The photos of the packed cattle cars and mass graves overwhelmed his already aged heart. He died before the judge could pass sentence. The court found him guilty, anyway.

Heinrich hadn’t talked to him since the trial began. Otto’s lawyer informed him of his will, which left everything to him. It amounted to an apartment and a bit of money. Heinrich had no job and no prospects so he swallowed his pride and accepted his inheritance. The first day back in the familiar apartment he had spent twelve hours cleaning out every trace of his grandfather—every piece of furniture, every picture, every memento. He even threw out the coasters and silverware, anything Otto had owned. While rummaging through old boxes and stacks of photos he kept thinking he’d come across some Nazi literature or a medal or a photo of his SS unit, but he found nothing. Otto Müller had left all that behind him. Heinrich did the same.

That had been 25 years ago, and he had thought he had managed it, but just like his grandfather, he found the past had a way of coming back at you.

✽ ✽ ✽

Heinrich tried to control his trembling as he came to the apartment on 45th St. It was on the second floor of a well-preserved old brownstone, the kind of place that went for cheap when he was a kid and now sold for a cool million. A gruff voice on the intercom demanded his name. He gave the alias his Eritrean friend had been using and got buzzed in.

A narrow flight of stairs took him up to the landing where an impressively muscled man with a shaved head and an angry scowl stood next to the door. He looked about the same size as the attacker. Different clothes, though, and the attacker hadn’t had a shaved head. Of course the attacker could have shaved his head, but then it wouldn’t have had time to develop the uniform coloring this guy sported.

“Password?” Baldy whispered, his voice at odds with his menacing stance. These guys weren’t exactly being subtle. Heinrich wondered what the neighbors thought.

“John Birch didn’t go far enough,” Heinrich replied.

“Sure as hell didn’t,” the man said, and opened the door.

The interior smelled of money. The front hall had a marble floor and oil paintings on the walls. The paintings were simple landscapes, no giveaways that neo-Nazis lived here.

That all changed when he walked down the short hall and entered the spacious living room.

The furniture had been cleared out to allow room for several rows of chairs facing one side of the room. The wall on that side was decorated with a large swastika flag that looked original. Along the other walls hung several framed German and Italian fascist posters, also original. Judging from the prices he had seen on the Briggs’s online catalog, the owner of this place had spent tens of thousands just on the part of the collection decorating on the walls. He wondered what other stuff was tucked away.

He noticed that none of the posters would be visible from the street. The blinds were drawn anyway, no doubt because the flag would have been. Heinrich figured it had been hung especially for the occasion.

About twenty people sat in the chairs or milled around chatting. Nobody seemed to know anybody else. Biniam had explained this to him. It was called an IRL Meetup, as in “in real life” meetup, where the denizens of the dingier corners of the web finally came out from behind their online anonymity and met face to face.

He scanned the room, looking for someone who matched the general description of Aaron’s killer, and found several.