CHAPTER 39

LAKE HALLSTATT, AUSTRIA

APRIL 1939

Luzi spent the night in the sliver of room behind the wall, sleeping in fitful stages. Twice she turned on the battery-powered lamp to check the time, but she never opened the panel to check on Annika or see who had come to the door.

By morning, her skin was slathered with sweat. The hiding space was warm, her body radiating heat, but more than that, it was the walls. In the darkness, they felt as if they were inching toward her. Black jaws ready to bite.

The third time she turned on the lamp, the clock read nine.

Baby pressed down against her bladder, and she would need to either leave this hiding place soon or maneuver her body over the chamber pot in this sticky, cramped space.

Leaning against the pillow, her mind wandered, back nearly a year ago when she’d been playing her violin at the Rathaus, entertaining the elite of Austria, dancing with Max around the polished floor. And now, in such a short time, everything had changed. At one time, she’d prided herself on being Luzia Weiss, daughter of the esteemed Dr. and Frau Weiss, but the Nazis had stripped the honor from that name. There was no honor or dignity left for her.

Baby kicked again, and if she didn’t move quickly, she’d leave more than sweat on the floor.

She pulled on the panel, cracking it open. Then she heard pounding in the room. The angry voices of men.

Her heart hammering, Luzi sealed up the space in the wall again, praying they hadn’t seen her. Her body began to tremble, and she curled up like a caterpillar, wishing again that she had wings. In the darkness, she could see the faces of these men, their brown shirts and badges, the black web etched of their arms. Every one of them looked like Ernst in her mind, wanting to hurt her and now her baby.

She heard them draw closer to her space, the echo of their pounding.

Tears fell onto her belly as she awaited her fate, praying for God’s mercy. When they found her, she wanted to go in strength as her father had, without fear marking her face.

Minutes passed—an eternity—and then just as quickly as it had started, the pounding stopped.

Luzi pressed her ear against the wood, straining to hear—she must hear—but the sound eluded her.

One and two and three and . . .

Triple time.

Not the pounding in the room outside, but the beats of her heart. The aching in her emptied soul. The music still escaped her but the measures remained, the steady pace keeping her mind from finding relief in madness.

Another hour passed counting the beats, her bladder long since emptied on the wooden floor.

Sleeping relieved her temporarily from her fear. Then she awakened to more pounding. At first she thought it was the measures beating again in her head, but someone was knocking on the panel. Steady taps.

She pressed her ear to the wood, listened for the voices of men.

Someone knocked again, five times in a row.

The signal for her to slip safely back outside.

Still she didn’t unlock the panel. She was safe in this locked shell, or at least as safe as she could be inside a wall. What if the men were trying to trick her? They could be waiting for her on the other side.

Five taps again, slow and deliberate. And then she heard someone call her name.

Luzi tentatively slid back the bolt that held the panel in place, peeking through the crack until she saw Hermann. Relief surged through his eyes, but there was no smile on his face. She crawled out quickly, embarrassed at the stench.

She pushed her wet hair back, and he helped her stand. Her legs wobbled from the cramping in her muscles, but she was no longer focused on herself. The library around her—books scattered across the floor, lamps lying on their sides, one of the windows broken. It looked like her apartment in Vienna, the night they took her father away.

Her eyes wide, she turned to Hermann. “What happened?”

“The Gestapo came.”

“They were looking for me,” she whispered.

He nodded slowly.

“But they didn’t find my hiding place.” She stepped forward. “Annika?”

When no one answered, she called Annika’s name again.

“Luzi—”

She pushed around Hermann and ran into the foyer, panic rising inside her chest. “Annika!”

Hermann followed her, but he didn’t yell for Annika. Instead he collapsed on the front staircase, his head buried deep in the grave of his hands. The entire weight of the Alps seemed to press down on his shoulders, and she feared knowing the reason. She didn’t think she could bear to lose someone else. “Where’s Annika?” she demanded.

“The Gestapo. They took her away.”

Luzi felt as if she might collapse on the floor. “Why would they take her?”

“She claimed to be you.”

His words washed over her, slowly at first. Then they nailed themselves to her heart, one at a time.

“Why—?” But she didn’t have to ask; she knew why Annika would do this.

Greater love had no man or woman.

Greater love had Annika for her and . . .

Her heart seemed to cave in. She had known Annika loved Max, had seen it clearly in her eyes when Max brought Luzi to her. Max was oblivious, but women—they knew these things.

Still Annika had done the unthinkable for her.

In that moment, Luzi knew that she could never marry Max Dornbach. He belonged with Annika.

“We must stop them,” Luzi said.

Hermann shook his head. “They will arrest you, too.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It should matter.” He looked back up at her. “They will punish her even more severely for hiding you.”

“Then you must go.” She glanced toward the window. “Or Max.”

“We will do everything we can.” But any strength left in his voice broke.

She shivered. “What will they do to her?”

“Take her, I fear, to one of their work camps.”

She crumpled onto the tile floor, wishing she could crawl back into her hiding place, make it all go away. Wishing she could open the panel one more time and see Annika on the other side.

“I must do something,” she said.

“Come home with me, for the sake of your child.” Hermann reached for her hand. “It’s no longer safe for either of you here.”

“It’s no longer safe for us anywhere.”

“I told you to wait for me,” Ernst yelled into the telephone.

The line buzzed back at him, an awful, whining sound.

“Why must we wait?” the man on the other line finally replied, sounding bored. The tone infuriated Ernst.

“Because I wanted to interrogate the girl.”

“She had nothing to tell us.”

“You, perhaps, but she had plenty to tell me.” He wrapped his fingers around the glass ball of his paperweight and squeezed it. These idiots had sent Luzi away even though he’d never once told them to send her to a camp. She was supposed to be collateral to draw Max out of his hiding place.

“Our commander put her on a train.”

“My commander said she was supposed to stay!”

“Then he should have communicated that to Salzburg.”

He’d overstepped his bounds, perhaps a meter or two, and as he paced in front of the desk, the phone cord scraping the edge of the wood, Ernst decided to change tactics.

“What else did you find?”

“Nothing of significance.”

“Nothing at all?”

“If you are referring to the jewelry and other valuables, there’s nothing of worth in that castle.”

If it wasn’t in the house, it must be nearby. He only needed to retrieve it, and then he would find Max and send him off to a camp like Luzi.

Ernst no longer cared what his commander said. He’d been patient long enough, sending photographs and memos to Salzburg that were promptly ignored. Major Rosch would show his gratitude once Ernst returned with something to line both their pockets.

Early the next morning, Ernst left Vienna via train and traveled almost four hours to the desolate Obertraun Bahnhof. No automobiles or even a bicycle were available for hire, so he hiked through the forest until he located the gates of Max’s summer estate and walked right through them.

One day he’d own a castle much like this one . . . or perhaps this estate would be his home. He would marry someone much more prominent, more beautiful, than Luzi Weiss. An Aryan, of course, with the purest of blood to make Hitler himself proud. Someone who would show Ernst the honor and respect that he deserved.

Luzi deserved whatever the work camps gave to her.

He searched for a day but found nothing from Max and Dr. Weiss’s cache. The Gestapo, it seemed, had emptied the house of anything that would be of value, and they’d dug up a plot of land near the chapel. Perhaps they’d found things there and kept them.

Or perhaps Max was smarter than he imagined and stole the treasure himself.

His return ticket to Vienna was tonight, 22:00 Uhr. On the trip home, Ernst concocted and schemed and determined his course forward. Max, he knew, would return eventually to Schloss Schwansee. Ernst could wait for weeks, even months, if he must. He would travel to the castle again and again until he found Max Dornbach and his treasure.

His plans had solidified into stone by the time the train reopened its doors under the iron awning in the Wien Westbahnhof. But when he returned to Hotel Metropole the next morning, his commander wasn’t pleased that he had traveled to the lakes without permission.

If he wanted water, Major Rosch said, he could have the entire North Sea. Then he reassigned Ernst to an office in Hamburg, a thousand kilometers north of Hallstättersee.