"Yes.. .." He took his eyes off her and continued.
"Did Knox Talbot find out who broke into the AA computers" - "Of course, they were on the Eagle's Nest printouts. A I man and a woman who'd worked their way up for sixteen years in the Agency. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, church acolytes, one from a farm-Four H, whatever that is-and the other the offspring of a suburban couple who taught Sunday school."
"Sonnenkinder," said Drew.
"Precisely. Right down to choir practice and your Rotary Clubs."
"What about the files on Monluc that were stolen from the OSI?"
"One of the directors who posed as a Jewish historian. Who could suspect him?"
"Sonnenkind."
"Naturally."
"What about that financial shark in Paris who was buying up real estate in the Loire Valley with German money?"
"His house of cards collapsed. Bonn stepped in with some very creative foreign accounting procedures that saved a lot of German money. He was a swindler praying upon old misguided loyalties."
Karin glanced up at Latham.
"Why are you looking at me like that? So questioningly?"
"A moment ago you mentioned my mother and father, and that made me suddenly think. You've never told me about your parents, your mother and father, who gave you all that academic training. I don't even know what your name is, your maiden name. Why is that?"
"Does it matter?"
"Hell, no! But I'm curious, isn't that normal? I guess, in my imagination, I always thought that when and if I was ever going to ask a woman to marry me, I'd have to go to her father and say something like, "Yes, sir, I can support her and I love her'-in that order. Can I do that, Karin?"
"No, I'm afraid you can't, so I might as well tell you the truth.. .. My grandmother was a Danish woman, abducted by the Nazis and forced into the Lebensborn. When her daughter, my mother, was born, she stole her away, and with a tenacity that is beyond understanding, she made her way back into Denmark with that child, and hid herself in a small village on the outskirts of Hansthohn on the North Sea. She found a man, an anti-Nazi, who married her and accepted the child, my mother."
"So what you're saying-" "Yes, Drew Latham, but for the driven stubbornness of a woman's ferocity, I might have become a Sormenkind, not unlike Janine Clunes. Unfortunately, the Nazis kept meticulous records, and my grandmother and her husband had to keep running, never having a permanent home of their own, or access to normal educational facilities. Finally, after the war, they moved to Belgium', where the barely literate child grew up, got married, and had me 1962.
Because my mother had been denied any formal education, my schooling became an obsession with her."
"Where are they now?"
"My father deserted us when I was nine years old and, looking back, I can understand why. My mother had my grandmother's intensity of purpose. As her mother had risked everything, including a public hanging, to steal her own child away from the Lebensborn, my mother was consumed by me. She had no time for her husband, her whole focus was on her daughter. I had to read constantly, feverishly, attain the highest grades of anyone in the academies, study, study, study, until I myself caught the fever. I became as obsessed with my scholarship as she was."
"No wonder you and Harry got along. Is your mother alive?"
"She's in a nursing home in Antwerp. You could say she burnt herself out, and now barely recognizes me."
"Your father?"
"Who knows? I never tried to find him. Later I thought often of trying, for, as I say, I understood why he le . At the first chance, you see, I myself left before I was completely smothered, and how accurately does the English language create that word. Then Freddie came along and I was 'out like a shot," as you Americans say."
"Well, that's over with!" said Drew, smiling and squeezing her hand.
"Now I feel I know you well enough to carry on the Latham dynasty."
"How generous of you, I'll try to be worthy."
"Worthy? For you it's a step or two down, but I want you to know that the first thing I'm ordering for the library is a set of encyclopedias."
"What library?"
"In the house."
"What house?"
"Our house. Right around the bend on this old road, which, naturally, I'll have surfaced now that I can afford to. @9