CATHERINE SAT IN HER bedroom with her feet raised, rubbing vitamin E lotion on her abdomen with her right hand, holding her phone in her left. Liam was in Israel.
“Cat, I met with Ruth Abrams today. She’s a curator in the archives here at Yad Vashem. Lena is well documented here. As you know, she gave a video history. It’s about an hour long and she gives quite a detailed narrative about prewar Chrzanów and her time in the camps. But she doesn’t mention Karolina or the babies. Totally omitted. Doesn’t that trouble you?”
“A little, but I can understand it. Why would she want to relive the story of the twins, and permanently record how she threw them out of the window? She’s never told this story before. She told me that after the war she closed and locked that door. Did she talk about Milosz and her time in the attic?”
“Oh, yes. And her time at the Tarnowski farm. Obviously the hours she spent with you provide much greater detail than the one-hour videotape she made. But the chronology is the same. She summarizes her time in the Shop, her time in the Parschnitz concentration camp and her captivity in Auschwitz. She talks about her escape from the death march and her return to Chrzanów. She even mentioned that while she worked in the Shop, she lived in a furnace room in the ghetto. But she totally omits Karolina and the twins.”
“I don’t find that inconsistent. It’s just too painful.”
“I also researched Karolina Neuman. She’s listed here as a Shoah victim, killed at the Parschnitz sub-camp. Born in 1922, died in 1943. No survivors.”
“No mention of her twins?”
“Nope.”
“Well, think about it, Liam. Who would know about the twins?”
“Are you kidding? Lena would know. She may have been the very person who gave the information about Karolina to the museum. But she didn’t say anything about the twins.”
“And you find that disturbing?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Any luck finding Muriel or Chaya?”
“Chaya is deceased. She died in 1945. Probably on the death march. But I had better luck with Muriel. She’s still alive. I was given an address in New York and I believe she still lives there. I’ve tried to contact her, but so far I’ve had no luck.”
“So now what?”
“I’m going first to Scharmassing, Germany. I’m going to try to track down the Schultz family. That would seem to be the logical starting point to finding the twins. If they survived being cast into a field from a moving train. If somebody found them and rescued them, then they would have seen the address. I’m going there first.”
“I agree. That makes sense.”
“How’s my little tyke doing? Growing fast?”
“Kicking the stuffings out of me and keeping me up at night.”
“Then it’s probably a boy, and with legs like that, the Chicago Bears will want to take a look at him.”
“It could be a girl, you know.”
“Well, then, she’ll be kicking ass in some courtroom like her mother.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Nope.”
“So when do you leave for Germany?”
“Tomorrow. Tonight I’m having dinner with Kayla Cummings.”
“Kayla? Seriously? Do I have to worry about you two again?”
“Again? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I worried about the two of you before. Tell me you’re not having dinner in Hebron. You know she’s a reckless intelligence agent. She’s pulled you into the battlefields before.”
“Do I sense a return of Cat jealousy?”
“No. Maybe I was last year when you were spending so much time with a gorgeous spy on the beaches of Hawaii and chasing after Sophie Sommers.”
“On the beaches of Hawaii? I think it was me and a suspicious jealous woman named Catherine on the beaches of Hawaii, whose unreasonable suspicions were proven to be false. And besides, we were chasing after Arif al-Zahani, a terrorist in Israel.”
“Right. Through Hebron, the most dangerous city in the world. You tell her that you can’t be entering any danger zones, you’re about to be a father.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Okay. Tell Kayla I said hello and I’m happy that’s she’s doing well.”
“I will.”
“And just mention that Liam Taggart is now a married man with a family.”
“Ha, ha. I’ll do that. I love you, good-bye.”