“I always get several made at once,” his grandfather said, pulling it on and appraising the cut. “Saves wasting time thinking what to wear.” He nodded at Harry’s computer. “Reckon you can fire that thing up, Alex? I’m all thumbs with them.”

“Uh, think so.” Alex hit a key. The sleeping screen lit. He touched the hard drive. Warm. But anyone trying to use it hadn’t got far. “It’s password protected.”

“Ah. Oh, I know: try The Irons. Harry always uses that.”

Alex tried it a few ways. The third—one word, all lowercase—worked. The desktop was littered with dozens of folders. His grandfather leaned closer.

“There.” He jabbed a finger that set the screen trembling. The fingerprint left behind marked a folder labeled ALTE PINAKOTHEK.

“What’s that mean?” Alex asked, clicking it open.

“Name of a museum. In Munich. We should go there sometime, Alex, highly educational. Now. One of these is a film clip; Harry taped it from the, you know. The websnet. Can you tell which it is?”

Of the five files, only one was a video. Setting it playing revealed a TV news show. A well-groomed man and woman sat talking animatedly in German to a female correspondent on the big screen by their side, reporting from a street somewhere.

“I don’t know what they’re saying,” Alex said.

“Doesn’t matter. They don’t know what they’re talking about. This is from last week. Keep watching, it’s coming up.”

The reporter stood in drizzling morning rain outside a large, imposing building, its long facade lined with stern rows of tall arched windows. She pointed excitedly to her left. The camera followed the movement until it found an area cordoned by tape, and zoomed in. Between two vans marked POLIZEI, a group of people, some in uniform, stood inspecting the gaping hole where another window should have been. Rubble and glass lay strewn over the ground where the wall had been ripped away.

“Here it comes,” Alex’s grandfather said.

The picture changed again. This time it was a silent, static, strangely angled black-and-white shot, staring down into a large dim room from a high corner. Huge paintings hung on the walls.

“CCTV,” Alex said.

“Inside the gallery. Night before.”

The image shook, then settled, as if something had rocked the lens. Stark light fell across the floor. Seconds later, two enormous figures entered, backs to the camera: hulking men in long black coats and black hats. They went straight to the largest painting—Alex estimated it to be around twenty feet in height, maybe fifteen across, but couldn’t tell what it depicted in the murky light—grabbed a corner of the frame each, and began to pull it away from the wall.