That night Alex couldn’t sleep. He had been sucked into a conversation online with an American who believed Hitler had not killed himself on April 30, 1945, but had escaped Germany in the closing days of the war, fled to South America, and lived out his days in hiding. Alex found such theories, and the tenacity with which some people clung to them, fascinating. He was neither quick to believe nor quick to dismiss and he never used terms like “conspiracy theory” or “alternative history,” which people like the enthusiastic American would find pejorative. His open-mindedness and willingness to listen meant that people who held such ideas felt comfortable pouring out every detail of their theories to him. He had heard the “Hitler Flees to South America” story many times before, but with each telling he gleaned new details, which he recorded in one of the notebooks on a shelf labeled simply Possibilities.

Following his latest conversation, he had found his “Hitler in South America” notebook and recorded the name of a village in Argentina that was completely new to him. Some theories about the Nazis had been scientifically disproved—like the story that the man who landed in Scotland in 1941 wasn’t Rudolf Hess, but a doppelgänger. DNA testing had finally put that to rest, and Alex had moved his “Hess Was Not Hess” notebook off the Possibilities shelf and onto the Debunked shelf. But for many of these theories, Alex maintained the philosophy reflected in the words he had once read in an article about secret Nazi bases in Antarctica—“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”

Alex reshelved his “Hitler in South America” notebook in between “Nazis Got Technology from Space Aliens” and one of his favorites, “Himmler Mastered Alchemy.” They might be far-fetched notions, thought Alex, but so was the idea that a high school dropout would become Führer of Germany in 1934 and an ironfisted dictator who ruled over much of Europe.

“Do you have a car?” said Ruthie as they slipped out the back of the museum.

“No,” said Nemo.

“Yes, we do,” said Patton, confused.

“Put yourself in the shoes of those gentlemen waiting for us at the gate,” said Nemo. “You are parked right next to our rental car. What would you do?”

“I’d be sure the car wouldn’t start,” said Ruthie.

“This one is all kinds of smart,” said Nemo.

“I drive a Mini Cooper,” said Ruthie, “but if one of you can fold up in what passes for the back seat we can take it.”

“I’ll drive,” said Nemo.

“Why should I let you drive?” said Ruthie.

“Trust me, you want me to drive.”

“I’d let him,” said Patton.

“How does the gate open?” asked Nemo.

“If you’re driving out, it opens outward when you approach it,” said Ruthie.

“And there’s no other way?”

“There’s a keypad next to it.”

“And you know the code?”

“I do.”