“Victory also depends on Germany persuading our allies to join the war on Germany’s side. One by one, Germany will destroy—”

Laughter interrupted the kaiser’s words—nervous laughter, which was choked off abruptly.

Wagner opened his eyes and saw to his horror that even as the kaiser’s words issued from the horns, the picture showed his dachshund barking at the camera. But that couldn’t be. The dog was supposed to bark after the kaiser had finished speaking. Somehow the sound and the picture had jumped apart.

The kaiser leaped from his throne and stormed out, trailed by his generals.

Hermann Wagner stood frozen with disbelief as the company melted away. How could it have gone so wrong? Left alone, he plunged blindly toward the doors, the Donar Plan a failure, his career destroyed.

A palace maid ran after him. “Your hat, Herr Wagner. Your hat!”

She was a tiny little thing with gold braids. Polite even on the worst day of his life, the gentle Hermann Wagner thanked her with a compliment—“What a sharp-eyed girl you are”—and even tipped her a silver coin.

“Thank you, Herr Wagner.”

Moments after she curtsied her thanks, Detective Pauline Grandzau slipped out of the palace to cable the good news to Chief Investigator Bell.

Epilogue

AFTER THE GREAT WAR

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

THE WIDOW SKELTON HAD TAKEN UP WITH the Widower Farquhar, which pleased everyone in Newcastle upon Tyne except the priest. Mrs. Skelton, who had served as a nursing sister in the Boer War and a matron of military hospitals in the Great War, and was still a raven-haired beauty, owned the Marysmead Arms, a popular pub in the shadows of the Swan Hunter shipyard. Mr. Farquhar was admired as one of “nature’s gentlemen,” a master craftsman and head foreman at the Swan Hunter furnace works where the legendary Cunard flyer Mauretania—which still held the Blue Riband for the fastest on the Atlantic—had returned to her launching place to be converted to burning oil instead of coal.

“I brought you something,” said Mr. Farquhar, coming home from his shift on a wet, blustery evening to their flat above the pub.

“There’s no need,” she said, though pleased. “You should save your money.”

He thrust an oilskin-wrapped packet in her hand. “It didn’t cost a penny.”

“I’m not surprised.” It was grimy with coal dust.

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

He showed her where he had already unfolded one end. She peeled back the oilskin and found a fancy envelope.

“What is this?”

“The lads found it behind a coal bunker. It must have been there for years. See what’s inside.”

“You didn’t look, yet?’

“No, I saved that for you.”

She turned back the flap and pulled out a thick sheet of lavishly decorated parchment paper. Mr. Farquhar rested a hand on her shoulder as he leaned close.

“That looks like real gold.”

“Gold leaf.”