“I have time.” At thirty-four, Klaus von Koenig was the youngest Nazi general, thanks to a talent for finance and Himmler’s patronage.

The banker was no longer listening. He browsed the black ledger, his stubby finger running down to the totals at the bottom of each page. “This is fantastic. Fantastic!” His gold-rimmed glasses slipped down to the tip of his nose, and he pushed them back. “Diamonds, total weight, nine and one-quarter tons? God in heavens! Thirteen point four tons of pearls? Sixteen tons, eight hundred and ninety-two kilos of emeralds? Three tons, nine hundred and thirty-four kilos of red rubies?” He pulled the curtain aside and looked at the truck across the road. “The Jews had so much?”

Klaus patted his chest. “They swallowed more stones than breadcrumbs.”

Armande Hoffgeitz looked at him, puzzled. “So how?”

“Crematoria. The fire consumes everything but precious stones. The gold teeth had to be removed beforehand, of course.” Klaus didn’t miss the shiver that passed through Tanya, who would have been gassed and cremated had he not pulled her out of line at Dachau. “It’s almost over now,” he said. “We’re shutting down the camps, thank God.”

Tanya knew his itinerary, the names on his routine travel route-Maidanek, Belzec, Auschwitz, Dachau, Mauthausen, Gross-Rosen, Chelmno, and back to Herr Himmler’s compound near Treblinka, where she had overheard Commandant Franz Stangl brag of killing seventeen thousand Jews in a single day-stripped, shaved, herded into the showers, gassed, searched for gold teeth, and burned to thin powder, which was then combed for precious stones.

The banker’s thick forefinger pushed his spectacles up his stubby nose. “What did you do with the gold?”

“Shipped to Argentina by U-boats. The last one is waiting for us in Kiel.”

Armande Hoffgeitz held up the ledger, shaking it. “How could they have so much?”