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“Exactly,” I say. “If he gets caught by the SS, he doesn’t want them finding the backpack. So he gives it to Peter, who drives away in one direction, while Thomas runs in the other direction on foot. The plan is to meet later, to rendezvous at Fritz Gerlich’s hideaway—their safe house, so to speak—ninety minutes later.”
“But we don’t know what Peter did during those ninety minutes.” Monica glances over at me.
“No, but we know one critical thing that Peter didn’t do,” I say. “He didn’t turn it over immediately to the Nazis or Chief Müller. Why not? Once Thomas has handed it to him, Peter has everything he needs. Why not go directly to the chief? His work is done. The Nazis can then arrest Thomas and Fritz Gerlich whenever they wish. But he didn’t do that. Why not?”
Monica doesn’t know. She’s trying to catch up with me.
“There can only be one reason that Peter didn’t immediately tell the chief that he’d recovered the contents of Hitler’s safe. He wanted to have a look inside first.”
“Ha!” Monica pounds the steering wheel. “Peter was a devious one.”
“Well, we already know that, don’t we? Look what he did to your great-grandfather and Fritz. He pretended to be on their side and betrayed them.”
I shift in the front seat. The faster Monica drives, the better I feel. The Asian woman with the colored wigs couldn’t possibly be keeping up.
Monica asks, “Why would Peter take that risk?”
“He wanted some insurance,” I say. “Something incriminating to potentially reveal later.”
Monica nearly jumps in her seat. “You think Peter kept something?”
“I do. Think about it. When he arrives at the rendezvous with Thomas and Fritz that night, the backpack has five envelopes in it. But back at the church in Vienna, it was accidentally revealed to me that there were six envelopes in Hitler’s safe.”
“So Peter kept whatever was in the sixth envelope,” says Monica. “Maybe for insurance. Maybe to reveal later. But if so, then how did that man at the church know about the sixth envelope?”
“Well, he said when Peter returned the contents of Hitler’s safe the next morning, whatever was in the sixth envelope was destroyed. It was ‘unusable.’ It couldn’t be ‘viewed’ anymore.”
“That doesn’t sound like a document,” says Monica. “Possibly a photograph?”
“Maybe,” I agree. “But that’s not my best guess.”
She looks over at me. “What is?”
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“MY BEST GUESS,” I tell Monica, “is that the sixth envelope contained an incriminating film.”
“Video?” Monica nearly swerves into a different lane of traffic.
“The 1930s version of video,” I say. “A reel of film. When I was a kid, all our family videos were on Super 8 film reels. My father would play them over a projector on a screen for us to watch.”
“Okay, I’m following.”
“Reels of film were fragile,” I say. “They could rip, melt, become overexposed, all kinds of things. You could accidentally destroy them. And if they were fragile in the 1970s, imagine how they were in the 1930s.”
“Okay, okay, okay.” Monica raises her hand. “So this is what you’re saying. Peter finds a reel of film in the sixth envelope. He plays it, he watches it. And it’s really bad, really incriminating to Hitler. He keeps it, like we said, for insurance or to reveal later.”
I nod.
“Then he substitutes a different reel of film, but it’s ripped or overexposed or something. Something that renders it useless.”
“Exactly,” I say. “So when he returns it to Müller, to Hitler ultimately—the reel of film is unwatchable. Hitler can’t ‘use’ it. He can’t ‘view’ it. Thomas was probably blamed for treating it carelessly or something and inadvertently destroying it. That would be totally believable.”
“But Thomas never actually knew about it. He never knew there was a sixth envelope.”
“Correct,” I say. “No one knew but Peter Helldorff. My guess is that Peter replaced the actual reel of film in the sixth envelope with something else. Hitler would be expecting film, right? Only what Helldorff returns is a reel of destroyed film.”
“And he keeps the original.” Monica gives a decisive shake of the head. “Wow. So it might still be out there?”
