Maria Stuckler bargained her way to the States with the promise of documents relating to German Communists secured by her husband during his dealings with Himmler. She was a clever woman, delivering enough material to keep the Americans keen and, with each disclosure, getting a little closer to her ultimate goal of U.S. citizenship for her son and herself. Her citizenship application was personally approved by Hoover after she handed over the last of her store of documents, which related to various left-wing Jews who had fled Germany before the start of the war and had since found gainful employment in the United States. The IWG concluded that some of Maria Stuckler’s information proved crucial in the early days of the McCarthy hearings, which made her something of a heroine in Hoover’s eyes. Her “favored person” status enabled her to set up the antiques business that her son subsequently inherited, and to import objects of interest from Europe with little or no interference from U.S. Customs. The old woman was still alive, apparently. She lived in a big house in Newport, Rhode Island, and all of her faculties were fully intact at the age of eighty-five.

Now here I was, taking tea with her son in a room furnished and paid for with the spoils of war, if Reid was right in his assessment of Stuckler’s private collection, and secured by an ambitious woman’s slow process of betrayal over more than a decade. I wondered if it ever bothered Stuckler. Ross’s contact had said that Stuckler was a generous contributor to a great many good causes, including a number of Jewish charities, although some had declined his largesse once the identity of the prospective donor became known. It might have been genuine pangs of conscience that led to his donations. It might also merely have been good public relations, a means of deflecting attention away from his business and his collections.

I realized that I had developed a sudden, deep-seated dislike for Stuckler, and I didn’t even know him.

“I’m grateful to you for taking the time to come here,” he said. He had no trace of an accent, German or otherwise. His tone was entirely neutral, contributing to the sense of an image that had been carefully cultivated to give away as little as possible about the origins and true nature of the man who lay behind it.

“With respect,” I said, “I came here because your employee indicated that you might have some information. I can take tea at home.”

Despite the calculated insult, Stuckler continued to radiate goodwill, as though he took great pleasure in the suspicion that everyone who came to his house secretly disliked him, and their jibes were merely honey on his bread.

“Of course, of course. I think perhaps I can help you. Before we begin, though, I am curious about the death of Mr. Garcia, in which I understand you played a significant role. I should like to know what you saw in his apartment.”

I didn’t know where this was leading, but I understood that Stuckler was used to bargaining. He had probably learned the skill from his mother, and applied it every day in his business dealings. I wasn’t going to get anything out of him unless I gave him at least as much in return.

“There were bone sculptures, ornate candlesticks made from human remains, some other half-completed efforts, and a representation of a Mexican deity, Santa Muerte, made from a female skull.”

Stuckler didn’t seem interested in Santa Muerte. Instead he made me elaborate on what I had seen, questioning me about small details of construction and presentation. He then gestured to Murnos, who took a book from a side table and brought it to his employer. It was a black coffee table volume, with the words Memento Mori in red along the spine. On the cover was a photograph of a piece that might have come from Garcia’s apartment: a skull resting upon a curved bone that jutted out like a white tongue from beneath the ruined jaw, which was missing five or six of its front teeth. Below the skull was a column of five or six similar curved bones.

Stuckler saw me looking.

“Each is a human sacrum,” he said. “One can tell from the five fused vertebrae.”

He flicked through fifty or sixty pages of text in a number of languages, including German and English, until he came to a series of photographs. He handed the volume to me.

“Please, take a look at these photographs and tell me if anything is familiar.”

I leafed through them. All were in black-and-white, with a faint sepia tint. The first depicted a church of some kind, with three spires set in a triangular pattern. It was surrounded by bare trees, and an old stone wall separated at regular intervals by columns topped with carved skulls. The rest of the pictures showed ornate arrangements of skulls and bones beneath vaulted ceilings: great pyramids and crosses; garlands of bones and white chain; candlesticks and candelabras; and finally, another view of the church, this time taken from the rear, and in daylight. The surrounding walls were thick with ivy, but the monochrome textures of the photograph gave it the appearance of a swarm of insects, as though bees were massing along the walls.

“What is this place?” I said. Once again, there was something obscene about the photographs, about this reduction of human beings to a series of adornments to a church. “Is this Sedlec?”

“First you have to answer my question,” said Stuckler. He wagged a finger at me in reproach. I considered breaking it. I looked at Murnos. He didn’t need telepathy to know what I was thinking. From the expression on his face, I imagined that a lot of people, maybe Murnos included, had thought about hurting Joachim Stuckler.

I ignored the finger and pointed instead to one small photograph of an anchor-shaped arrangement of bones set in an alcove beside a cracked wall. Seven humerus bones formed a stellate pattern with a skull at their center, supported in turn by what might have been portions of sternum or scapula, then a vertical column of more humerus bones, which met at last a semicircle of vertebrae curving upward on either side and ending in a pair of skulls.

“There was something similar to this in Garcia’s apartment,” I said.

“Is that what you showed to Mr. Neddo?”

I didn’t answer. Stuckler snorted impatiently.

“Come, come, Mr. Parker. As I told you, I know a great deal about you and your work. I am aware that you consulted Neddo. It was natural that you should do so: after all, he is an acknowledged expert in his field. He is also, I might add, a Believer. Well, in his defense, perhaps ‘was a Believer’ might be more accurate. He has since turned his back on them, although I suspect that he retains a faith in some of their more obscure convictions.”

This was news to me. Assuming Stuckler was telling the truth, Neddo had kept his connection to the Believers well hidden. It raised further questions about his loyalties. He had spoken to Reid and Bartek, and I could only assume that they knew of his background, but I wondered if Neddo had told Brightwell about me as well.

“What do you know about them?” I asked.

“That they are secretive and organized; that they believe in the existence of angelic, or demonic, beings; and that they are looking for the same item that I am seeking.”

“The Black Angel.”

For the first time, Stuckler actually looked impressed. If I was a little more insecure, I might have blushed happily in the light of his approval.

“Yes, the Black Angel, although my desire for it is different from theirs. My father died seeking it. Perhaps you are aware of my background? Yes, I rather suspect that you are. I don’t believe you are the kind of man who fails to equip himself with information before meeting a stranger. My father was a member of the SS, and part of the Ahnenerbe, Reichsführer Himmler’s delvers into the occult. Most of it was nonsense, of course, but the Black Angel was different: it was real, or at least one could say with reasonable certainty that a silver statue of a being in the process of transformation from human to demonic existed. Such an artifact would be an adornment to any collection, regardless of its value. But Himmler, like the Believers, was of the opinion that it was more than a mere statue. He knew the tale of its creation. Such a story had a natural appeal for him. He began seeking the pieces of the map that contained the location of the statue, and it was for this reason that my father and his men were dispatched to the monastery at Fontfroide, after Himmler discovered that one of the boxes containing a map fragment was reputed to be hidden there. The Ahnenerbe boasted prodigious researchers, capable of unearthing the most obscure references. It was a dangerous errand, undertaken under the noses of the Allied forces, and it led to my father’s death. The box disappeared and, so far I have been unable to trace it.”