There is no monument to the gypsies.”

“So you’re not earmarking any money for the Jews, eh?”

The widow looked like she had bitten something sour. “The Jews have plenty of money.”

“Somehow I knew you’d say that.”

“Young man, what you think of me and my late husband Aaron is irrelevant. You do not know us and cannot judge us.”

Young man? Well, compared to you I guess I am. And yes, I can judge you, Heinrich thought. The widow, Amethyst Briggs, went on.

“We have made a good living selling these items, that is true, but most of our sales have been to museums and amateur historians. We have never sought out members of the far right.”

“I’m sure they’ve sought you out. I checked your online catalog. It’s one thing to sell World War Two memorabilia, it’s another thing to sell only Nazi memorabilia.”

Her eyes misted over.

“It was one of the great epochs of world history.”

“Yeah, real great.”

“By great I mean important, powerful.”

“So tell me about all these gold and gems.” Heinrich’s finances were in such a state that an offer of big money almost balanced out the bitter taste in his mouth. Almost.

“Have you heard of the Nazi gold train in Poland?”

“Vaguely. I’m a private detective, not a historian.”

Although history keeps blindsiding me, Heinrich added to himself.

“It was a train filled with treasure hidden by the Nazis in January of 1945, when the Russian hordes were sweeping in from the East to rape and pillage the Reich. The treasure was mostly jewelry and gold taken from the conquered territories. A German general was entrusted with bringing the train back to Berlin but all the bombing and partisan activity kept the train from making the journey. Fearing he would be surrounded, and the treasure taken, he decided to hide it in the southeastern part of the Reich, in a region that has since been taken by Poland. There are several tunnels there dating from the war, used by the Germans as air raid shelters and storage depots. Some of them even had railroad tracks so that entire trains could be hidden in them during the daytime to avoid Russian dive bombers.”

“OK, I remember now,” Heinrich said. “They thought they’d found the tunnel a couple of years back and there was a big deal in the media. They didn’t find a thing. The train is a myth.”

“The train is not a myth. They were digging in the wrong place.”

“Of course they were, but you know where it really is because you have a treasure map.”

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the scoundrel, young man.”

“I thought that was patriotism.”

“Patriotism may have become a bad word to your generation, but in earlier times it was the noblest trait someone could have.”

“Yeah, worked out well for the Germans.”

The widow clucked her tongue and looked away. To her credit, she had held up well to this relentless abuse. Try as he might, Heinrich couldn’t really get a rise from her.

There was a pause. Heinrich broke it.

“Look, I used to love stories of buried treasure when I was a kid. But that’s all they are, stories. That treasure map is a fake. Probably a good fake if it fooled you and your husband, but there’s no treasure.”

“It’s not a treasure map,” Amethyst Briggs said, looking at him again.

“What is it, then?”

“An official top secret field report from the general responsible for the train.”

“Historical documents can be faked too.”

“This isn’t a fake. My husband and I are experts.”

Why does she keep referring to her husband in the present tense? It’s freaking me out.

“Even experts can be fooled.”

“They can. We could take the Metro North line into New York City right now and I could point out half a dozen forgeries hanging in the Met. But this document wasn’t faked.”

“And how do you know that?”

“The document is written in code, and not the regular codes used by the SS, but a more obscure, local code devised in Breslau late in the war. The only surviving code book was captured by the Soviets when they took Breslau and was kept in the Kremlin archives until those archives were opened to the public after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

Heinrich shrugged. “So some historian who went to Moscow faked it.”

“No.