have a chance before, but now—”
“You’re a father. A father doesn’t abandon his children. What are you thinking?”
She heard him sniffling in the dark, bitter laughter he was trying not to show, and she snapped on the flashlight to catch him at it. “I’m not going to break up a family. Not even for you. I know you’d leave everything for me if you could. But I wouldn’t respect you if you did. You know that because you know me. Better than almost anyone.”
“I see your ironclad principles are alive and well.”
She gave him a look, but decided not to let him bait her. “Did the British put my mother in the attic at Falkenhorst?”
“Worse. They evicted her.”
It was such a horrendous thought, Clara had to fight the urge to laugh. “How did they get her out? With a bulldozer?”
“More or less. She’s living in a flat in Bredeney.”
“I need to see her. She’ll know where Elisa is.” She was aware again of the silk square in her pocket. “Do you know the street?”
“I know the exact house. After the Allies hired me, your mother stooped to talking to me now and then. She thinks I’m her spy.”
That wasn’t at all how Anne used to be. She would mumble and complain about the riffraff—Max and Elisa—who Papa and then Clara had allowed to rise at the Works. Outsiders were not to be trusted, Anne always said. Clara had ignored that. Her mother was the last person she looked to for advice about trust.
“Will you take me to her?”
“No.” The flare of light as he lit a cigarette. “I don’t think I will.”
Clara knew Max too well to argue. There was no need. She clicked off her flashlight and waited for him to finish his smoke. When he did, he kissed her in the inky dark of the workshop, his fingers pressing her skull, his teeth rattling hers. She remembered this too, how he could funnel anger into his kisses, how submitting to them could calm him and get him to do what she wanted. They separated, her lips numb from his, and he led her outside to where his bicycle leaned against the carriage-house wall.
12
Jakob Relling got home a little drunk but contented, as he’d been most of the time since the miracle of Willy Sieland’s depot dropped into his life. He deserved some luck—cripple’s luck, as he wasn’t afraid to call it—and since it had been a long time in coming, he was savoring it all the more. Even better, he was learning how one piece of luck could lead to another. Willy’s delicious depot had led him to Willy’s house, which had led him to the diamond ring worn by one Margarete Müller. Her mission to find an ex-Gestapo man was ridiculous, but his luck was holding out even there. He knew a fellow who knew a fellow who tonight had insisted he could set up a meeting with another fellow who might be the one. If that worked out, the diamond was his. Once he had the diamond, he’d have capital. With that, he could do anything. Buy clothes for the baby, shoes for his sisters, a new suit and a gold-plated prosthesis for himself. He might even get a half-crazy kid out of the mine while taking the food for his growing family.
The only problem, or rather a pleasant concern that had been nagging at the back of Jakob’s mind, was Margarete Müller. Talking to her, an odd feeling had nudged him toward . . . he wasn’t sure what. Somehow he associated her with damp leather and straw and wood smoke, smells that were comforting and so intense he’d smelled them in the cold air at Sophienhof. And so, as he’d been out working on her behalf, Jakob carried around with him the memory of her gray eyes, drained of color except for the black pricks of the pupils. He thought of the graceful black curves of her eyebrows. He wasn’t dumb. He knew an alias when he heard one. That woman was no Fr?ulein Müller. But if not her—then who?
Humming to himself, he hobbled into the dank foyer. His building had four walls and something like a roof and most of the time he could push away his fear of it collapsing. He lived with his sisters on the ground floor, which suited him, considering the upstairs neighbors had to climb a ladder. The Rellings had it easier, two rooms for three people, four