Plot
Pendergast and Judson are hunting in Scotland. They each try to kill the other. Esterhazy eventually shoots Pendergast in the chest and leaves him for dead, sinking into some quicksand. When he returns with police, they drag the swamp but don’t find Pendergast's body.
Constance is taken to the hospital for the criminally insane, and is assigned to the same room where Pendergast's Aunt Cornelia was hospitalized.
Corrie Swanson comes to see D’Agosta at his desk. She informs Vinnie that AP has missed a lunch meeting that he scheduled. Back in Scotland, an open verdict is returned from the inquest, allowing Judson to be free to leave Scotland. He leaves, then disguises himself, and homes to a town that is close to where Pendergast disappeared.
Vinnie heads to Scotland to search for Pendergast. He gets lost in the bogs, near a house, whose inhabitants he thinks might have some information. He appears to be freezing to death, just as he spots lights nearby.
June Brodie and her husband, now living back in Malfourche, are interviewed by a local reporter. A shady German, living in Guatemala, is sent the newspaper clipping. He calls a German associate and tells him to investigate and then there will be “wet work” for him. The assassin finds Brodie and her husband, discovers their real story, and then kills them.
Esterhazy is still searching for Pendergast, who is now in disguise as a Welshman clergyman. He lures Esterhazy to a churchyard. Judson begins to tell his story, which begins in 1945. But they are interrupted by a group of genealogists. They exchange shots, and Esterhazy gets away in his van.
Esterhazy meets with someone from the Covenant (Der Bund). The person tells Judson to man up and take care of Pendergast himself. After talking with a homeless person at a soup kitchen, he decides to go after a woman close to Pendergast.
Ned Betterton, the local Louisiana reporter, finds out more information about the Brodie murders, as well as the events at and around Spanish Island that occurred at the end of Fever Dream.
Pendergast has his wife’s body exhumed, as he believes that she is alive, so he wonders whose body is in her coffin. He then conducts an exhaustive search of Esterhazy’s home in Savannah, Georgia, finding nothing of interest.
Dr. Beaufort, whom Pendergast has known since childhood, conducts the tests on the remains from Helen’s coffin. He says that all evidence points to the body being Helen Pendergast, but Pendergast does not accept these findings. The doctor also mentions that the mitochondrial DNA test finds that Helen shared a female ancestor with a Nazi doctor, Faust, born in 1908 and died in 1978.
Pendergast also coerces a general in charge of an exhaustive database to search for any trace of Helen. He can’t find anything past when she was killed by the lion, and tells Pendergast that she must be dead.
Pendergast finds out that Helen was born in Brazil, that her native language was Portuguese, and that her great grandfather was a notorious Nazi. Meanwhile, Judson is pretending to be a psychiatrist that has seen Constance in the past, intimating that she has some sort of amnesia. This is to cover why she doesn’t recognize him when he sees her in the Sanatorium. He convinces her that he is there on Pendergast's behalf, and that Pendergast needs her help. He tells her that he’ll help her to escape. In reality, he wants to kidnap Constance to have a chip to hold when he confronts Pendergast.
Esterhazy manages to kidnap Constance, as they are on allowed offsite. They trick Dr. Felder and now he’s in big trouble. The reporter, Betterton, manages to track down the killers to a yacht, the Vertgeltung (German for “Vengeance”). But they kill him.
The Covenant lures Pendergast to the yacht, where they are holding Constance, tricking him into thinking he has discovered their location. But Constance sent a note to a woman with information: the woman took the note to the police. But she is actually a member of the Covenant.
Corrie Swanson finds the house where they held Constance, and is going to try to look in. In her note, Constance intimates that her baby is alive.
On the yacht, they throw Constance overboard, thus making Pendergast surrender. Esterhazy, fearing for his own life, kills the man in charge, Falkoner, and several other members of the Covenant. Pendergast damages the boat beyond repair, then he, Judson, and Constance escape on one of the tenders.
Pendergast figures out that Judson killed Helen’s twin in her place. She was severely intellectually disabled, and he needed a body to convince the Nazis that Helen was dead. He tells Pendergast that he will bring Helen to him, at a meeting in Central Park.
Corrie searches the old house, finding evidence of the Nazis in the house. It seems they are rolling up their operations here. But she finds some documents that she puts in her knapsack to take to Pendergast. After hearing some noises, she hides in a closet, but is discovered by a member of the Covenant.
Pendergast and Helen reunite. But they are ambushed by the Nazis. Judson is killed, and Helen taken. Proctor is shot, and Pendergast wounded.
Open questions that will be answered in Two Graves, the third book of the trilogy: is Proctor alive? Pendergast was wearing a bulletproof vest, so maybe Proctor was as well. Is the Covenant going to kill Helen? And, finally, how is Corrie going to escape from the Nazi pointing a gun at her and saying, “Auf wiedersehen?”
