Johanna was beautiful, beguiling, cunning ... with a lust for wealth. She sought out the very rich plying the steamship lines from Italy to Argentina. Konrad Ackermann was young, naive ... a former captain of the SS who abandoned Berlin as the Russian troops stormed the Führer bunker in April 1945. Konrad Ackermann ... who financed his escape with a stash of solid gold coins, the Brotherhood coins minted by Martin Bormann to fund a resurgent German Fourth Reich. Konrad Ackermann ... who Gela Pientka identified as the man who murdered Marianne.

In the chaos of a defeated Germany important people began to die as they sought refuge along the clandestine routes called ratlines between the ruins of Berlin and sanctuary in South America. Rumors spread of a fanatical SS officer, financed by stolen Nazi gold, who hunted those who abandoned their Führer in those dying days.