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different, and you damn well know it.” She twisted her body away from us, crossed her arms, and stared at the wall behind Archie’s desk.
    Ann turned to me. “These issues of provenance come up every now and again,” she said. “Before we make the final deposit, we investigate all suspicious funds. I myself reject several transactions every year.”
    I had read many legends about Nazi treasures, including some scandals. I could easily imagine how an organization like Soul Identity had been involved.
    But I had a hard time imagining how that organization could reach the Nazis in their prison cells. That took some serious clout.
    “Wasn’t Goering locked up tight during the Nuremberg trials?” I asked Archie.
    “He was.”
    “So how did you read his identity?”
    “We found a way,” Madame Flora said, still staring at the wall.
    “I’ll need to hear that story,” I said. “But first I want to know why Archie decided to open Goering’s collection yesterday.”
    “I want to know that too,” Madame Flora said.
    Archie looked down at the coffee table.
    I waited a minute for him to speak, and when he remained silent, I asked, “Did the new carrier show up?”
    He shook his head. He glanced up at me, then back down at the table. “Yesterday was the sixty-fourth anniversary of that deposit,” he said quietly. “I felt it was time to right an old wrong.”
    “So you admit you were wrong,” Madame Flora said.
    Archie stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes, Flora, I admit it.”
    He stood up and walked over to the window, then turned back to face us. “When our adventure with Mr. Feret ended last year, those old Nuremberg memories started haunting my dreams. Hermann Goering condoned and committed repugnant acts of evil. He looted treasuries and museums all over Europe. And I was the unlucky new overseer whose job it was to make him a member. I was the one who had to swallow my pride and do the dirty work.”
    Archie’s voice rose in volume and he shook his finger at Madame Flora. “Contrary to what you may think, I despised that man, and I hated what I had to do. I could not wait to complete my task and return to Sterling.”
    He started coughing, and he bent over nearly double with his hands covering his face. After a minute he caught his breath, wiped his eyes, and sat back down.
    “Back then,” Madame Flora said, “you told me I was an idealistic child who should stay out of grownup problems. You may now say you hated what you did, but I hated you then for doing it.”
    Archie muttered something under his breath.
    “What was that?” Madame Flora’s voice was sharp.
    He narrowed his eyes. “You did it too, right alongside me.”
    “You made me do it,” she said, her mouth in a snarl. “Your threats against my grandmother left me no choice.”
    Another drawn-out period of silence.
    “But that’s all water under the bridge,” Ann said. “You two have patched that up over the last six decades, haven’t you?”
    Archie and Madame Flora looked at each other, then eventually they both nodded.
    “Good,” I said. “Now quit your bickering and tell me how you got Goering enrolled.”
    “I’ll tell it,” Madame Flora said. “It’s faster this way.”
    Archie smiled.

eight
    August 1946
    Nuremberg, Occupied Germany
     
    “I still don’t think we can do it,” James said for what Flora thought was at least the fifth time that night. “The guards are right outside his door, peeking in every thirty seconds. His lights never dim, and thanks to Robert Ley strangling himself on the john last October, they won’t let him sleep with his hands under the bedcovers. We can’t sneak the old gal in to read him, and we sure as heck can’t sneak Goering out.”
    “I am sure we will find a way,” Archibald Morgan repeated.
    It was a little past two in the morning. Mr. Morgan and James had been poring over a set of architectural blueprints of the Nuremberg Palais du Justice while Flora sat