45

WHEN FRIEDERICH had focused on Lea’s face . . . Rachel could barely breathe. He was a shell of a man, his body broken, one eye lost, but what she saw in his expression was explosive and beautiful and rare. She envied Lea. She wanted what Friederich gave her sister in that moment —not from Friederich, but Rachel wanted . . . oh, how she wanted. She couldn’t articulate it and couldn’t deny it. She’d slipped from the room, pulling a willing but frightened Amelie with her. Rivka, stunned into silence, followed without a word.

Rachel tucked Amelie into her makeshift bed and climbed into her own pallet, pulled close alongside Amelie’s. For the first time she let the little girl snuggle against her. The kitchen stovepipe, coming up through the attic floor, warmed the room just enough to sleep. Still, Rachel shivered. Amelie’s breathing evened before ten minutes passed.

Rachel pulled the eiderdown over her head, willing the day to be done. She was sleeping on a pallet in a Bavarian attic with a deaf child and a Jewish teenager. She’d been raised —designed and groomed —to become the elite of society, racially and genetically superior to the masses. The philosophy had been drilled into her since childhood. And yet she felt the least of all.

Oma and Lea and Friederich got along fine without her, had lived a lifetime without her. Amelie would thrive under Lea’s care. Even Rivka had grown closer to Oma in some ways than Rachel had, than she probably ever could. Oma and Lea appreciated and served those who worked with willing hearts and spirits, but they didn’t seem to understand that Rachel was not raised to serve.

Changing that was less about participating in physical labor than about comprehending the levels of evolution within the human species. She could never explain that to them. She no longer understood it herself. And for the first time, Rachel wondered if it was true. Could that be one more lie from her father’s lips? And if it was, how would she ever rid her mind, her very marrow, of its deception?

Rachel rolled over, drying silent tears on the sleeve of her nightdress.

“Rachel?” Rivka whispered behind her.

Rachel wanted to ignore the girl. The last thing she wanted to add to this unholy mixture was the adolescent pleas of a girl who’d stolen the one man whose nearness did raise the hairs on her arms —a man she’d finally admitted she never really had in the first place, and one her father had seen as “the lowest of the low,” simply because of his dogged determination to bring the truth to light.

“Rachel?” Rivka whispered again, this time more urgently.

“What is it?” Rachel tried to sound as if she’d been asleep and wasn’t happy to be woken.

“I must tell you something.”

“In the morning. I’m tired. Go to sleep, Rivka.”

But Rivka shook her shoulder. “No, it cannot wait. I should have told you sooner. I should have told you today —this morning.”

Rachel sighed long and loudly, pulling the covers from her head. “What is it?”

Rachel felt her roommate sit up, saw her faint silhouette against the attic wall as she pulled the long and tangled ropes of her hair to the side and slipped her hands behind her neck.

“He told me to save this until Christmas Day, to give it to you first thing in the morning.” She felt for Rachel’s hand in the darkness and pressed the locket —Rachel could tell by the feel of the metal and the shape of the oval —with its delicate golden chain into Rachel’s palm. Rivka closed Rachel’s fingers. “I’m sorry that I didn’t give it to you sooner. Jason said —” and now Rivka’s voice trembled —“to tell you that he wants you to be well and safe and happy . . . and that he will find a way out of Germany for you and Amelie —he promises.”

Rachel stopped breathing. She pressed her eyes tight, then opened them again, certain she was dreaming, angry in part that Rivka had held back Jason’s gift, that she’d worn for weeks what was intended for Rachel. Still, one thought pushed beyond all the others. He cares for me!

Rivka lay down and turned her back to Rachel. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I was just pretending it was mine. . . .”

Rachel didn’t trust herself to answer. She closed her eyes and sank beneath the eiderdown. She couldn’t see the necklace, not properly in the dark, but ran her fingers over its every intricacy, again and again. Finally she worked the clasp and fastened it round her neck. She fingered the locket’s shape, imagined that Jason had fastened the clasp himself, that he admired how the locket fell into the hollow of her throat. He cares for me. He’ll come for me. He’ll get me out of Germany —he promised! But how? She could not imagine that.

It was late. Christmas night and not a reporter or typist in the newsroom. Mark Eldridge had pushed and pushed for a story or a lead at the US ambassador’s house —nearly begged —but it was shut up tight. The ambassador wasn’t about to let reporters intrude on the final hours of Christmas Day with his family. It had been a long shot anyway, but a shot Eldridge dared in order to impress the chief.

That “Silent Night in Oberndorf” story Young had phoned in was nothing but sap, pure and simple. But the chief was delighted. It seemed that’s what readers wanted this Christmas —something homespun and sappy from Germany. No Hitler atrocities for the holidays, though there was no shortage of those.

Earlier in the month Young had submitted an entire roll of Christmas market shots —all rosy-cheeked Bavarian girls and long-white-bearded men bouncing delighted toddlers on their knees as they played with carved wooden toys. Enough sap to cover the Zugspitze, tallest mountain in Germany —more than enough to make a guy sick.

Eldridge needed something fresh, something wholesome for the New Year. He wasn’t likely to find that in Berlin. He pulled out the chair of Young’s desk and flipped through the photos Peterson had left in the top drawer. Extras. Young had already submitted the best ones. Eldridge had seen them in print.

Frustrated, he slammed the drawer shut. It jammed. Eldridge pushed again, but it wouldn’t close. He pulled the drawer out and ran his hand round the perimeter. Nothing. He tried again. It still wouldn’t close.

Eldridge knelt down and peered into the space. Something dangled, like bait, near the back and from beneath the desktop. He reached in and pulled the small cylinder, sticky with tape, from its hiding place. Popping the canister’s lid, he emptied the contents into his palm.

“Well, well, Ace, what have we here?”