Winter still clung to the river when Professor Albrecht von Hohenfels arrived in New York, a man built for silence and calculation.
He carried two suitcases, a coat tailored in Vienna, and a lifetime of knowledge wrapped in discretion.
Once he had lectured under imperial eagles and dined beside the Kaiser himself.
Now, he was merely another European exile, folded into the anonymity of the new American Regime.
His "refuge" had been arranged by the Reich through unseen channels.
To Washington, he was a scholar displaced by circumstance; to Bruno, he was an old servant sent to guide, and if need be, to wound.
The research campus that welcomed him smelled of ozone and coffee.
Corridors hummed with ambition, chalkboards filled with symbols of faith disguised as mathematics.
The Americans were clever but raw, craftsmen without apprenticeship.
They greeted him with polite awe, invoking his reputation like a charm.
