Ruthie hated to drive, but she had no light on her bicycle and there was too much traffic on the road to risk riding at night. She could have ridden in earlier, she supposed; after all, the museum was closed on Mondays, but then she would have been stuck there in the middle of the night with no way home. So she cranked up her ten-year-old Mini Cooper for the first time in a week and eased away from the curb in front of her cottage and into the road. She still had not decided how she felt about seeing Patton after all this time—and under such bizarre circumstances. But as she approached the museum gates, she felt excitement rising up unbidden. Ruthie was typically a calm person—unusually calm, the staff at the museum would have said. Even with the most rambunctious school group threatening to overrun her and lay hands on her precious machine, Ruthie remained cool and level-headed. But now she found herself actually trembling with anticipation of the night ahead. As much as she tried to squelch it, as hard as she tried to tell herself it was wrong, misguided, and foolish, Ruthie’s heart insisted on being heard, and what it said, in the loudest and most enthusiastic terms, was: “You have a second chance.”

V

V

Karl had watched from the shadows as the woman and the hired gun climbed over the wall and disappeared.

“They have to come back this way, right?” said Erich.

“They won’t get far without their car,” said Karl.

“Should I disable it?”

But instead of answering, Karl took out the phone and called Weiss to discuss their next move.

“Excellent,” said Ingrid, when she heard that the two fugitives had arrived at Bletchley. “They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t have the message. Let them do the work of decrypting, then take care of them when they come back out.”

Karl smiled. Finally something had gone right in this debacle of a job. Once they had the decrypted message, there would be no stopping Columbia House. Projekt Alchemie would make everything possible. He switched off the phone, turned to Erich, and said, “Fix the car.”

As Ingrid hung up, the landline rang. Jean Simpson had miscalculated the time change when she called Columbia House. She forgot that Germany was six hours ahead not six hours behind.

“That’s the business number,” said Gottfried, looking at a readout on his screen. “It’s coming from America.”

“Answer it,” said Dietrich.

“Don’t answer it,” said Weiss firmly. “Can you get a better trace on it?”

“North Carolina,” said Gottfried. “Eastern part of the state.”

“Didn’t we send a book there recently?” said Eva Klein. “Jean Simpson, Ridgefield, North Carolina.” Eva had a near eidetic memory, which meant she could often access pertinent information faster than Gottfried and all his computers. A second later the recorded message played and then a voice proved Eva correct.