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for intelligent females who won't tie you down."
    "Is that your proposition?"
    "Hardly, Mr. Rook."
    "Then why undo two buttons on your blouse?"
    "Fashion."
    "Hardly, Ms. Hannah. For that, one would do. Two's because you want something from this 'ladies' man.'"
    "Your attention."
    "Well, you've got that."
    "Mission accomplished," she said, buttoning up. "There, is that better?"
    "No," he said.
    "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
    "You didn't need the honey trap."
    "But setting it up was fun."
    "Let's get down to business. Why was I lured here? What exactly is your proposition?"
    "Have you read about the Ace of Clubs, the bomber resurrected in Germany? The pilot, Fletch Hannah, was my granddad.
    On my grandmother's behalf—to give her peace of mind before she dies—I want to retain you to find out why he disappeared."

    + + +

    "Why me?" Wyatt asked, sipping tea and munching the Eccles cake.
    "How old were you when your father vanished?"
    "Nine."
    "You don't practice law?"
    "No."
    "So why the law degree?"
    "I use it to access government files that officials want kept secret. It's a research tool."
     "It's a powerful tool, judging from your work. When we screened your documentaries at the network, I was amazed by how many long-kept secrets you brought to light, and how little knee-jerk reverence you have for the sacred cows of your country."
    "Four hundred thousand Americans died in the Second World War for something. It wasn't so a rocket man who climbed the ladder of Himmler's SS and was tied to the deaths of twenty thousand prisoners of war could be turned into an American icon. Two hundred thousand Japanese were fried in the bombing of Hiroshima, and it wasn't to save half a million Americans from dying while invading Japan. It galls me that my government still peddles those empty lies, so I explode them."
    "Don Quixote."
    "Tilting at dirty windmills."
    "I think that's just the buildup. You're after much more.
    Once you have a reputation for getting to the truth, you'll go after the White House to find out what happened to your dad and why it's been covered up. Presidents consulted him on foreign crises. Then one day he vanished, and no one will tell you why. You want to crack that puzzle."
    "Don't forget my mom. The lie is that she killed herself the following day, distraught over the loss of my dad. But no way would she abandon me to face life alone. Someone assassinated her, and someday— believe me —her killer will pay."
    "I believe you." Liz took a sip of her tea. "So why write Dresden?"
    "So critics can't accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist with an ax to grind with Washington. Dresden was Britain's Hiroshima. Here you have a city of minor industrial importance—after almost six years of war, it was one of the few unbombed cities in Germany—and it gets singled out for razing by RAF firebombs in February 1945, at a time when Dresden was crammed with refugees. No one knows how many were incinerated, but it was anywhere from 35,000 to 135,000 people. These are the kinds of things that vex me."
    "There you have all the reasons why I'm stalking you," said Liz. "First, you know how to smoke out the secrets of Bomber Command. Second, as an outsider, you won't pull your punches. And third, you grasp why I—like you—need to know the truth about my family."
    "You've lost me."
    "What does 'Judas' mean to you?"
    "I assume you don't mean the disciple who betrayed Jesus?"
    "No."
    '"Judas' was the codename Hitler gave to a mystery man who tried to betray him in 1944. El Alamein and Stalingrad were turning points of the war. Those losses spawned a conspiracy within the German army to oust Hitler and negotiate peace with the Allies. Allegedly, Judas made contact with Churchill and offered him top-secret information about Hitler's atomic bomb. He also planned to smuggle out recently found biblical relics. Rumor is that Churchill told Bomber Command to parachute in a German-speaking secret agent, who would then