All the same, Edith knew that da Vinci’s Lady wasn’t any safer here than it was traveling all over Poland and Austria, or being stored underground in a salt mine. Surely, Frank was a target for the Anglo-Americans. On the surface, there was the illusion that Frank was living as some kind of country gentleman in this Bavarian estate. But if he was a target and his private villa was bombed, the painting and their lives were at risk as much as they had ever been, in Poland or anywhere else.
Edith stared at the crate, knowing she would soon be asked to open it and hang the picture for him. Frank stood silently at the bar cart, examining a crystal tumbler filled with transparent liquid. She wondered what was on his mind. She wished that Brigitte would come back home.
“Would you please hang our girl?” Frank said finally, in a low voice, taking a sip of the drink and pursing his lips. “I’m sure you will do a more professional job than I.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d held da Vinci’s Lady in her hands, but Edith handled it with as much reverence as the first time she saw it pulled from the walled-up room at Pełkinie. She stepped forward toward the space on the wall where the painting was to be hung. She stared into Cecilia Gallerani’s eyes, admiring her beauty, taking in every brushstroke, the glossy surface that separated the two women by some five hundred years. The expression on Cecilia’s face seemed so serene. Surely she was coddled like a treasure? Surely she could not have known what it was like to fall prey to the whims of powerful men and events beyond your control?
“Enchanting, isn’t it?”
Edith felt Frank standing only inches from her back. She did her best to ignore him, reaching out to level the painting. With the other hand, she squeezed the handle of the hammer she had used to drive the nail into the wall. Frank had closed the space between them down to a point that she couldn’t get away. Her fist closed tightly around the hammer.
“Are you happy about going back to Munich, mein Liebling?”
I’m not your dear. Aloud she said, “I am looking forward to seeing my vati again, seeing if he is doing all right. He was ill when I left. I hope he is there for me to return to.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, crossing her arms over her chest and stepping away a little.
“Cecilia Gallerani was a beautiful woman,” she mumbled, trying to distract him.
He looked at the painting, a proud look on his face. “Yes. It is a privilege to have her under my care.”
Because it isn’t yours, Edith thought.
“Will you be returning to your fiancé when you get back to Munich?”
Edith tried to keep the look on her face neutral. She shook her head, turning a blank face to stare at him. “He was killed in Poland.”
But Frank hardly seemed to be listening. The announcement didn’t change the look on his face at all. He was still staring at the picture of Cecilia Gallerani. He didn’t care that Heinrich had died, that he had been killed in a battle Frank was responsible for. He didn’t care about the thousands of lives he had helped destroy. He was a greedy, obsessive monster.
Edith wondered if she could hit him over the head with the hammer. Would she have the physical strength? The courage? What would happen if her attempt was unsuccessful? But what if she succeeded instead? She indulged in the fantasy for a moment before he spoke again.
“You have provided excellent service during your time with us, Miss Becker. I will see to it that you get a well-deserved post at the museum when this is all over.”
Edith had her doubts that when it was all over, there would be a high post for her to consider.
“I need to go home now.” Edith forced herself to look into Frank’s eyes. “My father . . . He has been ill for a long time. Please,” she said. “Let me go home to Munich.”
She watched Frank’s lips spread into a thin line. “Hmm. But my dear, we still have work here. And besides, we are at risk here right now, perhaps even more so than we were in Poland. It is not the time to travel.”
Frank stepped closer to her again. He was so close, she could feel him breathing on her neck. She closed her eyes, trying to press down her disgust. Edith inched to the side and walked back around him to the couch opposite the desk.
She kept walking slowly and made her way to the balcony overlooking the lawn that sloped down to the lake. Two armed guards wore a path between the lake and the house, looking bored. Edith opened the double windows and stepped out onto the narrow balcony, feeling Frank behind her, tracking her steps. From this high vantage point, she watched the gardens, the rolling hills, cascading like ocean waves, stretch out before her to the icy edge of the lake. Bavaria. Home. It had been four years too long.
She leaned over the railing, looking down at the children rolling in the snow below. Norman and Michael, dressed in matching lederhosen and knitted mittens, were engaged in a mock wrestling match. The dogs circled them, leaping with joy. The lawn was littered with smashed snowballs and muddy footprints. Little Michael stopped then and looked up at her, his blond curls spilling from his cap. He smiled and waved frantically as if there was no way she could spot him otherwise. She grinned and waved back. Sweet, innocent child. What would become of him? How long before he would be swept up into Hitler’s Youth?
“You have good children,” Edith said. Frank came forward and stood next to her, looking down at his children below. “You must protect them,” Edith said. The two of them watched a drift of dry snow suddenly come to life, swirling across the glassy surface of the lake.
66
Dominic
Munich, Germany
May 1945
MUNICH WAS A FREE CITY, DOMINIC MARVELED AS THE dusty Jeep rolled through the crenelated gates of the city. The battle had been brief, with little resistance put up by the few German troops that remained. Now, relief washed over the soldiers.
There had been skirmishes over the past two days, the first of them just outside Dachau the day before as the shell-shocked Americans reeled from the horror of seeing the dead bodies piled so carelessly in the boxcars. Those boxcars. All those emaciated bodies stripped of everything they had—their dignity, their society, their possessions, their identities. Just a collection of nameless flesh rotting in the unflinching sun, stripped to the bare bones of their souls and bodies before being killed and forgotten.
Stories of other concentration camps that had been liberated—starting with Majdanek in Poland the previous July—had found their way into the ranks of the Americans marching on Dachau. The figures were staggering. Auschwitz, liberated by the Soviets a few months before, was the story that haunted Dominic the most. One number stuck in his mind. Eight hundred thousand. It was the number of women’s dresses the Soviets had discovered hidden in a warehouse full of personal belongings, presumably those of the inmates who had been killed. The number was more than Dominic could comprehend. But nothing had prepared them for what awaited them in Dachau.
In comparison with the rest of Dominic’s unit—the men who had marched on Dachau to liberate the stricken camp—his mission now was simple; he had been sent with a small group of other soldiers to go ahead to Munich and prepare it for the arrival of the rest of the troops. He was intensely grateful not to be marching on the internment camps. The gunfights they’d had seemed a trifling nuisance in comparison with the mammoth task of rescuing the thousands of sick and malnourished prisoners.