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I slowly approach the car. The rear passenger-side window buzzes down. An elderly man with a weathered face, dark sunken eyes, and a gray beard attempts a smile. “Professor,” he says in a weak, raspy voice. “I am Franklin Linderman.”

I walk around to the other side of the car and get in, carrying my small roller suitcase with me. “Eleanor Robbins,” I say, extending my hand once I’m inside the car.

He reaches over with some effort to take my hand, and gently squeezes it. Franklin was born in 1933, putting him north of ninety years old, and he looks every bit of it. “It’s my great honor to meet you, Professor. I apologize for the precautions. You’ve met Jenny.” He nods toward the woman in the driver’s seat.

“Honestly, I saw her following me around Vienna,” I say. “I didn’t realize she was with you. I thought she was with the… others.”

“Ah. Oh, listen to that. You thought she was a threat to you.” Franklin says something to the Asian woman in a language I don’t understand, but sounds vaguely Germanic to my ear. Franklin manages a chuckle. Jenny does not. She is continuously checking her surroundings, reminding me that people are looking for Franklin, that we are in danger.

“I do not worry for my safety,” he tells me. “I am quite near my expiration date.” He brings a fist to his mouth and lets out a prickly cough, then clears his throat. “It is your safety that concerns me, Professor. I was reluctant to meet with you for this reason. But I did very much want to address you face-to-face.” He scoots in his seat with some effort and looks at me.

“May I record our conversation?” I show him my phone.

“Yes, yes, of course. A fine idea.” He coughs once more as I hit the Record button. “May I call you Eleanor?”

“Of course.”

“I do not remember my father, Eleanor. He was killed a year after my birth, on the Night of the Long Knives, the Röhm Purge, whatever you may call it. You know this already.”

“Yes, I do.”

“My mother? She adored my father until the day she died. She became aware over time of his… mistakes. She learned what he had done. It pained her deeply. It pains me as well. I always hoped in my lifetime that the truth would emerge.”

I nod. What goes unspoken is that his grandson, Francis, died trying to bring out that very truth.

“I do not ask you to gloss over my father’s role. I only ask that you treat him humanely. He was a young man with ambition. He surely did not appreciate the gravity of what he was doing at the age of eighteen.”

“I will make sure to be clear about that,” I say. “I’ve read as much in his journals, and in Thomas Bauer’s journals, by the way. As have you, obviously.”

“Yes. Monica was very kind to show them to me.”

“Franklin,” I say. “May I get to business? There was a sixth envelope in Hitler’s safe the night that Thomas Bauer stole it, correct? Your father took it, yes?”

Franklin nods. “He did, of course. And kept it.”

“Was it a reel of film?”

“It was.” Franklin’s eyes narrow. “I don’t… I don’t understand.” He turns and speaks to Jenny, who says something in response.

And then Franklin lurches forward as the rear glass windshield shatters. Blood explodes from Franklin’s face, splattering the seat in front of him.

In the blink of an eye, the man sitting next to me is slumped forward, dead from an assassin’s bullet.

102

“NAY!” JENNY SHOUTS FROM the front seat. “Nay!”

As I sit there immobile, in shock, Franklin’s head resting against the front seat, blood gushing to the floorboard, Jenny races the car forward, swiping the vehicle in front of us but not stopping, speeding out onto the road. She calls back to him frantically, but she seems to understand what has happened. I can see the raw gash of an entry wound at the rear of Franklin’s skull.

As she speeds forward, Jenny waves her hand at me, a downward gesture, which I finally understand to be instruction to duck down.

I brace myself with a hand on the back of Jenny’s seat, as we race forward, Jenny navigating the streets of Munich expertly but chaotically, horns sounding and tires squealing.

After a moment, it crashes down on me, and I hear myself wailing. “This can’t be how this ends,” I lament. “This can’t be.”

After a while, the herky-jerkiness subsides, though we remain moving at high speed. We are on the highway. Jenny is all business now, and I realize that she’s taking me to the airport.

The car skids to a halt at departures. “Go!” she yells in English.