Some jerky phone video from one of the witnesses showed a broad-shouldered man with a grey hood hiding his features running away from the camera. Sweatpants, green sneakers of unknown make with a white stripe on the back, athletic gait, that’s all. He had tucked the pipe in his pocket. The guy had known what he was doing. A maniac or a nervous amateur would have probably tossed it, leaving key evidence behind.

The statement given by Amethyst Briggs did not mention any World War Two German military communique and did not mention her suspicions he had been killed by the Purity League. She didn’t want the authorities to know. Why not? Wouldn’t an investigation give her the chance of getting the document back? She wouldn’t even need to tell them what it was. It wasn’t like the NYPD went around cracking 70-year-old codes.

The paper trail, Heinrich realized a moment later. She doesn’t want a paper trail.

But she was willing to hire me even after I called her a neo-Nazi bitch. She must be desperate. She could have gotten someone else. It’s me she wants.

And why does she have a secret hideout? Has she been in danger before?

Questions, questions, questions.

He did a bit of research on the Purity League. There wasn’t much on the Internet, just a rather plain website that spoke in euphemisms like “maintaining national integrity” and “ensuring that any new citizens will fit in the dominant culture.” He suspected that there would be more on the Dark Web. He called Biniam, a programmer he sometimes hired, to check into that.

While he waited for Biniam to do his magic, Heinrich scrolled through news articles about the Purity League in all the languages he knew. He found little. A feature from La Repubblica from two years ago showed convincing evidence of ties to Forza Nuova, a small Italian political party that was anti-immigrant and pro-Catholic like the Partido Falange in Spain, while the Süddeutsche Zeitung told how the organization funded various skinhead groups in Germany. A few scattered articles in other papers filled out the picture that the Purity League was well funded although no one could say where their funds came from. They made donations to many small, struggling parties and groups in Europe’s far right.

Beyond that he could find little. The Purity League liked to operate behind the scenes and did not call attention to itself. That anodyne website and the fact that they never gave interviews to the press showed they were careful about security. Since most neo-fascists made lots of noise and got off by marching through immigrant neighborhoods and Jewish cemeteries, this relative anonymity made Heinrich wonder.

His cell phone rang. Biniam.

“Selam, Biniam,” Heinrich said. “Kemey ‘aleka?”

“Kemey Wu’elka, Heinrich.”

Basic greetings were the limit of Heinrich’s Tigrinya, but he’d learned long ago that the more obscure the language, the more its speakers appreciated you learning a bit of it.

Biniam was a refugee from Eritrea who worked for an Internet security company and moonlighted as a political activist trying to overthrow the oppressive regime back home. Like other political activists fighting against dictatorships, he did most of his work on the Dark Web where the government couldn’t trace him. Biniam spouted a lot of babble about the Tor browser and onion sites and Virtual Private Networks that Heinrich didn’t understand. What he understood was that for a modest price Biniam could find out all sorts of information quickly.

“What’s up, my man?” Biniam said in English, his accent laced with that strange lilt that the people of the Horn of Africa have.

“Sitting here reading about the scum of the earth,” Heinrich replied. “Got anything for me?”

“Yep. A representative from the Purity League is giving a speech the day after tomorrow to the White Patriots Society here in New York.”

“Really?” he had expected some background information, not the guys landing right in his lap. Why were they giving speeches right after killing somebody? Biniam went on.

“It’s members only. 11 East 45th St., Apartment A, 8 p.m.