The warehouse smelled of oil and damp concrete. Two men sat tied to chairs in the middle of the floor, their mouths taped shut, their eyes fixed on the man who walked toward them. Tony Accardo, twenty years old and barely two years out of the streets, stood in front of them and waited. Al … Read more

It was past midnight when J. Henry Brown watched his father slip away. The man had nearly recovered from the fever he caught after being soaked in the Green River, a sickness that had laid him low for days. Then a sudden chill brought a relapse, and with no doctor in their company or anywhere … Read more

The signal arrived at F Section headquarters on July 7, 1943. It came from Gilbert Norman, the wireless operator for the Prosper resistance network in occupied France, and a highly experienced agent. Every message Norman sent was supposed to carry two security checks—deliberate spelling mistakes agreed in advance with London. If a check was missing, … Read more

On the morning of July 24, 1943, in the Pacific north of Truk, Lieutenant Commander Lawrence Daspit brought the submarine USS Tinoso to periscope depth. Ahead of him lay the target every submarine commander waits an entire war to find. The Tonan Maru No. 3, a Japanese whaling ship converted into an oil tanker, displaced … Read more

In Rome in 1808, beneath the gaze of cardinals and princes, a marble vision was unveiled: a woman reclining on stone cushions, bare save for a drapery that seemed to slip with defiant ease. The sculptor Antonio Canova presented to the world Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, transformed into Venus Victrix. Whispers surged through the … Read more

The radio operator had been captured, and the message had to get through. Nancy Wake did not hesitate. She swung a leg over the bicycle and began to pedal, heading for Toulouse, more than a hundred kilometers away. She rode through the night and into the next day, her legs burning, her throat raw, her … Read more

On a May morning in 1992, Tony Accardo died peacefully in his suburban Chicago mansion at the age of eighty-six. There were no handcuffs, no prison walls, no bullets. The man who had ruled the Chicago Outfit for more than forty years slipped away surrounded by family, in a home that boasted two bowling lanes, … Read more

On the third of June, 1886, a scout named Tom Horn lay flat in the rocks above a dry wash in the Pinito Mountains of northern Sonora. He had not slept in two days. His canteen was empty. Below him, in the canyon, he saw what he had been sent to find: smoke from a … Read more

Heute weiß niemand mehr, wie viele Türen sich im Wiener Hofburgpalast im Laufe der Jahrzehnte vor Kaiser Franz Joseph I. geschlossen haben. Aber es gibt eine Tür, von der die Chronisten mit Sicherheit berichten, dass sie sich immer wieder vor ihm verschloss – verschlossen von einer Frau, die nicht einmal Adelige war. Fanny Feifalik, die … Read more