“It worked.” She kissed the tip of my nose. “You were in such bad shape.”
I rolled onto my back, bringing her on top of me. “Can you sing it again?”
She snuggled into my arms, her lips close to my ear. “I’ll sing you the first few verses.”
I closed my eyes and listened to her beautiful, calming voice. “Tell me the lyrics,” I said when she stopped.
She propped herself up on her elbows and smiled. “The golden rays of the sun are caressing the shore. The waves are washing up, and somewhere far away, a beautiful ship is floating, its scarlet sail blooming.”
I raised my head up off the pillow and gave her a long kiss. “You saved me, my beautiful girl,” I murmured. “What shall be your reward?”
“I’ll get it myself,” she said, her hand sliding down my side and across my hip.
thirty-seven
Present Day
Nuremberg, Germany
George and Sue met Val and me as we came through the Nuremberg customs early in the afternoon. Val and I had arrived three days after everybody else, giving the others time to explore the city while we spent extra time diving. The others had come on Soul Identity’s jet. We had flown commercial.
George wore lederhosen, a white shirt, and thick gray socks. He hooked his thumbs under the suspender straps and smiled. “Welcome to Bavaria,” he said.
“Where’s the hat and hiking stick?” I asked.
“Back in the hotel where they belong,” Sue said. “Next to the new dirndl you won’t ever see me wear.”
George smiled. “She looks fabulous in it,” he said. “It’s one of the made-for-tourists dirndls, so it shows lots of cleavage.”
Sue shook her head, but she was smiling. “Let’s get you out of the airport and checked into the hotel.”
Once we closed the door of our hotel room, Val burst out laughing. “George gets so excited when he travels. Remember how he was in Venice?”
I put my arms around her. “I’ve been imagining how you’d look in one of those dirndls.”
She gave me a kiss. “Just keep imagining,” she said. “Sue said we’re having dinner at the Bratwurstglocklein, and I hear their waitresses wear some revealing ones.”
“Cool.” I sat down on the bed and patted the space next to me. It was time to have the conversation that we both had been avoiding the last few days. “Val, I can’t shake the bad feeling I have about this little adventure.”
She sat down and grabbed my hand. “I have it too. But then I tell myself that we’re doing the right thing, and it sort of fades away.”
“How do you know it’s the right thing?”
She sat quietly for a minute before speaking. “By the time I was a teenager, the Soviet Union was in its perestroika days, so things weren’t that bad. But my parents told me how it was in their generation. Success in those days wasn’t driven by hard work and determination, but by who you snitched on and how you played the game.” She squeezed my hand. “My mom said our next door neighbors, the nicest, gentlest family you could imagine, got hauled off to Siberia because their other neighbor’s cousins slandered them to get their flat. My parents were too afraid to speak out, and they lived in constant fear of losing their own place to another one of the cousins.”
We sat quietly for a moment.
“When my parents told me that story,” she continued, “I swore that I’d never do what they did—I’d never shy away from doing what is right, and I’d always help people with their struggles—no matter the consequences.” She looked at me with shining eyes. “And this is my chance. I can help the victims, and I can help Flora conquer her life struggle.”
I could understand where Val was coming from. But should we put our lives in danger to satisfy Madame Flora’s warped sense of what was right?
I stood up and grabbed both her hands. “It’s not just the diving and my stupid panic attacks that are bothering me. If we can believe her, the Nazis are still out hunting for that gold, and they’ll want revenge. Are you willing to risk dying for your convictions?”
She stared right into my eyes. “We’ve been put in this situation for a reason, Scott. Flora is right—your connection to Ned Callaghan is more than just a random coincidence. We are here to make a difference.”
“But it’s only twenty-five million dollars,” I said. “Soul Identity’s annual budget is what, several billion? Couldn’t Archie divert some of that toward a fund for Madame Flora’s victims?”
“He’s too straight an arrow to do that. And besides, Flora still needs to complete her life struggle. She needs our help.”
Val was committed. And so was I—partly because I agreed with her, and partly because I couldn’t imagine letting her go without me.
We met the rest of our party at Bratwurstglocklein that evening. George wore his lederhosen, but he still hadn’t cajoled Sue into her dirndl.
The restaurant was on the lower level of an old building. Waitresses carried plates of bratwurst and glasses of beer to the busy tables. The wooden floors gleamed from what must have been constant polishing. The eight of us sat on two long wooden benches placed on either side of a narrow table.
The twins were reading the history of the restaurant from the back of the menu. “Listen to this,” Rose said. “The oldest bratwurst place in Nuremberg, established in 1313.” She looked up. “Did you eat here during the trial, Grandma?”
Madame Flora nodded. “Only once—on a date with a soldier named Private Lee.” She glanced across the table at Archie.
“I also dined here,” Archie said. “With James, the first weekend after I arrived.” He looked around. “It is almost the same as it was, though the waitresses’ dirndls are much more revealing than they were in 1946.”
“I’ll drink to progress,” George said, hoisting his empty glass in the air. “Another hefeweizen, bitte schoen,” he said to the shapely waitress.
We ate sausages with spicy mustard and a white asparagus salad, and we washed it all down with beer. When we were done, George cleared his throat. “This is a good time to review our itinerary,” he said. “We meet tomorrow morning at seven, where we will follow Flora’s route as she headed to…” he looked at Madame Flora.
“East,” she said.
“Grandma, don’t you think it’s time to tell us where we’re going?” Marie asked.
Madame Flora lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “I told you already—they might be listening.”
“Who’s listening?” I asked.
“The Nazis!” she whispered.
“Why would the Nazis be listening?” I said this a little too loudly, and the other patrons in the restaurant went silent.
“Keep your voice down,” Madame Flora hissed. She looked around at the other tables and let out a nervous laugh.
The other diners went back to their own conversations.
“After all we saw today, Grandma must think she’s back at the trial,” Rose said to Marie.
“Where did you guys go?” Val asked Rose.
“Today was the Palace of Justice. We saw Courtroom 600, and then we rode the elevator down to Hermann Goering’s cell.” Rose shivered. “Grandma told us how she and Mr. Morgan took his photograph in there.”
Marie laughed. “And how she got him to sit in the toilet.” Her smile faded. “After that, George drove us to a forest where Grandma said James got hurt.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “She and Mr. Morgan got into a huge fight about whose fault it was.”
“Who won the fight?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Nobody. It sounded like a discussion they’ve had many times before—like they were an old married couple.”
“Speaking of which…” Rose turned to Archie. “Mr. Morgan, how come you never got married?”
Archie put down his stein and smiled at her. “I seem to have always put my duties ahead of my personal life.”
“Didn’t you ever want children?” Marie asked. “Or grandchildren?”
He sigh
ed. “I have been so deeply involved in Soul Identity that I never thought too much about it,” he said. Then he leaned toward Marie with a twinkle in his eye. “When I was young, my grandfather used to say, ‘If I had known grandchildren would be so much fun, I would have had them first.’” He turned to Madame Flora. “Was he right?”
She shook her head. “My son, granddaughter, and now these two have been my life’s joy. I’m sorry to say this, Archibald, but you’ve missed out on the best part of life by not having children.”
Wasn’t she the one who never told Archie about their child? I was about to say something, but then Val kicked my shin, and I realized I had better be quiet.
Archie sighed. “We all make our choices, Flora.”
Before Madame Flora could reply, I jumped in. “George, can you at least share tomorrow’s mode of transportation?”
George grinned. “We’re flying. We’ll go slow, but we’ll cover in a few hours what took Flora four and a half days to do back in forty-six.”
“Is everything arranged on site?” Madame Flora asked him.
He nodded. “We’ll arrive simultaneously with the rest of the diving equipment.”
The eight of us met in the lobby of the Grand Hotel after breakfast. George and Sue ushered us outside to a waiting van. We piled our luggage in the back, rode to the Nuremberg airport, and got onto the green Soul Identity jet.
Val and I sat around a table with Archie and Madame Flora. Once we were airborne, the twins came by. “Now can you tell us where we’re going, Grandma?” Marie asked.
Rose chimed in. “And how you got there?”
Madame Flora nodded and beckoned to George and Sue. “It’s time I tell you about our mad dash from Nuremberg to Dubnik.”
“Dubnik?” Archie asked.
I smiled. “Of course—the opal mines your grandfather once worked at.”
thirty-eight
October 1946
Occupied Germany
The truck lurched through another large pothole. Were the barrels strong enough to survive the rough trip?
“We should have taken the autobahn,” Flora said to Major Callaghan.
“Too many patrols and too many questions, lass,” he replied. “One sniff of that gold and I reckon our bodies would never be found.”
It was almost midnight on the fifteenth of October. When Archibald left in his robes for his second and final visit with Hermann Goering, Flora packed her bags, kissed Baba goodbye, and waited for the Major and his men to pick her up.
They had come at eight o’clock, in the same green truck they had loaded the gold on earlier that evening. The flatbed and its contents, along with the major’s two helpers, sat under a canvas-covered frame.
Not really sat; more like rattled around. “If those barrels break open, we’ll never get the gold hidden,” she said.
“Only a few more miles, lass, and we’ll be in Regensburg.”
Why worry about the barrels splitting, when she should be thinking about how they’d make it back to Paris by the twenty-seventh? It would be close: three days to float down the Danube to Bratislava, another day to take a train to Presov, and two days to hide the gold in Dubnik’s opal mines. That would leave them only five days to reach Paris.
Baba would be on her own in America if anything went wrong. But Flora couldn’t turn back now; she would stop at nothing to keep the gold hidden.
They’d almost blown it that afternoon with Archibald, when he asked for the Major’s identification. “How has your Soul Identity card survived all these years?” Flora asked him.
He gave a laugh. “Luckily the War Department recovered my wallet and mess kit from Cyprus. I got them back only last month in Berlin.”
She shook her head. “I was sure Mr. Morgan had found us out.”
“You were looking like a ‘roo caught in the headlights,” he said. “At that moment you truly reminded me of old Raddy.”
“My scared look?”
He nodded. “Your old Pap had it when I caught him ratting opals from me mine in White Cliffs.” He navigated the truck around a gaping hole. “That was before we became mates, Flora. Raddy was going through a dry spell, I reckon.”
“My grandfather stole your opals?”
“Aye. I caught him in my hole one night, and we got into a terrible fight. We slammed into the main prop, and the bloody roof caved in. We dug for a week, and when we finally climbed out, we had become best mates.” He put his hand on his chest. “Your grandfather saved me, Flora, when he could’ve let me die. I was buried head-down in potch, but he grabbed me boots and pulled me out.”
She thought about the grenade in Gallipoli. “He twice saved your life.”
He nodded. “And the poor bastard died that second time. That’s why I told your grand-mum I’d help you on your fools’ errand. What little bit of life I do have left I owe to Raddy.”
They reached a river’s bank in Regensburg in the gray early morning hours, and the Major and his men transferred the barrels and boxes to a squat, rusted barge.
“We’ll float down the Danube,” the Major said, “right under the noses of the patrols. I told the captain we’re smuggling cognac to the Carlton-Savoy Hotel in Bratislava—I promised him a barrel if he gets us there in three days.”
Flora’s mouth tightened. “Don’t you dare give him my gold.”
“Count the barrels, girlie. I added one full of cognac. Fair dinkum.” He chuckled. “He needed a reason to evade the patrols and rush us to the back of beyond.”
She pointed to his men, who were assisting as the captain prepared the boat for launch. The three of them spoke in German. “Your two men are his crew?”
“Aye. I told the buggers to keep their traps shut in Nuremberg. They also think we’re carrying cognac.”
She smiled. Baba was right about Major Ned Cunningham—he was a treasure.
Flora sat on the prow of the barge, her legs dangling over the edge. She pulled the inner wax carton out of another “K” ration breakfast package. She was glad she had thought to pack these—the crew was grateful to have more than just their dry brown bread and ersatz coffee.
The edge of the sun had just popped up over the Danube in front of her. It streaked the sky in shades of pink and orange. The water ahead was calm.
Major Callaghan limped up. “The billy’s piping hot—are you ready for your cuppa?”
She nodded. This was their third dawn on the barge, and they had settled into a comfortable routine of greeting the sun with her coffee, his tea, and their rations. “I’m going to miss this,” she said.
The Major grunted as he filled her cup with hot water. “It’s pretty, but it’s not home.”
“Where is home, Major Callaghan?”
He sighed. “Until six years ago, I’d still have called myself an Aussie. But I’ve been gone so bloody long I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Do you have a family?”
“Aye, I did. A regular May-December romance, it was. A tram picked a fight with me back in early ‘thirty-nine, and I fell for me eighteen-year-old nurse. Betty and I married a month before I shipped out.” His face clouded over. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“What happened?”
“The bloody government told her I was dead five years ago, and she up and married last year. Another digger, but this one her age and not forty years older.”
She was shocked. “What are you going to do?”
The Major shrugged. “Let her be, I reckon. Betty doesn’t need an old bugger like me rattling around the house. She needs somebody young and strong to help her raise our daughter Kate.”
He coughed and turned away, but not before Flora saw the tears in his eyes reflecting the rising sun. She reached out and patted his arm.
He gripped her hand in his, and the two of them watched the sun rise. Then he sighed. “I’m unlucky in love, I reckon. This is the second family I’ve lost.”
She had heard from Baba how Ned Callaghan’s first wife and
infant son had died during a typhus outbreak in White Cliffs. Ned had turned his claim over to her grandfather and had gone on a walkabout, fully intending to die in the outback.
She wondered what had kept him alive. “How did you and my grandfather find each other after you left White Cliffs?” she asked.
The Major straightened up. “I spent the next year and a half with me dilly bag, drifting around the country. Sometimes I would ride the rails, and one day I stopped in Ballarat, an almost-dried-up gold town. I heard somebody hollering ‘Old Ned!’, and I spotted your grandfather waving his bloody hat at me.”
He smiled. “That was back in 1913. He took me home, and I boarded with him and your grand-mum,” he said. “I worked for Raddy in his new blacksmith shop until we both were volunteered for the war.”
“The one he didn’t make it home from.”
“Aye.” They sat in silence for a few more minutes. “He was a right chap, Flora. When I returned to Ballarat and found your grand-mum and father gone, I ran his blacksmith shop for twenty years. Until I got buggered by that bloody tram.”
They finished their hot drinks and stood up. Flora handed Callaghan his cane. “The captain says we’ll be at the Carlton-Savoy by noon,” she said.
He nodded. “We have seats on the three o’clock train to Presov.”
“Will the captain let you take Dieter?” She and Ned would need his help in the mines.
“Aye, Dieter rides with us.” The other two would sail on to Budapest, load up, and pick them up from Bratislava four days later. He turned toward her. “If the three of us are late, you won’t make it to Paris in time.”
“We won’t be late,” she said. She hoped she was right.
thirty-nine
Present Day
Slovakia
“While Flora floated down the Danube,” Archie said, “I visited Mr. Goering.” A faint smile crossed his lips. “I spent a long and painful following afternoon answering Colonel Andrus’s questions regarding Hermann Goering’s suicide.”
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