THE LINHOF’S LENS BOARD SCREWS OFF EASILY, THE RING nut gives way, the locking nut rolls into his hand. The lens is easy to pop out as well. He runs his finger over the glass—Zeiss, good quality. The leather bellows that the lens was attached to is quite long. He moves it this way and that, testing it, then stretches it out as far as it will go; there doesn’t seem to be any anchoring. Next up before he takes apart the housing is the flashbulb. The screws clatter as they drop out, one by one—that was easy.

It’s been a long time since he last got to work on some piece of gadgetry. On Ellis Island there were no machines or electrical devices, no tools, and no work either. Only books, board games, a few soccer balls (mostly for the younger inmates), newspapers. Every day he waited for the paper. It would be a week old, and sometimes there were pages missing. This made him suspicious, and he would use the article previews on the first page to try to reconstruct whatever it was they were hiding from him this time.

The first time it happened was at Sandstone. Reading the newspaper and being staggered and horrified. Later it became a sign to him that he was onto something. Something that possibly no one else knew about.

The first article that gave him pause appeared in the summer of 1942. He had been in prison for just over half a year. Eight Germans had landed on the beach at Amagansett. A German U-boat had dropped them just off the coast of Long Island; they paddled toward the shore in rubber boats in the gray of dawn. They were just able to bury their waterproof crates of explosives and timed fuses before they were seen by a shore guard. They offered him money and hurried off, then the guard contacted the police. The wet sand showed where the crates were hidden; cigarette butts of German origin were scattered everywhere. Not hard to guess who they were dealing with: German spies. On top of that, they accidentally left important documents on the train to New York. Look at that, he thought. More dopes working behind enemy lines for the German Reich.

Their objectives: blow up industrial facilities and infrastructure like aluminum plants, bridges, and train tracks; plunge America into chaos. Operation Pastorius.

The bellows isn’t quite as easy to dismount. Josef spends a while trying to jimmy it loose with the screwdriver from an awkward angle until finally something gives way. He finds clumps of dust on the inside and blows them away. Carl’s photos in the city park were slightly overexposed, so he checks the folds but can’t find any tears anywhere—though they might just be too tiny.