Edith felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“You have demonstrated a talent for identifying and locating important, worthy paintings,” he continued. “Only first-rate. Nothing degenerate.”
“I believe that all art is worth preserving.” She met his gaze.
“That is why I have requested that the director of the Alte Pinakothek let me have you for a while.”
Edith was rendered nearly mute. Let him have her?
How could she explain that she had duties back home? And yet what choice did she have? She had never felt so pressured, so on the brink of fearing for her life. If not her life, she could be tortured or . . . she shuddered, refusing to allow the word to form in her mind. I would be shot, she had heard Mühlmann say. And what had Manfred told her? Frank had decreed the confiscation of all Polish property. And he had already sent untold numbers to the detention camps.
Behind them, the soldier had managed to open the crate holding the Lady with an Ermine. As soon as Frank spotted the painting carefully packed inside, he set down his drink and moved to look more closely. He leaned forward, his hands clasped behind his back, as his eyes ran over the girl in the painting. Then he turned to look at Edith for a few long moments.
“You will help me hang it,” he said. He lifted the painting from the crate and took it to the other side of the room.
The soldier moved a stepladder near the wall opposite Frank’s desk. Frank gently put the painting down. On a nearby table, a small hammer and nail stood waiting. Frank handed both to Edith. She hesitated, feeling the heat of the men’s eyes on her.
Seeming to move in slow motion, she climbed the stepladder and tapped the nail gently into the wall above a radiator. The soldier lifted up the picture and handed it to Edith. Carefully, she leveled the frame. Frank took a few steps backward, looking proudly at his newest acquisition.
Edith felt her legs tremble as she descended the ladder, but she forced herself to face Frank. “You cannot just . . . just take it,” she said quietly.
Frank stared at her for a few long moments and she held her breath. But then he only chuckled, shaking his head. “No, my dear. I didn’t take it. You did. And now, the Führer has gifted it to me, as a token of his esteem.”
Edith sucked in her breath. Yes, she had taken the picture. It was undeniable. All the same, he was patronizing her. Surely Hitler had more important things on his mind than pictures?
“We have to guard this one carefully, no? I spend all my time here. My guards are always outside. There is no better place than here for such a beautiful work of art. No one will take it. It will be safe under my personal care.”
“Such a painting is not replaceable,” she said. “And the radiator . . . It will make the paint crack.”
Frank looked perturbed and she realized she’d overstepped her bounds. “It will be secure here. You have done your duty, you do not need to worry about it anymore. Come. Sit with me.”
He walked forward with a stiff pace to a table by the large window. He pulled a chair out for her to sit and took her coffee cup from her hand. She had not taken a sip.
“Let us refill this with something more suitable. Make yourself comfortable . . .”
She sat down hard and pressed her lips together as he went to the bar and made them both another drink. Her head was already swimming a little, the result of nerves and the lack of sleep. She turned her head to look at the portrait again. The girl seemed to call out for her help, Edith thought, her eyes seeming a little more desperate and sad than before. What could she do to save her this time?
Frank came back and set the glass down in front of her. Then he sat and took a sip of his drink, looking at her over the rim.
“Please, fräulein, tell me how you came to be so prominent in the Munich art world?”
She took a sip of the strong concoction, hoping it would calm her. “I don’t hold a prominent position at all,” she said. “I only work in a simple conservation studio . . .”
“But you graduated top in your class at the art academy, Mühlmann has told me.”
She hesitated. “My father taught me about art when I was young; he taught me that art makes life worth living. And after that, I wanted to learn everything I could about preserving paintings.” She looked warily again at the priceless masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, now hanging over a radiator.
Frank nodded. “You will be an asset to the future of this empire. I intend to let the Führer know my opinion of your work, which, as you might have guessed, is highly favorable.”
Frank raised his glass in a toast, then leaned toward Edith, so close that she could smell the tangy metal of his breath.
“I am eager to see what other treasures you might find for us.”
39
Dominic
Bonn, Germany
March 1945
DOMINIC CAREFULLY PASSED UP A PAINTING WRAPPED and padded in canvas tarps to another soldier standing on the flatbed of the Jimmy. The other soldier handled it with reverence, sliding it to rest beside a stack of similarly wrapped artwork. It was the last of several dozen pictures recovered from the basement of a university library in Bonn.
The pictures safely secured, Dominic hopped up into the back and crouched beside them, clasping his rifle between his knees in a pose that had become all too familiar. Another soldier slammed the tailgate closed and slapped his hand against the back of the truck to signal the driver. Dominic stared blankly out the back as the truck trundled off, swaying between two other servicemen. He barely knew their names. One or two of them had attempted to reach out to him, as starved for companionship as he was; but none of them were gentle Paul, and especially, none of them was Sally. He shunned them all, retreating into a ball of silence as desolate as the landscape around them.
The truck made its slow and laborious way through the debris and out into the countryside, heading eastward, toward enemy territory, toward Siegen, and whatever treasures might be hidden there. The road was pitted and uphill, but it was the only one that was open for them to use; all the others still fell under heavy fire. Even this one was covered in ruin, and the occasional dark stain on the earth bore testimony to the price that had been paid to open it.
At least the truck in front of them carried the closest thing to a friend that Dominic still had: Stephany. The old vicar had met up with them again in Bonn, determined to be present when they arrived at Siegen. Hancock had tried to dissuade the vicar from joining them because of the obvious dangers of trekking through territory still under fire, but Stephany would have none of it. He was going to Siegen whether Hancock liked it or not, and it would have taken more than a mere American army to stop him from seeing if his beloved cathedral treasure was hidden there as promised.
As the cover of town receded, Dominic felt exposed in the hilly countryside. He stared out at the rolling horizon, scanning for the barrels of enemy guns that he knew still had to be out there, hidden just over the crest of a hill. Wisps of smoke marked the sky in places, the remnants of battles still raging not far away. He clasped his rifle a little tighter, an uneasy feeling stirring in his gut.
Someone was watching them.
The next moment, the air ripped with gunfire. Dominic threw himself to the floor of the truck bed as holes exploded in the canvas tarp that covered them, punching into a priceless canvas, gunpowder spraying into the air. Without thinking, Dominic grasped the edge of a wooden frame and pressed the canvas down into the bed of the truck. The man beside him screamed and rolled, blood from his shoulder splattering hot on Dominic’s cheek. Dominic pressed himself to his belly as the truck screeched to a halt.