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a challenge. He wondered if he needed a touch of the real Budapest to continue the quest.
    Doing his ablutions in the bathroom before bed, he washed his face thoroughly with the shea butter soap and studied his reflection. The skin was clear, the hair mostly gone except for silver wings and the slim beard, and the nose prominent. The look read? Determination, skepticism, openness, and … folly. What percentage of each, he wondered? And where was Belief in something beyond his boys? In history, for example? He smiled mockingly at his cynical view, and decided to close the windows in case of hard rain.

CHAPTER 2
    Manny glanced out his tinted-glass window at the large green, on the Dartmouth College campus. It was March. Some kids were tossing a Frisbee, and others, strolling from classes. A twenty-first-century New England postcard scene down there, while up here, in his office, he tried to imagine Budapest of 1944. Quite a transport. Realistic? Or merely fanciful, hopeful? He set his feet up on the messy desk.
    How did he get into this fix in the first place? Get involved with the long dead and long forgotten Swede? With the horror show of Budapest 1944? He had this easy, comfortable life, here on this protected campus oasis. Why go and tamper with it?
    He recalled the beginning of the fall term, when the bright graduate student had come to see him, said she still hadn’t a good idea for a thesis, and he offered, “Well, maybe I have a topic for you: Raoul Wallenberg. Ever hear of him? His case is full of problems and mysteries, just right for research and educated speculation. See what you think.”
    She immediately took notes as he gave her a few ideas and a few leads, and told her to see him in ten weeks at the end of the quarter. “And if you can find this rumored lady in Budapest …” And he gave her the name. The rest was history, as they say.
    Manny had always wanted to figure out the mysterious Swede, as well as the mysterious circumstances, so here was a chance to start.
    During her December trip, doing research, the student had e-mailed him, saying how excited she was, and her father also. (“He’s half Swedish you know, and Lutheran too, so he was delighted at the project, and he’s even supporting my trip to Budapest.”) Later on, she had e-mailed him from Budapest, saying she was visiting the libraries, meeting people, getting the feel of the place, and making real “hands-on” progress.
    When reading her ten-page proposal, sent via e-mail from Budapest, he had kept his doubts to himself, thinking, Let her get through it. Why not? So what if it produced not much new? Had the legions of experts done any better for the past half century? Not really. Besides, it might trigger his own detective work. Which it did. (But where had his own interest come from?)
    When she called him from Budapest, he told her that the proposal was pretty decent, and cautioned, routinely, “There’s been a lot of stuff written about him, so you will have to come up with some sort of real argument, you understand?”
    “Yeah, for sure!” she responded. “But I just wanted to check with you, to make sure you’ll go along with it, and me!”
    “I’m not really an expert in the field,” he said. “There is Michael Atworthy, who is the European World War II specialist, you realize, and—”
    “Oh, no, sir, it’s you I want to direct it, absolutely. You suggested it, and also, you’re Jewish, not that that makes a great difference. But you’re the one who knows me, and whom I trust totally!”
    “Jewish? Who told you that?” he deadpanned in his voice. “And what difference would that make?” Then he said, “Okay, it looks good. You’re on.”
    And maybe, he advised, the Budapest lady would be worth a footnote in the thesis, and maybe in history too.
    A few days later, having done some more RW reading, Manny found an observation from C. Vann Woodward on Francis Parkman and tacked it up—“He sought by creative