“What is that,” said Patton, “some sort of special forces unit?”

“H-Sonderkommando was a unit of the SS supposedly investigating witches. The ‘H’ stood for ‘hexen,’ which is the German word for witch. It’s all very fuzzy, but it’s likely Himmler had something to do with it—he was head of the SS and fascinated by witches and anything related to the occult. He assembled a huge library of books on the subject.”

“You mean Heinrich Himmler,” said Patton, “the chief architect of the Holocaust?”

“That’s the one.”

“Any chance he was interested in alchemy?” said Nemo.

“Oh, he was very interested in alchemy,” said Ruthie.

july 1938

As he ushered Karl Malchus down the corridor, Helmut glanced out the window toward the five-acre prisoner enclosure at Dachau. He admired Himmler’s design of the concentration camp. While it had principally been used for political prisoners and enemies of the Reich for the past five years, soon the real work of this, and other camps, would begin. The return of the Aryan race to their proper place of domination could only be accomplished by cleansing Germany of the inferior races, especially the Jews. Helmut could already imagine the fences of Dachau containing tens of thousands of Jews removed from society so that a pure-blooded Aryan Germany could flourish.

Karl Malchus hardly looked like a pure-blooded Aryan, thought Helmut. Malchus wore neither a uniform nor a business suit, unlike most of the people Himmler dealt with. He wore, instead, a shabby outfit of brown corduroy pants and a plaid shirt frayed at the collar which a white laboratory coat did little to hide. His mop of hair nearly fell in front of his gold-rimmed eyeglasses. But if Malchus did not have the perfect pure-blooded appearance of Helmut, that apparently didn’t matter to Himmler, so long as he could deliver.

And Malchus had delivered. He had come to Himmler a few months earlier claiming to be able to manufacture gold and Himmler had brought him here, to the Dachau concentration camp—not as a prisoner, but as a scientist. Here, in the fine brick buildings outside the main camp enclosure, Malchus worked in secret, his well-equipped laboratory protected from the prying eyes of other high-ranking Nazis.

Helmut remembered well the day Malchus dropped a nugget of pure gold on Himmler’s desk, proof of his success.

“What materials do you require?” Himmler had said with a gleam in his eye.

“Paraffin,” said Malchus, “ordinary stones, and most importantly sand from the bed of the river Isar.”

“Easily done,” said Himmler. He picked up the gold nugget and rubbed it between his fingers. “You cannot fool me, you know,” he said.