Vesper Two read the text message and smiled.
Dan Cahill had made several interesting purchases while in Basel. Sending out that alert to all chemical supply houses had been a brilliant stroke. Amazing what the promise of a little money could do. If someone comes asking to buy odd items, please let us know. We will make it worth your while.
So, just as Vesper Two had thought. He was collecting the Clues, thirty-nine ingredients for the serum.
The serum could change everything. And the only one who had the formula was Dan Cahill.
Vesper One didn’t have to know just yet. He wasn’t convinced that Dan could be turned. Not yet. He didn’t realize completely that the ties of blood could work in their favor.
Not yet. But soon.
Amy leaned back and rubbed her eyes. She had window after window of research stacked on her computer. She’d spoken to Evan and Ian and Sinead. They’d thrown theories at each other, random facts, odd bits, wild guesses, hoping something would stick. Nothing did.
“Talk to me, Jane,” she said aloud. “You were a rich girl, used to comfort. London was being bombed. Why did you stay? Why did you stay in Germany so long in the thirties? Who are you?”
She typed in Jane Sperling and World War II and scrolled through the results. She clicked on a page called Down Easterner, a small-town paper in Angel Harbor, Maine. Amy quickly scanned the article, an obituary for Jane Sperling. She had died at age ninety-two. The obituary documented her early life, her studies at the University of Chicago, and then the war years.
“Yes, I stayed in London during the Blitz. Oh, heavens, I was never heroic. Just a secretary for the OSS – I translated documents and things from German to English. Because I’d lived in Germany before the war. I never look back. The things I did are done now. All down the drain.”
“OSS,” Amy muttered. She did a quick word search. The Office of Strategic Services was the spying arm of the American government during the war!
Amy clicked back to the research Evan and Ian had sent. Professor Hummel had turned out to be one superbad Nazi. He’d risen to major and had been involved in a group called the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, which, as Evan put it, was quite a mouthful for “dirty despicable thieves.” They were also known as the ERR, Hitler’s special group that stole art and artifacts and property from Jewish families. The artworks were shipped to Paris and stored at a museum called the Jeu de Paume. There, the art was cataloged, inventoried, and crated, then sent to Germany. Hundreds of thousands of looted treasures from world-famous artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh. Hummel was a high-ranking officer in charge, valuable because of his knowledge of medieval art.
“So, Herr Hummel,” Amy murmured, “you were a thief.”
Near the end of the war, as the Allies began bombing German cities, the Nazis got nervous. They moved the art to salt mines and caves and castles in the Bavarian Alps. It all would have worked except for a few inconvenient facts. One: The Nazis lost the war. Two: In 1943, a section of the Allied army was formed called the Monuments Men. After the invasion they traveled with the front lines, charged with finding the artworks and returning them to their rightful owners.
“The Nazis were evil, but what made them so especially chilling is that they were really organized about it,” Evan had explained. “They kept records of everything they stole. So when the Allied armies moved in, they found everything – hidden caches of priceless paintings and artifacts… . If Hummel had the de Virga, there should have been a record of it. But there’s nothing. It’s another dead end.”
“Maybe,” Amy murmured now to herself. She typed Monuments Men and Otto Hummel into the search engine. If the US Army was chasing stolen art, they must have known about Hummel.
A document popped up on Hummel’s death. His body had been found by a group of Monuments Men as the war was ending. He had been shot and was still sitting in a gilt chair in the ballroom of Neuschwanstein Castle, the famous site built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, often called the Mad King.
The Monuments Men had been acting on information from one American spy, code name Sparrow, who had traced thousands of artworks looted from Jewish families all over Europe to Neuschwanstein Castle.
Amy read through a record of a soldier who had served there. “We had a strong suspicion that Sparrow had killed Hummel,” he said.
Amy rubbed her forehead. Everything was jumbled together in her head. Spies and stolen art, Nazis, heroes, victims. A medieval map. How was it all connected? Was it connected at all?
She just knew the answer was here.
She contacted Attleboro again. Ian answered.
“Can you help me out with some research?” she asked. “I need to know the identity of a spy at the end of the war called Sparrow. He might lead us to Jane.”
“You know,” Ian said. “That’s a funny coincidence… .”
“What?”
“Sparrow is Sperling in German,” Ian said.
“Of course!” Amy sat up. “It’s Jane! It’s got to be! We need confirmation.”
“I’m on it,” Ian said.
Amy checked her watch. Where was Dan? He’d been gone for way over an hour. Just as she had the thought, he walked in.
She examined him briefly as he tossed his backpack on the floor. That mask was there. He had gone deep inside himself. Whenever she saw it, it chilled her. It was like she had lost her brother.
“I think we found the connection between Jane Sperling and Hummel,” she told him. “I think she killed him!” Quickly, she explained that she thought Jane Sperling had been a spy for the OSS.
“Sparrow was chasing Hummel. I think she was still tracking the de Virga. What if the de Virga was at Neuschwanstein Castle? They were both there at the same time – that can’t be a coincidence!” Amy insisted.
Ian broke in. “We just got a confirmation from a Cahill in the field – our government source. He’s confirmed that Jane Sperling was Sparrow.”
“Yes!” Amy exclaimed.
“Neuschwanstein Castle is a Janus stronghold,” Sinead said. “We can definitely get you a schematic of the interior and send it to your wrist GPS.”
“And we’ll send Hamilton and Jonah in for backup,” Ian said. “They’re already in the air flying back to Europe. We’ll have them fly into Munich.”
“I don’t know about this, Ames,” Evan said. “You’re building a case just based on guesses.”
“Not guesses,” Amy said. “Instinct.”
“And I trust Amy’s instincts,” Dan said. “I say we go.”
“Dan’s right,” Sinead said. “We trust you, Amy.”
Apprehension suddenly bloomed in Amy. Despite their confidence – or maybe because of it – she was afraid.
Sometimes this felt so surreal, like she’d walked into an alternate universe. Maybe the real Amy was back in Attleboro, Massachusetts, a nerdy grind who got excited over research papers and whose idea of a big day was whipped cream on her chai.
That Amy didn’t lay everything on the line and say we have to do this. And that Amy didn’t have a gut-wrenching fear staring her in the face every moment – that she wouldn’t be smart enough, or brave enough, to save the lives of the people she loved.
Location Unknown
“Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six …” Reagan rapped out. She wasn’t even winded.
Nellie struggled with the next sit-up. Alistair had collapsed at seventeen. Fiske had kept up until forty. Natalie was humming to herself as she moved. Ted was concentrating, perspiration on his forehead. And Phoenix was following Reagan easily.
“Sixty. Good job, people. Done for the day.”
“Thank you,” Alistair breathed.
“All right,” Reagan said. “Tomorrow we’ll tackle shoulders and arms. That means push-ups, people! And if you want to fit in some extra ab work after dinner, I’ll be cranking out some more crunches.”