the trunk and tossed the machine in.