The two of them met the next day at the New York Public Library, where David had been looking into table settings and flatware patterns of the 1930s, as well as who might have made personalized sets in New York, Chicago or Miami.  The reference librarian gave David a look to suggest, “You don’t look the type.”
      He had also paid visits to various precious metal exchanges in Manhattan, some of whose owners had worked with the police on stolen goods.
        
        “Fancy meeting you here, in a library,” said Katie.
         “Don’t worry.  I’ve got my brass knuckles and Taser with me just in case.”
         “So, anything new?”
         “I’ve been looking into table settings.”
         Katie feigned blushing, crossed her hands on her chest, and said, “Oh, David, this is so sudden!”
         “Yeah, well with what I make, stainless steel flatware is more likely. So, anyway, I found that solid gold knives, forks and spoons would have been outrageously expensive, and, in the 1930s, the gold would have been very difficult to obtain.”
         He read from his notes:  Most gold flatware is just gold plated, with under layers of silver or copper.  Even so-called “gold-filled” jewelry is a layer, and by law has to be at least five percent of the item’s total weight.  But in the 1920s and 1930s, some gold-filled items, called “rolled gold plate” contained 12.5 percent 14 karat gold.  Anything solid gold would be unique in any era.
         “That setting Theresa Scali had would have been, well, worth its weight in gold,” he said.
         “And she said there were maybe twenty settings total,” Katie added.
         “That still wouldn’t add up to more than a few melted down ingots,” said David. “I figure that Capone just had the gold settings made for his own pleasure before he went to prison.  And when he died, and the feds tried to confiscate his holdings, his wife or mother gave the settings to various family members as a gift.  Telling the feds that their gold was melted down to make settings for his dinner table was not likely to sit well with the feds, who would then indict him for merely owning the stuff and use it as evidence he was behind the heist.”
         “All right,” said Katie, “so we eliminate a few ingots of gold.  Where’s the rest?”
         “I was just going to ask you if it might be in Germany.”
          Katie took out her notes from her meeting with Professor Mundt and made a very detailed report.
         “So, it’s possible that Capone made friends with Adolph Hitler and had the gold shipped to Germany?” asked David.
         “Well, if he did he couldn’t touch it during the war. And by then, from what Professor Mundt said, most of the loot was either stolen by the Nazi higher-ups, deposited in Switzerland, recovered by the Allies and Russia, or is still sitting in tunnels throughout eastern Europe.”
         “So, shy of our digging and spelunking our way through the mountains of Bavaria, Poland, and the rest of eastern Europe,” said David, “that info leads nowhere. Besides, if the Nazis smelted and changed the stamp on the gold bars, you couldn’t tell if it came from the Federal Reserve anyway.”
         “True,” said Katie, “but if we could at least find out that Capone did somehow ship the gold to Germany, that’s not only part of my story but may be enough to get the feds to hand over the reward.”
         David shook his head and said, “That I doubt.  The reward is for information leading to the ‘recovery’ of the gold, not just saying where it might have gone.”
         “I guess you’re right, but it’s still part of the story and, if we could find out how much—maybe all—of it went to Germany, it would be a coup on our part.  And, if it did not all go to Germany, it’s still out there, and we can eliminate one whole country in our search.”
         “I feel better already,” said David. “So now I think we’re back to Capone’s boats. His bigger yachts could sail the Atlantic, or, what’s easier, they could rendezvous with a German ship beyond the 12-mile limit.  A rumrunner, if fitted to carry successive, light shipments of the gold might be even a better idea in case they had to make a run for it.”
         “Any idea how’d we’d go about finding evidence of that?”
         “There must be records of ship itineraries from before the war.  I think we should call on Edward Prus and find out.”
         David and Katie walked the two blocks from the library to the New York Yacht Club and asked to see Edward Prus.  This time the wait was short and Prus seemed happy to see the couple, who asked where there might be maritime records on sailings as far back as the mid-1930s.
         “Hmm, the only archive I can think would have such material would be the Naval Institute in Annapolis,” said Prus.  “I can give you an introduction to some people down there, if you like, and they can gather what you might be looking for if you give them a day or two.”
         Katie and David thanked Prus for the offer and left to plan a quick trip on Amtrak down to Annapolis.

                                                         *                         *                         *

         The U.S. Naval Institute is located just across Peters Cove from the U.S. Naval Academy (below), and since Katie and David arrived an hour early for their appointment at the Institute, they walked like tourists through the red brick streets of Annapolis, visited St. Mary’s Church, and meandered through the Naval Academy, where cadets in various uniforms walked briskly, without ever setting foot on the campus grass.
           At two o’clock, Katie and David entered the Institute and met Lieutenant William Gaudet, who appeared to be in his mid-forties.
         “I hear you know Ed Prus,” said Gaudet. “Very knowledgeable man, at least about the yachting world.”
         “He was very helpful,” said Katie, “but he said you’d be the man to help us with maritime records from the 1930s.” She then explained the relevance to Al Capone and the connection to Nazi Germany.
         “Interesting topic,” said Gaudet. “Before the war there was a lot of activity in the Caribbean and the Atlantic between Germany and other countries, especially Brazil and Argentina.  We have a good deal of archival material on that, and we even have a lot on the rumrunner boats, because so many of them were used by the Navy during the war for sub chasing and other patrol activities.  They were very fast boats, you know.”
         Gaudet led them to a library desk and said he’d be back with materials in a few moments.  Katie took out her pocket recorder. When he returned Gaudet had a very large map of the Atlantic, labeled 1938.  
         “If I may begin with a little background of what was going on back then,” said Gaudet, spreading out the map of the Atlantic, lined with myriad shipping lanes of the day. “If Al Capone, or anybody, wanted to ship something to Germany in the mid-1930s, it would have come under scrutiny by port authorities on this side because the signs that Hitler was not to be trusted had already shown themselves.”
         Gaudet went on to explain that Hitler’s need for gold early on was driven by his desire to build a strong navy for Germany, whose size and tonnage had been very, very restricted by the League of Nations.  The priority, therefore, was to rebuild the army and air force, because ship building on a naval scale takes enormous resources of steel, shipyards, and workers skilled enough to handle the new technologies of the time.  So, although Hitler later flouted the restrictions on German naval power, the construction of U-boats was cheaper and easier to hide than battleships. As you know, once the war started, U-boats became the most powerful weapon in Hitler’s arsenal until the British cracked the Nazi codes and could track the U-boats on all their missions.
         “And the U-boats of the early 1930s were good enough to cross the Atlantic?” asked David.
         “Oh, yes. Remember, the Germans for all intents and purposes invented the submarine before World War I, so their expertise was unparalleled by the 1930s. And they were constantly making improvements to them.”
         “So, you’re saying that the Germans were more likely to use U-boats for these clandestine rendezvous with ships on this side of the Atlantic?”
        “It’s highly likely,” said Gaudet. “As I mentioned, boats flying the German flag would have come under greater scrutiny sailing out of American or British Commonwealth ports.  But U-boats could sneak up to the 12-mile limit or wait a few hundred miles away in the Atlantic and make transfers without being noticed.”
         “And do you have any information that American gangsters were in league with the Germans for such transfers?” asked Katie.
         “Oh, absolutely,” said Gaudet. “You may know that Henry Ford (below) himself was an ardent anti-Semite, and in 1938 he received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Adolph Hitler, who admired Ford’s assembly line techniques for the Model T as adaptable to producing the Volkswagen.  Hitler also saw Ford as a comrade-in-arms against the Jews.  He even mentioned Ford as a hero in Mein Kampf.”
         “And you’re saying Ford shipped illegal goods and technology to Germany via U-boats?”
         “He didn’t have to. There was nothing illegal about Ford trading with Germany before the war.  He even sent experts to help the Germans set up their assembly lines. In fact, before 1939, Ford subsidiaries controlled 70 percent of production in Germany.  Of course, once the war started, Ford’s participation ceased.”
         “All right,” said David, “so, if trade with Germany was perfectly legal, what would not have been legal to ship to Germany?”  (David already knew the answer.)
         Gaudet turned his palms up and said, “Why, gold, of course.  And from what you tell me, Capone was the only American who had a significant cache of gold to hide.  What better place to store it than Germany or Switzerland?”
         “And a U-boat could lug that much gold across the Atlantic?”
         “Well, you’ve given me no idea of the amount of gold there was, but it could have been accomplished over several trips.”
         Katie asked, “Is there any chance you have records of these clandestine trips.  I mean, if they were made in secret they wouldn’t have been recorded.”
         “True,” answered Gaudet, “but, fortunately, we do have records of U-boat travel before 1939 that were gleaned from German archives after the war.  The Nazis certainly knew where all their U-boats were going.”
         “Well, we’re looking at a period probably right after 1934, maybe early ’35,” said David.  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d have the logs of rumrunners of the period.”
         “Actually, we do have some. They came with the confiscated boats. Listen, if you haven't had lunch, go ahead and I’ll see what I can find meanwhile?”
         Katie and David went off to lunch—Maryland crab cakes and cold beer—and talked a blue streak about what they’d just learned from Gaudet.
         “I think this is the missing link we’ve been looking for,” said Katie.  “It’s amazing that Gaudet has these kind of archives.”
         “Well, don’t get too excited,” said David. “He may not have the ones we need to make the connection.  I can’t imagine they have anything like complete files.”