“Can’t say as I blame him, really,” I said, finishing off the bandage. “There are too many Nazis still walking around as free as air. Only I’m not one of them, see? Gruen and Henkell murdered my wife.”

“Who is Henkell?”

“Another Nazi doctor. But it would take too long to explain. I have to get after them. You see, Aaron, I’m going to do your job for you, if I can. I’m probably too late. I’ll probably end up getting killed myself. But I’ve got to try. Because that’s what you do when someone murders your wife in cold blood. Even though it was finished between us, she was still my wife and that has to count for something. Doesn’t it?” I wiped my face with the remainder of the sheet and went to the door, pausing only to check the phone. It was dead.

“The phone isn’t working,” I said. “I’ll try to call an ambulance for you when I get a chance. All right?”

“Thanks,” he said. “And good luck, Gunther. I hope you find them.”

I went outside, walked down the drive, and found the car. There was a warm-looking leather coat in the back. I put it on and sat in the driver’s seat. The car was a black Mercury sedan. The fuel tank was almost full. With its five-liter engine it was a good, fast car with a top speed of over a hundred kilometers an hour. Which was approximately the speed I was going to have to do if I was going to make Rhein-Main before midnight.

I drove back via the lab in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Jacobs had cleared out the filing cabinets. But I wasn’t interested in the files. Instead I went back down to the cellar to collect a couple of the packages and paperwork that were—I hoped—going to gain my entry to the U.S. airbase. It wasn’t much of a plan. But I remembered something Timmermann, the Stars and Stripes driver who had taken me from Vienna to the monastery at Kempten, had told me about American security being almost nonexistent. That’s what I was relying on. That and an urgent package for Major Jacobs.