table of contents

title page

preface

chapter one: a pair of nights

chapter two: when a predator becomes prey

chapter three: a promise unsaid

chapter four: smetana in theresienstadt

chapter five: the envy of every woman

chapter six: the woman in the yellow shawl

chapter seven: a spark of aspiration

chapter eight: an unexpected kindness

chapter nine: dreaming of knaidels

chapter ten: the café across from jáchym street

chapter eleven: the pickle jar by the window

chapter twelve: it happened on kant street

chapter thirteen: a door ajar

chapter fourteen: out of a wagnerian opera

chapter fifteen: the stomping feet

chapter sixteen: a mirror reflecting time

chapter seventeen: the book of creation

chapter eighteen: the exhibition of extinct peoples

chapter nineteen: their own triple entente

chapter twenty: three plates of venison

chapter twenty-one: an unlikely turn

chapter twenty-two: the blessing after the meal

chapter twenty-three: the voice on the phone

chapter twenty-four: something like a drug

chapter twenty-five: in the rain

chapter twenty-six: one mystery leads to another

chapter twenty-seven: the footprints in the cellar

chapter twenty-eight: under the glare of jan hus

chapter twenty-nine: bumping into each other

chapter thirty: the joy of potato dumplings

chapter thirty-one: collaborating with the enemy

chapter thirty-two: when a chicken scratches

chapter thirty-three: a ride in a paternoster

chapter thirty-four: the eyes of a golem

chapter thirty-five: a small amount of happiness

chapter thirty-six: the skirt-chaser

chapter thirty-seven: the swatting of a fly

chapter thirty-eight: the man who refused to collaborate

chapter thirty-nine: what lurks in the shadows

chapter forty: returning to the scene of the crime

chapter forty-one: a large number of valuables

chapter forty-two: the circumstances of his death

chapter forty-three: pretending it all away

chapter forty-four: dinner with hegel and heisenberg and a man named saul

chapter forty-five: different turns of the same phrase

chapter forty-six: cutting to the chase

chapter forty-seven: the last goodbye

chapter forty-eight: the kindness of his smile

chapter forty-nine: the papers on the floor

chapter fifty: in pursuit of mr. malý

chapter fifty-one: good king wenceslas

chapter fifty-two: a sense of something familiar

chapter fifty-three: from deep inside the building

chapter fifty-four: limitless unknowns and no equations

chapter fifty-five: a burst of excitement

chapter fifty-six: following the suspects

chapter fifty-seven: a stunning realization

chapter fifty-eight: the road from home

thank you

copyright

preface

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BY THE TIME I started Last Jew in Prague, I had been living on the streets for years. A period in which I would spend my days earning a few dollars writing for one of the content mills on the Internet and my nights trying to survive the desert.

With little chance of escaping this, a desperation set in, similar to the one that had almost killed me when my life came crashing down. I needed hope, and I found it in this novel. I realized that if I could lift my hero from the pit I had thrown him into—one far worse than my own—I could lift myself too.

Told through the veil that separates the narrator from me, the story on its surface has many of the earmarks of a classic whodunit. But it’s what is underneath this that has been guiding me above the bottom I had fallen through.

chapter one: a pair of nights

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MY GRANDFATHER WAS certain they would shoot him.

I was thinking about this and him on a freezing rainy night in the desert as I rolled myself into a tight ball under my tattered and soaked sleeping bag. While clutching an old brass compass in front of the canyon soaring over me, I saw how my struggles had been entwined with his, even if mine weren’t nearly as overwhelming.

He first told me about his on the night of my bar mitzvah, days after I had turned thirteen and after many years of prodding him to tell me about his time during the war and having no expectation he would. When we came home on that day I had come of age, with one of his gentle smiles he led me through our home and into the living room, where I sat on the sofa and watched him start a fire.

As he finally let me into his world, I loosened my tie and found myself drifting forward, unaware of how the story unfolding before me would upend my life.

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“WEISS!” A VOICE called out to the forty-five-year-old man who would become my grandfather. “Hermann Weiss!”

Groggily, Hermann woke, and he squinted into a beam of light as he lifted his head off a straw-filled sheet that was making believe it was a mattress. Through the light, he saw the silhouette of two soldiers in the doorway, one of which was waving his flashlight toward himself.

Hermann nodded, and he crawled down from the top of a triple-decker bunk bed, where he noticed the man staring at him from the bunk next to his. A man he didn’t really know but was quite familiar. He had cropped and graying brown hair much like his, and the man’s dirty and torn jacket and the tattered shirt underneath it mimicked his own. Looking at him was like looking at himself in a dirty mirror, at a scarecrow who was missing his stuffing.

The last Hermann saw of him was his smile. It was mild and forced, probably because he thought the soldiers would shoot Hermann.

Hermann realized this too, and he moved faster. Quickly, he made it to the tight opening on the floor between the beds, and he hurried toward the light in a closet that was making believe it was a room. He hurried until he reached a pair of towering SS troopers.

With far less urgency, the three started forward in the dimness of the building. They moved through the heaps of flesh sleeping in front of them and behind them and all around them in what was called the Hanover Barracks. Two centuries earlier, the building had quartered a few hundred Austrian soldiers serving Emperor Joseph II. But now, in a garrison town that had become a concentration camp, it housed thousands of cattle like Hermann, all waiting their turn to die.

Even with their casual pace, it didn’t take the three long to leave the building. Which left them along the eastern edge of Theresienstadt, about halfway across its length. From there they began marching both south and west into a dark and wet and unseasonably cold morning in April 1943. Passing barracks after barracks and all the corpses left outside them that night were these two Aryan giants and a speck of a man who had lost all will, the same who always seemed so towering to me despite his diminutive size.

But the man walking through the streets of Theresienstadt had lost much in the years prior to this. Perhaps the only thing he hadn’t was the skill that had served him so well in his past profession: the power of observation. Because of this, he noticed how similar the night was to the first he’d spent at the camp many months before. That had been a warm and muggy August evening, but it was the same night, with the same paucity of aspiration.

Hermann noticed something else. As they passed the center of the camp, he heard dogs barking in the distance. Which made him wonder if these would be the last sounds of life he would experience, as he thought the troopers at any moment would put him against a wall and release him from the flames to which he’d been consigned.

Despite his eagerness for this, Hermann was scared. His only comfort was that he wasn’t alone.

A woman was walking beside him. She had her arm wrapped tightly around his and was smiling at him. She was smiling as if he were the only thing that mattered.

This gave him the courage to continue forward, the same she’d given him during all the months he had spent at the camp. She only faded when the men, instead of shooting Hermann, marched him to the Czech gendarmerie near the southwestern edge of Theresienstadt, where those responsible for policing the camp worked.

Hermann was surprised, and he became more so when the men marched him inside the building and up to the commander’s door, where he heard the voice of Theodor Janeček along with that of another man.

He couldn’t place this other voice, even though it was more familiar than Janeček’s, which caused his curiosity to rise. It rose so that he felt himself drifting forward.

“I don’t like this idea,” Janeček cried out in heavily-accented German. “You can’t—”

“—If I want your opinion,” growled the second voice, which had now become so familiar to Hermann that he wanted to scream, “you can be certain I will ask for it.”

A pause in the conversation ensued, and one of the troopers took the opportunity to knock on the door.

“Come in!” shouted Janeček.

With great force, the trooper flung open the door, and he flung Hermann by the arm inside the room with just as much force, and the three saw a pale Janeček perched behind his desk as well as a tall, blond SS officer that was sitting across from him.

Even with his back partially to him, and in spite of all the time that had passed since he had seen him last, Hermann recognized Klaus Stamm. Which caused his jaw to unhinge as the two troopers saluted Klaus, with the one who had been doing all the talking calling out, “Herr Captain, we—”

“—That is all for now,” Klaus interrupted without glancing at either the men or Hermann.

Hurriedly, the troopers backed out of the room, with the talking one slamming the door as they left.

“You as well,” Klaus told Janeček.

“It’s against all protocols,” Janeček insisted.

Klaus didn’t exactly respond. He just glared at Janeček with eyes burning with contempt.

Fearing this, Janeček jumped to his feet like a dog hopping in front of its enraged master, and he saluted Klaus while shouting, “Heil Hitler!”

Again, Klaus glared, and he kept doing it until Janeček scurried from his desk, which was right before he rushed out of his office and closed the door behind himself.

Hermann wasn’t sure what to do next. So he just stared at the man who had once been his friend.

“Sit down,” Klaus ordered. He ordered it as if Hermann were a small child he was about to punish.

“Where?” Hermann asked.

“Where do you see a free seat?”

“Janeček’s?”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

Hermann didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped past Klaus and the black attaché case lying by his feet. He stepped all the way to the commander’s desk, where he sat across from Klaus and got his first good look at a man he hadn’t seen in more than twenty years.

Slowly, the seconds went by. With them an anger burned inside Hermann. It burned until he couldn’t keep it there any longer. “I’m not surprised you’ve become a Nazi,” he grumbled while noticing two things. The first was how Klaus had aged even more than him, and the second was how tired he looked. “I’m not even surprised that you’re an SS man.”

But both facts surprised Hermann. He was surprised that the man he knew was so different from how he had known him. The two didn’t seem like they could be the same, which led him to try to find some glimmer of his former friend in what remained. He tried and tried.

“How are you?” Klaus uttered while not looking at Hermann. Though not even this could prevent his own surprise, which probably came from how terrible Hermann must’ve looked. Hermann not only saw this surprise but he saw Klaus trying to focus on anything but it.

The casualness of Klaus’s question shook Hermann. It shook him so much that he gasped, “How am I?”

“As you can imagine, this isn’t a social call.”

Hermann nodded. “That I can imagine. But what I can’t imagine is its purpose.”

“I’m provisionally the head of the Prague office of the Kripo. Though unlike in Germany, our office isn’t staffed by career police detectives. We simply don’t have the personnel at our disposal. This means that, while we’re capable of solving simple and ordinary crimes . . .”

“I still don’t understand why you’ve come here,” snapped Hermann.

“My office has spent the past few days sifting through the archives of the Prague Police, and it’s come to my attention that you were among the best detectives in Josefov, if not the best. It’s also come to my attention that you were someone who always embraced challenges, and unlike many of your colleagues, even sought them out.”

Again, Hermann was surprised. The revelations surprised him almost as much as the man who had made them. “I’m not the same person who had been all those things.”

“We have a situation there, in Josefov. In the past few weeks, someone has murdered three SS officers in the district.”

Hermann understood the words Klaus was telling him but not their context, which made them seem nonsensical. “Why are you telling me this?” he questioned with his head shaking in a more or less continuous manner. “You can’t possibly think I care.”

“We would involve the local police, if they weren’t so useless,” Klaus went on, as if he hadn’t heard what Hermann had said. Though I think he just didn’t care what Hermann had to say. “We can’t tell if they’re all incompetent or just acting that way.”

Hermann grinned. He grinned at the quagmire of feckless acquiescence his former colleagues were creating for people like Klaus. “You’ve read The Good Soldier Švejk. Passive resistance is ingrained in the Czech character.”

“But not in the Jewish one.”

Hermann realized that Klaus was finally coming to the point of the conversation. But he still didn’t know what it was. So he asked him.

“As I’ve alluded to,” Klaus answered, “my office doesn’t have the capabilities to solve this crime. To be honest, the SS is not adept at tracking down murderers anywhere, even in Germany.”

“Maybe it’s because you give them medals.”

“And Josefov is alien to us. It’s alien even to me after all these years. We get lost just driving through it.”

“I still don’t understand what you want from me.”

“I’m authorized to offer you your old job back for this one case.”

Hermann wasn’t sure how to react to this. He didn’t know whether to be aghast or humored. Finally, he decided on apathetic. “Why would you think I’d take it?”

“I have in my jacket pocket,” Klaus declared while touching this, “a visa that will provide you with passage to Switzerland. It’s yours if you can find those responsible for the murders before my replacement arrives at the end of the month.”

Hermann didn’t really believe there was a visa, either in Klaus’s pocket or anywhere else, and he certainly didn’t believe that they would give it to him if there was. But even if he had believed everything Klaus had said, his answer would’ve been the same as it was. “I won’t do it.”

“You, you’ve misunderstood me, Hermann,” Klaus mumbled, with his expression for the first time that night shifting from its matter-of-factness, to a surprise that was all over his face. “I wasn’t asking you. Either you come back with me to Prague and help me find the killer or those men outside the door will shoot you right now.”

Hermann didn’t respond, at least not in words. He just glared at Klaus, I bet much like Klaus had glared at Janeček but with even more contempt, as he was angry at him, even more than before, for making him complicit in his death when he had expected and needed the opposite. He wanted to scream at him, to demand he’d be shot without conditions. But this in itself would be complicity, which was the one thing he couldn’t have.

Again, Klaus expressed surprise, this time at Hermann’s response to his threat. “Did you not understand what I just said?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Hermann muttered, and he really was. He was thinking of some way he could extricate himself from the snare he had just been trapped in. He tried and tried.

chapter two: when a predator becomes prey

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THERE ARE EVENTS in this story that happened outside of what my grandfather experienced. Some he would piece together afterward while others I’d only discover years later from those involved. This was one of the latter.

V Praze je klid.

Prague is calm.

The authorities often declared this during the occupation of the city, to create a sense of normalcy. On this night it was true. As the rain came to a halt, a fog descended upon the center of Prague, engulfing the stillness of the evening and creating a scene that couldn’t be placed in a particular time.

This was only broken when a gunshot rang out. It was followed by the door to the High Synagogue swinging open and by a young SS officer bursting out of the building unarmed. The fear on this man’s face was palpable as he ran east along the cobblestones of Červená Street, flailing his arms and everything else.

He hadn’t taken more than a handful of steps down the narrow road when he began hearing something, the sound of footsteps. They were heavy and methodic and getting louder, which caused him to run faster.

He didn’t look back.

chapter three: a promise unsaid

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OVER THE SOUNDS of musical instruments tuning in the courtyard, Hermann stood in front of a mirror on the door in the dimly-lit gendarmerie closet while he put on the musty off-black suit Klaus had given him.

It was too big. It was so big that it made him look like a clown. Though this wasn’t done intentionally. There were no suits his size. Not in the camp or anywhere else.

Still, this didn’t make him feel any better, especially when he saw more than just a clown in the mirror. This one had hollow cheeks, complemented by a pair of sunken eyes and a complexion as coarse as sandpaper. His earlier shave and shower had only accentuated this and made him look even more ridiculous.

Suddenly, he stopped. He stopped with both the suit and the absurdity of the situation. With rising anger, he called out Klaus’s name, believing the humiliation he was feeling made him no longer complicit in whatever would come next.

“What is it?” Klaus growled from the other side of the door.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Hermann growled back. “I want . . .”

Hermann couldn’t finish his thought, as he saw something that broke his concentration. He saw his Ana.

He saw her not in the mirror or in the closet or even in his imagination, as he had on his way to the gendarmerie. He saw her in what he supposed was a memory. Though he knew it was more than that. It was so vivid that it seemed to be taking place in the present while returning him a few years earlier to an evening in his old apartment on Eliška Krásnohorská Street in Josefov.

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HERMANN SAW NOT only Ana but all her unsold paintings in their living room. Which was where they had been since the Reich closed her art gallery after finding her work a form of “degenerate art,” something they applied inconsistently and only when purposes suited them, such as when punishing the wife of a Jew.

Ana was not far from the paintings. She was brooding in front of them from her rocking chair a few steps away.

She once told Hermann that she could see her whole life’s arc in her works, from her carefree student days, to her search for some greater purpose as she approached mid-life, all the way to the despair of the occupation. Though Hermann also believed she saw herself as a piece of art, one that would never be fully realized or leave the slightest of footprints, and he knew it was all his fault.

Hermann stared at her paintings too, and he saw how her subjects had grown darker in recent years. Her early works, while not exactly joyous, had expressed the promise of joy and all the hope that accompanied it. But her newer ones expressed only the inevitability of disappointment and ruin. This was especially true of her latest painting, which depicted the buildings in their neighborhood leaning over each other in the dead of night, looking as if they were about to collapse, with their building in the center of it.

Hermann turned from her, and he realized there was a record playing on the phonograph a few steps from Ana. Zdena Vincíková’s “Smutná Neděle.”

Known as “The Hungarian Suicide Song,” in the few years since Rezső Seress had composed it, it had been recorded in many languages and in countries throughout the world and had been banned in some. Its tale of mad desperation had been blamed for a rash of deaths, including in the English-speaking world, where Billie Holiday had sung a haunting rendition of it called “Gloomy Sunday” that few listeners would forget.

The record mesmerized Hermann and caused him to gaze out the window and the escape it offered. He only came out of this when an envelope slid under their front door.

Slowly, he crept over to it. With some reluctance, he picked it up and opened it, and he found an official-looking letter along with an abundance of stars made from cheap yellow cloth.

Before he could even start reading the letter, Ana grabbed it and the stars from him and read the letter herself. Which led her to collect his coats from the nearby closet and his suit jackets from the bedroom a short distance away.

“I won’t do it,” he called out to her from outside the bedroom as he balled up the envelope and threw it onto the floor. “I won’t wear them. V žádném případě!”

Ana didn’t respond to any of this, including his affirmation of his intentions in Czech, which was a language he only spoke to her when he couldn’t express in German what he wanted to say in the way he wanted to say it. Ignoring it all, she returned from the bedroom with the garments and her sewing kit, along with a look that muted all his fury. The very same look he had seen on the way to the gendarmerie.

She returned to her rocking chair and began working. She even looked a little relieved, probably because she could finally take her eyes away from her misery.

But the same couldn’t be said of Hermann. Watching his wife sew the stars into his clothes caused his fury to roar back. This was so out of character for him but not without reason, as it was bad enough to suffer the humiliation of the stars. Worse was making her a part of it.

His fury built and built. When it finally exploded, he stormed up to her and grabbed the letter from the chair’s armrest before ripping it into shreds. He grabbed his clothes from her too. “I’ll dare them to shoot me. I’ll go down to the street right now and dare them!”

Calmly, she rose from her chair, and she shook her head in a slow but continuous manner, which she would do not when she wanted to express disapproval of his actions but when she wanted him to do so himself.

“They’re just going to shoot me anyway,” he insisted while wanting to cry but unable to do so.

“But not now,” she insisted back before grabbing all the clothes from him. “Until then, there’s still now.”

Again, she sat in the rocking chair, and again she began sewing. She even looked happy, and Hermann couldn’t understand why. He would say that it was one of the few mysteries he could never solve.

But I’ve since learned the source of Ana’s joy. It happened after the Iron Curtain fell and I could freely travel to Prague. It was then I visited the National Gallery, one of the largest art museums in central Europe.

In a far-off corner of the building, I found a pair of Ana’s paintings. For hours I stared at them while trying to come up not only with the cause of her happiness that evening but also as to what would lead her to the choice she would later make, a choice that would so affect Hermann’s life and the lives of many others, including my own.

I stared at her paintings for so long that a member of the museum’s staff noticed and approached me, curious as to why I was interested in such an obscure artist.

I told him, and he smiled at me. “These paintings have an interesting history,” he said. “They were smuggled to Switzerland during the occupation, hidden in a bridal chest. They would’ve surely been burned otherwise, along with the rest of her work. There’s such insolence in them. They’re almost spitting in the face of everything the Nazis were about.”

“Do you know anything about her?” I asked.

“No one in the museum knows anything about her, other than that her talent was in excess. But I could give you the phone number of the woman who donated the paintings, Věra Davidová. She is one of the museum’s benefactors.”

With great excitement, I got the number and called the woman right away. She agreed to meet me the following day in a restaurant on top of her office building in the New Town section of the city.

I couldn’t think of anything else. But when I got there, it was difficult to concentrate, as the table provided a view of the Vltava River and its surroundings that was well past stunning. My attention was only drawn from it when the aging woman murmured, “I knew Ana a little.”

“You did?” I gasped.

“My mother was her patron until . . . until we had to leave the city.”

This led me to glance at the woman’s forearm, and I saw the same kind of number that had been tattooed on Hermann. “Did you know my grandfather?” I breathlessly asked.

“Not really. I knew who he was. Everyone at Theresienstadt did. But he mostly kept to himself, understandably, and we never approached him, as my mother didn’t want to do anything that would make him relive what had happened to Ana.”

“I’m trying to better understand Ana, and what my grandfather meant to her.”

“She loved him very much. Whenever she visited us, she talked more about him than she did of herself or her work. It was almost as if he were her work, and maybe he was.”

It’s because of this I think Ana was happy that evening in their apartment. I think she saw that her life’s arc really wasn’t in her paintings. They were nothing but representations of it while the real thing was found in the man who had been standing beside her through all of it. It was through him that her life had been realized, and she must’ve felt that she’d always feel this way as long as he continued to stand beside her.

What she told Hermann next only strengthens my belief. “You must promise me,” she said while continuing her sewing, “you must promise that, no matter how impossible everything may seem, you’ll always wait through whatever ‘now’ you have left. Even if it’s to last only seconds more.”

“I won’t,” he snarled.

Ana smiled again, and this time Hermann knew why, because she had heard the promise in his voice, and she knew he had heard it as well.

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“YOU’VE CHANGED YOUR mind about what?” Klaus growled from the other side of the gendarmerie closet door. “Don’t think I’m enjoying this anymore than you are. And I can end it at any time. Just say the word.”

With the closet and the mirror and all his current reality returning, Hermann desperately wanted to say this word. He even opened his mouth.

But just because he had returned to the present didn’t mean that Ana had gone or that his memory of her had left him. They were still with him, along with the promise he had made to her.

Only hours earlier, when he agreed to Klaus’s demands, he thought he could still change his mind. He thought he could do so at any time he found some reasonable excuse. But he saw now that this was nothing but a lie. He saw now that he could have no complicity in his death, no matter what excuses he made.

Ana had seen to this. She had made sure that he would live for as long as he could. He would even pursue the murderer of Nazis if it meant living for a few seconds more.

But that didn’t mean he had to like it. So, as he reached for the door, he made himself another promise.

chapter four: smetana in theresienstadt

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HERMANN CREAKED OPEN the closet door and took a hesitant step into the gendarmerie office, where he saw Klaus glaring at him with his arms crossed. He saw, too, that the man was struggling to stay awake. He looked like he might fall asleep on his feet.

Hermann pointed to the chest pocket of his jacket. “There’s no star.”

“It’d be gratuitous on you,” Klaus said.

Without waiting for a reply, Klaus walked to his black attaché case on the floor and picked it up on his way out the door.

Hermann followed, with the two SS troopers following him. They marched into a cold and cloudy and damp morning. It was the kind of day Hermann would say that “you feel like you’re swimming through the air.”

Though this was brightened and warmed when they entered the center of the camp, which was the town’s marketplace back when it was a town. Something resembling a music pavilion had been erected there, and Hermann saw Karel Ančerl and his orchestra of fellow inmates preparing to play.

Live music, theater, and art were a few of the many things that distinguished Theresienstadt from concentration camps farther east, along with relatively better living conditions and a fleeting notion that you might survive the war. Though Hermann wasn’t sure that this made the place better than the rest. He was even inclined to believe that it made it worse, by creating a false sense of tolerableness.

He described Ančerl to me as a pale and serious-looking man in his mid-thirties. As he approached him, he recalled how he and Ana had watched him conduct the orchestra at the Prague Free Theater on Vodička Street many years earlier.

With more than a little surprise, Hermann realized the man looked exactly as he remembered him. The Nazis could starve him and dehumanize him in every way, but they couldn’t alter him. This made Hermann realize that, while Klaus could make him look like a clown, it was up to him to decide whether to play the part.

Closer the four men got to the orchestra, and it began to play. It played Bedřich Smetana’s “Vltava,” a song that is often known in the English-speaking world as “The Moldau,” which is the German name of the river.

Hermann had heard the song many times in the more than twenty years he lived in the country, including several times in the camp. It was and still is popular because it’s more than just some classical song from a forgotten era. It’s one of the country’s national songs. In some ways, it’s even more of a national song than “Where My Home Is,” which was and still is the anthem of the country. During my trip to Prague, I often heard “Vltava.” I even heard it on the plane when we landed.

The most famous of a collection of symphonic poems called My Country, which Smetana composed after he had become deaf, “Vltava” symbolizes the Czech nation’s drive toward its destiny. It follows a pair of small springs in the Bohemian countryside that come together and grow into the roaring river that splits Prague in two before careening its way toward the Elbe.

While listening to the orchestra perform that morning, Hermann recalled all the many people he had known, including his Ana, who’d been enraptured by the song and continued being so no matter how many times they heard it.

But it never meant anything to him. He always made himself believe that this was because he wasn’t Czech. Though he knew there was more to it than that. The song, while beautiful and moving, for some reason always seemed off to him. It was as if there were something wrong about it that he couldn’t place.

But this performance would change that, to the extent that I would come to know this song more than all others and often find myself humming it whenever I’m in need of comfort that nothing else can bring. I was even humming it on that rainy desert night.

The song also helps me remember my grandfather and all the times I watched him listen to it in our living room with the volume turned all the way up. The time in particular I remember was when I was around five, after I asked him and my grandmother what had happened to my parents.

They were hesitant to say a thing, but eventually my grandfather told me that they had died in a car crash.

I was too young to really understand this and had no memories of them at all, but still I was sad that day as I sat on the sofa.

My grandfather must’ve noticed this, because he tried to pick me up. He marched into the room and turned on the music, and he began conducting it while describing every aspect of it.

“Can you hear the horns?” he shouted with his hand cupped over his ear, as the sounds of the river swept us through a forest. “We’re coming upon a huntsman!”

A little later in the song, with the introduction of a gentle polka, he cried out, “Now we’re at the wedding!” and he danced with the peasants along the riverbank.

Then, during the song’s thunderous climax, when the harmonies clashed to capture the waves as they smashed into each other, he raised his fists high above his head. “The rapids! We’re reaching the rapids!”

Despite this exuberance, the performance at the camp would always be Hermann’s favorite. He would swear that, as both he and the song propelled themselves forward, he could feel the freezing waters of the Vltava flowing into him and around him while smothering him in its tears. Just as importantly, he could feel the currents pushing him somewhere he couldn’t see but was driven to go.

Eventually, the four men reached the orchestra and Ančerl, who noticed not only Hermann but those accompanying him.

Like the man across from Hermann in the barracks the night before, Ančerl smiled. He smiled with the same kind of mild and forced smile, and Hermann believed that it was for the same reason, because he was to be shot.

But this wouldn’t happen here, Hermann assured himself with his own smile. Nor would it happen in some place like Auschwitz, where they sent people from Theresienstadt all the time. It would be in his hometown, where his Ana was, and he’d have no complicity in it at all.

This made his smile stronger, as he knew he could only gain from whatever would happen next.

He was still smiling as they approached the camp gate. On the other side was a black-and-white sign on the archway, which he had seen upon entering the camp all those months earlier and still could see, even from this side of the wall.

It read, Arbeit Macht Frei.

Work Sets You Free.

Only now could he see its truth, and he began racing toward it.

Though he slowed when he began doubting something, a promise he had made. Not the promise he had made to Ana not to give up, but the one he had made to himself as he left the gendarmerie closet, when he promised that he wouldn’t put any real effort into investigating the murders and that he would instead švejkovat his way through it.

Švejkovat is a very informal Czech verb and difficult to translate. It derives from the antihero of the novel Hermann had mentioned to Klaus, who resisted authority through willful incompetence.

It’s a word I learned at an early age and would come to particularly experience during my adolescence. Whenever I avoided doing something or would make only a token effort, which happened often in the temperament I was in after learning all the details of this story, my grandfather would always say something like, “Stop with all your švejking, young man!” or “There will be no švejkování in this house!”

The word always put a smile on my face, even when I wanted to do anything but smile. It could somehow put a smile on my face on that freezing desert night.

It wasn’t just because the word sounds funny. It was because of the man who never stopped caring about me, even after I gave him plenty of reasons to.

Though in the gendarmerie closet that morning the word had a somewhat different connotation. Hermann was saying that he would be just like the good soldier Švejk, in that he would consciously undermine any help he would give the Nazis. The problem was that he now wondered whether this was a promise as hollow as the suit he was wearing.

chapter five: the envy of every woman

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A MERCEDES-BENZ 770 sedan sped out of Theresienstadt on Klaus’s command, which he issued before swallowing the stale air swirling around the back seat of the car.

Sitting next to him was Hermann, who noticed how relieved Klaus looked. He looked more relieved than how Hermann felt and more tired than before, and his eyes began to flutter.

Turning from this, Hermann saw that the car had reached an impasse: a mass of men, women, and children walking in the opposite direction, flanked by a handful of soldiers.

Slowly, the vehicle passed through them, and Hermann noticed how they were struggling, not just to walk to the camp but to carry what was left of their possessions. These they had taken from the Bohušovice train station a few kilometers away toward what for many would be their final destination.

There were a thousand of these people, but one stuck out to Hermann, a little girl who was carrying a broken doll that seemed to reflect all the fears her face was unable to express.

Hermann continued glancing into the crowd, and he saw something else. He saw himself walking to the camp the summer before, among those who were both different and the same as those arriving that day. He saw this in another memory-like experience, in which he was carrying a suitcase in one hand and a crumpled pink slip of paper in the other. He was also looking back every few seconds, despite knowing there was nothing to look back upon.

Within a flicker of time, Hermann returned to the Mercedes. He did as it came to a stop in front of an elderly woman, who was on her knees and looking at them with sad and hopeless eyes while grasping her suitcase with both hands.

“Move!” hollered a soldier from nearby.

But she didn’t. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Again, the soldier repeated his command, this time firmer and from a few steps away and with his rifle drawn.

Watching in horror as the soldier put his finger on the trigger, Hermann recalled a similar incident from his not-so-distant past, and he grabbed the door handle. He was just about to push the door open when one of the men in the crowd took hold of the woman and swept her and her suitcase away.

The Mercedes continued on, and Hermann turned to Klaus. Seeing that he had fallen asleep during the melee, he glared at him, recognizing just how different Klaus had become from the man who had been his friend and how he could never be this man again. He glared until they reached the train station, where he saw all the empty cattle cars on the tracks waiting to go and collect more cattle. Which sent Hermann back to a car that was just like them at Prague’s Hybernské Station, where he sat on the floor pressed against a splintery gate made from planks of wood after catching his last glimpses of Ana, apart from those inside his mind.

This reexperience didn’t last long either, and he again found himself in the Mercedes as it came to the end of the street and the town. It paused for a few seconds before turning right onto a long and empty country road in the direction of Prague.

Glancing once more at Klaus, Hermann saw that he was writhing in his sleep. He was tossing and turning, looking like he was in the midst of not just a nightmare but a great conflict.

Despite his anger toward the man, Hermann felt uncomfortable watching this. Which caused him to once more turn forward. Along with this, a collection of vague fears overtook him, and the car and everything inside it changed into a very different one: the railroad car that took him to Prague for the first time more than two decades earlier, a few years after the end of World War I.

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HERMANN ARRIVED IN the city around midday, not long after it had become the capital of what would later be known as the First Czechoslovak Republic, marking the first time that the city had been the capital of an independent country since the Battle of White Mountain three hundred years earlier.

Wide-eyed, Hermann gazed through the train’s window feeling not only exhausted but hungry, having survived the three-day journey mostly on a sack of a cheap deep-fried bread called langoš.

This journey had led from his childhood home in the eastern frontier of the new country into the unknown. It also had led from the arms of his mother, who cried during their long goodbye. She cried even more than she had before he left for the army years earlier, probably because she knew they were parting for good.

My grandfather recounted this years later at Newark Airport when he sent me off to my first job after graduating college. My grandmother had passed away that summer, and this would be the first time he’d be alone since Theresienstadt.

Like his mother, he had tears in his eyes, and I think for the same reason, as it would be the last time I’d see him, apart from my memories.

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“YOU’LL COME AND visit us in Jerusalem, won’t you?” Hermann’s mother said to him outside the forest in front of their home, even though they both knew that the only Jerusalem she would ever see was in her dreams.

“Yes, Mama,” he told her before starting down the road with his heavy trunk.

While he was excited to leave, he was also afraid to go. So he tried not to look back. But he couldn’t help himself, and he saw now that his father was crying too. Though he always believed that the man was crying not because he was sad but because he was happy. He was happy that Hermann was realizing a dream that he had never been able to realize for himself.

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BACK ON THE train in Prague, Hermann jumped off with his heavy trunk before it even came to a stop at Wilson Station, which had just been renamed that after the American president who had helped Czechoslovakia come to be.

Hermann then was much different than the man leaving Theresienstadt. He wasn’t just younger. The years he’d spent in the army had thickened him in many places, and when he saw his reflection off a mirror-like wall, he noticed how sharp he looked in the hand-tailored suit his next-door neighbor had made for him. This was a suit that took three months of savings to pay for, and that was just for the materials. He could only afford the whole thing because Mr. Jacobs provided his labor for free, as a thank you for all the snow Hermann had cleared from the walkway of his home since he’d been a boy.

Even with his fancy suit and all his thickness, twenty-two-year-old Hermann looked like a boy in that crowded station and not just because of his youthful face. Complementing this was his thick brown curls, which he would say were the envy of every woman he met and needed trimming twice a week. He was much like a boy on the inside too, despite all the horrors he had witnessed during a war that was said to end all of them. Or maybe it was because of it.

Hurriedly, Hermann rushed out of the station, and he thought about splurging for a cab, especially when he breathed in the hot and thick late summer air. But realizing he needed to conserve the little funds he had, he instead hurried his trunk to Wenceslas Square a few blocks away.

From there he was practically skipping as he rushed down what is actually more of an avenue than a square, in the direction of Charles University, where he’d been accepted into the law faculty. Decades earlier, the 500-year-old school had split into separate Czech and German colleges, reflecting how the population of the country was split into Czech and German speakers, and the latter was what he would attend.

Despite the heaviness of his trunk and all his fatigue, the walk to school seemed short to Hermann. He even forgot about his hunger and his ever-increasing thirst while ignoring the smells of the sizzling kielbasas coming from the vendors lining the streets and the aroma of fresh pilsner drifting out of the pubs he passed. He could do this because the walk to and through Old Town was like making his way through the fantastical tales his father had told him, tales filled with ghosts and golems and impossibly beautiful women. In many ways, the trip was like passing through the man’s dreams, which had long become his own.

While the trip awed Hermann, it wasn’t the size of Prague or its age that did. Even though he had grown up in a rural village, by then he was no stranger to big cities. During his time in the army, he had been through many. Some were even bigger and older than Prague. But none were anything like it. The center of Prague was and still is a place where time has stopped, with every building seemingly more ancient than the next. Hermann felt that, with every step he was taking, he was walking deeper into a past that kept expanding before him, and he couldn’t keep his jaw hinged.

Finally, he reached the Karolinum, then the seat of Charles’s German college and almost as old as the university itself. This collection of buildings especially mesmerized him, as he knew his future was entwined with them. They mesmerized him so much as he continued down the street that he couldn’t even recall entering the lobby of his residency hall. One moment he was facing the façade of the Aula Magna, and the next he was in front of his room.

In the threshold, he saw the strangest of sights: a tall muscular man his age, who had a big flock of blond hair and the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen. He was doing handstand pushups against a wall with beads of sweat glistening off his chest while wearing nothing but one of the buttoned undershorts soldiers had worn during the war.

Hermann didn’t know what to make of this. So, while glancing at the books on math and physics and geology in a case by the wall, he dropped his trunk by the unmade bed in the far corner of the room and gazed at his new roommate with rising curiosity. “You must be Klaus,” he uttered with a smile.

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HERMANN’S SMILE WAS still on his face as he returned to the Mercedes, which was quickly approaching Prague and all the other wonderful memories waiting for him to reexperience. But he knew there would also be some not-so-wonderful memories lying in wait, and this overwhelmed everything else.

chapter six: the woman in the yellow shawl

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AS THE SUN rose over the streets of Josefov, a woman wearing a yellow shawl glanced down Červená Street as she reached the intersection of it and Maisel. Years later, she would tell me how she stopped cold with her mouth agape when she saw that the door to the High Synagogue was wide open.

Hurriedly, she rushed inside the building and both closed and locked the door, and she looked around. She looked for many minutes. Finally, by an old arched door, she found something: the Luger that the young SS officer in his fright had dropped the night before.

Despite the incongruity of the gun in the synagogue, she stared not at it but at the door. For many seconds, she stared at it before grabbing the gun and placing it in her purse.

From this she took out a large iron key that looked hundreds of years old, and she used it to unlock the door.

With a deep breath, she pushed the door, and it creaked open. Then, as she stared at the nothingness in front of her, she returned the key and withdrew a flashlight, which she turned on before she strode down the ancient stone steps.

chapter seven: a spark of aspiration

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KLAUS’S MERCEDES CONTINUED down the road, with Hermann gazing at the SS flag on the hood of the car, which was standing still in the wind in defiance of it. He gazed until a big truck made a wide right turn ahead of them from the opposite side of the road.

Like everyone who’d come of age in what was known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hermann learned to drive on the left-hand side of the road, and he continued driving this way through all his years in prewar Czechoslovakia. It was so ingrained in him that, when I was growing up, I often had to remind him to move our car into the right lane, and more than once we only narrowly escaped certain death.

But at the time he left Theresienstadt, Hermann was particularly not accustomed to seeing vehicles drive on the right-hand side of streets. So he flinched at the sight of the truck barreling toward them, thinking it would surely smash into and over them.

It didn’t. It made its way into the right lane as if it were the most normal thing.

At the beginning of the occupation, Hermann had been startled by how it had taken the Germans only a few days to make an entire country drive on the opposite side of the road. But now it was even more startling to see how fast they had made it part of everyone’s nature. It was startling to see how easily an entire nation had conformed to the will of another.

Hiding from this, Hermann found himself returning to his past and the day he met Klaus in the dorm room they shared more than twenty years earlier.

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KLAUS MADE NO reply to Hermann’s greeting in their doorway or even acknowledged he was there. He just kept doing those pushups in his underwear. Up and down he went, as if he were racing against something unseen, and Hermann wondered if he was afraid of coming to a rest and what might happen if he did.

Not knowing what to do, Hermann introduced himself.

Klaus didn’t say anything in return, but he did respond. He did a dramatic backflip to his feet. Then, with a big, toothy smile, he approached Hermann and shook his hand with a firm but moist grip.

Seeing confusion fall across Klaus’s face, Hermann asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Klaus replied, with his confusion having turned into dismay. “I just wasn’t expecting . . .”

“You did know that I was Jewish?” Hermann mumbled with sudden fright, as he had seen Klaus’s expression many times and knew that it never preceded anything positive.

“Oh, it’s not that,” Klaus insisted with a dismissive wave. “It’s just that I was expecting from everything I had read about you . . .”

“Expecting what?”

Klaus grinned. “You know, that you’d be a big giant warrior.”

Hermann grinned back. “Looks can be deceiving.”

“Did you bring your medals?” Klaus excitedly asked as he gawked at Hermann much like people today gawk at celebrities.

“It really was nothing,” Hermann muttered while I bet expressing all kinds of embarrassment and hoping they could change the subject. He expressed this whenever anyone broached the subject, including me. Even worse, just the mentioning of the war was enough for the sounds to return, the deafening sounds of gunfire and screaming coming from all directions, especially from him. They were sounds that refused to end or even pause.

“I served too, you know,” Klaus went on, causing the sounds to finally stop ringing in Hermann’s ears.

“I could tell by your shorts,” Hermann said while pointing at them.

“Though not on the front lines.”

“You were lucky then,” Hermann told him after sitting on his bed and wishing he had been so lucky.

“It’s strange how many freshmen here are in their twenties,” Klaus continued, clearly unaware of Hermann’s discomfort. “Some of the seniors are pushing thirty. And some of the doctoral candidates, some of them will be pensioners before they get their degrees.”

Both men chuckled, and Klaus took off his shorts. “You like beer?” he asked.

“I think it’s gone past like,” answered Hermann.

Klaus grabbed a towel off a closet door and wrapped himself with it. “How about joining me and my new girlfriend at U Zlatého Tygra tonight?”

“Could we do it some other time?” Hermann pleaded while likely expressing embarrassment once again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I need to find a job first.”

“You have no money?”

“Sure, I have money. Just not a whole lot of it.”

“I thought you people were all rich.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not so. You don’t know how much I wish it were.”

“Well, the wrestling club needs a manager. I’m already the captain, so consider the job yours if you want it.”

“That would be terrific,” Hermann blurted out, unable to control his excitement.

“And I’ll front you some money until then,” Klaus added.

Hermann shook his head. “I couldn’t let you do that.”

“You can and will. You’re coming out with me and Ana tonight, and I won’t listen to another word.”

Hermann smiled. Though as he watched Klaus march to the front door of their room, and while trying to hide his envy of him, he called out, “You have a girlfriend already?”

Klaus came to a stop, and he turned back to Hermann with another grin. “I’m only surprised that it took me so long.” He then pointed to a bureau by his bed. “Her picture’s over there.”

Klaus left the room, but Hermann barely noticed. While feeling all kinds of strange and conflicting thoughts, he told himself that he wasn’t going to look at the picture of Ana. He even insisted that it didn’t matter what she looked like and that she had nothing to do with him.

But slowly he made his way toward the big wooden bureau and the picture on top of it, which was turned slightly from him. Something about it both enticed and excited him, which only increased the closer he got to it.

Finally, he was in reach. While feeling just a flicker of hesitation, he grabbed the frame and looked at the image of a nineteen-year-old woman who had her dark-flaxen hair styled in the kind of bob that was popular everywhere at the time. He would tell me that it was an image that made all of Prague seem bland and ordinary.

It wasn’t Ana’s beauty that swept Hermann off his feet. Though from the pictures Věra showed me of her, she was indeed beautiful. What swept him off his feet was the spark in her eyes. Never had he seen anything so aspirational. He realized, from her photograph alone, that Ana was the kind of woman who could lead a man toward something bigger than himself. He realized, too, that this was something he desperately wanted.

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AGAIN, HERMANN RETURNED to the Mercedes, where he saw that the image of Ana had been replaced by another.

The Golden City, as Prague is known, was on the horizon. He saw, too, that Klaus was waking. He was waking with a face full of fright, and the sight of the city didn’t ease it. It only made it worse.

But the same couldn’t be said of Hermann. Seeing the city, like on his first day there, he felt a strange aspiration, even if he didn’t know for what.

chapter eight: an unexpected kindness

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THE MERCEDES REACHED what had again become a former capital and approached Prague Castle.

From his window, Hermann gaped at the massive structure, which is more than a thousand years old and dominates the skyline. It’s a fairy tale that’s come alive.

Closer they got to it in the early afternoon sun, and Hermann could hear his father describe it in perfect detail: the palaces and churches and towers rising from everywhere. He could recall, too, his youthful daydreams about it. Which helped him forget his present situation and something he’d spent months trying to forget.

Even after the castle left his view, Hermann was still able to forget. Like the Old Town neighborhood he had walked through on his first day in the city, the Hradčany streets he found himself on now were a snapshot of a lost time, which not even the Nazis could corrupt. The district impressed him even more than Old Town had on his first day there. I think because he thought he’d never see it again.

This lasted only until the car parked in front of a block-long baroque building on Loreta Square called Černín Palace. Before the occupation, the building had housed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But now it was the headquarters of the SS.

With a sigh, Hermann turned to Klaus and noticed that he wasn’t making the slightest effort to leave and that he looked somewhere else. “Are we waiting for something?” Hermann asked.

Klaus didn’t respond. It didn’t even seem as if he had heard the question. So Hermann asked it again.

“As you probably can guess,” Klaus muttered while looking away and without expressing any emotion, “this affair has been embarrassing to us for many reasons. No one outside of a handful of SS officers knows about it.”

Hermann nodded. “And you want me to keep it that way.”

Klaus didn’t answer, but this was all the answer Hermann needed. It confirmed everything he believed about his task and what would be the outcome of it, and a grin came across his face. Which stayed there as the two passed the SS guards standing outside the palace and stepped through the entrance of the building, where they found themselves in a marble hallway not far from an immense statue of Hercules battling the Hydra.

Hermann stopped in front of it, and he gazed at it in awe.

“Is there a reason why you’ve stopped?” Klaus grumbled from beside him.

Hermann didn’t answer, as something had grabbed his attention: a large and heavyset SS colonel.

The man was about sixty and marching toward them from the staircase, alongside a small and gaunt captain who was less than half his age and smiling smugly.

With obvious reluctance, the colonel stopped along with his companion in front of Hermann and Klaus, and Klaus saluted the colonel with a reverence that Hermann noticed was forced.

The colonel acknowledged this with a nod before turning toward Hermann and sneering.

Hermann didn’t know why the man was sneering, but it probably had to do with him finding Hermann a living caricature of everything he hated. He likely took Hermann’s presence as a personal affront.

While Hermann didn’t acknowledge the sneer or the man behind it, he recognized what the colonel was about, having known other such officers in the previous war. He saw in him someone who could see everyone’s flaws but his own and knew this trait did more to help the Central Powers lose the first world war than anything the enemy had done.

“So,” the colonel growled with the type of deep baritone voice Hermann expected him to have, “this is the Miracle Jew who’s going to save us from that terrible killer.”

Neither Klaus nor Hermann said anything in reply, and the colonel turned to Klaus. “He doesn’t look like much to me.”

“But that didn’t stop the Austrians from giving him the Order of the Iron Crown for his actions at Verdun,” Klaus replied.

These words caused Hermann to glance away while again feeling overwhelmed by the sounds of battle and all they had evoked. Even decades after the war, its mentioning still affected him and always would.

His military service was one of the few aspects of his life that he would never discuss with me apart from peripherally, such as when he described this encounter, and even then I had to piece together information. This period of his life so troubled him that all it would take was the reading of a newspaper article about the war or the glancing at a war movie for him to later experience such terrible nightmares that he would wake me with his screaming. On one such occasion, not long after my grandmother died, it got so bad that I rushed into his room and found him hiding under the bed in tears.

“The emperor himself pinned the medal on him,” Klaus noted, “after he single-handedly saved a dozen wounded men from a French assault while wounded himself.”

The colonel snarled. “The Austrian army wasn’t at Verdun.”

“Four infantry divisions joined the battle under German command at the end of it.”

“Yes, and they were all worthless.”

“Not all of them.”

“Still, consider me skeptical.”

“We’ll know soon enough if your skepticism is warranted, Herr Colonel.”

“Captain Kleiner,” the colonel said while eyeing the man next to him, “he believes he can solve this crime in short order, and I’m inclined to believe him.”

“It’s simply a matter of being persuasive enough with the local riffraff,” the small and gaunt man interjected, “and I can be quite persuasive.”

“Yes,” Klaus told him. “It’s remarkable how you’ve persuaded every commanding officer to keep you out of harm’s way.”

The remark wiped both the smugness and the smile from Kleiner’s face. He was just about to reply to it when a commotion down the hall interrupted him.

They all turned toward it and saw a frightened and unshaved man running to the exits, who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

“Stop him!” came a voice from somewhere unseen.

Calmly, Klaus whipped out his pistol. Just as calmly, he shot the man in the leg as he reached the doors, causing him to collapse.

While trying to project Klaus’s calm, the colonel stared at the man writhing on the floor. “Captain Stamm has earned the right to conduct this investigation as he sees fit.” He then spun toward Klaus. “But I’ll be keeping a close eye on both you and the Jew.”

Klaus responded by clicking his heels and saluting the colonel.

“At ease,” the man barked before marching through Klaus and Hermann as if he were smashing through a wall. He was followed by Captain Kleiner, who again was smiling smugly as the two left the building.

“That was Colonel Reidl,” Klaus whispered to Hermann. “He wasn’t exactly enamored with the idea of bringing you in on this case.”

“So how did you get him to agree to it?” Hermann whispered back while gazing at the man who’d been shot. Even though this was far from the first time he had seen something like this in recent years, it unnerved him. It especially unnerved him that Klaus wasn’t unnerved at all, and it made him realize that Klaus could shoot him just as easily.

“He agreed to this for the same reason I did,” Klaus explained. “The lack of viable alternatives. But you’d best be as invisible to him as possible.”

Hermann nodded, and they continued on. They entered the staircase, with Hermann staring at the painting on the ceiling as they rose to the second floor, where they made their way into the north wing of the building and came upon a reception area. By a desk there sat a woman in her late twenties, who was wearing a dark-blue dress and had long light-brown hair and similarly colored doe-like eyes.

Recognizing Hermann, she jumped to her feet in shock before rushing toward him. “Herr Weiss!”

With great affection, the two embraced, and Hermann murmured, “Marta.”

In the years prior to the occupation, Marta Vachoušková had been Hermann’s “partner in crimefighting” as he would call her. Even though she was much younger than him, largely uneducated, and officially only his personal assistant—whose primary responsibility was to translate for him when his Czech proved inadequate—I could only think of them as equals by the way he described her.

“What have those animals done to you?” she stammered while shaking a bit.

“I’m fine,” he insisted before they reluctantly released their arms from each other, with Hermann noticing that Klaus had taken a few steps from them and was looking away.

“I was so sorry to hear about Ana,” Marta mumbled with her eyes lowered. “She was very kind to me.”

Hermann didn’t know how to reply. So he just smiled meekly before muttering, “They’ve got you working here too.”

“Yes,” she said after raising her eyes. “They didn’t even tell me why or for whom. They just told me to report here this morning. I had no idea I’d be working for you again. Or that you were even . . .”

“They probably wanted to bring back as many of my old cohorts as possible.”

“There are not many of us left.”

Hermann nodded, and the two ran out of things to say.

“You,” she blurted out, “you must be starving. I mean . . .”

“It’s all right, Marta,” he told her with a forced grin. “Really.”

“I could get you a couple of utopence,” she exclaimed before pointing to a window and the view across the square and mentioning, “U Černého Vola makes them much the way you like, with plenty of onions.”

“That would be terrific,” he spoke with a smile that reflected all the warmth of her sentiment, and he found himself holding back tears from what he would only later recognize as the beautiful unexpectedness of her kindness. Still, through this he was able to utter, “And perhaps you could also get me some—”

“—Some Velkopopovický,” she interrupted as she lifted a flower vase from the table beside her and removed its dying flowers. “Řezané, just as you like it.”

“You can still read my mind,” he remarked with another smile, one that expressed all the things he couldn’t put into words.

She smiled as well and started backing up with the vase. “I won’t be but a minute.”

Suddenly, she turned around and sprinted off.

“Oh, Marta,” he called out. “Perhaps you could make it—”

“—Three utopence!” she shouted after stopping and spinning back toward him with three fingers in the air.

Again, he smiled. This time he smiled not only at everything that made her so wonderful but at how such wonderfulness could still mean something to him. Just as importantly, he found himself for the first time in years anticipating something positive.

chapter nine: dreaming of knaidels

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IN THE SMALL, cluttered room that was now his office, Hermann sat at a wobbly desk and chair across from Klaus, and he ate the cold pickled sausages Marta had brought.

Utopence, as these fist-sized sausages are called in Czech, were Hermann’s favorite food and remained so all his life. Like with his love of Smetana’s “Vltava,” they were an inseparable part of how I remember him.

But they were also far from kosher, so my grandmother wanted nothing to do with them. He had to make them himself in the basement of our house, and he had to eat them there too.

Sometimes I’d watch. I’d sit on the floor and watch him carefully measure and prepare everything. He always had such excitement in his eyes, the kind that’s usually reserved for a small child. Though I don’t think it was the food that excited him as much as his ability to enjoy it.

What I’m certain of is that it was because of my grandfather’s experiences in Theresienstadt that my family placed such a value on food. Not only was it never wasted in our house, but meals were always a source of celebration. They were a kind of miracle we never took for granted, which is why I can remember the most mundane of them.

The most memorable of these included my grandmother’s knaidels.

According to the dictionary, “knaidel” is the Yiddish word for “matzo ball.” But the knaidels of my youth only had a passing resemblance to any matzo balls I’d later experience. The latter were never anything special. Bland and lifeless dumplings, whether they were in a bowl of chicken soup or not mattered little.

But knaidels were something else. Their rich taste was both unique and comforting. They warmed you everywhere at once and were the best part of the meal by far, which is why in my house they were always the main attraction.

It would take my grandmother days to make them, using a recipe that had been passed down to her through generations. First, she would make chicken soup from scratch. Then she’d patiently wait for the fat to rise and gel. Which would be the key ingredient in what I could only dream about on that cold and rainy desert night and on many like it.

Though food was only part of what made our meals special. Both my grandparents would cook, and watching them was like watching a magic show, which I’d enjoy even through the increasing bitterness I felt as a teenager. As my grandparents glided through the kitchen like characters in a ballet, they would toss plates and ingredients to each other. They would even sing. I couldn’t help get excited from all their excitement.

Unfortunately, Hermann’s meal at SS headquarters wasn’t quite as exciting.

Having been systematically starved for eight months, Hermann thought he’d devour the meal in seconds and still be hungry for more. But this didn’t happen. He was full even after one sausage and thoroughly stuffed after two, and it angered him. He felt cheated by his own stomach, which wasn’t accustomed to eating such quantities of food, much less good food.

Still, even with his lack of appetite, Hermann enjoyed the meal. He especially enjoyed the smells rising from the plate, which brought back his own recollections of meals past.

Like with my grandmother and her knaidels, Ana would spend days preparing utopence, using her own special recipe, adapted from all the years she had spent making them for Hermann. Often, he would catch her in her flowered apron, sneaking something else into the big pickle jar by the kitchen window, whether it was peppers or onions or things he couldn’t even recognize. Which would only cause his anticipation of them to rise until he finally had the opportunity to enjoy them.

But while he would tell me again and again that Ana’s utopence were the best he ever had, it wasn’t the taste he loved the most. It was only a small part of what they meant. Even though he never put it into words, I know what really mattered was how he could taste her love for him in every bite. Despite their coldness, the sausages generated a warmth that never ceased to marvel him.

Because of this and all the other things Ana would do for him, Hermann would often try to show his appreciation of her, by buying her white roses and taking her to the Lucerna on Saturday nights, where they would dance until they could barely walk. He even wrote her verse in two languages, which he said was bad but always put a smile on her face.

Though all this diminished as the years went on and he became more immersed in his police work, until it hardly happened at all. So he wondered right then whether she had known just how he felt about her and how he valued everything about her and the time they had spent together.

While trying to think about anything other than this, Hermann refilled his empty glass with the Velkopopovický Kozel beer from the flower vase, which was a mix of dark and pale beers. Řezané, as Czechs call it, meaning cut. He then took a long and slow sip of it, enjoying every moment of its journey through him, despite its weakness, at least by Czech standards. They grade beer not by its alcohol percentage but by its alcohol density. This beer was only 8 degrees, which made it about 3 percent alcohol. But it was still enough to numb Hermann’s guilt just a little, which came from many sources.

“Don’t get drunk,” Klaus told him with his arms crossed and a glare on his face. Though Hermann couldn’t tell if he was glaring at him or the beer.

“Not even you could get drunk off this,” Hermann replied.

Klaus didn’t reply back, and Hermann grabbed the thick and round loaf of rye bread beside the plate. From this he tore off a large chunk, which he used to soak up the pickle juice as well as lots of onions. “So, are you going to show me the details of the case?”

“You might want to finish eating first.”

“Trust me,” Hermann asserted before forcing himself to both chew and swallow the bread, “eight months of Theresienstadt has given me the ability to eat through anything.”

Again, Klaus made no reply. He just picked up his attaché case and placed it on the table before taking out a folder. Which he dropped in front of Hermann, who opened it and found three full-sized photographs of the dead men’s faces, each displaying varying degrees of horror.

Even before his time at Theresienstadt, even before becoming a policeman, Hermann had been inured to such sights and to much worse ones. So he matter-of-factly put the images side by side on the desk in front of him and read the police reports underneath them in the folder.

“The causes of death were all different,” Klaus let him know, despite knowing Hermann could read this himself. Hermann could only surmise that Klaus was doing this to make himself relevant in an investigation that Hermann could see was over his head. “A broken neck,” Klaus went on, “a strangulation, and a blunt blow to the back of the head. And that’s just what killed them. There were also broken limbs and assorted internal injuries. What links them together, besides being found near synagogues, is that they were all found sitting up, either against a wall or a set of bushes, and as you can see, they all seemed frightened of something.”

Hermann tuned Klaus out after this, and he concentrated on the facts in front of him.

These began two weeks earlier, at the end of March. A Czech policeman named Petr Hrubý, while making his rounds before dawn, found the body of Major Ernst Schiller sitting against an apartment building across the street from the Maisel Synagogue. At first, he thought the man was drunk. But when he tapped his shoulder with his billy club, the man fell to the ground, and the policeman discovered he was dead. While Schiller’s neck was broken, there were no signs of a struggle at the scene of the crime, nor had any witnesses been found who could remember seeing the major in Josefov that night, including seeing him sitting against the wall.

The coroner estimated that Schiller died much earlier than when he was found, well before midnight. The last known person to see him alive was his wife Sieglinde. On the night of his death, the two were about to see an opera at the Theater of the Estates when a lieutenant arrived and led him away. Frau Schiller didn’t know this lieutenant and was only able to provide a basic description of him, and the exact whereabouts of the major from the time he left the theater to the time the policeman found his body were unknown.

The second murder occurred three days later. A little after ten at night, a Josefov resident named Radoslav Hrabal found the body of Captain Franz Gruber sitting against a set of shrubberies while walking his dog. This happened not far from the Moorish-looking synagogue that was once known as the Temple on Geist Alley, which some were now calling the Spanish Synagogue. The coroner estimated that Gruber’s death occurred at around the same time he was discovered or within a few hours of it. Unlike with Major Schiller, no one could account for any of Gruber’s whereabouts that evening. He left duty at five, and no one knows where he went afterward. Also unlike Schiller, he had no wife or any known girlfriend or lover and was said to be a loner without friends.

Gruber died from a blow to the back of the head. Again, there were no signs of a struggle, and there were no witnesses who could place the captain in the district at all that night.

The body of the most recent murder victim, and the one who’d have the most relevance to me, was discovered nearly a week after Gruber’s murder. Captain Max Fischer was found at nine in the morning by an SS lieutenant named Greta Krieg. She discovered him sitting outside a building not far from the Klausen Synagogue where she worked. She further noted that she’d often seen him in the synagogue during the past month. The last time was late in the afternoon on the day he died when she left work.

Captain Fischer was strangled to death. Like with the others, there were no signs of a struggle at the scene of it. The coroner estimated that he died sometime during the night before, though it was somewhat later than the other two, closer to midnight. There were also no witnesses to the crime before or after it happened apart from Lieutenant Krieg, and no one else was known to have seen the man from the time the lieutenant left the synagogue in the afternoon to the time she found him in the morning. Like Gruber, Fischer had no wife or girlfriend. What’s more, all his known friends had said that he had been distant toward them in the past few months.

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HERMANN WAS SURPRISED by what he had read. So he turned to Klaus. “I can’t believe these reports are accurate.”

“In what way do you think they’re not accurate?” Klaus said with surprise of his own.

“There must have been some evidence left at scenes of such violent encounters. Some item the killer left or some disturbance of the area.”

“I’m telling you there was no evidence found of a crime whatsoever at the scenes. But understand that no one in my office, including me, is a professional detective. Nor have we allowed the Czech police or anyone else to investigate the scenes.”

“I also can’t believe there were no witnesses at all. Three separate murders in the streets of Prague and no one saw a thing? I realize that Josefov has fewer people than it had before the war, but it is still in the center of the city. There are people living in it and passing through it all the time.”

“No one has come forward. There are only those witnesses mentioned in the reports.”

“May I talk to them?”

Klaus gave the question some thought. “Tactfully.”

“We should start with the wife of the first victim.”

“Frau Schiller?”

“Yes, her.”

“She lives just a handful of blocks from the crime scene. So I can show you that before we speak with her.”

Hermann nodded. He then wiped his mouth with a napkin and rose to his feet. “Let’s go.”

Klaus didn’t move. Instead, with a face full of skepticism he grumbled, “Where’s all this sudden enthusiasm coming from?”

Hermann thought about this. He thought about it for many seconds, as the question had caught him off guard. Was he really being enthusiastic? he asked himself.

Perhaps he was, he realized, and this confused him as much as it had Klaus. It even made him feel guilty. The source of this was that, for the first time since that August day a year earlier, grief was not foremost in his mind.

Why? was the next question he asked himself. Why was he enthused when only hours earlier he had intended to do nothing more than go through the motions or even hamper the investigation as much as he could?

He answered aloud and as honestly as he could. “Maybe I enjoy the thrill of the chase more than I imagined. Or maybe I just want to shake the killer’s hand. Does it matter?”

Klaus answered by rising to his feet, and he started toward the door.

chapter ten: the café across from jáchym street

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HERMANN AND KLAUS returned to the Mercedes, and its driver took them through the streets of Hradčany once more before crossing the Vltava River over the Mánes Bridge.

Hermann would swear that he could hear the sounds of Smetana’s “Vltava,” and he wondered if this was what the composer himself heard even though he couldn’t hear a thing.

The music came to an end when the car reached the other side of town, and they headed north into Josefov along Maisel Street. With his eyes as wide as they could be, Hermann looked at a district where he had lived for decades and Jews had been living for a thousand years. For most of these, it had been a walled-off ghetto of cramped streets and the only place Jews could live in the city. Even after the walls came down and Jews were free to live wherever they pleased, there were upward of twenty thousand of them packed within an area of what in the prior half-century had been reduced to a few dozen streets. But now Hermann was the last Jew there or anywhere in the city.

Though this didn’t mean that there was no one living in Josefov. Non-Jews were living there and had been even before the occupation. Despite this, the place seemed like a ghost town. So he now understood why there were no witnesses to the murders, as the district, which had always seemed so alive to him, had lost all this.

Still, the three men found themselves stuck in traffic among the empty sidewalks. Slowly, they passed building after building, with each evoking its own set of memories in Hermann. One, though, was more vivid than the rest and came to life when they reached a café across from Jáchym Street, where he found himself and Ana passing away one of the many Sunday mornings they had passed there together.

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HERMANN AND ANA were reading the latest editions of Lidové Noviny and the Prager Tagblatt while sipping cups of Turkish coffee. They were arguing too, over the latest doings of President Masaryk and Prime Minister Udržal.

Ana could see no wrong in either man, especially in Masaryk, who in many ways was the father of the country. They even named a train station in Prague after him while he was still alive.

But Hermann was critical of both. He felt the government was alienating the country’s large German minority, with both its policies and unfulfilled promises of autonomy, and he was right that there would be consequences to it. It would be the excuse Hitler used in 1938 to “free” the Sudetenland in the border areas of the country, under the terms of the infamous Munich Agreement. Which would be the precursor to Hitler “freeing” the rest of the country less than a year later.

Exasperated by Hermann’s arguments, Ana flung open her newspaper in front of herself. “I don’t even know why I married you.”

Hermann lowered his eyes. “I don’t know why you married me either.”

“Fortunately,” she replied after a brief pause, “knowing has got nothing to do with it.”

He smiled while recalling words spoken in a different time and place, and he reached one of his hands over the table and took one of hers.

He found her touch soft and comforting and as aspiring as the first time he had seen her face.

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HERMANN WAS BROUGHT back to the present when the Mercedes pulled in front of the closed gates of the Maisel Synagogue. Though strangely he could still feel Ana’s touch and all it evoked, which caused him to caress his hand in wonder.

This stopped when Klaus said, “Your old flat on Eliška Krásnohorská Street was available. So I made arrangements for you to stay there.”

“Oh,” Hermann mumbled, more than a little surprised. He was frightened too, as he knew some memories were best unexperienced.

“Is there a problem with that?”

“No,” Hermann insisted, but even he could hear the hesitancy in his voice.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t much furniture, and it’s a mess. There will also be a guard at your front door whenever you’re there. But it was either that or a cot in the office.”

Klaus’s words again surprised Hermann, even if he didn’t know why. It took him a few seconds before he realized there was kindness in the man’s voice.

Unsure how to feel about this, Hermann reminded himself that Klaus was his enemy and that he needed to hate him, and he pretended the kindness away. He kept doing it as the two stepped out of the car, with Hermann following not far behind Klaus. He followed him to an apartment building across the street from the synagogue, where Klaus pointed at a wall. “The policeman mentioned in the report found Major Schiller sitting upright over there.”

Hermann nodded, and he began looking around the area.

“Would you like to question the policeman?” Klaus asked.

Hermann shook his head. “I don’t know this Hrubý fellow, but I’ve known plenty like him. Attention to details is not their strong suit.”

Suddenly, something caught Hermann’s eye: a slight discoloration on the wall. So he walked up to it, and he found a collection of small bits of black fiber along the wall’s coarse surface.

“What is it?” Klaus asked.

“It’s likely from Major Schiller’s jacket,” Hermann answered after he pulled one of the fibers from the wall and showed it to Klaus.

“Does it have any significance?”

“Perhaps,” conjectured Hermann while measuring the distance between the pattern and the ground with his eyes. “It would appear that the killer carried the major to the wall and then slid him down it.”

“So?” questioned Klaus.

Hermann responded by asking his own question. “Why would he do this unless he murdered him somewhere else and brought him here?”

Klaus had no answer.

Hermann pointed at the discoloration. “From the height of this, I can say that the killer is quite tall, somewhere between 185 and 190 centimeters.”

He continued looking at the pattern, and he noticed something else about it. “It would also appear that the killer is right-handed.”

“How did you figure that out?” Klaus blurted out with surprise he couldn’t hide.

“A right-handed man would likely carry the torso in his right arm and the legs in his left, which would explain why the fibers are concentrated on the right side of the pattern.”

“How does any of this help us discover who the killer is?” grumbled Klaus.

“There’s rarely a ‘eureka’ moment, Klaus, when you discover everything at once about a mysterious crime. It’s usually a progression of small clues that, when summed together, lead you to the perpetrator. And now we have our first ones.”

“Well, if there are no others,” Klaus said before nodding down the street, “the major’s widow lives over there on Staromák.”

Hermann grinned at Klaus’s last word, as he found it funny that Klaus had used the Czech slang term for Staroměstské Náměstí, which in English is Old Town Square. While he had often heard this and similar forms of slang in the years he lived in Prague, it was strange to hear it from an SS man.

But then he recalled his college days with Klaus and remembered how consumed Klaus was by all things Czech, no matter how he insisted otherwise, as someone who professed love only for things German. The Czech language, along with its idioms and peculiarities, especially consumed Klaus, to the extent that Hermann once thought that Klaus had secretly wanted to be Czech and kept this from everyone, including himself.

Hermann continued to grin as the two headed back to the car, and he recalled something else: the many times he had watched Klaus wrestle in college. He would often remind him of the legendary Czech hero Bivoj, in that he would lift his opponents on his back, much like Bivoj had with a boar on Jackdaw Mountain.

Only when Hermann returned to the car did he realize that the grin was still on his face. He realized, too, that it wasn’t going to be easy to hate Klaus, no matter how much he reminded himself to do so.

Hermann didn’t stop grinning until the car came to a sudden stop at Široká Street, where the driver had hoped to make a right turn before making another right onto Pařížská Street one block up, which would have led them to Old Town Square. Instead, he was forced to make a left on the one-way street, and they quickly got tangled in a maze of roads that some believe were specifically designed to make foreign invaders lose their way. These same streets would confuse the Soviet Army two and a half decades later when they invaded the city, especially after the locals removed many of the street signs. When my grandfather read about this in a book by Alan Levy called Rowboat to Prague, he couldn’t stop smiling. A stranger would’ve thought that it was Christmas at our house.

Hermann was smiling in the back of the Mercedes too, as it hopelessly approached the river to the west instead of going south toward the square. They might’ve even driven right into the water if Hermann hadn’t guided the driver to what was then called Sanytrová Street, which led them eastward through the maze until they reached Pařížská and were finally able to make that right turn toward the square.

“How am I supposed to investigate a crime here when I literally can’t drive two blocks without getting lost?” Klaus growled to no one in particular.

“I’m sorry, Herr Captain,” the driver muttered, “I thought for sure I could make a right down Široká.”

“You can down half of it,” Hermann told the man, “but only west of Žatecká Street.”

The driver nodded, and Hermann turned to Klaus. “You used to know these streets as well as me, if not better.”

“That was a long time ago,” Klaus insisted after turning from him.

“Do you remember the night when we got so drunk at U Hynků that we set off to look for that legendary street from which there was no exit?”

“Ulice Prokletých,” Klaus mumbled with a hint of a smile. “The Street of the Damned.”

Along with the smile, Hermann could see a little spark of the old Klaus, which made him want to see more. A lot more. He didn’t even try to pretend otherwise.

“We would’ve found it if the sun hadn’t come up,” Klaus added while looking as if he were recalling the joy of that moment and maybe others like it. “We were so close to it. I’m sure of it.”

Klaus’s spark didn’t last long. It began to fade when they parked above the square and was completely gone by the time he and Hermann began lumbering over the ancient cobblestones.

Steadily, they made their way toward the three-story apartment building where Frau Schiller lived while walking alongside the tracks that carried trams across the square during that period. They did with Klaus’s head down and a scowl on his face. In the same manner, they entered the building and climbed to the top floor, where at the first unit by the staircase, Klaus knocked on the door.

Answering it was a servant woman, who brought them to the lady of the house, who was in the process of preparing to move, with boxes lying in almost all the free space. So she wasn’t pleased that they had interrupted her. She was especially not pleased by Hermann’s presence, and she tried to convince Klaus that she had no time to talk.

“Please, Frau Schiller,” Klaus pleaded. “We are trying to find your husband’s murderer. We won’t take more than a few minutes of your time. I promise you.”

The woman sighed, but she acquiesced and asked her servant to bring them some coffee, and she led the two men into the living room, where they sat on a sofa in front of a large bay window that provided a perfect view of the square below, especially of the statue of Jan Hus.

Hermann gazed at it while thinking back to a much different and better time.

“When will you be moving?” Klaus asked.

“In a few days,” the woman answered while glaring at Hermann. “To be honest, spending even a few more seconds in this city is too much.”

The woman continued to glare at Hermann. She only stopped when the servant came and laid a silver coffee service onto the table in front of them before leaving.

With a sigh and while pretending Hermann wasn’t there, Frau Schiller served what passed as coffee during the war to both Klaus and herself. Which oddly brought Hermann’s attention back from the statue to her.

“I read your statement, Frau Schiller,” he said. “But in my experience people often leave out small but not insignificant details from them. So I do hope you don’t mind going through the events once more. What do you recall about the night your husband was killed?”

It was clear that the woman had no intention of answering Hermann or even recognizing he was there. But when she noticed that Klaus was waiting for her to answer, she grudgingly said directly to him, “We were at the Theater of the Estates to watch Don Giovanni.”

“What a marvelous opera,” Hermann murmured as he recalled how he and Ana had seen it at the same theater before the occupation. “Is Ezio Pinza still performing the title role?”

Ignoring him, the woman told Klaus, “Right before the performance began, a lieutenant came up to my husband and led him off on what he said was an urgent matter.”

“He didn’t mention what this matter was?” asked Hermann.

“No,” the woman answered as curtly as possible.

“And you don’t know this lieutenant’s name?”

“No,” she groaned.

“Or what he looks like?”

“Only vaguely,” she snapped with a shake of her head. “I wasn’t paying attention. The man was . . . I don’t know, average. Average height, average weight. Unimposing, I would say as well, much like you. He was young too. But they’re all young.”

These details seemed a little too detailed for a passing glance, especially for someone who wasn’t paying attention, which led Hermann to ask, “Are you sure that you never saw him before that night?”

Unlike the other questions, this surprised Frau Schiller and caused her to think. She thought about it for many seconds before saying, “Maybe.”

“You’re not sure?” Hermann uttered.

“I may have seen him before.”

Her answer surprised Klaus more than the question had surprised the woman. It embarrassed him as well. “You didn’t tell my men that before.”

“Your men didn’t ask me that before. They just asked me if I knew who he was, and I don’t.”

Klaus was about to reply when Hermann interrupted him. “Where did you see this man?”

She gave this some thought before shaking her head and blurting out, “I don’t know. It could have been anywhere.”

“I realize that you have a lot on your mind. But if you could just try to concentrate. This information could very well lead us to your husband’s killer. It might be the only thing that can.”

She responded by closing her eyes, and she kept them this way for many seconds before she suddenly opened them. “It was at a party, I think. A Christmas party, at Colonel Mueller’s home. Yes, it must’ve been there. We passed the man on the way out and, and he nodded at my husband.”

“Like he knew him?” questioned Hermann.

“Yes.”

“Tell me, what time did your husband leave the theater?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she cried out. “I had no reason to look at my watch or at a clock. But like I said, it was right before the opera started.”

“8:30,” Klaus said. “It started at 8:30.”

“Are you sure about that?” Hermann replied.

“I saw the opera maybe a week beforehand. And, no, Ezio Pinza no longer performs the title role. The Americans, in fact, arrested him last year.”

“What a pity,” Hermann mumbled before turning back to the woman and saying, “Frau Schiller, did your husband have any enemies?”

For the first time since the conversation started, the woman looked at Hermann. She sneered as well. “You.”

“You mean he didn’t like Jews?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“What I mean is someone in particular. Someone who had a personal reason to cause him harm.”

Again, Frau Schiller turned to Klaus. “There were people who feared my husband, but no one would dare cause him harm. He was the strongest man alive and feared nothing, even going to the Eastern Front.”

Hermann had no more questions to ask. So the interview ended, and Klaus said goodbye to the woman, and the two men left the apartment and the building and started toward the car.

“I’ll contact Colonel Mueller when we return to the palace,” Klaus said as they again crossed the cobblestones, which exhausted both men, who were already well past tired. “To see if he can identify this average and unimposing lieutenant. At the very least, he should be able to give us the names of everyone at the party.”

Hermann nodded. “It would be interesting to know as well if either of the other murdered men attended the party.”

“I’ll find out,” Klaus declared as he watched Hermann yawn, which caused him to yawn himself before adding, “When we get back, I’ll arrange for some guards for you and transportation to your flat. We can visit the second murder scene in the morning.”

Suddenly, Hermann didn’t feel so tired. Instead, he felt afraid.

chapter eleven: the pickle jar by the window

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THE DOOR CREAKED open, and with heaping doses of hesitation, Hermann took a step inside his old apartment.

His first reaction was that Klaus had been right about its state. It was a mess, with broken walls and garbage strewn everywhere. It had also been stripped of everything of value, apart from the memories, which were there in abundance.

Trying to ignore them, Hermann took another step, and he heard the guard in the hallway close the door behind him. Which caused him to not only stop but realize that he had just become a prisoner in his own home. But he realized, too, that it was a better prison than his previous one. It was also better than sleeping in the office.

He continued on, and he reached a pair of empty easels on the living room floor. Stopping again, he turned toward the kitchen and saw the large and empty pickle jar by the window, just where Ana had left it. He noticed as well an upside-down picture frame on the floor nearby, and he crept over to it and picked it up.

Through the broken glass, he looked at an image of Ana and himself on their wedding day, and this brought it to life.

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HERMANN WAS BACK in Mr. Jacobs’ suit and was carrying his bride across the threshold, who was wearing a simple white dress and gripping an equally simple white rose bouquet.

They had arrived after a short and basic ceremony at City Hall that both their families had boycotted. Hermann’s mother was especially upset by it and her son’s decision to marry outside their faith. She was so upset that she even held a funeral for him and sat shiva in mourning.

Not a single guest witnessed the wedding. But the two didn’t care, as they were overcome with the promise in front of them. Hermann, in particular, was glowing. He would say that he was glowing more than the bride. He was also punch-drunk from all the kissing they’d been doing in the aftermath of the ceremony. He was so intoxicated with his new life state that he couldn’t feel the burden in his arms and could barely sense the aroma from Ana’s favorite perfume rising toward him.

“It’s not exactly Bled,” he told her, referring to the mountain resort town in what was then Yugoslavia that he had promised to take her for their honeymoon when they first got engaged. This didn’t happen because they ended up getting married much sooner than they had planned, and he had no time to save for it.

“I don’t need any Bleds,” she murmured while gazing into his eyes.

I can only imagine what she was feeling. But from the way my grandfather described her on that day and at that moment, and from my conversation with Věra, I bet he wasn’t so much holding her up as he was keeping her from reaching the ceiling.

“We’ll make it there one day,” Hermann went on, “when I’m the richest lawyer in Prague and you’re the most famous artist in the city. We’ll stay right on the lake, at the best suite in the Grand Hotel. And I’ll carry you right up those 99 steps I told you about. Přísahám!”

Ana smiled. She smiled at the vow he had just sworn in Czech while I’m sure thinking that the only one that would ever matter to her was the one he took earlier that day.

Suddenly, they both giggled and for no reason at all. Then, with his heart beating so that he thought it would explode from his chest, Hermann spun his bride around until she began to fade.

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AGAIN, HERMANN WAS staring at the broken picture. He did while recalling how he thought he’d never be happier than he was at the instant it was snapped.

But this only depressed him. So he removed the shards of broken glass from the frame and put the picture on the empty mantle, just where it had been and where it would always belong.

“Miláčku,” came Ana’s soft voice, expressing her pet name for Hermann.

Spinning around, he saw a more recent edition of his wife teasingly skipping into the bedroom.

He rushed after her.

But when he sprinted inside the room, all he saw was more mess. This included the remains of their featherbed on the floor, along with a single bare pillow on top of it. Which he stared at while feeling his body hollow out. It hollowed until he crashed onto the bed, where he grabbed the pillow and clutched it before rolling himself into a ball. “Aničko moje!” he cried out to his wife in her mother tongue. “Proč?”

He wanted her to tell him why. But he didn’t get an answer. Instead, his past once more came alive, and he found himself as a young man running through Old Town on his first night in Prague.

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HERMANN WAS RUNNING because he was more than an hour late for his get-together with Klaus and Ana, the result of him getting lost in the twisted streets of the city for the first of the many times he would.

Fed up with all the conflicting directions he’d been given by the passersby he asked, he decided to go inside a bookstore to buy a map.

But they didn’t have any. Though the shop owner took pity on him and his exasperation, and he gave him an old brass compass he found in a junk drawer. A compass I would come to know well.

“Just keep heading due west,” the man said with a grin as he motioned the way. “You’re bound to reach Hus Street eventually.”

With the aid of the compass, Hermann finally found both the street and U Zlatého Tygra.

As he stuffed the device into his jacket pocket, he rushed inside the pub and saw Klaus, who grinned and pointed to three full beers on the large communal table in front of him. “You’re way behind, my friend,” he said.

Relieved that Klaus wasn’t mad at him and his tardiness, Hermann hurried to the table, just as a waiter brought a fourth beer and tried to put it beside the others.

“No,” Hermann pleaded as he waved the man off. “I have enough.”

But the waiter didn’t listen. He put the beer down with the others and left.

“They just keep serving them here,” Klaus told Hermann, “whether you ask for them or not.”

“Or whether you’re here or not?” Hermann wondered.

“We have three seats, so we keep getting three beers. You either drink up in this place or you get the hell out.”

“Then I guess I better drink up.”

Toward this end, before he even sat down, Hermann grabbed one of the beers, just as the woman across from Klaus rose from her seat and smiled.

Little did Hermann know from her picture that Ana was a head taller than him. But he did know that this should’ve bothered him and greatly diminished the way she had aspired him. He actually wanted it to. He wanted to feel decidedly unaspired. He wanted this badly and for lots of reasons.

But nothing could do this, even when she was replaced by his single bare pillow. All she had evoked in him those many years earlier was still lingering and alive in him and so was she.

chapter twelve: it happened on kant street

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MY GRANDFATHER WOULD say that the mystery of Klaus was greater than that of the murdered men. While in some respects he knew Klaus well, in others he knew him not at all, and in many ways he would remain a mystery.

It was only during my trip to Prague that I would uncover some of this mystery. One of the first things I did was visit Klaus’s hometown in the north of the country, in what was once part of the Sudetenland.

I noticed right away how little there was to indicate that the city and its surrounding towns had once had German names and German-majority populations. After World War II, under the Beneš Decrees, Czechoslovakia expelled most of its German citizens from the area, who’d been living there almost as long as Jews had been living in Prague but who were also among the most ardent supporters of the Nazis. These refugees were part of the fifteen million ethnic Germans who were forced to flee from their homes across Europe at that time.

I would discover little about Klaus in the city where he was born, raised, and buried. Apart from his gravestone, I found his birth and death certificates and various unimportant documents from his early life. But I could find nothing about the events from the time of his falling-out with Hermann in college to his reuniting with him in Theresienstadt.

For this I had to go back to Prague and visit the archives of the Military History Institute on U Památníku Street. Though just getting access to these archives was difficult, as it was open only to accredited historians, which I decidedly was not.

Fortunately, my grandfather had taught me how to become fast friends with the locals.

Before returning to Prague, I took a quick trip to Karlovy Vary. This is a spa city a few hours west of the capital that is famous for its hot springs and an herbal liqueur produced there called Becherovka, which in my grandfather’s day was known as Karlsbader Becherbitter.

From the Jan Becher company store, I bought a few bottles of a special edition of this liqueur that was infused with honey and only sold there, which my grandfather had once told me could put a smile on the face of the Devil. These bottles literally opened doors for me, including the institute’s.

I spent many weeks there, digging through stacks of mundane war documents with a German dictionary and my rudimentary knowledge of the language, which I never really learned despite my grandparents being native speakers and my own special connection to it.

Finally, I discovered something interesting. At the conclusion of this case, the Nazis conducted a thorough inquest of it.

While this provided little insight into what Klaus was thinking and feeling at the time the events took place, and in this respect he remains almost as much of a mystery to me as he was to my grandfather, I was able to cobble together many facts that are relevant not only to the story but also speak to Klaus’s motivations. These began with the events that coincided with Hermann’s return to his old apartment.

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KLAUS LEFT ČERNÍN Palace with the sun setting in front of him.

The first thing he must’ve seen was his Mercedes and the driver inside it. But he also saw something else: U Černého Vola across the square.

Klaus’s driver told the inquest that Klaus was just standing there glaring at the pub, I suppose much like he was glaring earlier while Hermann sipped his beer.

Eventually, he took a handful of steps toward it before he abruptly stopped and turned around, and he rushed into the back seat of his car, where he ordered the driver to leave at once.

Hurriedly, the Mercedes sped off. Again, it made its way through Hradčany and over the river. After passing through the maze, it returned Klaus to Old Town Square, a short distance from his final destination of the evening: Železná Street, one of the many ancient and crooked cobblestone roads in that part of the city, which leads from the southern end of the square.

Without enthusiasm, Klaus exited the car and crossed the square, just as a tram did. But even though it was speeding in his path, he didn’t stop or speed up. Indifferently, he crossed the tracks seconds before the tram passed. Then, once he reached Železná, he stopped and turned to a sun that had almost completely fallen.

The driver told the inquest that Klaus’s face had lost all color and that he looked as if he were anywhere but there. Where exactly he was I can’t say, but I do know that the inquest brought up Klaus’s troubled past.

This included one particular incident on Berlin’s Kant Street in 1928 that stuck out to me because, according to my grandfather, during the course of this case, Klaus would have an adverse reaction whenever anyone brought up Kant’s name.

The incident began when Klaus drunkenly stumbled out of The Eldorado club late one September evening. It was so late that the streets were empty. But they didn’t stay this way.

Two men came running out of their parked Dixi 3/15, a forerunner of today’s BMWs, and they accosted Klaus and started beating him against one of the walls of the club.

According to a witness inside the club, who watched in horror through a window, even in Klaus’s state he could’ve handled the men. Instead, the witness said that he egged them on. He was certain that Klaus had wanted the men to hurt him. He even laughed at their blows, in spite of their increasing savagery. He laughed until he could do so no more.

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BACK ON ŽELEZNÁ Street, Klaus turned his head.

He was now facing U Hynků, the pub Hermann had mentioned to him earlier and one of their favorite drinking spots when they were in college.

Like he had in front of U Černého Vola, Klaus took a few steps toward the pub. But he again forced himself to stop and turn around, and he started down Železná and made his way through the arched entranceway of number 18, a sixteenth-century building that today looks even older than that. Inside it is both a courtyard and a set of old stone steps, and up the latter he climbed to the second floor, where he rang the doorbell.

At once, the door swung open, and a tall servant around thirty with bleached-blonde hair and blue eyes greeted him in a pristine black uniform.

“Hello, Kamča,” Klaus said with a forced smile.

Kamča replied in kind, and she let him into the foyer, where she took his overcoat. “The lady is getting dressed.”

Klaus nodded, and he shuffled down the corridor toward a door, watched by Kamča as she hung up his coat.

“Is that you, Klaus?” came another female voice, from behind the door as Klaus stopped in front of it.

“It’s me,” answered Klaus as he stared at his aging face in a mirror at the end of the hallway. Kamča told the inquest that he was doing so while touching the lines and wrinkles around his eyes as if their existence had surprised him.

“I’ll be ready in a few minutes,” the woman in the bedroom went on.

“All right,” Klaus mumbled while looking as if he wanted to cry.

“Will you be staying overnight?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“You know I don’t. You’re always welcome here. Where would you like to go tonight?”

Klaus looked as if he were trying to come up with an answer. He tried and tried, but finally he uttered, “You think, you think we could just stay in tonight?”

“Are you not feeling well?”

“I’m feeling tired. But if you really want to go out . . .”

“I think staying home would be a wonderful idea. I’ll have Kamča cook us up something. Is there anything particular you would like?”

“Anything would be fine.”

“Are you sure you’re just tired? You sound a little off.”

“I am a little off. Or maybe a lot.”

“What’s wrong, dear? Does it have something to do with that nasty investigation you’ve been involved with?”

“I guess so.”

“I know you can’t discuss the specifics of it with me, but can’t you at least tell me what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing’s bothering me.”

“Did you have some kind of setback today?”

“Actually, it was quite the opposite. I have every confidence now that the case will be resolved soon.”

“Shouldn’t that make you happy?”

“It should,” he argued, as if he were trying to convince himself.

Suddenly, the door to the bedroom swung open, and Klaus turned toward it and the beautiful woman standing in front of it, who was wearing a lavish white evening gown.

Years later, this woman would insist to me that Klaus in some ways adored her. She said he saw her much like a wall he could lean on. He knew, too, that there was a safety with her that he couldn’t find anywhere else. But she believed as well that he found her draining, and this was likely the last thing he wanted.

As with Kamča, Klaus forced a mild smile upon the woman. Based on everything I know about him, I bet he also forced upon himself the even milder belief that her appearance had brought him some joy.

chapter thirteen: a door ajar

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HERMANN WOKE WHEN the rising sun began seeping through his drape-less bedroom windows.

Despite the state of his bed, sleeping on feathers was better than straw. So, despite the mixed feelings he had about returning home and all the bittersweet memories they evoked, it was the best night of sleep he had since his deportation. Not only did he feel rested, but he didn’t feel the odd coldness he felt all the time in Theresienstadt, regardless of the weather. It was also the first time since leaving Prague that he didn’t feel the least bit sick. He actually felt good.

Like the day before, he again felt enthused about working on the case and again felt a lack of grief, and he again felt guilty about both. While trying not to think about this, he got up and tried to wash and groom himself in the broken bathroom mirror.

But it was a hopeless task, as he was well past the point of repair, at least from soap and water. So he gave up and went to the front door of his apartment.

Outside this stood a burly guard, who led him to his far smaller colleague sleeping in the back seat of the car that had taken Hermann home the night before. In it they were quickly passing Maisel Street, where Hermann noticed that the door to the gate of the Maisel Synagogue was ajar.

While he contemplated its meaning, the three continued through the maze of the ghost town before making their way over the river, with Hermann once more hearing Smetana’s “Vltava.” He heard it until they reached the other side of town and came upon a pair of paramedics carrying a corpse down a sidewalk.

Hermann couldn’t be sure of what had happened, but he had a pretty good idea, as it was a sight all too common in Prague at the time. The suicide rate in the city had skyrocketed since the occupation and was showing no signs of abating despite the dwindling population.

Slowly, the car passed the paramedics, and Hermann stared at the dead person. With his envy toward the corpse increasing to the extent that he was leaning toward it, he heard another song. He heard Zdena Vincíková’s soft voice echo inside his head as she sang the chorus of “Smutná Neděle.”

It came to an end when a tram passed them from the opposite direction. Now staring at it, Hermann recalled at how, from the early days of the occupation, Jews had to ride in the back of them and that was only if there were two cars. If there was only one, he simply had to wait for the next to arrive.

I think it was because of experiences like these that Jews like my grandparents were so supportive of the American Civil Rights Movement. The prejudice and discrimination they were reading about in newspapers wasn’t something abstract. They were witnessing history repeat itself.

It didn’t take long before the tram left Hermann’s view, and he could now see the sprawling gardens below the castle. Which led him to recall the endless Saturdays he spent in these with Ana and Klaus during the months of their friendship. It made him recall his falling-out with Klaus there as well. This recollection was so strong that he could see the look of horror and betrayal on the face of Klaus. He saw it as clearly as he had on the day it happened.

His guilt from this was unbearable. It only let up when the Mercedes parked in front of the palace.

Klaus faded, replaced by the empty parking lot Hermann was looking at from his window. Which was when he realized how early it was. This was reinforced after he entered the building with his guards. He didn’t even need to look at the clocks on the wall to know that it wasn’t even seven. It was sufficient that Marta wasn’t there, as she was always at work by then.

Dragging his feet, Hermann slithered into his office, and he again reviewed the police reports.

But after just a few paragraphs, his eyes became heavy and closed, and he fell asleep. He stayed this way until the door swung open, which caused him to not only wake but jump back. He almost fell out of his seat.

chapter fourteen: out of a wagnerian opera

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THROUGH HIS DROWSINESS, Hermann saw from the clock on the wall that it was just after nine. He saw, too, Klaus standing in the doorway, and he noticed how disheveled the man looked. Not only had he haphazardly dressed that morning as if he had been in a hurry, but he hadn’t even shaved. He looked tired as well, even more than the day before. All this made Hermann recall the nightmare Klaus had been experiencing in the car, and he asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Klaus grumbled.

Hermann could tell this was a lie. But he pretended otherwise and nodded his head. “So, what about our average and unimposing lieutenant?”

“Colonel Mueller says that three or four men could match the description. He gave me their names, but Colonel Reidl doesn’t want you questioning them. He’s having Captain Kleiner do it.”

“What about the other dead men? Were they at the party?”

“Captain Fischer was but not Captain Gruber.”

The conversation fell silent, and this continued until Hermann mentioned, “I saw something peculiar this morning on the way here. The door to the gate of the Maisel Synagogue was ajar.”

“What’s so peculiar about that?”

“It wasn’t like that yesterday.”

“We can check it out if you’d like.”

“Then may we talk to the man who found the body at the Spanish Synagogue?” Hermann asked while sifting through the police reports. “Mr. Hrabal?”

Klaus answered by pointing into the hallway, and the two left the office and started down the corridor.

Again, Hermann couldn’t help feel enthusiasm, and again he felt guilty about it. So he tried dampening it. But no matter what he tried or how strong his guilt got, he only moved faster, and he and Klaus approached both the reception area and Marta’s desk.

“Herr Weiss,” she cried as she rose to her feet with a piping hot cup of faux coffee in her hand and surprise on her face. “I was just about to bring this to you. Was I late this morning?”

“I very much doubt it,” he said with a grin as she gave him the cup, which he downed in one gulp.

“Herr Weiss,” she mumbled with even more surprise, “that was scalding hot.”

“I know, and you don’t know how much I appreciate it.”

Gulping down scorching hot coffee would become one of Hermann’s trademarks. He drank it this way until his death. I once asked him why, and he said that eight months of Theresienstadt had made him appreciate hot coffee and that there was no such thing as too hot.

Glancing at Klaus, Hermann could tell that he was anxious to get going, so he looked for a place to put down his cup.

Marta grabbed it, much as she had done over the years, and Hermann and Klaus started off.

“Is there anything you want me to do today?” she called out.

Hermann stopped and turned toward her, and he saw the same eager expression he knew from all the years they had worked together, which he never ceased to admire.

“I was terribly bored yesterday,” she added.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “you can be of great help to me and our investigation. The Jewish community before they left town, so to speak, must’ve assigned responsibility for the upkeep of their synagogues and other communal properties to some local individuals or companies. If you could do some research at City Hall and find out who’s responsible for the six synagogues in Josefov, I’d very much appreciate it. I’d also like to know everything you can find out about these people or companies themselves.”

“When do you need it?”

“There’s no rush. Accuracy is more important than speed.”

Marta nodded, and Klaus and Hermann continued down the hall. They then descended the stairs and passed Hercules and Hydra in the building’s lobby before exiting.

Waiting for them outside was Klaus’s Mercedes, whose engine started on sight of them. Though before they could take more than a few steps toward it, a female voice stopped them by yelling, “Klaus!”

Turning toward the voice, Hermann saw a beautiful woman in her thirties rush toward Klaus with a paper bag in her hand.

She was about Hermann’s height and was wearing an expensive black coat and an equally expensive black purse. She also had a big flashy smile on her face that made her look vacuous. But none of these things were what Hermann really noticed about her, which was how she looked like a character out of a Wagnerian opera, with long and curled platinum-blonde hair and light-blue eyes. Her skin was also so fair that he wondered whether this was the first time the sun had set upon it.

Still, there was something about the woman that made Hermann think that there was more to her than the archetype she was projecting, even if he didn’t know what it was. So, while he felt a visceral dislike toward her because of everything she represented, especially when he noticed the National Socialist Women’s League pin on her coat, he found her intriguing too. He couldn’t stop looking at her and thinking about her.

“You left your wallet,” she told Klaus as she stopped in front of him. She further reached inside her purse and whipped the wallet out.

This caused Klaus’s face to turn a shade of red. After he tersely thanked her, he grabbed the wallet and stuffed it into his jacket as quickly as possible.

While glancing at not only this but also his disheveled appearance, the woman added, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he grumbled, much as he had when Hermann had asked him this.

“Did you have some kind of accident this morning? I heard a crashing sound.”

“I had a bit of a tumble. I was in a hurry. I woke up late.”

“I would’ve had Kamča wake you if I knew you needed to get up at a certain time. She was up early baking rohlíky.”

The woman took this opportunity to offer Klaus the paper bag. “They’re so good that you don’t even need to butter them.”

“Thanks,” he said with little enthusiasm before taking the bag with even less.

“Do you still want to go out tonight?”

“I told you I did,” he groaned. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

The woman didn’t respond, as she was too busy staring at Hermann. Which led to an uncomfortable silence that overtook all of them, driven by the same thing: the incongruence of Hermann and Klaus together. She gawked at this for many seconds while trying to make sense of it.

Unable to do so, she turned to Klaus. “So?”

“Excuse me?” he uttered.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

It was clear that Klaus didn’t want to do this. But he told the woman what she wanted to know while adding, “He, he’s an old friend of mine.”

“Strange,” the woman remarked as she turned back to Hermann and continued her gaze, this time with a curious smile. The source of this was that she found Hermann as interesting as he found her. She would say that she found him interesting in so many ways that she wasn’t sure which was the most significant. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wanted to know more about him. “I don’t think Klaus has ever mentioned you before.”

“He’s never mentioned you either,” Hermann said, causing Klaus to sneer from behind the woman.

But this didn’t last, and Klaus pointed to her and grudgingly mentioned, “This is my lady friend Gertrud Gross.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Hermann told her with a forced smile.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met any of Klaus’s old friends,” she told him back.

“Perhaps he doesn’t have many,” Hermann said before noticing that Klaus was again sneering at him and doing so far stronger, which he grinned at.

Again, Klaus’s sneer didn’t stay on his face. It faded the moment Gertrud spun toward him. “Of course, you’re inviting Hermann to join us tonight,” she declared. “He looks as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks.”

“I’m afraid he’s terribly busy,” Klaus insisted.

But Gertrud was persistent. Despite Klaus’s continued resistance to the idea, she let him know that she’d get her way.

Finally, Hermann injected himself into the conversation by agreeing to the invitation, and Klaus sneered at him for a third time, with this the strongest and most serious.

Not seeing it, Gertrud did nothing but smile at Hermann. “Six o’clock or so, at U Bílého Lva. It’s not far from—”

“—I know where it is,” Hermann interrupted.

Again, Gertrud smiled. “You don’t know how much I’m looking forward to this.”

These weren’t just words to her. She really meant them. She didn’t even know whether she’d make it through the day.

chapter fifteen: the stomping feet

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WHEN HERMANN AND Klaus returned to the Maisel Synagogue, the gate’s door was closed. It was locked too.

“I could get someone to open it,” Klaus said with an expression that indicated he was still perturbed over what had happened outside the palace.

“I’d rather speak to Mr. Hrabal,” Hermann replied while gazing into the darkness of the building as he gripped the bars of the gate.

Klaus nodded, and the two returned to the car.

While Hermann munched on the crescent rolls Kamča had baked, which were so good that he had to keep himself from fainting, he again guided Klaus’s driver through the maze of Josefov from the back seat of the Mercedes. This time he had to guide him well to the east of their destination by driving down Dlouhá and Kozí streets before coming back around Vězeňská. Even then, the two had to walk through a courtyard to reach the apartment building beyond it.

“I only accepted her invitation to avoid a scene,” Hermann said after sensing Klaus’s continued agitation as they approached the end of the courtyard. “You can make up some excuse for me tonight.”

“She’d just reschedule it,” Klaus growled. “She always gets what she wants.”

“I apologize then.”

“Don’t pretend you’re sorry,” Klaus snapped, “or that you’ve ever been sorry.”

Hermann saw that Klaus regretted his anger at once and knew that its source came not from what had just happened but from something that had happened long before it, in the gardens below the castle. But still he told him, “You’re wrong. I’m sorry for lots of things I’ve done. I’m even more sorry for things I haven’t. I’m sorry for things I can never apologize for.”

The conversation ended, and the two reached Dušní Street, where they stepped inside a five-story apartment building across from the synagogue and climbed to the fourth floor. On a door down the corridor, Klaus knocked, and a tall elderly man greeted the two in Czech with lots of friendliness.

Klaus responded in the same language and with perfect fluency. He told the man what they were doing there and what they wanted from him.

With great excitement, the man led the two inside his flat and up to a window that overlooked the synagogue so he could show them where he discovered the body.

“Pane Hrabale,” Hermann began in Czech, with a lack of confidence in his words and his mind fumbling for the right ones to add after it. Even though he had lived in Prague for more than twenty years with a native Czech speaker and could read and understand the language without much problem, he was never able to turn himself into a fluent speaker, despite how much he loved Czech and enjoyed both speaking it and peppering his sentences with it.

He did the latter so often when I was growing up that I would often repeat the words in school and among others without realizing no one would understand them. To this day, I have to fight the urge to use many of them, especially as they often sound better than their English equivalents. Why say “bad weather” when you can say “slota”? Why say “careful!” when you can say “pozor!”? The sound of the words evokes their meaning.

From my grandfather, who was certainly the unlikeliest of ambassadors for the Czech language, I learned not just the language but just how beautiful it is. It’s a beauty that brightens the darkest of my days, where I recall the words my grandfather would read to me from the threshold of my room when I was a child. The words of Božena Němcová and the Brothers Čapek and Ota Pavel. Even when I didn’t understand what all these words meant, they would send me drifting to the most blissful sleep.

A big part of the language’s beauty comes from the strange musical quality it possesses, something that never ceased to cause wonder in both Hermann and me. Czechs sing when they talk, without even realizing they’re singing. My grandfather said that he had seen operas that weren’t as melodious as an everyday conversation between two random Czechs. Even the banal conversation between Klaus and Mr. Hrabal sounded musical to his ears.

The problem Hermann had with speaking Czech fluently was that it had been too easy getting by speaking German in Prague, especially with Ana. At times like the one in Hrabal’s apartment, he regretted how easy, as the last thing he wanted was for Klaus to have to translate for him.

“I can speak German,” Hrabal insisted in this language, over the sound of a small dog barking in the adjoining room. “He was sitting right there,” he added while pointing to the spot through the window, “the Nazi officer, up against the shrubs.”

“You found him while walking your dog,” Hermann said.

Hrabal nodded. “That’s right.”

“Was this when you left the building or when you returned?”

“It was when I came back.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t out there when you left?”

“I’m certain of it. I would have seen him from the building’s front door. And Pepin would’ve too. That’s my dog.”

“You said this happened at ten. Are you certain of this as well?”

“I’m certain of it. I take Pepin out every night at ten or within a few minutes of it. We go right after the nightly news on the radio or what passes for it.”

Right then, Hrabal must’ve remembered who was in the room with him, because he spun toward Klaus. “Of course, I don’t listen to those horrible BBC broadcasts.”

Klaus nodded. He did so skeptically as Hrabal shot Hermann a surreptitious wink.

“Had you ever seen the dead man before?” Hermann asked while trying to suppress a smile.

“Never,” Hrabal answered.

“Are you sure about that? You never saw him even in passing?”

“Not even in passing.”

“Do you remember where you went that night?”

Hrabal pointed out the window. “Where I always go: around the block.” He further demonstrated his path by turning in something of a circle. “Down Dušní, then around U Staré Školy onto Vězeňská before coming back up Dušní.”

From this it wasn’t difficult for Hermann to determine that the man’s route was a simple and relatively small rectangle. “You didn’t hear anything along the way?” he asked.

“Like what?” Hrabal asked back.

“A fight or commotion. Some kind of disturbance.”

Hrabal shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything like that. Or anything at all really. But truthfully my hearing isn’t what it used to be. I’m surprised that I can hear all those stomping feet.”

“Stomping feet?”

“Almost every night I hear them.”

“For how long has this been going on?”

“Months now.”

“Who’s behind them?”

“That I’ve never seen. But he must be somewhere nearby.”

“Did you hear these stomping feet on the night of the murder?”

“I did, in fact.”

“On your way from the building or on your way back?”

“Strictly speaking, from the moment I step outside my building, I’m on my way back.”

“Was it during the first half of your walk or the second?”

“I’d say that it was sometime in the middle of it.”

Hermann had nothing left to ask. So he began eyeing the door. But before he could take a step toward it, another question came to him. “Have you noticed anything else strange of late?”

Hrabal thought about this awhile, and he mentioned, “I did see this woman a few nights after I found the body. As Pepin and I were leaving the building, she was walking inside that long-closed synagogue over there.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She was too far away. All I can tell you is that she was wearing a yellow shawl.”

Now there really were no more questions to ask. So the two men left the apartment, much to the disappointment of Mr. Hrabal, who had clearly been enjoying the company, and they returned down the staircase.

“What do you make of those ‘stomping feet’?” Klaus wondered as they stopped outside the front door.

“I’m not sure,” Hermann replied. “The only thing I’m certain of is, like the previous murder, this one didn’t take place where the victim was found.”

“Maybe he just didn’t hear it take place. He did say that his hearing is bad.”

“He had no trouble hearing those ‘stomping feet.’”

“They could have been loud.”

“So would a murder most likely. Besides, he had no trouble hearing me, and I wasn’t speaking loudly at all. The dog, too, would’ve alerted him to anything unusual. He barked the moment he heard my bad Czech.”

“So where do you think Captain Gruber was killed?”

“That I don’t know,” Hermann said before he and Klaus walked up to the shrubbery, where Hermann noted, “This was about where Gruber was found.”

“About,” answered Klaus.

“With his back against the bushes?”

“Yes.”

Carefully, Hermann inspected the area in and around the bushes and the cobblestone path that was behind them and ran parallel to them. But he saw nothing out of the ordinary, nor were there any footprints on the ground or broken branches or any other indication that someone had trampled through the area. The scene seemed completely devoid of clues, which only intensified his speculation.

“Tell me something,” he mumbled to Klaus before taking a long pause and adding, “were you here when the body was found?”

“I arrived about a half hour afterward,” Klaus answered.

“Had the body been moved?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was it sitting straight ahead or at an angle?”

“What difference does it make?” Klaus grumbled.

“Humor me,” groaned Hermann.

Klaus sighed. But he gave the question some thought before saying, “It, it was at an angle.”

“What kind of angle?”

“He was sitting this way,” Klaus explained while motioning toward his right.

Hermann turned back to the shrubbery. “As we’ve already established the killer is right-handed, we can assume that he didn’t lay the body down from this side of the bushes, or the victim would’ve been facing our left. So that means he must’ve come from the path and laid the body down from there.”

Both men looked at the path, and they saw that it headed straight to the entrance of the Spanish Synagogue.

Without saying a word, they began making their way toward it.

chapter sixteen: a mirror reflecting time

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GERTRUD PARKED HER pristine white Horch 930V Phaeton convertible on Smetana Quay.

From the way she described it to me, she must’ve looked like the cover image of one of those magazines that promote an affluent lifestyle. She had a big smile on her face, and it must’ve seemed like there wasn’t a single thought going on inside her head.

Though this faded when she heard something that sounded like a gunshot echoing in the distance, which caused her to grip the steering wheel as she recalled a similar sound. A sound she didn’t want to recall.

Quickly, this became intolerable, and she forced her hands to release the wheel. She also forced the smile back on her face in defiance of herself, and she jumped out of her car and raced across the street to the riverbank.

By the railing, she gazed northward, not just at the docks and the boats making their way upstream but at something she could only see in her mind, something that was tugging her forward.

Resisting this, she turned in the opposite direction and began waltzing down the riverbank. Knowing her as I do, I bet she looked as if she owned the whole damn city as she chugged the cool air blowing off the roaring water beside her. She pretended, too, that she really was the happy and carefree woman she was projecting and that she could control her emotions and all the hate rising from them and not let them control her.

But she couldn’t do this for long, and it had nothing to do with her. It was because of the bench she was approaching, where sat a woman she knew all too well.

The woman was a little older than her and both unkempt and filthy, and she had a yellow shawl over her head and shoulders. She was a little smaller than Gertrud too, with jet-black hair and eyes of the same color. With the latter, she was staring into the river without any signs of life. They barely blinked.

I bet she also had a look of quiet desperation, the same I’ve seen in others like her over the years. It’s how we recognize each other, even when we’re not filthy and unkempt.

Despite the obvious differences between the women, Gertrud saw someone who was much like her. Looking at her was like looking into a mirror that reflected time, and it made her doubt whether she really could control the feelings that were always looking for a reason to explode.

The similarity between the women wasn’t something Gertrud only noticed that morning. She noticed it whenever she ran into her, which happened more often than what any standard deviation of coincidence could allow. Their meeting happened so often that Gertrud wondered if their fates were entwined.

Still, as she approached the woman, she wanted to walk right past her with the barest of acknowledgement, as she had important things to do that morning and didn’t want anything to distract her from them.

But she couldn’t quite convince herself to do this, and she strode up to the woman and stopped. “How are you this morning?” she murmured, though she knew from experience that she wasn’t likely to get an answer.

The woman didn’t disappoint her. Not only didn’t she say anything, but she acted as if she hadn’t heard a thing.

“Did you sleep well?” Gertrud asked. “Or at all?”

Again, the woman neither spoke nor reacted.

“What happened to the blanket I gave you?” was the next question Gertrud didn’t expect an answer to.

When she didn’t get one, she gently took hold of the woman’s shoulder and whispered, “What am I going to do with you, Klara?”

Klara didn’t answer, but she at least looked at Gertrud, who could see a speck of hope in the woman’s eyes. Or at least the wanting of it. Which led Gertrud to say, “My offer from yesterday still stands. You could think of it as a favor to me. Which would be true. You have no idea how.”

Klara didn’t exactly reply. But Gertrud could see some acquiescence in her eyes.

Jumping at this, Gertrud nodded toward the building across the street. “There’s someone I need to speak with for just a few minutes inside the café. But right afterward I’m coming back for you. Will you promise me you’ll wait?”

Klara didn’t answer. But her expression remained the same, and Gertrud took this for a yes.

Quickly, she backed her way across the street, and she rushed inside Café Slavia while again pretending she was in control of herself.

In the entranceway, she saw someone. He was a tall and well-built balding man a little younger than her, who was sitting at a table in the middle of what was and still is a narrow and long hall.

The man saw Gertrud at the same time, and he rose to his feet and grinned as she strutted toward him with one of her smiles. Which remained on her face as the two kissed each other’s cheeks and sat across from one another.

“I’d order you a cup,” he said as he lifted his own, with a voice that seemed to come from a man much smaller, “but it took a half hour to get mine, and I’m a regular here.”

“Why do you keep coming back to this place?” she grumbled. “The service is terrible. It’s always been terrible. It’ll be terrible a hundred years from now.”

He nodded toward the riverbank. “I love the view. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without it. Even the idea of this frightens me.”

Gertrud smirked. “Tonda, you’ve been a very naughty boy.”

“Whatever do you mean?” he asked with feigned innocence.

“I haven’t seen or heard from you in weeks, and you know how I don’t like that.”

“It couldn’t be avoided, my dear. It’s been a hectic few weeks. Lots of craziness in Josefov right now, all over the place. My duties have me coming and going at all hours of the night. I’ve barely slept since the last time we met.”

“Malý, you scoundrel!” bellowed a male voice from nearby.

The two turned toward it and saw a grinning man holding out his hand to Tonda.

“Good to see you,” Tonda said as he shook the man’s hand with his own grin.

“How is it that you haven’t been arrested?” the man asked with his glee unrestrained.

“Perhaps they haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Tonda replied, causing all three to laugh before the man walked off.

“So,” Gertrud continued once the man was out of earshot, “business is good, I presume.”

“Better than good,” Tonda told her, “and it’s only going to get better. Early next week, in fact.”

“Is this that big deal you’ve been alluding to for so long?”

“It is indeed, my dear, and it’s all but complete. Me and my associate are just waiting on a little something so we can pack up the goods.”

“Associate?” she uttered with surprise. “What associate?”

“Luděk.”

“You’ve never mentioned such a man before. Who is he?”

“Someone I’ve worked with for years. I even knew his father a bit before they sent him away for embezzlement. A fine man otherwise, whom I’d trust with my life. Or at least someone else’s.”

“I sure hope you can trust his son,” murmured Gertrud with a slow shake of her head.

“I’m telling you I can, my dear,” Tonda insisted. “It’s all downhill from here. The hard part is over.”

“See, and you were worried the deal would fall through.”

“You were right, just like you always are. There wasn’t the slightest hitch.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Not surprised, astonished. Frankly, I was certain this would be the death of me. I even made out my will.”

“Don’t talk like that. I’ve got enough to worry about.”

“Like what?”

“Like Klaus,” she answered after glancing around the almost empty café. “He’s been acting awfully strange of late, and it’s making me awfully suspicious.”

“You don’t think he’s up to something unkosher, so to speak?”

“I don’t know what he’s up to. The man’s impenetrable. But speaking of ‘unkosher,’ I saw something terribly odd this morning, to say the least.”

“Saw what?”

Again, Gertrud looked around the café before leaning toward Tonda and whispering, “I saw him with a Jew.”

“A Jew?” Tonda whispered back in shock. “There are still Jews in Prague?”

“Apparently,” she said while not quite believing it herself. “Klaus gave me some nonsense about how they’re old friends.”

“Who do you think he is?”

“I don’t know, but he looked like he had just come from one of the camps. Despite this, the two appeared almost congenial. They were about to take a car ride together as if this were the most normal of things. Someone might’ve thought they were colleagues or something.”

“Do you think this Jew is some kind of collaborator?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Trust me.”

“Maybe I should delay my deal, just in case you have a problem of some sort that you need help with. Another week probably won’t make a difference.”

“But it could. You’ve been working on this deal for so long, Tonda. I’d hate to see it fall apart at the end. It would pain me greatly. If anything . . . you should probably hasten the deal.”

“Hasten it?” he quietly cried out. “Hasten it by how much?”

“By how much could you hasten it?” Gertrud questioned while again leaning forward.

“I could even get it done tomorrow, if necessary,” Tonda conjectured while leaning forward himself. “Or the day after tomorrow at the latest. Believe me, my partners would love nothing more than to hasten it. They seem quite anxious to get the deal done.”

“It seems then that you have nothing to lose by hastening it,” she noted after sitting back in her chair.

“Only a little something,” he noted back with a smile before patting his jacket pocket and adding, “And I have my will with me at all times.”

chapter seventeen: the book of creation

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WITH SURPRISE, HERMANN and Klaus found the doors to the Spanish Synagogue unlocked.

Slowly, Hermann opened them, and the two stepped inside the vestibule of Josefov’s newest synagogue, having been constructed less than a century earlier on the grounds of what had been the oldest.

These steps represented the first time in years Hermann had been in such a place or any house of worship, apart from some very makeshift ones in recent times. So he tried to feel something.

But it was just a beautiful but ordinary building, much like all others he had been inside, and he found this deflating.

The synagogue looked empty but was well lit. The lights surprised Hermann even more than finding the doors open. But what really surprised him was the friendly male voice that called out, “Who’s there?”

“Hello,” was Klaus’s response. “We . . .”

Klaus couldn’t finish his thought, as a man came limping into his view.

He was in his forties and a little taller and larger than average, with a big cherubic face, and he was holding a pair of clock hands and some mechanical parts. But what Hermann noticed most about him was how he was wearing a black cloth kippah and wearing it on the front of his head instead of in the back as it’s normally worn. He was also wearing a pair of grimy blue work dungarees and heavily padded slippers. Though even with the latter, every step brought him pain, which was all over his face. He would wince whenever his feet hit the floor, and he looked as if the imbalance caused by his movements could lead him to fall over for the slightest of reasons. But Hermann would discover that the man’s feet were the least of his problems. He noticed this soon after the man noticed him.

A big smile came across the man’s face. It was as if he were witnessing a long-lost brother. Which led him to put the clock hands and the parts in a pocket of his dungarees and stagger up to Hermann, where he did two things. The first was to hand Hermann a kippah like his from one of his pockets, and the second was to shake Hermann’s hand. He shook it hard and over and over as he cried out, “You’ve come back.”

“Back?” Hermann uttered with confusion, which caused the man to release his hand and say, “You Jews, you’ve come back to Prague.”

Hermann grinned, realizing that, despite the man’s obvious mental limitations, even he could tell Hermann’s ethnicity. “I’m afraid it’s just me who’s returned,” he let the man know while putting on the kippah.

Disappointment came across the man’s face, and it only became more accentuated when he glanced at Klaus and his uniform.

“Do you work here?” Hermann asked.

“I’m Ivo,” answered the man, with his disappointment having vanished and his smile having returned. “I’m the caretaker of the synagogues.”

“Ivo what?”

“Ivo Pokorný. Do you know that ‘pokorný’ means ‘humble’ in Czech? Rabbi Popper gave me the name. He said that it was the most important thing a man could be.”

“I gather that you take care of more than just this synagogue.”

Ivo nodded, and he counted the buildings with his fingers while mumbling to himself. This took a while, as he had to count them twice. But finally he declared, “Six of them.”

“All six by yourself?”

The man nodded his head over and over. “Before I just worked at the Maisel for Rabbi Popper and his wife. That’s the pretty white building on Maisel Street. But now even six is too little work for me.”

“What time do you work until?”

Ivo had to think about this. He did for many moments before he suddenly smiled and took out the clock hands from his pocket, which he used to answer Hermann’s question.

“Until five?” Hermann wondered.

Again, Ivo nodded his head over and over, with yet another smile. “I always get confused over when to use ‘five o’clock’ and when to use ‘seventeen hundred.’ But clocks don’t care.”

“Does anyone work at the synagogues at night, like a watchman?”

“No one. I just lock each synagogue after I clean them. That’s what the rabbi told me to do before he and his wife left the city. Have, have I done something wrong?”

Hermann found this question strange, and it caused him to ask, “Why would you say that?”

Ivo pointed to Klaus. “You’ve brought a policeman.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong. Do you mind if we have a look around?”

“This is your house,” Ivo replied as he started off, again with lots of pain. “I’m just taking care of it until you all return. Call out if you need me.”

“What’s wrong with your feet?”

Ivo stopped, and he turned back to Hermann. “My feet are very bad, and Dr. Brod is no longer here to help me.”

“What exactly is wrong with them?”

“Dr. Brod tried to explain it to me once, but there were too many fancy words. It has to do with tall things in my feet.”

“High arches?”

Ivo shrugged. “All I know is that my feet have always been this bad. Since I was born, I think. Though I can’t remember that far back. Anyway, that’s why I couldn’t fight in the big war. I wanted to.”

To underscore this, Ivo pretended to fire a machine gun. Though he was careful not to fire it at either Hermann or Klaus.

“We could’ve used a man like you,” Hermann murmured with a smile. I bet the kind I would come to know so well. It was a smile that made you believe everything he said because there was so much truth in it.

The compliment made Ivo happy. He grinned and kept doing this even as he limped off in pain.

“I have just one more question,” Hermann called out.

Once more, Ivo stopped, and he turned back to Hermann, who added, “Who pays you?”

“Pays me?”

“You do get a salary, don’t you?”

Ivo nodded. He nodded twice. “Oh, yes. Mr. Malý comes to the Maisel first thing in the morning on the last day of the month, and he pays me. Then I pay my landlady Mrs. Mlýnková right away, just like the rabbi always told me to do.”

“Do you know Mr. Malý’s first name?”

“No, but he’s a very nice man. He’s always smiling. He smiles even more than the rabbi, and he smiled a lot.”

“How long have you known Mr. Malý?”

“Ever since the rabbi left town. He came to the Maisel a few days later and told me that he would take care of me until the rabbi returned and that he would get me anything I needed.”

“Did he give you his phone number?”

“I have it in the Maisel. He pinned his card on the board in the office so I wouldn’t lose it.”

“So you can read.”

“The rabbi taught me. It wasn’t easy.”

“Mr. Malý’s card doesn’t have his name on it?”

Ivo responded by glancing upward as if he were reading something. “It just says, ‘A. Malý.’ It doesn’t even have an address. Do you want me to get it?”

“What time do you usually clean the Maisel?”

“First thing in the morning.”

“At nine?” Hermann asked, and he took the clock hands from Ivo and used them to make this clear.

Ivo nodded before taking back the hands.

“We’ll come by then if we need it.”

Again, Ivo nodded.

“Were you at the Maisel this morning?”

“I was.”

“Did you notice that the door to the gate was ajar?”

“I did notice it.”

“It wasn’t like that yesterday afternoon.”

“I know. I closed it yesterday morning after I cleaned the building.”

“Who could’ve left it open?”

Ivo shook his head over and over. “I don’t know.”

Hermann had no more questions to ask, so he let the man continue his work, and he began searching the building with Klaus. While ignoring the large prayer hall, he glanced into every room they passed, no matter how small or insignificant they seemed. Many of these contained nothing but furniture collected from the other synagogues.

“So you think Gruber was killed here,” Klaus said.

“I’d say it’s a strong possibility,” Hermann said back. “What if all three men were killed in the synagogues near where they were found and then carried outside them and set down?”

“What would SS officers be doing in synagogues, especially long closed ones?”

“That’s a good question,” was Hermann’s reply as he stopped and peeked into yet another room. “If we can come up with an answer to that, we’ll probably have a good idea as to what happened.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” Klaus asked next while peeking over Hermann’s shoulder.

“If I knew exactly, I probably wouldn’t have to look for it.”

But Hermann didn’t find it in this room. So he stepped into the prayer hall before coming to a stop in the entranceway with Klaus, where he admired the arabesque ceiling as well as the ornate balconies on each side of the hall. “Stunning,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Klaus admitted, “it is indeed beautiful.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to believe that human beings are capable of such beauty,” Hermann added as the two started through the hall, with Hermann finding the silence eerie, having never been in such a place so quiet even when it was empty. The prayer halls of his youth and even the makeshift ones he had known in recent times were all boisterous places full of life. But this was neither. In a sense, it reflected the ghost town-like quality of the district.

The two reached the altar, and they climbed its four steps and approached the ark at the end of it, whose door was partly open.

Hermann looked inside it, and with surprise he found it empty. “What did you do with the Torah?” he asked Klaus.

“The what?” Klaus asked back.

“A large Hebrew scroll containing the Five Books of Moses.”

“You mean the Pentateuch?”

“We Jews know them by the name of the man who wrote them. Actually, in the cheder I attended as a boy, I was taught God spoke the words and Moses wrote them down with his tears. You know, I always thought that was pretty even if I never believed it. Anyway, the Torah is the most important item in a synagogue and is kept right here in this ark. Did one of your people confiscate it when they closed the synagogue?”

Klaus shook his head. “I have no idea. I wouldn’t even know who to ask about it. Do you think it has something to do with Gruber’s death?”

“I was just curious as to what happened to it. That’s all.”

With nothing more to see in the prayer hall, the two left and continued searching through the building. They did until they came upon a room that Hermann had already peeked inside, a small library. Unlike then, though, the room interested him for a reason that he didn’t know. So he stepped inside it followed by Klaus, and he gazed at one of a handful of bookshelves, which contained a set of dry Hebrew-language religious texts.

Again, he tried feeling something. He wasn’t expecting faith or anything like it but the feeling that the books had some meaning to him or that he had some connection to them. But they were just books, much like they had always been.

“I’m sorry,” Klaus uttered, “but I just don’t see how any of these books could’ve had something to do with Captain Gruber’s murder.”

“In my experience,” Hermann replied, “it’s often an item that appears completely unrelated to a crime that somehow leads to its exposure. To do this job effectively, Klaus, you have to separate what your eyes take interest in from what your mind tells you makes sense.”

Hermann kept looking through the books.

At the next bookshelf, he came upon one that his eyes found especially interesting, Sefer Yetzirah. They found it interesting for a number of reasons. The first was the book’s content, which was far different from the traditional rabbinical texts surrounding it. It was a book that he hadn’t thought about since childhood, which led him to recall how his father had mentioned it more than once in the midst of one of his fantastical tales. But the second reason his eyes found the book so interesting had nothing to do with its content, which caused him to pull it off the shelf and check its edges.

“Now what are you doing?” grumbled Klaus.

“How long has this synagogue been closed?” Hermann asked.

“More than a year.”

“So why does this book have clean edges?”

“The caretaker must’ve cleaned it.”

Hermann moved his finger along the top edge of the neighboring book, and he showed Klaus the resulting dust. “Then why do the rest of the books here and those on the other shelves in this room have dust along their edges?”

Klaus had no answer.

Hermann opened the book, and he started reading its pages, even though his Hebrew was even worse than his Czech. “I’ve read that the Jews of Palestine have been reviving Hebrew as a spoken language, much like what the Czechs did with their language last century.”

Klaus pointed at the book. “What’s it about?”

“The title translates to The Book of Creation. It’s what’s known as Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism.”

“And what could it possibly have to do with Gruber’s murder?” Klaus groaned with no small amount of exasperation.

“That I don’t know. All I can tell you is that this book doesn’t belong here. Not in this library nor anywhere else in this synagogue. And that’s what makes it so interesting.”

But the book offered no additional clues. So Hermann closed it and returned it to its shelf. After giving the room one final glance, he and Klaus left and continued to look around the building.

Reaching the back of it, they discovered an old arched door. It was locked, so they found Ivo, who told the two that he didn’t have the key for it. Though he looked so nervous that Hermann became suspicious of why.

“Who has the key?” asked Hermann.

“Rabbi Schuler,” Ivo mumbled without looking at Hermann directly. “He was the rabbi of this synagogue before, before he left.”

“What’s behind the door?”

Ivo didn’t reply. Instead, after glancing at Klaus, he shrugged, which made him appear even more suspicious.

“I’ll get someone to open it,” Klaus interjected with some aggravation. “In the meantime, we can go to the third crime scene.”

Hermann nodded, and he said to Ivo, “How can we reach you if we need to speak to you?”

“Just call out,” Ivo said back.

“I mean how do we find you if you are not at work?”

“Oh, I live on Maisel Street, in one of Mrs. Mlýnková’s rooms above the café across from Jáchym Street. I live in the room by the top of the first staircase.”

Again, Hermann nodded. He nodded with a smile while again recalling the café and all the wonderfully normal times he had spent there with Ana.

He was still smiling as he and Klaus left the synagogue and returned through the courtyard toward the car. He only stopped when he tried to unwrap the mystery of Ivo, and he began looking so puzzled that Klaus asked him what was wrong.

Hermann nodded toward the synagogue. “He’s hiding something.”

“The caretaker?” Klaus asked. “Surely, you don’t think he could’ve had something to do with all this.”

“Why couldn’t he?”

“First, he’s a complete idiot. He’s barely conscious of the basest of realities. Second, he’s lame. Frau Schiller was not exaggerating about her husband. He was indeed a strong man and well versed in hand-to-hand combat techniques. He would’ve flattened that idiot, even if the man had caught him by surprise, which is unlikely. The other men were quite capable and well-trained soldiers as well. I doubt Ivo could’ve even carried any of them.”

“You asked me whether I thought he had something to do with all this, not whether I thought he was the one who committed the murders. I think the former is quite possible, if not likely. The bigger question is whether he even knows he’s had something to do with it.”

chapter eighteen: the exhibition of extinct peoples

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THE DISTANCE BETWEEN the Spanish and Klausen synagogues is only a few kilometers. But getting from one to the other wasn’t easy. It required Hermann and Klaus taking an even more tortuous route through the maze than what they had done on their previous journeys. They had to drive all the way north to the river and go westward along Dvořák Quay before taking a seashell-like path around Maisel Street and U Starého Hřbitova.

“I don’t understand how you can figure this all out,” the driver said to Hermann as he parked near the building with his head shaking in a continuous motion.

“When I first came to the city,” Hermann explained, “I had an old brass compass. I can’t tell you how helpful it was. But I lost it long ago and quickly discovered that making my way through Josefov required nothing more than solving a puzzle that consists of finding a path between two points. And this isn’t such a difficult task, as the number of these puzzles isn’t as infinite as you may think. It’s limited to the number of streets in the district squared minus this number of streets, and there really aren’t that many of these streets, even when you take into account the ones that change direction, like Široká yesterday. In the end, you realize that finding your way from any point in Josefov to another is just a matter of recalling one of these puzzles you’ve already solved.”

The driver made no response, and Klaus and Hermann stepped out of the car. Hermann noticed the concession stands lining a cemetery wall, and he nodded toward one that was selling kielbasas and beer.

Grudgingly, Klaus nodded back, and he bought Hermann one of the burnt sausages the man was selling, which came on a piece of newspaper along with mustard and a few slices of stale rye bread. Klaus bought Hermann a beer too, which was even weaker than what he had the day before.

“Your diet hasn’t gotten any better since college,” Klaus let Hermann know while watching him eat with a grimace after the two sat on a bench. “Nor has it gotten any more Jewish.”

“But it has gotten better since Theresienstadt,” Hermann insisted while again feeling angered that his stomach wasn’t allowing him to fully enjoy what he was eating. “I thank you for that much.”

Klaus made no reply.

“You’re not eating?” Hermann asked.

“I had a big breakfast,” Klaus answered with another grimace.

Hermann knew this was a lie and not just because Gertrud had brought him the rolls earlier. It looked as if Klaus hadn’t been eating much better than him. Which made him wonder if this had something to do with the nightmare Klaus was having in the car the day before. Though he tried telling himself that he didn’t care, and when this didn’t work, he just pretended it.

To help with this, he lifted what was left of his sausage and gazed at it. “Every morning I would have one of these as svačina,” he remarked, referring to the small meal many Czechs eat between breakfast and lunch, along with the very peculiar New Jersey family I grew up in. “They’re awful, but they’re a wonderful kind of awful.”

Sensing Klaus was anxious to get moving, Hermann hurriedly finished what he could before wiping his face with the newspaper and tossing what remained into a garbage pail. The two then stepped into the synagogue and inside a large prayer hall that had exceedingly high vaulted ceilings, where hung a chandelier that extended from the ceiling to the level of the balcony, which itself extended halfway around the room. Beneath the chandelier stood a short and heavyset female SS officer around forty, who was directing a pair of workers in placing oversized photographs on the four walls of the hall, which were labeled “Jews,” “Gypsies,” “Homosexuals,” and “The Enfeebled.”

“Don’t put it on that wall, you fool!” she screamed at one of the men. “Can you not see the man’s hooked nose? Whether he was a homosexual as well is of secondary concern.”

“That must be Lieutenant Krieg,” Klaus told Hermann while trying to mask his disdain for the woman. He kept trying as the two strode up to her, with Hermann feeling disdain too.

Tersely, Klaus introduced himself and Hermann, and he told the lieutenant that they were interested in the circumstances of Captain Fischer’s death.

“What’s going on here?” Hermann asked while pointing at the photographs.

The woman didn’t respond, which led Klaus to sigh. “The man asked you a question.”

“I don’t answer the questions of Jews,” she snarled.

“You will answer this one’s, Lieutenant,” Klaus snarled back.

Now it was the lieutenant’s turn to sigh. She sighed loudly while looking away from both men. “We’re turning this building and all other synagogues in the district into museums,” she said as she crossed her arms. “This will be one of its main exhibitions.”

“An exhibition of what?” Hermann wanted to know.

“Extinct peoples.”

“None of these people are extinct.”

“The exhibition hasn’t opened yet. It’ll take years before it’s completed. But hopefully not many.”

“And what will be the point of this exhibition?”

“To chronicle your race and similar forms of life, much like other museums chronicle Neanderthals and dinosaurs and other creatures that weren’t fit to survive. You should be thankful that the Reich is taking such trouble and expense to keep the memory of your people alive.”

Hermann wasn’t thankful. But he wasn’t angered either. He wanted to feel anger, not just at what she had said but at how she had defiled what was once a holy place. But he could feel no more anger toward her than he could find joy in being in a synagogue. He could only feel unease and mostly at himself. Though he tried to ignore this as best he could. “Are you developing these museums in cooperation with Mr. Malý?” he asked.

“Who’s Mr. Malý?” the woman asked back.

“The person responsible for the synagogues.”

“What do you mean by ‘responsible’?”

“He’s responsible for their upkeep.”

The lieutenant shook her head. “Such things are none of my concern. Colonel Reidl’s office deals with issues related to the buildings themselves. My responsibilities involve only curation.”

“You’re the person who discovered the body of Captain Fischer,” Klaus interjected.

“He was sitting out there when I came to work that morning,” the woman replied after turning toward Klaus and pointing at the door.

“It’s our understanding that you knew him,” Hermann said while trying not to look at the pictures or at Lieutenant Krieg directly.

“He had been observing the progress of the exhibition.”

“He said that was his purpose?” questioned Klaus with a look of confusion.

“Not exactly. But why else would he be here all the time? There is great interest in this exhibition. I hear even Eichmann is interested in our work.”

“Was Captain Fischer ever here at night?” Hermann inquired.

“I don’t know how late he stayed,” was her response, “but he was often here when I left for the day. Including the day he died.”

“What time did you leave that day?”

“At exactly 4:30.”

Hermann paused in thought, after which he next inquired, “Was anyone else here with him when you left?”

“Just the idiot.”

“The idiot?”

“The crippled idiot who sometimes works here,” she groaned with her voice soaked with contempt.

“You mean Ivo.”

“I didn’t even know he had a name. We just call him ‘idiot.’ One day hopefully his picture will be up there on that wall along with others of his kind.”

Hermann tried not to wince at her words. But he couldn’t stop himself. “I have just one more question. What was Captain Fischer doing when you left that day?”

The woman pointed to one of the back corners of the hall. “He was very interested in that door over there.”

Hermann looked at what she was pointing at: an old arched door like the one in the Spanish Synagogue. “What’s behind it?” he excitedly asked while glancing at Klaus, who was glancing right back at him with the same excitement.

“It leads to a cellar.”

“Can we go down there?”

“The door’s locked and no one has a key. Captain Fischer had a locksmith come here, but he couldn’t open it either. Nobody can. The captain couldn’t even shoot the lock off.”

“So how do you know that it leads to a cellar?”

“Captain Fischer insisted that it did.”

“How did he know this?”

“That I can’t tell you,” she blurted out with a dismissive wave. “But he became insistent on it after spending a few days here, even though the first thing I showed him was a blueprint of the building, which has no indication of a cellar.”

“Where does the door lead to on the blueprint?”

“There is no door on the blueprint.”

Neither Klaus nor Hermann had any more questions. So, without saying goodbye to the woman, they started to leave. Though Hermann stopped when he noticed the open and empty ark by the altar. “Just one more question,” he called out after turning toward the lieutenant and pointing at the ark.

“You said that before,” she growled, “and even then you asked another. More than one, in fact.”

“But this time I mean it. What have you done with the Torah that was in that ark?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she screeched with a shake of her head.

“A large Hebrew scroll that was kept in that compartment.”

“That compartment has been empty since I started working here.”

“When was that?”

“Nearly a half year ago.”

Hermann nodded, and the two men left the synagogue, with Hermann again feeling thankful. This time for fresh air.

“I guess you were right about Ivo,” Klaus mumbled as they made their way to the car. “I’ll have someone pick him up.”

“We have no evidence against him,” Hermann argued, knowing full well what would await Ivo if someone did “pick him up.”

“We don’t need evidence, Hermann. It’s sufficient that we know he was with the dead man the night he died. We also know that he was in the vicinity of the other dead men as well and that he was acting suspiciously about the door. We’ll discover his connection to all this in short order.”

“If you don’t kill him first. Besides, you yourself said that he’s conscious of only the basest of realities.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“We can get into those cellars. If the evidence leads to Ivo, we’ll find it soon enough.”

“Fine,” Klaus snapped after raising his hands in exasperation. “We’ll get into the cellars.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Hermann questioned as the two reached the Mercedes.

“Trust me, Hermann, if the Reich can get into this country, it can get into two lousy cellars.”

Klaus glanced at his watch as he opened the back door. “I have a meeting right now that I must attend. I will take you back to the palace and get you some new guards, and they’ll take you to U Bílého Lva when it’s time for dinner.

Hermann nodded.

“One more thing,” Klaus added. “I care deeply for Frau Gross, but she is truly the biggest gossiper in town. She is not to know anything about what we’re doing, other than that you’re assisting me in a rather mundane and uninteresting crime investigation.”

“You think she’ll believe that?” wondered Hermann.

“Convince her,” Klaus barked. “We both know that you have a way with women.”

chapter nineteen: their own triple entente

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BACK IN THE PALACE with his new guards, Hermann discovered that Marta was gone.

As she and the errand he had sent her on were the only things that could’ve occupied his time until dinner, he was left with nothing to do but sit in his cramped office and stare at the same police reports he had already spent too much time staring at. So he asked his guards if they could take him early to U Bílého Lva, which was only a short distance away on Bělohorská Street.

Unable to come up with an objection to this, the men drove him to the restaurant, where he sat at a table in the center of it, with a beer in front of him and lots of time to kill. This beer, though, was 12 degrees, which meant it was far stronger than the others he had since returning to Prague. It only took a couple of these before he drifted off, along with his surroundings, to a much happier time: the evening he spent more than twenty years earlier with Ana and Klaus at U Zlatého Tygra.

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“NA ZDRAVÍ!” THE three cried out while raising their mugs of beer, which they did before slamming these together with such force that Hermann thought for sure they would break.

This didn’t happen, and Hermann noticed that he was still two beers behind his new friends. To correct this, he needed to work up a thirst. So he started devouring the large plate of utopence in front of him.

“I don’t know how you can eat that,” Klaus said to him while shaking his head and grimacing much as he would more than twenty years later when watching Hermann eat.

“I don’t know either,” Hermann said back before flinging a large chunk of meat into his mouth and swallowing it after only a few bites. “Fortunately, knowing has got nothing to do with it.”

Ana giggled, which caused her upper lip to curl a little. Hermann would say that it was the first time he’d seen anything like it. Though I think it was just the first time he ever noticed such a thing. Regardless of which, he found it and her fascinating. They were so fascinating that he had a hard time concentrating on anything else.

“Do you have any idea how long those things have been sitting in that?” Klaus wondered while pointing at the big pickle jar by the bar, where many sausages were floating in the brine. They looked like a bunch of drowned people, which is what utopence means in Czech. “They’ve probably been in that jar since before the war.”

“They’re like fine wine,” Hermann insisted, even though this was only the second time he had eaten the dish. The first came a day earlier during the long trip to Prague, at a stopover late at night in Pardubice after he had run out of langoš. Utopence were not only cheap but were the only food served in the only place open. He had no more choice in them becoming his favorite food than he had in Ana becoming the object of his fascination.

“They’re hardly kosher,” Klaus noted while pointing at the meat.

“Neither am I,” Hermann noted back as he glanced at Ana and wondered what she thought of him being Jewish and whether it would affect her opinion of him.

“You couldn’t tell by looking at you,” Klaus quipped.

All Hermann could do in response was shrug in embarrassment. His Jewish looks marked him wherever he went, and it would only become more accentuated the older he got. When I was growing up, more than once we heard antisemitic slurs directed at him when we were out somewhere, which would always cause him to grin. I once asked him why, and he said, “What bothers them is that I’m alive. How can I not be joyful for that?”

But Hermann didn’t always think like this. When he was younger, he wasn’t joyful at all when reminded of what he was. He would even sometimes deny his Jewishness when he could get away with it and that he couldn’t with Klaus was the reason he was shrugging.

“Just look at us,” Klaus went on, seemingly unaware of how uncomfortable he was making Hermann, “a German, a Jew, and a Czech sitting together as if we were one big happy family. Our very own Triple Entente.”

Ana and Hermann chuckled at Klaus’s reference to the nickname of their enemies in the recent war. But over this chuckle Hermann told him, “A joke like that could’ve gotten you shot in my unit.” He meant it too. He could even picture the officer who would’ve done the shooting.

Hermann’s remark led Klaus to notice an aging man at the end of their table, who was wearing a medal from the Austro-Prussian War and glaring at him. “It might get me shot right now,” Klaus said.

“Don’t worry, Klaus,” Ana uttered with a big smile. “I’ll protect you.”

“But who’ll protect you?”

Ana turned to Hermann while continuing to smile. “The war hero.”

This embarrassed Hermann, even more than Klaus’s kosher quip. It also made him want to crawl under the table. Though at least the sounds of war her comment evoked were drowned out by all the pub noise.

“I read all about you in Lidové Noviny,” Ana mentioned. “The local boy who made good.”

“I’m not exactly a local boy,” Hermann countered with even more embarrassment. “I’m actually from a little shtetl in Subcarpathia no one’s heard of, even people from other shtetls in Subcarpathia.”

“I could’ve sworn that I read you were from Prague.”

“My father and his family were from here. So when the propaganda officer asked me where I was from, I . . .”

“You lied,” Klaus interjected with a grin.

“I lied,” Hermann confessed with his own grin while recalling his father and all the stories he had told him about Prague, which were countless in number even though he was a small boy when he left the city and couldn’t have remembered much. He recalled as well the nights the two spent in front of a roaring fire talking of nothing but the city, which was an experience my grandfather and I would often recreate decades later, such as on the night of my bar mitzvah, and one I’ve always wanted to recreate with my own child while talking about the same city and sitting in front of the same kind of fire.

During the talks with his father, Hermann’s eyes were always as wide as they could be, as the city was beyond his imagination, especially as he hadn’t seen any pictures of it to ground it in some kind of reality. Just as importantly, he could draw no parallels to it with anything he had seen in the fields and forests around his home, and this only drove his fascination. There were times he thought only of Prague. He thought of it when he was in school. He thought of it when he was doing his chores. He especially thought of it when he lay in bed at night. It became an obsession to him, which was pleasing to his father, who was obsessed with the city himself. Though it wasn’t so pleasing to his mother, who was obsessed with a much different city.

Her yearning for Jerusalem was something Hermann was aware of from the time he was small. She would not only talk about the city all the time, especially during the Sabbath and the High Holidays, but she would sing about it too. She did everything she could to impart onto Hermann a love for a city she knew only in books. But it just never sparked his imagination in the same way as his true love. Actually, it didn’t spark it at all.

“It’s always been my intention to move to Prague,” Hermann declared to Ana and Klaus while emphatically pointing to their table. “To be from here and to make something of myself here.”

“Then I’m sure you will,” Ana told him while looking deeply into his eyes.

Once more, Hermann felt aspired by Ana, even more so than before, because she made him want to believe in his words. More importantly, she gave him the courage to believe in them and in himself. Which made him want to reciprocate what he was feeling.

“Besides,” she added, “now that Subcarpathia is part of Czechoslovakia, you’re as much of a citizen here as anyone else. You have as much right to be from Prague as I do.”

Hermann smiled. Though he noticed Klaus was looking uncomfortable. He was looking much like Hermann had felt a few minutes earlier. So he decided to change the subject, to anything that wasn’t about himself. “Where are you from?” he asked Ana.

“From right here in Vysočany,” she answered, referring to a district in the northeastern section of the city. “We only recently became part of Prague, so I’m an adopted Pražanka too.”

“Are you going to the university?”

“I’m attending the Academy of Fine Arts.”

“You’re an artist?” he uttered in surprise.

“She’s a painter,” Klaus interjected with a sneer. “One of those nasty expressionists.”

“You mean like Max Beckmann?” Hermann blurted out, both unable and unwilling to restrain his excitement.

“You, you’ve heard of Max Beckmann?” Ana mumbled with her own surprise, as she would later tell Hermann that she knew no one outside of school who knew of Beckmann and his work.

“I saw some of his paintings at a gallery in Frankfurt when I was passing through there after finishing my military service. I had never seen anything like it, especially that painting . . . what was it called?”

Hermann paused in thought before snapping his fingers. “The Night. You know, before I saw it, I always thought of art as something to admire only for its beauty. I never thought of it as something that could make you think and feel something. I must’ve stared at that painting for an hour. I thought they were going to call the police on me.”

“He’s actually one of my biggest influences,” Ana said, “especially that painting you mentioned. And I can tell you that I’ve stared at it for a lot more than an hour. I mean I’ve stared at the copy of it we have at school.”

“Really?”

“I’d love to show you some of my work.”

“I’d love to see them.”

“I should warn you, my paintings are not as good as Beckmann’s.”

“Even Beckmann must’ve been a student once. You must have great talent or a school like the academy would’ve never accepted you. Why, I bet you have twice as much talent as any man there. Or like I said, they would’ve never accepted you. All you need is more training and experience and maybe, I don’t know, maybe someone to believe in you.”

Ana responded by smiling at him, but I think she was smiling more at his words.

Years later, she would tell Věra and her mother that, from the moment she met Hermann, she had felt attracted to him, despite their significant difference in height. She found him not only handsome and charming but kept getting lost in what she referred to as “his impossible brown curls.” More than once that evening, she had to stop herself from reaching over the table and wrapping her fingers around them. But now her attraction to him was far more than physical.

According to Věra, from the time Ana reached adolescence, men had fawned over her and drowned her in compliments. Though not once did these go beyond her looks. It didn’t seem that men even cared to notice what was beyond them. But Hermann both noticed and cared, and it made her wonder if he could provide her with the one thing she knew was lacking in her and holding her back: confidence in herself. Because of this, she began drifting toward Hermann and the possibilities she saw in his eyes.

Hermann noticed this, and it made him more excited, until he noticed that Klaus was looking more uncomfortable than before and even angry. Hermann supposed that this was from being excluded from the conversation. So he turned to his roommate. “And you? Where are you from?”

“Reichenberg,” Klaus answered.

“The city today is called Liberec,” Ana insisted with her elbows on the table and no shortage of congenial defiance.

“You can call it Xanadu if you want,” Klaus insisted back with his own defiance. “To us it’s always been Reichenberg, and to us it will always be Reichenberg.”

Now it was Hermann’s turn for insisting. “Please, you two, let’s not start another war. I’ll never finish school.”

Again, Ana giggled, and again her upper lip curled a bit, and again the two looked into each other’s eyes. Also again, Klaus looked uncomfortable and angry, and he chugged his beer and turned toward the bar and the waiter standing in front of it. “Ještě jednou!” he howled while raising his empty mug high into the air.

Hermann both saw and heard Klaus demand another beer. But he was paying attention only to the woman who was becoming his fate.

Though he wasn’t oblivious to the loud clearing of a throat, which brought him roaring back to U Bílého Lva and his present circumstances.

chapter twenty: three plates of venison

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HERMANN TURNED TOWARD the throat-clearing sound and saw Klaus and Gertrud standing beside the table, which caused him to jump to his feet and greet them.

“I hope we didn’t keep you waiting,” murmured Gertrud in an extravagant blue gown that couldn’t have contrasted more with the shabby suit he was wearing. Almost everything about her contrasted with him.

Still, despite their differences, Hermann got this strange feeling that they weren’t that different. What’s more, like when they first met, he felt there was something about her that went beyond all she was projecting, and this once more intrigued him.

“I got here a little early,” he told them both.

“I’m just glad you made it,” she said before taking her seat.

Like him, Gertrud again found Hermann interesting. She found him as interesting as he found her, if not more so, and she wanted to discover the source of this. “I’ve been so looking forward to tonight. You don’t know how much.”

Hermann nodded unsurely, and he and Klaus joined her at the table. Joining them as well was the waiter, who left three menus and a wine list before continuing on.

“They have terrific peppered venison here,” Gertrud remarked without making the slightest attempt to look at her menu.

“I know,” Hermann remarked back while recalling the many times he had eaten the dish here over the years. “My wife and I . . .”

Suddenly, he stopped himself when he noticed Klaus glaring at him.

“Go on,” Gertrud uttered.

Hermann shook his head. “It’s not important.”

“You two share some mysterious past, don’t you?” she said with a grin as she gazed at both men.

“It’s really not mysterious,” Hermann insisted.

“If only finding the truth in men were as easy as finding the area under a curve. I’d simply take the definite integral between the two of you and discover everything I wanted to know. Still, I’m going to find out all about you two. You can trust me on that.”

Right then, something else captured her interest: the waiter, who was walking past them. She caught his attention by calling out to him in Czech, “Pane vrchní!”

The man came to a stop, and he turned around and stepped up to their table, where he fished out his pad and pen. “Ano?”

“Srnčí na pepři, prosím,” she told him as she ordered the meal. “Třikrát. S rýží.”

“Něco k pití?” was the waiter’s next question, which he asked her after he picked up the wine list and showed it to her.

“Váš nejlepší pinot noir.”

“Mléko pro mne,” Klaus interjected with some embarrassment.

“Dobře,” the waiter exclaimed before he took the menus and scurried off to the kitchen.

“I hope you don’t mind that I ordered for you,” Gertrud said to Hermann.

“Not at all,” he mumbled.

“It annoys Klaus to no end,” she explained as she grasped the man’s wrist. “He’s not used to a strong woman.”

“Your Czech is really quite good,” Hermann said while shaking his head in disbelief over how well she had ordered the meal. It embarrassed him too, knowing that he couldn’t have done it nearly as well. “Not even Klaus can pronounce his ř’s like you, and I’ve always envied his. Even after living here for twenty years, I still can’t say them right. Which is something my wife . . .”

Again, Hermann stopped himself when he again noticed Klaus glaring at him.

“I was born here, you know,” Gertrud mentioned as the waiter brought Klaus a glass of milk and Gertrud and Hermann a bottle of expensive French wine, which he showed her.

“Dobře,” she told him with a nod, and he uncorked the bottle and served it to them before leaving what remained on the table and taking his leave once more.

“I’ve known plenty of native German speakers who were born in Prague,” Hermann mentioned. “Many can barely say hello in Czech and most aren’t the slightest bit ashamed of it. In fact, a good friend of mine named Kafka was even taught Czech from his earliest years but spoke it more haltingly than me.”

“Well, in my father’s house, the entire staff was Czech. I simply had to learn it if I wanted to keep up with all the goings-on.”

“Something tells me that it’s more than just that, and I bet this something is more interesting than my past with Klaus.”

Suddenly, the gaiety that had flowed from Gertrud from the moment Hermann met her emptied out of her. It was as if someone had deflated all the air in her balloon. “My husband,” she mumbled, “he was a native Czech speaker. In spite of being German, he insisted on us speaking it whenever possible.”

The loss of air wasn’t the only thing afflicting Gertrud. Sounds and images flooded her mind, of her tear-soaked visit days earlier to Vyšehrad Cemetery and the terrible morning years before that, the morning she desperately wanted to forget and knew she had to forget. But no matter how hard she tried or what she tried, she couldn’t stem the flow of these images and sounds, and the horror of them poured out onto her face.

“I think we should change the subject,” Klaus suggested.

“Me too,” muttered Hermann while averting his eyes from both of them, as the horror he saw on her face was something he recognized all too well.

“Klaus tells me you’re a police detective,” Gertrud said while trying to reinflate herself. “He also says that you’re helping him solve a very important case.”

“He said that?” Hermann gasped with both surprise and confusion.

“He actually said quite the opposite, which led to my conclusion. Which the expression on your face has just confirmed, by the way. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said to her before glancing at Klaus, who just shrugged in defeat.

This exchange forced Hermann to see a certain truth about Gertrud. While earlier he had thought of her as both beautiful and interesting but vapid, he now knew she was something a whole lot better. He knew there was not only a human being behind the caricature but that a big powerful mind was lurking beneath her beauty and that it was as adept as anything on the outside of her, if not more so.

“I’ve never heard of a Jewish policeman,” Gertrud went on. “I’ve heard of Jewish accountants and Jewish bankers and lots of Jewish lawyers. I’ve even heard of a Jewish boxer. But never a Jewish policeman.”

“There are more of us than you’d think,” Hermann told her. “Police serve best in the communities in which they live, and Josefov, where I both lived and worked, was a community like all others, with the same problems and crimes.”

“But there is no more Josefov.”

“There may not be any more Jews in Josefov, but there will always be a Josefov. And there will always be crimes there. Which, I suppose, is why I’m here.”

“So I assume that you haven’t been in Prague all this time.”

“I recently spent some time in Theresienstadt.”

Again, Hermann glanced at Klaus, and he saw that he was getting antsy. Which only increased when Gertrud added, “It must have been some crime for them to drag you out of Theresienstadt to solve it.”

“I suppose all crime is relative, especially in times such as these. What may seem like a big crime to some people, to others may seem small and insignificant in comparison to other crimes.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Gertrud declared while feeling her interest in Hermann rising. It rose to the point that she found herself leaning toward him. “So, are you hot on the trail of this culprit?”

“I only began looking for him yesterday afternoon.”

“Something tells me that if I were your villain, I’d be very worried about tomorrow morning.”

“Maybe the morning after tomorrow.”

Gertrud giggled, just as the waiter came by with three plates of peppered venison and white rice, which he placed in front of them before leaving once more.

“Dobrou chuť,” she called out to both men while picking up her utensils, and Klaus and Hermann replied in kind before picking up their own.

Overwhelmed by the smells in front of him, Hermann tore off a large piece of the cutlet. He further brought it into his mouth, where he savored every spice and flavor that came into contact with his tongue. The food made him tremble, not just from the taste but from the excitement of experiencing such pleasure again.

Though he was brought out of this when he heard a man scream, “Heil Hitler!”

Hermann didn’t want to look at the source of it. But he couldn’t help himself, and he saw a young soldier saluting Klaus with eyes as wide as apples.

“What is it?” Klaus growled while looking perturbed, though not nearly as perturbed as Gertrud, who had had way too many meals with Klaus interrupted in a similar manner.

“Colonel Reidl requests your presence in his office at once on a most urgent matter,” the man cried out.

Klaus sighed. He did before wiping his mouth with a napkin and rising to his feet. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said to Gertrud.

“You know I always do,” she said to him back. “Though I shouldn’t.”

Quickly, Hermann took one last and exceedingly large bite of the venison, which was pretty much all he would’ve been able to eat that night anyway. Then, after washing it down with his entire glass of wine, which itself exhibited a perfectness that he never imagined wine having, he rose to his feet as well.

“But Hermann doesn’t have to go too, does he?” Gertrud uttered. “I’ve been so enjoying our conversation.”

“I’m afraid so,” Klaus insisted. “This probably concerns him too.”

“All right, gentlemen. We’ll continue this tomorrow night. I’m having a dinner party at my home, and I won’t take no for an answer. I’ll even serve venison, Hermann, so you can get your proper fill of it this time.”

chapter twenty-one: an unlikely turn

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ČERNÍN PALACE WAS almost empty when Klaus’s Mercedes parked in front of it. There were only a handful of offices in the entire block-long building that were still lit.

Without enthusiasm, Hermann and Klaus stepped out of the car and into the building. In the same manner, they made their way to the third floor and down a quiet corridor that led to one of the lit offices, with Hermann feeling a strange unease.

While he didn’t know its cause, he knew he was approaching more than just a room. His fate, too, lay behind the open door ahead.

“Do you want me in there with you?” he asked Klaus while pointing at the door.

“If Reidl doesn’t want you there,” Klaus answered, “he won’t be bashful about it.”

A handful of steps later, the two reached the office, and Klaus marched inside and saluted the colonel, who was sitting at his desk across from Captain Kleiner, with the two grinning at each other. Reidl, in particular, was gleeful. He was kicking his little feet in joy underneath his desk.

Turning from this, Hermann stopped at the edge of the doorway and tried to make himself as invisible as possible. Though he knew this was futile.

“At ease, Captain,” Reidl told Klaus with some aggravation.

“You wanted to see me, sir,” Klaus told him back.

“Yes,” the man uttered while sneering at Hermann. “I have some good news for you: the mystery of the murders has been solved. So you can take the Miracle Jew back to where he belongs.”

Hermann knew this information should have brought him, if not joy, then at least relief, as it meant he’d no longer have to participate in what he still believed was a farce. That it was likely a death sentence as well shouldn’t have mattered to him at all. But he found no relief in it. It actually added to his unease something that bordered on disappointment. He thought this was because he wouldn’t be able to continue working on a case that had unexpectedly intrigued him, but he knew it was more than just that.

Klaus also had an unexpected reaction to the news, at least as far as Hermann was concerned. He looked upset. “You found the killer?” he gasped.

“I didn’t,” the colonel answered. “Captain Kleiner did.”

“Like I told you,” Kleiner said with a smirk, “all it would take was a little persuasion on my part.”

“Who is it?” Klaus yelped. “Who’s the murderer?”

“Lieutenant Maier,” Kleiner replied.

“Hans Maier?” Klaus muttered with surprise.

“Yes.”

“He confessed?” questioned Klaus with even more surprise.

“More or less.”

“What does that mean?”

“He confessed that he directed Major Schiller to the Maisel Synagogue on the night of the murder. We then searched his flat and found the belongings of all three dead men.”

Klaus shook his head. “Strange.”

“Why do you say that?” Reidl growled.

“Maier looks as if he can barely carry his own weight, let alone other and much larger men.”

“What makes you think he carried anyone?”

“We believe the killer murdered each man inside synagogues before carrying them outside. We also believe that he’s more than 185 centimeters tall, and Maier is nowhere near that height.”

“You say that you believe all this,” the colonel grumbled with his face reddening. “So I gather you don’t know it as fact.”

“Yes,” Klaus answered. “But all the evidence so far suggests—”

“—‘Suggests’ is not the same as knowing.”

“Yes, but—”

“—But nothing, Captain,” Reidl snapped while jumping up in his seat. “And Maier could’ve had an accomplice. Which, if true, Captain Kleiner will discover in short order. This case is closed. And you should be happy. Now you can return to far more useful work. You want to be useful to the Reich, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Klaus insisted with his eyes lowered. “Though I would still like permission to talk with Maier.”

“What for?” Reidl snarled.

“Just to be certain of the truth. So I can express this certainty in my final report.”

Carefully, the colonel thought over Klaus’s request. He did while looking quite conflicted about it. But eventually he nodded his head. “All right. You can question him. He’s in the basement. But if you cannot offer me proof of his innocence afterward, the case is closed. Is that clear?”

Klaus responded by clicking his heels, and he saluted Reidl with great reverence.

“At ease,” Reidl howled while waving his arm dismissively. “At ease.”

Klaus obeyed, and he started toward the door.

But Reidl stopped him. He stopped him by uttering, “Just one more thing.”

Slowly, Klaus turned toward the man, who added, “I’ve had enough of this experiment of yours. So, regardless of what you discover downstairs, I don’t want to see that Jew again. Do we understand each other?”

Not only did Klaus understand, but so did Hermann. He understood that, while for the moment he had once again eluded fate, it was coming back for more and coming fast, looking to run him over.

chapter twenty-two: the blessing after the meal

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BY THE TIME I visited Prague, I had spoken to a number of participants of this story. But I still wanted to talk to those who had knowledge of some of the missing elements.

So I spent days looking for them, only to discover that, apart from Ivo, they were all dead or for various reasons couldn’t be found. Even finding Ivo wasn’t easy.

The first place I tried was the Maisel Synagogue. As I stepped through its doors, I heard a handful of voices echoing off the prayer hall walls.

Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash shmei raba.

They were reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer said in memory of the dead that I think is the most beautiful in Judaism, even if it did lead me down a hole as a young man that I’m still climbing out of. Spoken not in Hebrew but in Aramaic, it’s a haunting prayer. Listeners can hear the cries for comfort and relief in the words of those who say it without understanding what they’re saying.

When I was a child, every Yom Kippur I listened to the Mourner’s Kaddish from outside our synagogue’s prayer hall. I listened to my grandparents and others recite it while thinking they really were speaking to God.

Afterward I would see the tears on my grandparents’ faces as they left the hall arm in arm. Every year these tears were the same, as their mourning for those they had lost never ceased.

Even now I can see my grandmother walking past me in the temple lobby. I can see both her and her gentle but firm steps. I can see, too, the gold Star of David pin on her dress. The one she only wore on Yom Kippur. The one that helped her through that prayer.

It was a prayer that I, too, was reciting when I joined the mourners in the Maisel Synagogue. I mourned for both my grandparents, who gave me so much more than a home. I cried for them as well and for all that was missing in me because of their passing.

Hearing an unusual voice, some of the people turned toward me. The rabbi also looked at me, and he smiled warmly.

After the service, I asked him about Ivo.

But he didn’t know him, as neither he nor any of the other rabbis in Josefov were around at the time of this story or during the years following the war. Though he was able to guide me to a handful of elderly congregants, and most not only recalled Ivo but did so with fondness.

While none of them knew where he was or were even certain he was alive, one woman gave me an important clue: where he went to work after the communists closed all the synagogues in the early 1950s, during a wave of antisemitism that coincided with what is known as the Slánský Show Trial.

This led me to a small town outside of Prague called Pečky and the Tona factory, where I asked the people in the personnel department about Ivo.

But they insisted that he didn’t worked for the company, and they refused to give me access to their old files.

With my head down, I left their office. But as I was leaving the building, an aging man in blue dungarees called out to me, and he told me that he was a friend of Ivo’s. He also told me that Ivo had returned to Prague after he retired, and he told me where I could find him.

A few months earlier, Ivo’s wife had passed, and he was staying at a nursing home in Háje, in the southernmost part of the city.

I came to his open door, and I knocked on it as I tried to introduce myself. “Promiňte, dovolte, abych se vám představil . . .”

Before I could finish, Ivo jumped off his bed and greeted me. He greeted me much like he had greeted my grandfather on the day he met him. Likely recognizing how my grandfather and I similarly mangled the Czech language, he knew exactly who I was, and he would provide me with invaluable insights into this story. One of these unfolded at about the same time Hermann and Klaus were having dinner with Gertrud.

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IN WHAT PASSED as his kitchen, Ivo was enjoying the enormous serving of potato dumplings that he himself had prepared while recalling the long and difficult day he had had. Not only had there been the strange incident with the two strange men that morning in the Spanish Synagogue, but Lieutenant Krieg in the afternoon had been even crueler to him than usual at the Klausen. Though he took some solace in knowing that the other German was no longer haunting the place or him, a man who was even crueler to him than the lieutenant and would haunt more than just him.

Without ado, Ivo finished his dinner while noting that he had found it good, much as he had for years. But he could still remember the times before that, the times when he rarely had a dinner, let alone a good one. Which made him wish that the blessing were said after the meal instead of before it, as this was when he truly felt thankful. He wished and wished for this to come true.

Even though it didn’t, he silently expressed his thanks anyway. He further finished the glass of water in front of him and brought his dish, cup, and utensils to the cracked and stained but tidy ceramic sink by the lone set of windows in his room.

Carefully, he washed and dried these things, and he placed them on a towel beside the sink, next to the bowl and saucepan that he had used to make the dumplings and which he had already washed so that everything would be ready for the following night’s supper.

Using the same towel, he dried his hands before taking out his coat and hat from the closet. Which he put on as he limped out the door of his room, where he saw Mrs. Mlýnková sweeping the hallway, much as she usually did at this time.

Much as he usually did at this time, he wished the middle-aged woman a good evening and asked her how she was doing.

“What a mess this place is,” was her response, much as it usually was at this time. “I keep telling people to take off their shoes when they come into my house. But do they listen? Do they?”

“I listen,” Ivo insisted.

“Only you listen, Ivo. I swear the next pair of shoes I find I’ll throw right out the window!”

This was a threat that was also made nightly, which would become moot a few years later when the onset of communist rule and its banning of servants led to everyone taking off their shoes when entering a home. But it still caused Ivo to shudder in horror before he nodded his head and started off.

“Out chasing the ladies again, Mr. Pokorný?” the woman quipped.

Ivo shook his head. He shook it as emphatically as he could. “Oh, no, Mrs. Mlýnková. It’s nothing like that, honestly.”

“Just be quiet when you return.”

Again, Ivo nodded. He nodded multiple times before limping down the stairs to the building’s foyer, where he put on his slippers and opened the door.

At once, he could smell the odor of burning coal in the cool night air, which had been getting fainter as the days had been getting warmer. He could sense as well that it was just about to rain, and he hoped it wouldn’t do so too hard.

Slowly, he limped his way out of the building and north up Maisel Street. Though as he approached the Maisel Synagogue, he saw something that caused him to stop under an awning. He saw a woman with a yellow shawl in front of the synagogue’s gate, who was gazing at the building in wonder.

She was the same woman he often saw lurking by the synagogues at night, and she often fascinated him. But on this night, she particularly fascinated him, as unlike before, she wasn’t filthy and disheveled. She even looked pretty. She fascinated him so much that, with his hands behind his back and without making the slightest movement, he watched her walk up the street.

Even after Klara had left his sight, Ivo continued looking at the spot where she had been, as she was just as fascinating to him when she was gone as when she was in sight. He only stopped his looking when he remembered that he had something to do that night, which was when he again limped up the street.

To reach his destination, Ivo only had to walk a little more than a block. Still, it took him more than twenty minutes as he had to stop many times because his feet hurt so much.

Finally, he reached the Old-New Synagogue, and he made his way to the rear of the thirteenth-century building, where he pulled out an old wooden ladder that he had hidden behind a tree. This he placed underneath a set of metal rungs in the synagogue’s back wall, which rose from about halfway up the building all the way to an attic door at the top.

Afterward he climbed both the ladder and the metal rungs, doing so one painfully slow step at a time. He climbed them even slower than how he had walked up Maisel Street. But his movements were steady, and he had a determination that never wavered in spite of all the agony he was feeling. This was because he knew what he’d be doing that night was far more important than any discomfort he was feeling at the moment.

Eventually, he reached the top rung of the wall and the door to the attic, where Rabbi Issacs had told him before he left town was the place for all things unholy. After taking out a set of large and rusty iron keys from his coat pocket, with the largest and oldest Ivo opened the door and stepped inside the room.

Which brought a smile upon his face, and it only got stronger when he turned on the light and saw what was waiting for him.

chapter twenty-three: the voice on the phone

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THREE MEN SAT in a sparsely lit room that had a short ceiling and both a narrow width and depth.

A few minutes earlier, when Hermann stepped through its doors, the room reminded him of the claustrophobic nightmares Max Beckmann often painted. The paintings his Ana loved. In particular, it reminded him of Beckmann’s Family Picture.

Quickly, Klaus finished reading Captain Kleiner’s hastily-written report, and he dropped it onto the table in front of a young man who was many stages past terrified.

Hermann had never met Lieutenant Maier before that night. But he knew what he was feeling. He had seen the same fear in others over the years, in men who were victims of circumstances beyond what they could comprehend. This led him to feel a certain sympathy toward the man, no matter how much he didn’t want to feel it.

“Who ordered you to send Major Schiller to the synagogue?” Klaus softly asked Maier, likely trying not to frighten him any more than he already was.

“I got a call from a Major Hoffmann,” Maier answered while holding on to the table, which Hermann supposed was done in order to keep himself from shaking. “He said that he was from Legal Affairs and that it was urgent that I get Major Schiller to the Maisel Synagogue. He also told me that this order was for his ears alone.”

“Did you know this Major Hoffman?” Hermann asked.

“No,” Maier insisted after turning toward him. “I had never even heard of him. But I don’t know any of the people who work in that department.”

“Did you recognize his voice?”

Maier thought this over before saying, “I don’t think so.”

“Was there anything strange or unusual about his voice?”

Again, Maier thought it over, and he told Hermann, “He might’ve had a cold or something.”

“But he could’ve been masking his voice.”

“I suppose.”

“Did you tell any of this to Captain Kleiner?”

“I told him about the major’s call. But he said that there is no Major Hoffmann in Legal Affairs. He said that this proves my guilt.”

With exasperation, the man spun back to Klaus. “But I’m not guilty. He really did call me, from a line inside the palace, and he asked for me by name. Why would I suspect he wasn’t who he said he was?”

“What exactly was the message you delivered?” asked Hermann.

“I can’t remember it exactly,” the man grumbled. “But the gist of it was that the major needed to go to the synagogue and look inside it for an arched door.”

“Didn’t you find this message strange?” Klaus uttered with a slow shake of his head.

“Yes, but I’ve received stranger. Much stranger. It’s not unusual for people to leave cryptic or coded messages.”

“What about the belongings of the three men that they found in your flat?”

“I know nothing about them. They were not there when I left this morning. Please, Captain, they’re threatening to shoot me for this.”

“How did you know where Major Schiller was that night?” interjected Hermann.

“I got his phone number from his file and called over there,” Maier answered after again turning to Hermann. “A woman told me that he was at the Theater of the Estates with his wife.”

“Didn’t Major Schiller find it strange that some man he obviously didn’t know wanted him to go to a synagogue in the middle of the night?”

“He didn’t find it strange at all. When I gave him the order outside the theater, it was as if he had been expecting it.”

“Did you accompany him to the synagogue or anywhere else that night?”

“He told me to go back to my post.”

“But you knew he was murdered, didn’t you?”

“No one said anything about a murder,” the lieutenant gasped. “I only heard that he was killed somehow. Soldiers get killed all the time. Why would I think it had something to do with me?”

“Why didn’t you inform your superiors about this incident?” Klaus demanded. “Why didn’t you report it in your log for the night?”

“Major Hoffman specifically ordered me not to put it in my report,” Maier cried out, “and I certainly wasn’t going to question a direct order from a superior.”

Neither Klaus nor Hermann had a response or any more questions for the lieutenant. So they started out of the room, leaving Maier looking even more frightened than how they had found him.

“Please,” the man begged Klaus as the two men reached the door.

But there was nothing Klaus could do for him, and he and Hermann left. They left both the room and the palace, moving even slower than how they had entered it.

“He’s innocent, you know,” Hermann said to Klaus while wondering why he bothered or why he even cared what would happen to the lieutenant, especially as he didn’t care what would happen to him.

“I knew that before we got here,” Klaus replied. “But I can’t prove it.”

“They should have to prove his guilt, not the other way around.”

Klaus didn’t even bother to reply to this, and the two walked outside into the lightly-falling rain before getting into the Mercedes and driving off.

“What are you going to do with me?” Hermann eventually asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Tomorrow I’ll take you back to Theresienstadt,” Klaus said with his eyes shut and his head in his hand.

Hermann was skeptical of this. “But not tonight?”

“Not tonight. Mostly because I’m exhausted.”

You must promise that, no matter how impossible everything may seem, you’ll always wait through whatever ‘now’ you have left. Even if it’s to last only seconds more.

Once more, Hermann recalled Ana’s words. But this time he was sure she had been right. He knew, too, that instead of a few seconds he would have a whole night and that this could be made to last a long time.

chapter twenty-four: something like a drug

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LIKE THE NIGHT before, Hermann took a single step into his old apartment.

Like then, he did with hesitancy, which was tinged by a sudden fear that he was letting Ana down by not doing enough to survive, which he now believed was the source of the disappointment he had felt in Colonel Reidl’s office.

Could he somehow convince Reidl that Maier wasn’t the killer? he asked himself.

He couldn’t come up with an answer. So like the night before, he continued inside the room. Like then, the guard closed the door.

This caused him to stop, just before he heard another sound: of something slipping under the door.

Turning toward it, he saw a folded pink slip of paper on the floor, and he walked up to it.

He grabbed and opened it, and he saw the deportation order he had received to Theresienstadt.

“What is it?” came Ana’s soft voice from nearby.

Spinning toward her, Hermann saw that she was again sitting in her rocking chair and again staring at her paintings, and he recalled when it had happened.

It did during one of the few difficult periods of their marriage. With nothing to do all day and nowhere to go during his last years in Prague, Hermann spent most of his time in the apartment with Ana. This led to unavoidable tension as the weeks and the months of his confinement continued. On top of this was the constant fear of the sword hanging over both their heads, which was just about to fall.

“It’s nothing,” he insisted to her as he crumpled up the page. “Just some stupid ad.”

From her fright as she turned toward him, Hermann could tell she didn’t believe him.

But I think she tried to believe him. I think it because, based on something Věra told me, the alternative would’ve been unbearable.

“Hermann had become something like a drug to Ana,” the woman said in the restaurant on top of her building. “During the occupation, whenever he was away from their apartment for even the briefest of moments, she would go crazy with worry over what could happen to him. She couldn’t think straight. She couldn’t control her actions.”

Hermann could see the worry on Ana’s face that night in their apartment. He could see, too, her upper lip quiver before she tried in vain to allay her fears by asking him in Czech, “Přísaháš?”

But Hermann couldn’t swear. He couldn’t swear to a thing. So he turned from her, and he hurried away with a single thought bouncing inside his head: he wouldn’t tell her the truth. He even convinced himself that it would be better for her if she didn’t know. Though he would admit that even then he knew it would only be better for him.

His shame from this caused him to hurry more. He hurried to a nearby closet to hide the deportation order, and he rushed inside the bedroom, where he noticed he was back in the present tense. Like the night before, his featherbed was on the floor and the bare pillow was on top of it.

Like then, he felt himself hollowing out, and like then he collapsed onto the bed and grabbed the pillow. This time while trying to will himself to remember anything that could bring him some happiness.

But he had no control over what he relived, and he again found himself on the night he met Ana.

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IT WAS LATE, and Hermann was dragging a drunken Klaus home, with Ana walking a few steps behind.

Hermann couldn’t understand why she was still hanging around with them, as even he had become tired of them. He was especially tired of Klaus, who’d been getting more ornery and unpleasant with each beer that passed through him while getting more obnoxious.

The climax of the latter was when he began slurring the opening verse of a popular Czech folk song about a little town not far away. A song called “Kolíne, Kolíne,” which would have a lot of meaning to me, as my grandfather taught it to me when I was a boy because the name of the town is similar to my own.

It was a song that I, too, was slurring, on that freezing desert night when the rains fell harder and the waters rose all around me.

Klaus didn’t even bother with the song’s second verse. Instead, he leaned against Hermann and raised his fist into the air before screaming the final line of the song to the whole city. “Kolínečku, Kolíne!”

Ana chuckled. She chuckled for a long time and told him, “You sing that better than Czechs. Where’d you pick it up?”

“I don’t know,” Klaus stammered while barely keeping his balance. “I’ve never even been to Kolín. The song just flew into my head and started singing itself.”

“I should’ve guessed with a name like Stamm you’d be a drunkard,” Hermann groaned as he struggled to move Klaus forward.

“In the army,” Klaus uttered, “they called me Corporal Stammgast.”

Klaus right then saluted, and again Ana chuckled. “That word is one of the few things Czechs and Germans can agree on,” she said. “We spell ‘štamgast’ a little differently, but it means the same exact thing: a good-for-nothing drunk, wasting his life away at the same pub every night like the stump of a tree.”

“It’s only the same word,” Klaus growled, “because you copied it from us. You people are incapable of an original idea. Just like you say ‘brýle’ and ‘makléř’ and ‘kšeft.’ All German in their origin.”

“If you hold Czechs in such low regard,” Hermann interjected, “why do you speak their language so well?”

“Know thine enemy!” Klaus screeched. “Know thine enemy!”

“Is that what you think of me, Klaus?” Ana joked.

“I’m going to turn you into a German, my dear.”

“Ježišmarjá! As if I didn’t have enough problems.”

Klaus didn’t exactly respond. He just collapsed unconsciously onto the sidewalk, in spite of Hermann’s efforts to keep him upright.

“Well, I think it’s time for me to go home,” Ana let Hermann know. Though he could tell she didn’t want their night to end any more than he did.

“Let me walk you home,” Hermann insisted while noticing that one of Klaus’s shirt buttons was in his hand. “It’ll take me just a minute to get him into bed. Well, maybe it’ll take me a little longer than that. But you can wait in the lobby.”

“I can get home on my own, you know,” she grumbled. “I’ll have you know that I was schooled by Eliška Krásnohorská herself.”

“Who’s Eliška Krásnohorská?”

“One of this country’s greatest writers and a feminist.”

“Whh, what’s a feminist?”

“Someone who believes women are equal to men in every respect.”

“Then I’m a feminist too.”

“Men can’t be feminists!”

“What about President Masaryk? I remember reading an article he wrote in Naše Doba, in which he was speaking much like you. And didn’t he take his wife’s last name when he married her?”

“Look, all I was trying to say is that I don’t need someone to walk me home.”

“I know you don’t. But Klaus would be very upset with me in the morning if he found out I let you walk home alone. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” she demanded, with her arms crossed and her back to Hermann. “That’s the only reason you want to walk me home, Herr Weiss?”

Hermann didn’t respond right away. He didn’t till she turned her head toward him, which was when he looked into her eyes. He looked so deeply that he lost not only himself but his train of thought. Still, he was somehow able to shake his head.

They both smiled. But it was interrupted by a knocking sound.

Hermann tried to ignore the sound. He tried to ignore it and remain in his memory or whatever it was.

But the sound was persistent, and it returned him to his bedroom, where he realized that it was coming from his front door. It got louder and more frantic, and he tumbled off his bed and onto his feet before stumbling out of the bedroom, where he noticed all the rain falling outside the window.

“Slota,” he mumbled.

The knocking on the door got even louder.

“I’m coming,” he called out, and he stammered toward the door. But suddenly he stopped when he noticed something was in his hand.

A shirt button. Klaus’s shirt button.

“It can’t be,” he muttered in shock before reaching inside his jacket pocket. Slowly, he reached, and he found the old brass compass the bookshop owner had given him during his reexperience the night before, which compounded his shock.

Suddenly, the front door swung open. In the threshold of it stood Klaus, who was both wet and more excited than Hermann had seen him since their reacquaintance.

“Captain Kleiner has just been murdered!” he hollered.

chapter twenty-five: in the rain

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“YOU’RE DRIVING TOO fast,” Hermann called out from the back seat of the Mercedes as rain pounded the windshield, making it difficult to see. This included seeing Colonel Reidl.

With fright, the driver slammed his brakes in front of the man, who was standing in the middle of the road not far from the gates of the Pinkas Synagogue. The car’s tires screeched, and the vehicle came to a halting stop a short distance from the man’s knees.

Thunder and lightning followed, exposing Reidl’s face, which expressed equal measures of shock and fear. Though I don’t think either had to do with the car that had almost hit him.

From examining the colonel’s record at the Military History Institute, not just during this war but the one before it, I can say he wasn’t a man easily frightened. Every report I read of him depicted someone whose mind remained calm even under the most trying of times, especially at Verdun. But the enemy he was now facing was different from all others. It was both unknown and seemingly omnipotent, and I think fear overtook him like a wave out of nowhere.

Recognizing the man’s fear and becoming unnerved by it, Klaus reached for his door. So did Hermann. But Klaus stopped him by saying, “You better wait inside for the moment.”

Hermann nodded, and Klaus exited the car. As he marched up to the colonel, Hermann cracked open his window a little to hear the conversation, and he saw that Reidl looked like he had forgotten about his fear.

Klaus saluted Reidl the moment he reached him. But the colonel didn’t react to it. He didn’t even seem to notice Klaus. All he noticed was Klaus’s car and the man sitting in the back of it. With his hand shaking in fury, he pointed at him and growled, “What’s he doing here?”

“I was going to take him back to Theresienstadt in the morning,” answered Klaus, despite knowing this wasn’t an answer.

“But what’s he doing here, Captain? You’ve disobeyed a direct order.”

“He’s a good detective, Colonel. Better than good. In a single twenty-four-hour period, he’s gotten further with this investigation than what we could in weeks. If we really want to find out who’s behind these murders and stop him before he kills again, he’s our best chance. Actually, I’d say he’s our only chance.”

Reidl thought it over. He thought it over for a long time, with his face burning with a rancor that wouldn’t diffuse. I’m not sure if even he knew whether it was more directed at Hermann or at Klaus.

“All right,” he blurted out. “Bring the Jew out.”

Klaus did, and Reidl led the two, along with Klaus’s Mercedes and its headlights, to the end of the synagogue gate, where sitting on the ground was a dead and very wet Captain Kleiner, who’d been shot in the right side of his head, with his face expressing a horror similar to that of the other victims.

Slowly and with the rain subsiding, Hermann took a few steps toward the man and noticed how muddy his uniform was, but he wasn’t sure there was any relevance to this.

He stepped closer, and he noticed something else. “His gun’s missing,” he said while pointing at Kleiner’s empty holster. He then checked the man’s wound. This took some time, after which he concluded, “It looks self-inflicted. Perhaps it happened in the struggle. Or perhaps he did it to himself.”

“Why would he do it to himself?” groaned Reidl.

“Maybe to avoid something worse.”

“But he was sat just like the others,” Klaus noted.

“Yes, it would certainly seem that he was killed by the same man.”

“That’s just brilliant deduction,” grumbled Reidl.

Hermann responded by turning to the colonel. “Were you nearby when he was killed?”

“Are you interrogating me, Jew?” Reidl screeched, with his rancor overwhelming him to an even greater extent than his fear had.

“Forgive me.”

“You better hope I will,” Reidl snapped before turning to Klaus. “When you left my office this evening, Captain Kleiner began to wonder about that theory of yours, that the men were killed inside synagogues. He told me that he wanted to search the synagogues for evidence of Maier’s accomplices. So, after getting the keys to the buildings, he went off, along with two of my men to protect him.

“Later on, he called me. He sounded very excited on the phone. He said that they had seen some strange large man lurking around the Klausen Synagogue and that they had followed him. They followed him to and inside this synagogue, where he seemed to disappear. I told Kleiner to stay with my men and wait for me outside, but obviously he didn’t do this.”

“Where did he get the keys from?” asked Klaus. “It was my understanding that we didn’t have them, that some civilian in contact with our office had a set.”

“That civilian is a man Captain Kleiner knew named Malý. He got the keys from him somehow.”

“That’s the man who pays the caretaker of the synagogues. You don’t happen to know anything about him, such as his first name or where he works?”

“I don’t know him at all.”

“You mentioned that Kleiner was here with two of your men. Where are they?”

Reidl pointed down the street, at a pair of Mercedes that were much like Klaus’s. One was Reidl’s, where sat his driver, and in the other sat two men. “Those two idiots of mine were with him,” Reidl told Klaus. “Like I said, I sent them with Kleiner to protect him. But Kleiner instead ordered them to continue looking through the synagogue for the man. When I got here, the two told me that, while they were searching, they saw someone in the graveyard out there and chased him. They chased him through the cemetery and into the streets. But he gave them the slip. Then, when they came back to the synagogue, they found Kleiner dead where he is now. This was just before I arrived.”

“Take a look at this,” Hermann cried out after searching Kleiner’s pockets and finding a gold coin, which he showed the men.

“What is it?” Klaus asked.

“A ducat from 1766. It’s very rare. Maria Theresa had it struck in commemoration of her husband’s passing.”

“So it’s valuable.”

“I should say,” Hermann said as he handed the coin to Klaus. “A few years ago, I saw one for sale at a jewelry store on Pařížská. It cost more than a month’s salary.”

“What would Kleiner be doing with it?”

Klaus never got an answer to this, as something captured all their attention: the sound of stomping feet in the distance, which first passed them and then began moving away from them.

“You think that’s what Mr. Hrabal has been hearing?” Klaus asked Hermann.

“I’d say it’s likely,” Hermann answered.

“My men mentioned stomping feet as well,” Reidl interjected.

“Now what?” Klaus wondered.

Hermann turned to the synagogue. He pointed at it too. “I’d like to go inside.”

chapter twenty-six: one mystery leads to another

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THE SYNAGOGUE DOOR was locked, and Hermann couldn’t find the keys to it on Captain Kleiner. Nor did Reidl’s men have them, who insisted that Kleiner had them when they entered the synagogue.

So, after waiting for one of the men to fetch a flashlight, they looked for the keys on the grounds of the synagogue. This included in the graveyard, where among the mass of crooked old tombstones they found Kleiner’s Luger.

Klaus picked it up, and he asked Hermann, “Do you think this is where he was killed?”

“I’m sure of it,” Hermann answered while pointing the flashlight at a spot in the thick and heavily-trampled mud where someone had fallen. “But why would the killer move his body from here to the gate? For what purpose?”

There was no answer, nor could they find the keys anywhere.

“Look,” Reidl growled at Klaus in annoyance, “if you want to go inside the building, just break into it. It’s not like you have to worry about getting into trouble with the law.”

But Hermann wasn’t so keen on them damaging the synagogue. So he convinced both men that he could get inside the building without potentially disturbing evidence. This entailed Klaus and him driving a short distance to Ivo’s home, which didn’t take them long to reach even when making their way through the maze.

The two parked outside the building, and they stepped up to the locked front entrance, and Hermann knocked on the door.

But this accomplished nothing, and he got the same result when he banged on it.

“Surely, there’s no evidence here I can disturb,” Klaus said before slamming his shoulder into the door, causing it to swing open.

This surprised Hermann. It surprised him that Klaus was as strong as he was twenty years earlier, if not more so, and he muttered, “Bivoj.”

“What’s that?” Klaus muttered back.

“Remember when you wrestled in college? You would lift your opponents on your back, just like what Bivoj did with the boar. I thought you were the strongest man in the world.”

Klaus shook his head. “That was a long time ago.”

“Apparently not that long.”

The two entered the building. In the lobby, Hermann fumbled around for the light switch. After he found it, he turned it on and they rose to Ivo’s floor, and Hermann knocked on the door.

Like downstairs, there was no response. So he kept knocking until there was.

“Have I done something wrong?” Ivo cried out in the doorway, with his hands raised in surrender and wearing only a shirt.

“Not at all,” Hermann insisted with a smile. “I’m sorry to wake you, but we need you to open the door of the Pinkas Synagogue.”

“Right now?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you need to pray?”

“We need to investigate a crime that just happened there.”

“Oh,” Ivo mumbled before glancing back into his room. “Should I put on my overalls?”

“We don’t need you to do any work. We just need you to open the door and lock it after we leave. Simply put on an overcoat.”

Hurriedly, Ivo grabbed his coat and hat from the closet and just as hurriedly put them on, with Hermann noticing how wet they were.

“Were you out this evening?” he asked.

“What?” Ivo uttered with fright covering his face.

“Your coat and hat are all wet. You must have been outside tonight.”

“Yyyyes. I, I went for a little walk. You can ask Mrs. Mlýnková. She saw me leave.”

“I believe you,” Hermann said, and he really did. But he also noticed how guilty the man looked. Though he pretended it away as he and Klaus started down the stairs.

Ivo followed. He followed them as fast as he could to the building’s foyer, where he stepped into his wet slippers before the three walked outside and into the Mercedes. Which took them to the synagogue just as an ambulance drove off with Kleiner’s body.

With the rain falling only lightly, the three exited the car, and Hermann, Klaus, and Reidl followed Ivo as he limped to the front door of the building, where he unlocked and opened the creaky door before turning on the lights and letting the three men inside, along with a group of six soldiers who had arrived during the time Hermann and Klaus had been gone.

While the soldiers fanned out across the vestibule, Ivo took a pair of kippahs from his coat pocket. He put one of these on his head, and he gave the other to Hermann, who put it on as well.

“I really don’t understand what you expect to find here,” groaned Reidl with a shake of his head as he gazed into the long and narrow prayer hall. “Obviously, the killer must be long gone.”

“It’s what he may have left behind that interests me,” Hermann explained before gazing into the hall too, where he noticed that the ark in the front of the room was open and missing its Torah. Which led him to turn to Ivo. “Do you know what happened to all the Torahs?”

“Somebody took them,” Ivo answered.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. One morning, I came to work and they were gone. All of them. I went to the rabbi’s house that day and told him, but he told me not to worry about it.”

“When was this?”

“After the synagogues were closed but before everyone left the city.”

“What does this have to do with Kleiner’s murder?” Reidl interjected with a sneer.

“I’m not sure,” answered Hermann before turning to Ivo again and asking, “Is there by any chance an arched door here like the ones in the Spanish and Klausen Synagogues?”

“Why?” Reidl demanded. “Why would you be looking for such a thing?”

Klaus answered for Hermann. “For the same reason we’re all here, Colonel.”

“Is there such a door, Ivo?” Hermann went on.

Ivo nodded, and he pointed in the door’s direction, and everyone hurried toward it.

Not surprisingly, they found it locked.

“You don’t have the key to this one either, I suppose,” Hermann said to Ivo once the man had reached them.

Ivo shook his head over and over while looking as guilty as he had in the Spanish Synagogue.

“We really need to get inside this door,” Klaus told Reidl.

“So shoot off the lock,” grumbled the colonel.

“Captain Fischer tried that at the Klausen Synagogue. It didn’t work.”

“Let me try,” Reidl snarled while reaching for his gun.

“We could damage evidence,” Hermann argued. He did much like when Reidl wanted to break into the building, with it again having more to do with not wanting to destroy the synagogue than anything else.

“I have a better way of opening it,” Klaus told everyone.

chapter twenty-seven: the footprints in the cellar

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THE SIX SOLDIERS stood in front of the arched door, holding a battering ram made from a thick log, with three standing on each side of it.

“Now!” Klaus ordered, and the men jerked the ram backward before slamming it into the door.

But this achieved not a thing.

“Harder!” Klaus cried out. “Much harder!”

The men obeyed, but the door held.

“They’d do better with a running start,” Hermann suggested.

“Five steps back,” Klaus told the men.

They did, and Klaus had them charge. This time they knocked the heavy door open, exposing an old stone staircase and plenty of darkness, which mixed with all the dust caused by the door slamming into a wall.

Hermann, Klaus, and Colonel Reidl all stared at this as they took a step through the doorway, with Klaus illuminating the way with the flashlight.

“Pozor,” Hermann murmured.

Carefully was how they descended the short staircase, and they came upon an ancient stone cellar with a dirt floor.

“This place looks older than the building,” the colonel remarked.

“Prague was originally at river level,” Hermann explained. “But because of floods, in the thirteenth century they built on top of what existed. There are cellars like this all over the city.”

“We’re not at river level,” Klaus noted.

“You’re right. This must’ve been an upper chamber or an attic.”

“Now what?”

“May I have the flashlight?”

Klaus complied, and Hermann moved the light across the small and cluttered room. He did until he came upon the door to a dumbwaiter on the wall.

After pausing for a moment, he continued looking and found something more interesting: a book on top of some boxes.

He walked over to it, and he saw that it was a Hebrew Bible. He saw, too, that one of its pages was dogeared, and he opened the book to it and discovered that a passage had been underlined.

“What is it?” Klaus asked.

“Job 29:18,” Hermann told him. “‘I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days like the phoenix.’”

“Does it mean something?”

“I don’t know,” Hermann muttered before putting the book down and once again moving the light across the room. It didn’t take him long before he found a pair of immense footprints in the dirt floor, which led to a stone wall that had a large Star of David hand-painted on it.

“Strange,” he said while staring at the footprints.

“What’s so strange about them?” asked Klaus.

“Look how deep they are.”

“If the killer was carrying Kleiner . . .”

“How could Kleiner have come down here? How could he have gotten through the door upstairs?”

“The killer could’ve brought him downstairs.”

“But why?”

Instead of answering, Klaus took the flashlight and walked up to the dumbwaiter. This he opened, and he shined light into the shallow compartment before shaking his head. “Not even Kleiner could’ve fit into that.”

“Forgetting about him for the moment,” Hermann said as he walked up to Klaus and retook the flashlight.

Again, he shined the light onto the footprints. “It’s not just the deepness of the prints that are strange. Look how oddly they’re shaped. They have no curves around the insteps, and the sizes of them are just enormous. Have you ever seen anyone with feet that large?”

All this made Hermann think of something he hadn’t in a long time, and he chuckled.

“Do you find something funny in all this, Jew?” groaned Reidl.

“I was laughing at myself, Colonel,” Hermann insisted. “Because something outrageous had occurred to me.”

“What was that?” Klaus asked.

“That these could be the footprints of a golem,” Hermann answered. Along with this, he recalled all the stories his father had told him about the legend. He recalled as well the man behind the stories, which made him smile.

“A golem?”

“A giant made of clay. One with brute strength but a limited capacity for thought. Some say it’s what inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein.”

“Yes, I think I remember seeing a movie about a golem when we were in college. Is that what you mean?”

“Exactly. Well, not exactly. Paul Wegener, the director of that film, took many liberties with the legend. In it, if you remember, Rabbi Loew created an amulet containing a magic word that he received from some spirit he called, and he placed this amulet on the golem’s chest to make it come alive.”

“Yes, I remember something like that.”

“But in the actual legend, the rabbi used the secrets contained in that book of Jewish mysticism we found at the Spanish Synagogue to create a golem. Also, instead of using an amulet to bring it to life, he carved the magic word into its forehead, the Hebrew word for ‘truth,’ אמת. He afterward turned the golem off by wiping the first letter off the word, which transformed it into the word for ‘death,’ מת. You know, I always found it interesting how the Hebrew words for ‘truth’ and ‘death’ are seemingly related, as if the former derives from the latter. But what’s even more interesting is that this Rabbi Loew really did live about three hundred years ago. He’s buried in that cemetery we were just in. Some people, to this day even, think the golem was real. I used to hear talk all the time about how it was locked away in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, which is just a few blocks from here. There was actually this old woman a few years back who came to my office and demanded that I investigate as to whether it was really up there.”

“Did you?” Klaus mumbled with fright overwhelming his voice.

“Did I investigate it?” Hermann gasped. “If I had, I would’ve been fired long before you people came to town.”

“You think that’s what killed Captain Kleiner?” Reidl uttered, with his voice expressing even more fear than Klaus’s.

“Of course not,” Hermann said, surprised by both men’s fright. “It’s preposterous.”

“It would explain those stomping feet,” Klaus countered.

“Perhaps the killer wants his victims to believe that a golem is pursuing them, to frighten them away, along with anyone else who might get in his way. Now that would make sense.”

“But we’re no closer in discovering who this killer is.”

“Before we can answer that question, I’m afraid we will have to answer many others. Such as, why have the conspirators been so obsessed with getting into these cellars? Even more perplexing is why do these footprints lead to the wall and not back?”

“For your sake, Jew,” Reidl growled, “you better come up with some answers to these questions and quickly. This evening, after you two left my office, I made arrangements for Captain Stamm’s replacement to arrive early. He’ll be here in two days.”

chapter twenty-eight: under the glare of jan hus

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WITH THE RAIN having come to a halt, Klaus’s Mercedes stopped in front of Hermann’s apartment building, not far from Hermann’s two guards, who were standing under an awning and looking exactly as they had when the pair left them hours earlier.

Slowly, Hermann opened the car’s back door, and with an extended moan, he stepped outside.

This was a moan that would become another of Hermann’s trademarks and something I’d come to know well in the downward spiral that defined my teenage years, as it often accompanied one of his talks about how disappointed he and my grandmother were in me.

“Would it be okay if I took a short walk before I went to bed?” Hermann asked Klaus. “I need to unwind a little.”

Klaus nodded.

While nodding himself, Hermann closed the door and started down Eliška Krásnohorská Street, where he noticed a street sign with the woman’s name. This made him recall how much she had meant to Ana and how her oversized presence had inspired Ana, both during her time at the woman’s prep school and well afterward. It had been the reason that she and Hermann had rented their apartment on her street, which had been named after her years before she died, much like how the train station had been named after President Masaryk long before he passed.

“Čest její památce,” Hermann murmured as he reached the sign.

Honor to her memory, which Ana would often say when they walked by the sign together.

Slowly but steadily, Hermann continued down the street, and Klaus must’ve signaled the guards, because the two followed Hermann. Though he didn’t notice. He didn’t even notice what was in front of him. All he noticed was a long-closed art gallery, and he stopped beside it.

What he was thinking of at this moment he didn’t tell me. But I have a pretty good idea, based on a story that Věra told me, which had been told to her by Ana.

In it, Ana had her arm wrapped around Hermann’s and they were walking down the busy sidewalk a few years after they’d been married. It was a hot and bright summer day, and Ana was holding a pink parasol in her free hand, which protected both their faces.

Like what often happened when they were out together, people gawked at them and their difference in height. Usually, this amused the two. But on this day, they weren’t paying attention, even if their reasons weren’t the same. While Hermann was overcome with excitement over what was to happen, Ana was by a gloom that had consumed her ever since graduating school and finding no market for her art. He practically had to drag her out of the house that day.

“You must hate me,” she muttered while avoiding his eyes.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“You gave up all your dreams for me and for what? I’m not good for anything, it would seem.”

Hermann didn’t reply. Instead, they continued on until they came upon the art gallery, where he stopped and said, “Wouldn’t this be a great spot for that self-portrait of yours?”

Ana glanced at the empty easel in the window, and she shrugged.

“So,” Hermann went on, “the other day I went inside and told the owner this.”

“You didn’t,” gasped Ana.

“I did,” he said with a grin.

“And?” Ana uttered with both anxiousness and nervousness.

“And she kindly showed me out the door. But that’s when I saw the store across the street.”

Ana turned around, releasing Hermann’s arm, and she looked at an empty shop window. “So?”

“So, I figured if the painting were in that window, she’d have to see it.”

“You didn’t,” Ana again gasped.

“I did,” Hermann again said with another grin.

“You rented that store?” she screeched. “With what?”

“With the money I’d been saving.”

“You were saving that for Bled. You almost had enough.”

“We’ll get there one day. You needed to get here right now.”

“That’s just great, Hermann,” she groaned with her face reddening with anger. “You wasted all that money, and I don’t see my painting anywhere.”

“Perhaps you need to look again,” he murmured before again glancing into the gallery window.

She did, and she saw a smiling woman putting the self-portrait in the empty easel.

“She wants to see all your work,” Hermann whispered while nodding at the woman who would become Ana’s patron.

Ana didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. She just teared up as she took hold of Hermann’s arm once more. She gripped it as if her life depended on it, and maybe it did.

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WITH A SMILE, Hermann stepped away from the shuttered gallery, and he continued down the empty and dark streets.

He walked for many blocks, until he reached Old Town Square, which was empty as well, apart from the statue of Jan Hus.

This drew him like a magnet, and he found himself under it while reexperiencing a moment there on the night he met Ana.

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HERMANN WAS KISSING Ana, which he could only do because she was leaning toward him so their lips could meet. He was also grasping one of her hands, which itself was gripping the single white rose he had just bought her while her other hand made its way through his impossible brown curls. Their bodies were far apart too, with their lips and eyes closed.

It was Hermann’s first kiss, even though he wasn’t exactly a boy. He would say that it was so powerful that it created a sense of calm in him from which he never wanted to return. It also made him content with himself for the first time. Still, something caused his eyes to open, and he saw the rose in Ana’s hand.

Carefully, he plucked one of its petals, and he put it in his pants pocket as a remembrance. He then noticed the towering figure of Hus, who was a pre-Reformation martyr and a Czech national hero. He noticed, too, that the man looked far from pleased. Which made him wonder what would happen to him if Hus were alive. He wondered if he’d be the one who’d get burned at the stake. But he didn’t wonder for long.

Ana opened her eyes. Seeing the statue, her face became flush, and she broke their kiss and rushed toward the safety of Železná Street.

Not knowing what to do, Hermann followed. He followed her like a puppy dog. “What’s wrong?” he called out.

“I was not expecting that kiss, Herr Weiss,” she called back.

“I don’t know what came over me. I’m not like that, really.”

Ana responded by pointing back to the statue without looking at it. “And underneath Master Hus, no less. My father would kill me. We’re Hussites, you know.”

“I didn’t know. Je mi líto.”

Hearing Hermann apologize in Czech and the sincerity in his voice, Ana slowed and so did he. Though he kept a safe distance back.

“It’s all right,” she told him. “Just give me a little warning next time.”

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”

Quickly, she came to a stop, and she spun toward him, causing him to stop in front of her.

“What was it like?” she asked.

“What was what like?” he asked back.

“The war.”

Hermann didn’t answer, as he was surprised that he wasn’t hearing the sounds of battle in his ears, which made him realize that he hadn’t left the calm state he had experienced in her kiss.

“Did you hear me?” she groaned.

“What?” he groaned back.

“What was the war like?” she cried out in exasperation.

“It, it was nothing like those romantic novels you read when you’re a kid,” he explained while avoiding her eyes. “It was nothing like them at all. Sometimes we would fight for months over the same trench in the middle of nowhere. Like at Verdun. It didn’t even seem like we were trying to win anything there. It seemed to be about killing as many people as possible, as if none of our lives mattered. Not just the lives of the enemy but ours as well. I saw so many people die for a trench, Ana. A lousy trench. I was scared all the time. I tell you, not for a second was I brave.”

“But you saved those men’s lives, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t like it was described in that newspaper article. It wasn’t my intention to save them. I was just trying not to get killed. That’s all I was doing. I don’t deserve any of those medals. You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to throw them all away. Even the one the emperor pinned on me.”

“But you didn’t throw them away, did you?”

“No,” Hermann answered with a slow shake of his head.

“Because you are a hero. You acted in spite of being afraid and that’s all that matters. So I never again want to hear you say that you weren’t brave or imply that you aren’t a hero. Not if you want a relationship with me, Herr Weiss. Is that understood?”

“Yes, no,” he gasped. “Relationship?”

She didn’t answer with words. Instead, she kissed him. She kissed him far more passionately than how they’d been kissing before, and this both surprised and shocked him, and he quickly broke their embrace.

“What’s wrong?” she cried.

“You’re Klaus’s girl,” was his response.

This caused Ana to chuckle, which caused him to demand, “What’s so funny?”

“You are,” she said with her hands on her hips. “Here you are this big, brave war hero, wrapped inside a naive little boy.”

“What do you mean?” he bellowed while trying to muster indignation that just wasn’t in him.

“It’s not me Klaus is in love with,” she insisted, as if he were oblivious to the obvious.

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IN A FLICKER of time, Ana was gone. All that remained was Hermann and the empty square, along with the statue of Hus, who was glaring at him just as he had more than two decades earlier.

Hermann turned around, and he saw the two guards waiting for him a short distance back at the edge of the square. They waited until Hermann passed them and made his way home.

“It was real,” Hermann told himself as he felt the rose petal in his pocket and tried to convince himself of what he was saying.

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HERMANN RETURNED TO Eliška Krásnohorská Street, where with surprise he saw that Klaus’s Mercedes was still in front of his building and that Klaus was watching him. He was watching him with sad and lonely eyes.

It’s not me Klaus is in love with.

Unlike when Ana said these words, Hermann was no longer oblivious to the obvious. But he wished he were.

chapter twenty-nine: bumping into each other

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ALONE IN THE Pinkas Synagogue, Ivo tidied up while realizing that he’d have to spend a lot of time the next day repairing the lock of the arched door, much as he had with the one in the Klausen after Captain Fischer tried to shoot it apart.

Fortunately for him, fixing mechanical devices was the one thing he did exceptionally well. He would later spend more than twenty years doing this at Tona.

Once Rabbi Popper told him that God gave everyone a gift and that this was his, and he never forgot it, nor did he ever cease feeling blessed because of it.

Finally, Ivo finished his work, and he turned off the lights before leaving the building and locking its door.

With both fatigue and pain, he limped toward the building’s gate and Široká Street beyond it. But as he reached the cobblestone sidewalk, he experienced something that made him forget his fatigue and pain and everything else. He bumped right into the woman with the yellow shawl.

They reacted to this in the same way, by jumping back in fear, and Klara looked as if she would flee. Which probably had something to do with Ivo not wearing pants.

But she didn’t flee. She just stood there and stared at the man, and he did likewise while feeling as frightened as she looked.

“Who, who are you?” he mumbled with his arms behind his back.

She didn’t answer. So he pointed to himself with his shaking hand and told her his name.

The woman didn’t seem like she would reply. Again, she looked as if she would run. But instead she muttered her name.

“That’s a pretty name,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said back.

“Your shawl is pretty too. I’ve seen you many times before but never with that shawl until tonight.”

“A friend gave it to me.”

“It’s good to have friends, isn’t it?”

Once more, she made no response, and he asked, “Are you Jewish?”

“Why would you ask that?” she uttered.

“I’ve seen you often by the synagogues.”

“I’m not Jewish. I just like being around the buildings. They seem peaceful and safe.”

“They are.”

“I like to be near them, just as I like to be near the river. They both bring me comfort.”

“I do hope that you didn’t get too wet tonight.”

“No, I was standing underneath a—”

“—Klara?” interrupted a female voice from down the street. “Is that you?”

“I better go,” Klara said to Ivo after seeing who had called her.

Slowly, she started backing up toward the woman, who was standing on the corner of Žatecká Street a half block away.

“I could show you the insides of one sometime,” Ivo called out while not moving a muscle. “The synagogues, I mean. I could show you any one you’d like to see anytime you’d like to see it. I work in them.”

“I know,” she told him. “I’ve seen you inside them and around them.”

“Me too.”

She smiled.

“Goodnight,” he whispered.

“To you as well.”

Quickly, she turned from him and hurried off.

“I’ll be here tomorrow night,” he shouted.

Her only response was to slow a little before again hurrying off, and now it was his turn to smile.

chapter thirty: the joy of potato dumplings

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DESPITE AGAIN NOT getting much sleep, Hermann again woke when the sun began seeping into his drape-less bedroom windows.

Though unlike the previous morning, Ana was sleeping peacefully in his arms, just as she had countless times before.

This had always been Hermann’s favorite part of the day. He loved the scent of her hair and the beat of her body as she breathed against him. It was how he knew he was alive and what made him “trust the magic of beginnings,” as his favorite philosopher Meister Eckhart once said.

So he enjoyed this reexperience more than all the others. He enjoyed it so that, while caressing the rose petal in his pocket, he tried to will it and her to last forever.

But both faded.

Like the morning before, he got up and cleaned himself in the bathroom mirror as best he could. Like then, his guards drove him toward the palace.

As they made their way across Maisel Street, Hermann noticed a smiling Ivo sweeping in front of the Maisel Synagogue, and he asked the driver to pull up alongside the man.

The driver complied, and Hermann rolled down his window and softly called out Ivo’s name. Which caused him to stop his sweeping. He also turned to Hermann, with his smile fading as he did.

“Good morning,” spoke Hermann. “I wanted to thank you for getting up last night.”

“That’s my job,” Ivo told him. “To help you people.”

“You’re working early this morning, I see.”

“I have a lot to do today.”

“Do you think I could talk to you for a few minutes?” Hermann asked as he opened the car door.

Ivo nodded, and he limped to the synagogue gate, where he put down his broom before limping back to the car and sitting inside it next to Hermann.

“It must be pretty hard getting around with those feet of yours,” Hermann said.

“It was worse before,” Ivo said back. “Dr. Brod, he made miracles for my feet. He’s a feet doctor, you know.”

“What kind of miracles did he make?”

“He made me shoes.”

“Was he a member of the synagogue?”

Ivo nodded.

“Tell me, how long have you worked in the synagogue? I mean the Maisel.”

“Many years.”

Ivo added to this by nodding down the road. “When I was little, I was an orphan. I used to beg on Old Town Square, by where Master Hus’ statue is.”

Hermann couldn’t help recall a certain kiss there, and he couldn’t help grin.

“But the statue wasn’t there when I was a boy,” Ivo went on. “Mr. Šaloun hadn’t built it yet. But not far from where it is now, I used to sit on the cobblestones all day and beg for my meals. Then Rabbi Popper found me.”

Suddenly, a big smile came across Ivo’s face, and he murmured, “I can remember the day like it happened now. I can remember it so exactly. The rabbi took me by the hand and told me to come with him. As he led me away, he described to me how he and his people had a responsibility to repair the world as he put it.”

“Tikkun olam,” Hermann whispered in Hebrew.

“To je vončo!” Ivo cried out in Czech while pointing at Hermann with excitement. “That’s exactly what he called it, tikkun olam. And you know what else he said? He said that I was a part of this. That’s why he took me into his home and taught me. Then when I got old enough, he hired me and got me my own place.”

Ivo’s smile didn’t last long. It left as suddenly as it came, as he recalled his life prior to meeting the rabbi. He remembered how cold he always was, no matter what the weather. He was always hungry too. Sometimes he was a little hungry and often he was a lot, but he was always some hungry.

Ivo and Hermann shared a lot in common, even if they didn’t realize it. Which created something of a bond between them, especially from Hermann’s perspective. He wanted to protect the man as much as he could. But to do this effectively he needed to discover what Ivo knew about the crimes and how he was involved in them. “You like Rabbi Popper, don’t you?” he noted, even though he knew the answer.

“Indeed I do,” Ivo noted back. “And his wife Mrs. Popperová. She’s the one who taught me how to make potato dumplings, which is my favorite dish.”

Once more, Ivo’s smile returned. “A very patient woman that Mrs. Popperová. It took her all day to teach an idiot like me how to make potato dumplings, and she did it on a Sunday too. But she did it. Now every night I make them. I make them all by myself. And they’re good. As good as what I used to eat in restaurants and much cheaper. Now I can afford to eat as many as I want, and sometimes I eat a lot. Now I’m never hungry.”

Like before, Ivo’s smile didn’t last, and he lowered his eyes and mumbled, “I miss them both terribly. I miss many who are gone. I guess, I guess I’m too dumb to understand.”

“Understand what?” Hermann asked.

“Why everyone hates you people so much,” Ivo answered after looking up at Hermann. “I hear all the time what they say about you. I’ve heard it since I was a boy sitting on the square. But it seems to me, it seems that they judge in you everything they don’t want to judge in themselves.”

“You’re not dumb at all. You’re a lot smarter than you think. A lot smarter than most people around here and that includes me.”

Unsurely, Ivo nodded, and he opened his door and started to climb out of the car.

“Just one more question,” Hermann uttered, causing Ivo to stop and turn toward him. “My understanding is that you were with Captain Fischer at the Klausen Synagogue the day he was killed.”

“Who?” asked Ivo.

“Captain Fischer. He was the man who was always trying to get into the cellar over there. You know, the one wearing a black uniform much like what my friend wears, the man you always see me with.”

“Oh, him. He’s not a nice man at all. He’s always yelling at me and telling me how he’s going to kill me. He even hit me once. It’s not my fault I’m dumb. The rabbi never yelled at me. He always smiled at me when I did something dumb. Mrs. Popperová too. That Sunday, when she taught me how to make potato dumplings, she smiled at me all day long.”

“When was the last time you saw Captain Fischer?”

Ivo thought about this, and he told Hermann, “When I saw him last, it was late in the afternoon just before I left for home so I could make my dumplings.”

“And what time did you leave that day?”

Once more, Ivo thought about it before answering, and he signified five by using his fingers like clock hands.

“I must go now,” he added as he left the car.

Slowly, he limped his way toward the synagogue gate and the broom, with Hermann surer than ever that he was involved in the murders, even if he was no surer how.

chapter thirty-one: collaborating with the enemy

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HERMANN AGAIN ARRIVED early at the palace, and he again walked into and through the building with his two guards trailing behind him.

This time Marta was waiting for him, standing by her desk and holding another piping hot cup of faux coffee, which she offered to him with a smile when he stopped beside her.

He smiled back and took the cup. “Thank you, Marta. Just what I needed as always.”

“I had a busy day yesterday,” she said while watching him gulp down the coffee with dismay.

“Tell me about it.”

She picked up a notepad off her desk and read it. “First, I checked with city records to see who’s responsible for those synagogues in Josefov, and I discovered that the responsibility for all six belongs to a joint-stock company called Golem a.s.”

“A very interesting choice of name. Were you able to find out anything about this company, such as its owners?”

“For that, I had to check state records. I discovered that the stockholders of the company are six limited-liability companies. Then when I researched each of these, I learned that the same person was listed as the responsible party for all of them.”

Hermann grinned. “Let me guess: his name is Malý.”

“How’d you guess?”

“He came up quite a bit yesterday. But we know nothing about him other than his first initial and last name. Perhaps you can fill in the details.”

“I can but it wasn’t easy,” she said before glancing at her notes. “He was only listed with that initial and last name. So, armed with one of those special bottles of Becherbitter you left me, I went to see Jindřich Vidlička. He’s a deputy at the Finance Ministry. But all he could give me were the financial statements of the companies. Still, I looked these over, and I saw this strange line item in the balance sheets: peníze na cestě.”

Hermann translated this term in his head to money on the way and it confused him, which must’ve been all over his face.

“I think,” Marta said while both reading his face and mind, “money in transit is a better translation.”

Hermann smiled. He smiled all over.

“It turns out,” Marta went on, “when someone makes a bank transfer, it doesn’t go directly from one bank account to another. The National Bank must process and record the transaction, and this takes time. Hence the need for ‘peníze na cestě.’ So I got to thinking that maybe these companies had made transfers to Malý, and I had Vidlička see if he could find any.”

“And he did,” Hermann blurted out as he continued to smile at Marta and a brilliance he always believed exceeded his own.

“He did. First, he found a bunch of transactions that Golem a.s. had made. A number of these were in the same amounts and to the same recipient, and from the bank account of this person, Vidlička was able to tell me that Malý’s first name is Antonín.”

“Were you able to find out anything else about him?”

“His name sounded familiar, so I checked if we had arrested him.”

“Had we?”

She shook her head. “But I was still certain that we had come across him before. So I went through all our old case files, and I discovered that, about six years ago, he represented Milan Žabka, whom you arrested for murder.”

“So Malý’s a lawyer?”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“I remember Žabka, but I don’t remember Malý at all.”

“Žabka fired him after about ten minutes and right before attempting his second murder. This must’ve happened before you came in that morning. Anyway, I did some research and learned that this Malý has an office at the Palác Dunaj. That’s the new building on Národní. You know, the modern-looking one with the paternoster.”

“Did you learn anything more?”

“I checked him out with the bar association,” Marta replied after again conferring with her notes, “and they don’t exactly have a fond opinion of him, to say the least. He’s almost been disbarred multiple times, and a slew of complaints have been filed against him by his former clients, and that doesn’t even include Žabka.”

“That makes him a rather interesting choice to be named responsible for six irreplaceable synagogues.”

“The bar association also told me that some of its members wanted to throw Malý out a few years ago because there were rumors he was a Jew. But they investigated these rumors and found them unsubstantiated.”

Hermann wasn’t sure what to conclude from this piece of information, so he just let Marta continue.

“I tried calling this Malý,” she said, “to get more information about the arrangement he has with the synagogues. I called him well into the afternoon, but no one picked up the phone. So I decided to go there myself.”

“So that’s where you were yesterday afternoon,” Hermann uttered.

“That’s where I was. I even took the paternoster to his office.”

“And you lived to talk about it.”

“It seems so.”

“Ana and I rode up and down in one of those things on our wedding day,” Hermann mumbled as he recalled his memory of that day. “I can’t even tell you how many times we did.”

Marta smiled, and she told him, “This Malý has a small office on the third floor, all the way in the back. But he wasn’t there when I arrived. I had to wait until the end of the day for him to show up.”

“Did he tell you anything when he did?”

“The only information he would give me is that he’s not the owner of Golem a.s. or of any the limited-liability companies that control it. He’s simply representing the actual owners. But he wouldn’t tell me who these people are.”

“Excellent work as usual, Marta. If it were up to me, I’d make you a detective.”

“Then I’m glad it’s not up to you. My husband complains enough about the hours I work.”

Hermann grinned. “But I bet he never complains about your pay.”

“Not once,” spoke Marta with her own grin.

Suddenly realizing Klaus would be arriving soon, Hermann said, “There’s just one thing I want you to do for me today. I’d like you to find out all you can about a certain Gertrud Gross. She’s a well-to-do socialite whose husband likely died recently. Whatever information you find, put it on a piece of paper and place this folded over in the top drawer of your desk. Then feel free to take some time off. You’ve earned it.”

Quickly, Hermann started off. But just as quickly he stopped, and he looked for a place to put his cup down.

Marta grabbed it, just like she always did, and he again started toward his office.

“Can I ask you something, Herr Weiss?” she whispered.

Hermann stopped and turned toward her, and he whispered back, “You can ask me anything.”

“What are you doing with these Nazis?” she muttered while eyeing Hermann’s guards, who were standing well behind them and engaged in their own conversation.

“You know, that’s a really good question, one that I’ve had to ask myself more than once. At first, they didn’t give me much choice, if you know what I mean. But even then I wanted to say no, and I only didn’t because I had once promised Ana not to give up. But I truly expected to do the job by rote.”

“And that hasn’t happened.”

“I can’t explain it,” Hermann said while averting his gaze from her. “Even to myself. I think part of it is that this case has taken my mind off Ana, at least a little. But just as importantly, it’s leading me somewhere, Marta. I don’t know where or even where this feeling is coming from. But I know it’s taking me somewhere I need to go.”

“People are talking,” she told him. To elaborate on this, she nodded down the hall, and Hermann turned and saw a pair of uniformed Czech policemen waiting outside a door, who were glaring at him. “They think you’ve become a collaborator.”

“I’ve wondered about that myself,” he murmured with his head hanging. “Even though I’m not helping them catch Jews or partisans or anything like that. Even though I’m not helping them advance their agenda in any way, I’ve wondered if helping them investigate a normal crime constituted collaboration. I’ve wondered if help was something fungible, that by providing it, I was freeing up another man, who’d then be able to commit atrocities.”

“If that were true, we’d all be collaborators.”

“Maybe we are. Maybe the simple act of driving on the right-hand side of the road is a form of collaboration. Just imagine if everyone started driving on the left-hand side again. The whole country would grind to a halt. And what would the Nazis do? Would they shoot seven million people?”

“It wouldn’t be the fear of seven million shot that would scare people from doing this. It’d be the fear that they’d be the first shot.”

Hermann had no response, and the conversation fell silent. Which was only broken when Marta asked, “Can I ask what you’re helping them investigate?”

“Just some dead Nazis,” Hermann grumbled with a shake of his head.

“Well,” she said under her breath, “all I can say is that I hope this investigation leads to making some more of them.”

Hermann smiled, which remained on his face until he heard someone nearby clear his throat.

It was Klaus.

chapter thirty-two: when a chicken scratches

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HERMANN AND KLAUS marched down the hallway, with Hermann trying to gauge his former friend and figure out what he was thinking and feeling.

But he was drawing a blank. It was as if Klaus had put up a wall, not just between them but between himself and the whole world. “I sure hope you won’t hold what Marta just said against her,” he said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Klaus said back without emotion. “I didn’t hear a thing. But she might want to be more careful about what she says in the future. Because next time someone just may be listening.”

Hermann nodded, and he stepped inside his office with Klaus, who closed the door and asked, “How do you want to proceed today?”

Hermann answered by asking his own question. “Do you believe Colonel Reidl’s story from last night?”

“There was certainly some truth in it, but certainly not all of it was truth. Or even most of it. For example, he had no reason for showing up there last night. If Kleiner had needed assistance, he could’ve sent him a whole division. Do you think he could be the killer?”

“He would’ve had just as much trouble carrying those men as Lieutenant Maier, if not more so. Besides, he had no mud on his uniform last night, and he’s not quite tall enough to be the killer either. What’s more, from the look on his face last night when we arrived, I’d say he was afraid and not of us.”

Klaus made no reply, and the two sat beside the desk as Hermann added, “But he’s involved in this somehow, even if it’s just tangentially. He and Captain Kleiner almost certainly framed Maier, and there must be a reason why. As Czechs like to say, ‘ani kuře zadarmo nehrabe.’”

Not even a chicken scratches for nothing.

This was something a veteran detective taught Hermann on his first case and something he applied on almost every one that came after it: the belief that no act, criminal or otherwise, is random. That behind every one is a motive, and if you can uncover what it is, you’ll likely uncover all sorts of things.

“So how do we discover why this particular chicken was scratching?” questioned Klaus.

“Do you have access to the murdered men’s personnel files?” Hermann questioned back.

Klaus answered by rising to his feet, and he left the room.

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WHEN KLAUS RETURNED, he tossed four folders onto the desk in front of Hermann, who opened each side by side.

“Now what?” Klaus said.

“We need to find a connection between them and Colonel Reidl,” Hermann said back. “By the way, was Reidl at Colonel Mueller’s party?”

“He was. He mentioned it to me when I first brought the subject up. But he insisted that he didn’t recall meeting Schiller or Fischer at the party or at any other time. He said there were quite a few people at the party, and Mueller’s guest list backs that up.”

“Still, we know that he had the opportunity to meet and talk with both of them. Now what do these files tell us?”

Carefully, Klaus examined them. But after many minutes of this, he shook his head. “If there’s a connection between them, I certainly don’t see it. It’s not in plain sight.”

“If solving murders were as easy as looking in plain sight, there’d never be any unsolved ones. Let’s start with the basic facts about these men and drill down from there.”

Klaus responded by emptying the contents of the files onto the desk and spreading them across it. “Which facts do you want to start with?”

“How about where they were from.”

“They, they were from all over the place,” Klaus said as he sifted through the material. “Schiller was from Danzig, for instance. And Fischer, he was from Königsberg. Gruber was from Essen, and Kleiner grew up not far from me in Tetschen.”

“Had they served together before or trained with one another at any time?” Hermann asked.

Quickly, Klaus scanned through the information, and he shook his head.

“Did they have any common skills or traits?” Hermann asked next.

Again, Klaus looked through the files. “Like I told you before, they were all well trained and capable soldiers, apart from Kleiner. They also all had significant combat experience other than Kleiner, and all three were decorated for valor too. Though nothing extraordinary. Nothing like you.”

Ignoring this remark, Hermann said, “Did they have any special skills?”

“Captain Gruber had some interesting skills,” Klaus replied after spending a considerable amount of time gleaning facts from the information. “He was an expert in Jewish Studies. He even knew some Hebrew.”

“Maybe he was the one who was looking at that Kabbalah book in the Spanish Synagogue. Maybe he even brought it there, believing a golem was after him.”

“One more thing,” Klaus mentioned after looking through the files again. “Other than Kleiner, all the men had had some disciplinary problems. Nothing extraordinary, though.”

“So, other than Kleiner, they were all competent and brave. Though not too brave. And they didn’t exactly walk what your version of the Bible calls the ‘straight and narrow.’”

“What exactly are you getting at?”

“If you were looking to recruit a group of men to commit a crime . . .”

“These men would be suitable. But what crime?”

“That’s for us to find out. Can we search through the men’s belongings? Just as importantly, may we?”

“We both can and may. But Schiller’s wife has probably already left town. And my understanding is that Kleiner’s mother is on her way to Prague right now to pick up his things. What’s more, I hear that she makes her son look agreeable in comparison.”

“He was the exception, anyway.”

“That leaves Gruber and Fischer.”

Hermann nodded before collecting the two men’s files. He then glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was approaching nine. “But first,” he said, “there’s a certain lawyer we need to visit.”

chapter thirty-three: a ride in a paternoster

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THE MERCEDES PULLED up in front of the Palác Dunaj, and Hermann noticed in the rearview mirror that the driver was smiling, probably because he was finally able to take the two somewhere without Hermann’s help.

As the car came to a stop, Hermann and Klaus jumped out of it onto Národní, which is an avenue that connects the riverbank with the center of town before ending a block short of Wenceslas Square at the heart of this center. The two afterward entered the building and passed the security guard in the foyer.

In the lobby, they came upon a paternoster, which is a contraption that still exists in a handful of buildings in Prague as well as in other parts of Europe. It works like this: through a pair of small elevator-like shafts passes a continuous chain of equally small and doorless cabins, whose only light comes from the floors they pass. Each of these cabins can hold two to three people, and they go up in one shaft and down in the other while moving at a speed that is slow enough for someone, in theory, to climb into or out of one without killing themselves. It’s called a paternoster because the chain of cars resembles to many the beads of a rosary, which recalls the alternative name of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin.

Riding in a paternoster is disconcerting to some, as it comes with the sense that fate is something no longer under control. It’s certainly disconcerting to me, and Klaus must’ve felt this too. While Hermann unhesitantly made his way to the upward shaft, Klaus continued past both while saying, “I’ll take the stairs and meet you there.”

“You’re not afraid of a little paternoster, are you?” Hermann asked with a smirk.

It must’ve been obvious even to Klaus that this was a joke. But he stopped anyway, and with indignation he spun toward Hermann. “It’s not fear. They’re too slow.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you were scared.”

With his smirk still on his face, Hermann stepped into a cabin just before Klaus jumped on board as well. The latter must’ve been recalling the Lord’s Prayer, because he began softly reciting its words with his eyes clenched closed.

Pater noster, qui es in caelis . . .

Suddenly, Klaus fast-forwarded to the final verse, which asks God to “deliver us from evil,” and he opened his eyes in fright.

Seeing and enjoying this, Hermann said, “I’ve heard that if you miss the last floor going up or the first floor going down, the paternoster chops off your head as the cabin moves from one shaft to the other.”

“Nonsense,” Klaus mumbled as the two approached the second floor. But his eyes warily rose to the ceiling.

Hermann wanted to chuckle. But he couldn’t. This was because, as he glanced at the ceiling himself, everything around him changed, into the paternoster he and Ana had ridden up in at City Hall on their wedding day. He was back in the suit Mr. Jacobs had made for him, and she was back in her wedding dress, gripping her white rose bouquet.

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WITH GRINS ON their faces, the two reached the top floor of the building, and they continued upward, watched by a handful of people in the hallway, who smiled knowingly at the pair while waiting their turn to get into one of the downward cars.

Not long after this, the couple were in darkness, and they began kissing in their own private parlor as the cabin shifted from the upward shaft to the downward one.

“You are my alpha and omega,” Hermann mumbled to her. “My beginning and end.”

While drinking in her favorite perfume as the cabin began to descend, he thought how strange it was that a Jew was paraphrasing Revelations, especially at this moment. But the words seemed right.

Their kiss was interrupted when light began streaming into the cabin. Hermann saw that he was again riding up in the Palác Dunaj with Klaus, who jumped onto the third floor at the first chance he got.

Hermann followed, and the two walked to the last office down the corridor, where stood Mr. Malý’s door, which Hermann knocked on.

“Dále,” came an effete male voice from the other side of the door.

Hermann opened it, and he and Klaus stepped into an office that was so tiny that it reminded Hermann of the closet in the Theresienstadt gendarmerie. Here they saw a large balding man sitting behind a desk, who barely fit in the room. It was as if he had been shoehorned inside it.

The man smiled warmly at the two, like he had been expecting their visit, and he rose to his feet to greet them.

“Antonín Malý?” Hermann uttered.

“That is indeed I,” the man uttered back before motioning toward a pair of chairs in front of his desk. “Please, gentlemen, have a seat.”

All three sat, and Hermann introduced both Klaus and himself before saying, “It’s our understanding that you’re responsible for the synagogues in Josefov.”

“Your understanding is correct,” Malý replied.

“Can you tell us who retained your services?”

“The Jewish community, of course.”

“Is it safe to assume that the six limited-liability companies you represent each represent the six synagogues in Josefov?”

“You are free to assume anything you’d like.”

“Do you have a long-standing relationship with the Jewish community?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that.”

“So why would they engage you for this?”

“You’d have to ask them that.”

“That would be rather difficult under the circumstances.”

“Yes, it would.”

“It’s also our understanding that last night you gave the keys to the synagogues to a certain SS captain named Kleiner.”

“In this your understanding is not correct,” Malý insisted with sudden defensiveness. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Where are these keys?” asked Hermann.

“Actually, I misplaced my set a while back.”

“That’s certainly convenient.”

“How so?”

“If you had them in your possession, it would’ve likely meant that you retrieved them from Kleiner’s body after he was murdered.”

“You’re right,” Malý uttered. “It certainly is convenient that I don’t have those keys.”

“Can I ask where you were last night?” Hermann wanted to know next.

“If this is an official interrogation, perhaps I should get a lawyer.”

“You are a lawyer.”

“But not a very good one.”

“You can either answer our questions here,” Klaus growled as he glared at the man, “or in the basement of Černín Palace. But in neither case shall you have a lawyer present. Though I can assure you that the questioning would be far more pleasant here.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” Malý muttered, “what was the question again?”

“Where were you last night?” Hermann asked while trying to keep himself from smiling. He was also having a difficult time remaining objective, as he liked Mr. Malý. Though he tried not to show this.

“Home,” the man answered. “I was home all night. It’s on Celetná, by the way.”

“Can anyone attest to your whereabouts?”

“Not a soul.”

“We believe Captain Kleiner was involved in some kind of conspiracy relating to the synagogues. Do you know why he and some other SS men have of late been interested in the buildings?”

“Not only don’t I know anything about this so-called conspiracy,” Malý declared, again with some defensiveness, “but I don’t know this Captain Kleiner. Or any SS captain, for that matter.”

“So you deny that you had a relationship with him?” Hermann countered.

“I do deny it. Are you sure that it was me he implicated?”

“He didn’t specify a first name, but—”

“—‘Malý’ is not such an unusual surname. I even had a client with that name. I almost got him acquitted, in fact.”

“The murder occurred on the property of one of the synagogues that you’re responsible for.”

“That still doesn’t mean that it was me who committed the murder. I further deny it was.”

“You do understand that it looks very bad for you right now, don’t you?”

“I understand perfectly. I’m not that bad of a lawyer.”

“Captain Stamm has more than enough cause to drag you somewhere from which you’d unlikely return.”

“If that was your intention, gentlemen, you would have done so already.”

“Very well,” Hermann murmured as he rose to his feet along with Klaus, who did so with surprise. “Just keep in mind that you’re our chief suspect. Actually, you’re our only suspect.”

“Sir, under a Nazi occupation, everyone’s suspect,” Malý said. “Whether you’re also the chief one or the only one hardly seems to matter.”

As much as he didn’t want to, Hermann smiled before he and Klaus left the office. The two then started down the corridor. Though as they approached the lobby, Klaus came to a sharp stop and groaned, “I should arrest him.”

“There’s no evidence that he’s the murderer,” Hermann groaned back as he stopped and turned to Klaus.

“Like I told you before, Hermann, we don’t need evidence. We only need a plausible suspect. He even matches the description of the man Kleiner was following last night.”

“If Kleiner had been following Malý, he would have said as much to Colonel Reidl.”

“He also matches the killer’s height.”

“Look, do you want to find the killer or do you want to wait until he kills again?”

Klaus didn’t exactly answer. He just glared at Hermann with his arms crossed.

“Like Ivo,” Hermann went on while pointing in the direction of Malý’s office, “he’s almost certainly involved in all this. But while he’s physically capable of killing those men and carrying them, and like you said, he’s the right height, it just doesn’t seem in his nature to commit such brutal crimes. He doesn’t seem like the type of person who could be driven toward any type of violence. I think it’s better to let him stay loose and see where he takes us. Can you put a tail on him?”

Klaus shook his head. “I doubt Reidl would approve it.”

“He’s just an ordinary Czech. Have the local police follow him. Tell them, I don’t know, tell them that we suspect him of black-market activities or something like that. Tell them anything you want but the truth. Or they just may be inclined to help him.”

chapter thirty-four: the eyes of a golem

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IN A SMALL single-room flat on the first floor of a crumbling building, Hermann rifled through the belongings of Captain Gruber while both recognizing and enjoying the irony of a Jew searching through an SS man’s things.

“I suppose you don’t know what you’re looking for,” said Klaus, who was standing nearby with his hands behind his back.

“You’re getting the hang of this,” Hermann replied.

This caused Klaus to smile, which Hermann both noticed and liked. He liked the man standing next to him a lot more than he could allow himself to admit.

“Just let me know if I can be of assistance,” Klaus went on.

Hermann didn’t respond. He just kept rifling through the furniture and closets and kitchen drawers. He checked everywhere but was getting nowhere. So, after uttering a brief but accentuated sigh, he turned to Klaus. “Perhaps you can help me, considering you and Captain Gruber shared the same profession and had similar backgrounds and training. If you were him and wanted to hide something, where would you do it?”

Klaus thought about this. He thought about it carefully as he glanced around the room. Finally, he pointed to the bureau by the bed. “I’d use a secret compartment in that.”

While nodding his head, Hermann walked up to the bureau, and he tossed out all the clothes from its drawers before kneeling on the floor and feeling around the insides of the drawers. He was looking for a latch or something like it, but he couldn’t find anything. So next he tried knocking on the wood in various places, both inside the bureau and out, searching for hollowness. This he found in the bottom of the middle drawer, which he took out and glanced at while feeling all around it.

“What are you doing?” Klaus asked.

“I can’t figure out how to open it,” Hermann answered.

“Let me try.”

Hermann turned to Klaus, who took the drawer and broke it open with his fist.

“That’s one way of doing it,” Hermann remarked.

“It’s the surest way,” Klaus remarked back before handing the remains of the drawer back to Hermann, who tossed away the broken pieces of wood, exposing a small leather-bound book.

“What is it?” Klaus gasped.

Hermann answered by opening the book, and he read its opening paragraphs. What he read surprised him, so he flipped through the pages while stopping in multiple places to read sections of it.

“What is it?” Klaus demanded.

“Pornography,” Hermann told him, “and not even good pornography.”

Still, for a reason not even Hermann could explain, he kept looking through the book. Eventually, he reached the inside back cover, where he saw something that did surprise him.

This led Klaus to look over Hermann’s shoulder, where he saw an ink drawing of a monstrous golem, who had blank and lifeless eyes. It even had the Hebrew word for “truth” carved in its head.

“Do you think he drew that from experience?” Klaus muttered.

Hermann didn’t answer. He just tossed the book onto the shards of broken wood lying on the floor.

chapter thirty-five: a small amount of happiness

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CAPTAIN FISCHER’S ONE-BEDROOM apartment was much larger than Captain Gruber’s studio. So it took Hermann much longer to find the same nothing. Even the search of Fischer’s bedroom bureau was fruitless.

“Where else could he have hidden something?” Hermann asked.

Like in Gruber’s flat, Klaus carefully looked around the room. But this time he shook his head.

With a sigh, Hermann started to leave.

“Now where?” Klaus uttered with frustration.

“Back to the living room,” Hermann uttered back while trying to hide his own frustration.

Klaus followed, but suddenly he came to a stop and called out, “Wait.”

“What is it?” Hermann asked after stopping himself and turning to Klaus.

Klaus responded by nudging his foot up and down over a loose floorboard, which led Hermann to kneel in front of it as Klaus removed his foot. Hermann then pried open the board, and he reached inside the crevice and felt around.

“Anything?” questioned Klaus.

Hermann shook his head before removing his hand and saying, “Sometimes a loose floorboard is simply a loose floorboard.”

“How about a little lunch before we go around in the same circle?” murmured Klaus.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Hermann murmured back before the two, with their heads hanging, left the apartment and the building.

Hermann noted that they were only a few blocks from U Pinkasů, so they walked to the busy restaurant, where they both ate bowls of a thick and hearty garlic soup called česnečka while barely saying a word.

But this didn’t mean that Hermann wasn’t thinking of anything. He was trying to determine whether the case had reached a dead end. More ominously, he began questioning whether it really had been leading him somewhere like he had told Marta or whether he had just been making himself believe it had so he could justify his survival.

From Klaus’s expression, it was clear, too, that he was thinking about the case. Hermann could sense as well that the man was feeling a certain doubt. Though he was at least eating, which I think was the result of the last few days and the small amount of happiness they had brought him.

“Tell me,” Klaus whispered as he finally broke the silence, “what do you expect to find in Fischer’s apartment that you didn’t find before?”

“Something I missed,” Hermann answered.

Toward this goal, the two quickly finished their meals and returned to Captain Fischer’s apartment, where Hermann rifled through the same living room he had rifled through before and where he found the same nothing.

Klaus started searching too. Which brought him into the foyer, where he noticed a mirror hanging on the wall that looked crooked. So he stepped up to it and removed it. But all he found behind it was a wall, and he sighed.

“It happens to the best of us,” Hermann told him as he checked between the cushions of a sofa. “You think you’ve finally stumbled upon the solution to the mystery only to find that you’ve simply stumbled.”

Klaus shrugged before returning the mirror and noticing a nearby closet, which he opened even though it was the first thing Hermann had searched when they first got there. Like what Hermann had done, he looked through the man’s jackets and coats and found nothing unusual or interesting. So he was about to close the door. But he stopped himself when he noticed Fischer’s SS cap on the shelf above the coats.

You have to separate what your eyes take interest in from what your mind tells you makes sense.

I wonder if Klaus was thinking about Hermann’s words from the day before as he stared at the cap. He stared at it for many seconds before pulling it off the shelf and examining it. This led him to the strap below the skull-and-bones insignia and to what was underneath it: a tiny scrap of paper that would have a big impact not just on this case but on my life.

Klaus unfolded it, exposing a coat check from a restaurant in the Malá Strana section of the city called U Malířů.

“You really have the makings of an excellent detective,” Hermann said while glancing at the coat check from beside him. “It’s just a shame that we’ve already eaten lunch.”

chapter thirty-six: the skirt-chaser

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IN THE LATE midday sun, the Mercedes parked on Maltézské Square in front of U Malířů, with Klaus gazing at the restaurant with a face full of skepticism. “It seems like a wild goose chase to me,” he said.

“It’s what I would call a refined wild goose chase,” Hermann said back. “I can tell you from experience that, if you approach them in the right way, you often catch yourself a goose.”

“What makes it so refined?”

“You saw Captain Fischer’s apartment. Did it look like it belonged to someone who frequents the most expensive restaurant in the city?”

“Nothing in his file would indicate it either. His tastes seem to run quite the opposite.”

“Yet he was here.”

“So he was here for some reason. I still don’t see what you expect to discover.”

“We might discover his dinner companions and what they were discussing.”

“What makes you think you’d discover what they were discussing?”

“Before I got drafted into the army, I was working at a restaurant in Uzhhorod that wasn’t much different than this. We even served the emperor once.”

“The one who pinned the Order of the Iron Crown on you?”

“The one before him. Anyway, I was always amazed at how freely the patrons talked among themselves. It was as if they were eating at home and the staff weren’t there. I can tell you that the head waiter, a certain Mr. Szilágyi, retired handsomely from all the investment tips he gleaned from working there.”

“We’re talking now about well-trained SS men,” Klaus insisted while shaking his head, “not drunken bankers.”

“Still,” Hermann insisted back as he opened his door with Fischer’s personnel file in his other hand, “it’s our only lead.”

Forced to acknowledge this, Klaus opened his door. But he didn’t seem excited as the two approached the restaurant.

Outside it was a sign that said it didn’t open until seventeen hundred, but they stepped inside anyway and saw not only the lavish furnishings throughout it but also the works of fine art painted on its ceilings.

“We’re not open, gentlemen,” the maître d’ told them while barely glancing at them, as he was busy with a stack of receipts. “Not until five.”

Ignoring this, Hermann walked up to the man, followed by Klaus, and he showed him Fischer’s photograph. “Do you recall serving this gentleman recently?”

Briefly, the maître d’ glanced at the photograph before shaking his head. “I can’t say that I recall him.” Though he pointed toward the kitchen. “Some of the staff are in there eating. You can ask them if you’d like.”

Hermann nodded, and he and Klaus started toward the kitchen.

“Perhaps you should wait outside the doors,” Hermann said to Klaus as he slowed.

“Why?” Klaus asked with surprise while slowing himself.

“If you were them, would you be willing to openly talk about one SS officer in front of another?”

Klaus didn’t exactly answer. Instead, he sighed and stepped to the side as they reached the doors.

“You can listen to the whole conversation from here,” Hermann told him. “Just keep one of the doors open with your foot.”

Klaus nodded, and Hermann entered the kitchen.

“You can’t come in here,” snapped a chef, who was eating with a half-dozen other men at a large wooden table.

“It’s okay,” Hermann insisted. “The maître d’ told me I could.”

“He did?” the man uttered while looking at Hermann’s appearance askance.

“It’s police business.”

“You’re a policeman?”

“I’m helping the authorities in an unofficial capacity. You can ask your boss if you’d like.”

The man didn’t reply. He just stared at Hermann as he walked up to the table.

Hermann showed everyone a picture of Captain Fischer and asked, “Have any of you seen him? We believe he ate here sometime in the recent past.”

One of the men nodded. “I remember him. I served him.”

“Was he here with someone?”

“Two other Nazis.”

“Can you describe them?”

“One was a big guy, big and fat and older than the other two. The other was thin and small. He looked kind of weasel-like.”

“When was this exactly?”

“I don’t remember exactly. But Dita was still working here. When did she quit?”

“Sometime in January,” the chef told him.

“Who’s Dita?” Hermann asked.

“Dita Prejslerová,” the waiter told him. “She was the coat-check girl here, and the guy in the picture, he was flirting with her a lot. A real sukničkář that guy, if you know what I mean. He noticed every woman that came into the restaurant that night. But he especially noticed Dita. He was flirting with her every chance he got.”

“And she quit soon afterward?”

“Yeah.”

“Do any of you know where she lives?”

They all shook their heads. But the waiter said, “You can ask Tomáš for her address.”

“Who’s Tomáš?” Hermann wondered.

“The maître d’. He actually manages the place.”

“Tell me, do you remember anything else about the three men, like what they were talking about?”

“I remember they would clam up anytime I came within sight, like they were discussing some big secret. The guy in the picture, he was also really interested in what the big fat guy had to say. The whole night he was leaning over the table, like his life depended on what this guy was telling him.”

“Thank you,” Hermann told everyone. “You’ve been most helpful.”

“Say,” the waiter exclaimed, “what did he do?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Hermann answered before bowing to everyone and leaving the kitchen.

Outside this he whispered to Klaus, “Did you catch everything?”

Klaus nodded.

“Now we know why the captain never returned his coat check that night,” Hermann went on as the two marched up to the maître d’ so Hermann could ask him about Dita.

“Who?” mumbled the maître d’ with his eyes still on the receipts.

“Dita Prejslerová,” Hermann replied. “She was a coat-check girl here. She quit sometime in the beginning of the year.”

“She didn’t quit,” the maître d’ grumbled. “She just stopped showing up. She didn’t even collect her last pay.”

“Can you give us her address?”

For the first time, the man gave Hermann and Klaus his full attention. He especially paid attention to Klaus and his uniform. “I guess I don’t have any choice.”

Klaus didn’t even bother to respond to this.

chapter thirty-seven: the swatting of a fly

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WHEN THE MAÎTRE D’ told Hermann that Dita lived on Dlážděná Street in the New Town section of the city, he didn’t think anything of it, even after he and Klaus began making their way there in the Mercedes. He certainly couldn’t know that this trip would forever bind my fate with his.

It was only after the Mercedes again crossed the river did he realize that they would be driving past an important landmark of his recent past and not a good one. Previously, this had been known as Masaryk Station and was now called Hybernské Station and was where a train early one August day took Hermann to Theresienstadt.

As the Mercedes approached the station, he recalled the day and found himself returning to the onset of it.

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HERMANN WAS STANDING in his bedroom late at night next to Ana, who was sleeping peacefully on their featherbed.

He was dressed in Mr. Jacobs’ suit and ready to go, with his suitcase at his feet and a letter in his shaking hand. Which was his way of making it easier on both of them but especially on him.

With his hand shaking more, he placed the letter on the nightstand and read it.

My dearest Ana,

No words can express all I want to say to you, nor can they make up for all the hurt they will cause. For hours, I’ve written and rewritten this letter, but it never improves and never could. So I will just say it: the day we’ve long known would come has come, and I must leave you.

But you will not leave me. You’ll be with me wherever I’ll be. The memories of you will hold me up.

I will never let them go.

While Hermann agonized over the text of the letter, he agonized even longer over how to end it. He knew he had to do so in Czech and that he couldn’t say “farewell” to her. He couldn’t use the word “sbohem,” which literally translates to “go with God.” So the last thing he wrote her was, “Na shledanou!”

Until we meet again.

Quickly, Hermann grabbed his suitcase and left the apartment. But as he tumbled out the front door of his building, instead of finding himself on Eliška Krásnohorská Street in the dead of night, he was back in Klaus’s Mercedes, facing the train station down the street.

He tried not to look at the building or at its surroundings. He especially tried not to look at the train tracks. He looked in the opposite direction of all this. Still, he saw not only the station but also the cattle car he came upon a few years earlier.

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THAT MORNING, THE heat and humidity were oppressive, to the extent Hermann could barely breathe, which was made worse by the proximity of others like him. Amid dozens of them, he climbed onto the car carrying his suitcase in one hand and the crumpled-up pink deportation slip in the other.

The car made him recall similar ones from his army days. “Forty-and-eights” they were called, because they could hold either forty soldiers or eight horses. But there were far more than forty people in the car and this was only increasing.

People pushed Hermann toward the back of the car, guided by the Nazi soldier outside it, who had his weapon draped over his shoulder, not expecting the slightest problem.

Resisting the pushing, Hermann pushed back. He pushed his way toward the front of the car so he could look outside in the direction of his home and where his Ana was and keep doing this for as long as possible. But whenever he got close to the front, someone would always drive him back. Finally, he told himself that he wouldn’t let anything more stop him from getting to the front of the car.

He kept pushing, and he saw some light. Which caused him to rush toward the car’s edge. But instead of seeing the Prague skyline, he saw something unexpected. He saw Ana rushing toward him in the distance with her own suitcase. He saw that their meeting again was to come much sooner than he had thought.

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ANA’S DEATH WAS the last part of this story I would learn from my grandfather.

For years, much like he had refused to talk to me about his military service, he refused to tell me how she died. He wouldn’t even tell my grandmother. He only relented when I stammered into the house at the culmination of all the times I had so disappointed him.

Looking back at this, I recall something that Jorge Luis Borges once wrote, that no matter how long or complex your life may be, it comes down to the single moment in which you learn who you really are. Mine came on the first Yom Kippur after my bar mitzvah. Only then was I allowed to say Kaddish, and I wanted to say it for my parents, and only then did I learn from my grandfather that they hadn’t died. Actually, I learned that I didn’t even know if they were alive.

I always understood why my grandfather didn’t tell me the truth when I was a child. It would’ve been one thing if I had just been abandoned by my parents. But even not knowing where my long-troubled mother was or who my father had been was as bad as learning that my grandfather wasn’t really my grandfather and that my real one had been a Nazi.

I can’t quite describe what I felt upon discovering this. It was like I had become two separate people: the quiet Jewish boy I had always known and the monster that was suddenly inside him. A monster full of hate. This was directed partly at my grandfather but mostly at myself. The guilt and shame I felt and still feel was so overwhelming that I wanted everyone to hate me as much as I did, and I did everything I could to make this happen. I did things I can’t talk about and for which I can never be forgiven.

When I came home that night stumbling drunk, my grandfather was waiting for me at the foot of the staircase in his robe. I thought he was throwing me out, just like my grandmother had threatened and much like I deserved. But instead, as I made my way toward him, ready to tell him off for good, he said, “I watched her die.”

“What?” I muttered.

He answered by nodding toward the empty spot on the step where he was sitting, and I sat beside him, and he finally told me what happened to Ana.

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WHEN HERMANN FIRST saw Ana approaching the train, he couldn’t speak or even react, as the sight of her was too impossible to believe. He only knew it was real when she cried out his name as she pushed her way through the crowd.

Hermann would say that he didn’t know how Ana ended up at the train station that morning. But I do.

Hermann had become something like a drug to Ana.

From my conversation with Věra, I believe that, even before Ana had finished reading Hermann’s letter, she was looking for him. Her life had become too entwined with his and couldn’t be untwined. I can see her struggling to control the basic functions of her mind and body. I can see her gasping for breath. She had to do something to change this, no matter what it was.

So she packed a suitcase and threw on her coat and shoes. Then, after throwing on a certain something else, she hurried out of the apartment with the suitcase and rushed toward her fate, which she was now only steps from.

Only at this moment could Hermann speak. “No,” he said at a volume he knew couldn’t be heard. “Stay back,” he uttered seconds later, a little louder. “Stay away from the train!” he screamed.

This she heard, as her head spun toward him, along with the mad desperation in her eyes. Desperation Hermann could see meant that she was too far gone to be stopped. She was no longer rational, and she continued hurling herself into the mass of people being pushed onto the train.

At first, the soldier pushed her forward. But when he noticed that she had neither a yellow star on her coat nor a pink slip of paper in her hand, he grabbed her arm, causing her to cry out like a wounded animal.

“You don’t belong here!” he howled.

“I do!” she howled back. “This is the only where I belong!”

But he dragged her away, and to stop her from screaming and struggling so much, he slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. Though this just intensified her struggling.

“You won’t!” she hollered before clawing his face with her fingernails. “You won’t take my ‘now’ from me! You won’t!”

With just one hand, she pushed the soldier to the ground, and she ran through a small opening in the crowd to the front of Hermann’s car.

“What are you doing?” he yelped while again unable to comprehend what was happening. He was frozen too. He couldn’t make his body move.

“I’ll be with you,” she mumbled as she reached the car and struggled to climb onto it with her suitcase. She struggled and struggled, and when she finally pulled herself on board among the stunned silence all around her, with both a smile and tears falling down her face she added, “I’ll be with you wherever you’ll be.”

But the soldier had now risen and was pushing his way through the crowd. Furious at what Ana had done and the humiliation it had caused, he removed his weapon from around his shoulder and jumped onto the car. Then, with the casualness he would’ve swatted a fly, he slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of her head, knocking her lifelessly into Hermann’s arms.

“Ana!” he whimpered as he caught her and smelled her perfume, the kind she only wore on special occasions, such as on their wedding day.

At once, the soldier tore her away from him, and he pushed Hermann back into the crowd and onto the floor of the car. The last things Hermann would see before they closed the splintery wooden-planked gate in his face were the trail of blood and the soldier dragging his wife. He dragged her like she was garbage that been left in the road.

For Hermann, there was only one thing worse than watching this: his inability to do anything about it. He had saved a dozen strangers at Verdun, but he couldn’t save his own wife. All he could do was watch her die.

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IN THE MOMENTS after hearing all this, as I held my trembling grandfather on the staircase, I couldn’t understand why he had told me. For a long time, I couldn’t understand.

But I do now. I realize now that he was trying to tell me that you can’t carry the weight of what others have done, even when this weight falls into your arms.

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“ARE YOU ALL right?” Klaus asked Hermann as the Mercedes stopped in front of Dita’s apartment building and he saw the horror on his former friend’s face.

Like in front of the Maisel Synagogue days earlier, Hermann could hear the kindness in Klaus’s voice. But he wanted nothing to do with it.

“No,” he growled while feeling his grief rush back as well as a burst of hatred toward Klaus he couldn’t control. “I’m not all right.”

“Would you like something to drink?” murmured Klaus. “A beer or perhaps something stronger?”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Hermann snarled.

He meant these words. He wanted to finish the job as soon as he could so he could face the same fate Ana had. He only hoped that he could do so as fearlessly as she had.

Hurriedly, the two exited the car. In the same manner, they entered the apartment building and passed through a rundown lobby. On the second floor, they found Dita’s apartment about halfway down the corridor from the stairwell.

After sucking in as much air as he could in order to compose himself, Hermann knocked on the door.

The only response came from down the hall. “There’s nobody there,” spoke an elderly female voice.

Both Hermann and Klaus turned toward it, and they saw an old woman pulling a small and empty shopping cart toward them.

“The girl moved out weeks ago,” the woman added.

“You don’t happen to know where she moved to, do you?” Hermann asked.

“I don’t happen to know.”

“What about the landlord?”

“He won’t be able to help you either. She left like a thief. She didn’t even close the door.”

Hermann sighed as the woman passed them on the way to the stairs before he and Klaus slowly followed her.

“Now what?” Klaus muttered.

“I have an idea,” Hermann told him.

Quickly, the two passed the woman on the stairs and returned to the building’s lobby, and Hermann stopped in front of Dita’s mailbox, which he pointed at. “As Colonel Reidl told you last night, it’s not like you have to worry about getting into trouble with the law.”

Klaus nodded, and he fished out the Ehrendolch dagger all SS men carried with them. With this he broke open Dita’s mailbox, which caused a bunch of mail to pour out of it onto the floor.

Hermann picked it up and pulled out what remained in the mailbox. In the latter, he found a handwritten envelope with a return address from a Jitka Prejslerová, who lived in the Pankrác section of the city, a handful of kilometers south of where they were.

“Do you think that could be her mother?” Klaus muttered.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Hermann muttered back.

chapter thirty-eight: the man who refused to collaborate

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THE PANKRÁC ADDRESS of Jitka Prejslerová was a ten-minute drive from where Dita lived. But the neighborhood was much the same, working class and dreary.

Slowly, the Mercedes turned the corner of the woman’s street, and they came to a stop in traffic not far from a parked ambulance. For many minutes nothing moved. They couldn’t even hear a sound.

With nothing else to look at, Hermann stared at the ambulance, and he thought of the poet Jiří Orten, who died a few years before, after he was accidently hit by an ambulance and the hospital refused to treat him because he was a Jew. The meaninglessness of his death and of so many like him caused Hermann to lower his eyes along with everything else. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever raise himself.

He only looked up when he heard a pair of paramedics carrying the body of a mangled man down the sidewalk toward the ambulance.

“Another suicide,” Hermann said to himself as he rolled down the window while feeling even more envy toward the corpse than what he had felt toward the one the day before.

“What happened?” a passerby asked one of the paramedics as the two reached the back of the ambulance.

“God only knows,” the paramedic told him. “He was driving on the left-hand side of the road. He drove straight into a truck.”

Suddenly, the presumptive corpse smiled.

Hermann smiled too. He smiled at the man who refused to collaborate, who refused to conform to the will of another. Which made him want to do the same. It also gave him back the breath he had lost when they passed the train station.

This only got stronger after the traffic cleared and the Mercedes parked outside Jitka’s building. With a renewed sense of purpose, Hermann marched inside it along with Klaus, and they found the woman’s apartment on the third floor, a short distance from the stairway.

Hermann knocked on the door, but no response came. So he knocked again and again and kept doing it until the door opened a little.

Peeking inside the crack, Hermann saw a single eye staring at him.

“What do you want?” came the voice of a middle-aged woman.

“We’re looking for Dita Prejslerová,” Hermann said.

“She’s not here. She hasn’t lived here for a long time.”

“Are you her mother?”

“She has her own apartment.”

“She doesn’t live there anymore.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Any information that could help us find her.”

“All I can tell you is that she’s taken up with a Nazi.”

“He’s dead.”

The woman didn’t reply. But her eye did widen.

“You don’t know where she could be right now?” Hermann went on.

“Not only don’t I know,” the woman growled, “but I don’t care. She has shamed the entire family!”

With a burst of fury, the woman slammed the door shut. She locked it too, and Hermann and Klaus started down the hallway.

“Now what?” Klaus wondered.

“Tell me something,” Hermann whispered before coming to a stop by the stairwell. “If a young lady were to call the palace and ask for Captain Fischer, what would they tell her?”

“That he’s unavailable,” Klaus whispered back.

“Even if she insisted that they were quite close?”

“Even then.”

“And they would keep telling her this, no matter how often she called?”

“Yes.”

“So, it’s unlikely she knows he’s dead.”

“Quite unlikely. I’d say it’s next to impossible, especially as Fischer had no next of kin. So no one was notified of his death.”

Hermann said nothing. He didn’t even move.

“Is there a reason why we’re standing here?” Klaus grumbled.

Hermann didn’t exactly reply to this either. He just put his index finger over his closed lips, and the two waited. They waited for more than a minute. They waited until they heard a young woman cry out from inside the apartment, a cry that reminded Hermann of his wife.

Trying not to think about this, he again stepped up to the woman’s door with Klaus, and he again knocked on it. “You’re going to have to let us inside, Mrs. Prejslerová,” he called out.

chapter thirty-nine: what lurks in the shadows

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HERMANN AND KLAUS sat at a kitchen table with cups of weak tea in front of them along with Dita and her mother.

“We’re trying to find out who murdered your boyfriend,” Hermann said to Dita, whose dirty-blonde hair was tied behind her head and whose mascara had been smeared by her tears.

“Husband,” she declared while wiping her eyes. “We were married just before he disappeared. You know, he told me more than once that he feared for his life. But I always thought it was nerves. I thought the responsibility of marriage had been too much for him and that he had walked out on me. I had no idea . . .”

“I think you can help us find his killer. I think you’re the only one who can.”

Dita shook her head over and over. “I don’t see how.”

“Did he tell you why he’d been spending so much time at the Klausen Synagogue?”

Dita didn’t reply. She just glanced at her mother.

“We are going to get answers,” Klaus groaned.

Knowing this tactic wouldn’t be helpful, Hermann interrupted Klaus by putting up his hand, and he told Dita, “In no way will you or your family get into trouble for anything your husband was involved in. Isn’t that right, Captain?”

“Yes,” Klaus said softly. “I won’t even mention your name in my report. My responsibility is simply to discover and apprehend those responsible for your husband’s murder.”

“And we can only do this,” Hermann added, “if we can understand the nature of the scheme your husband was participating in. It’s likely your husband’s killer was involved in this scheme, too, somehow.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Dita uttered.

“You met Captain Fischer while working at U Malířů.”

“He flirted with me when I took his coat. Actually, a lot of men flirted with me when I took their coats. But he was different. He didn’t treat me like some dumb blondýnka just because of how I look. And I’m not dumb. I went to Minerva.”

“A very good school. My wife went there.”

“I would’ve graduated too, if it weren’t for the war.”

“My husband died a while ago,” Dita’s mother interjected. “He left us with no source of income, so I couldn’t afford the tuition anymore.”

“Max saw right away that I was smart,” Dita went on while sitting up straight in her chair. “On our first date, we discussed Hegel and Schopenhauer. And Kant too. He was impressed that I had written a paper about Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason.”

“He and Kant were both from Königsberg,” noted Hermann.

“They were even baptized in the same church,” Dita noted back with a big smile on her face.

All this talk about Kant must’ve caused Klaus to relive those memories he didn’t want to relive. Because he both flinched and turned away.

“If we could get back to the night at U Malířů,” Hermann said, “it’s our understanding that Captain Fischer was there with two men.”

“Colonel Reidl and his aide,” Dita replied.

“Do you know Colonel Reidl?”

“Max told me a little about him later, after we got serious. He didn’t like the man at all, and he especially didn’t like the man’s aide. He always told me that he didn’t trust either of them and that he was only involved with them because he had no choice.”

“Did he ever talk to you about the dinner he had with Colonel Reidl at U Malířů?”

Dita nodded. “Max was not a perfect man. He told me this on our first date. He told me that he had some . . . some indiscretions with women in the past and that he had gotten into some trouble at work because of it. He also owed quite a bit of money. Anyway, he met Colonel Reidl at some Christmas party just before we met, and he promised to make all of Max’s problems go away, especially his money problems. That’s why they were meeting for dinner that night.”

“Just how was Reidl going to make all your husband’s money problems go away?”

“He didn’t tell me. He said that he couldn’t. He said that he had promised to keep it a secret. But he also said that we would soon never again have to worry about money.”

“Did he often worry about money or talk about it?”

“Not really. I . . .”

“He once asked me,” Dita’s mother interrupted, “he asked me if I knew someone who could buy valuables. I thought he meant a pawn shop or something like that. But he wanted someone who could buy very expensive things, such as fine jewelry and gold bullion and priceless heirlooms, and a large quantity of them.”

“What did you tell him?” Hermann asked.

“That I didn’t know anyone like that, which is the truth, and he never brought it up again.”

Once more, Hermann turned to Dita. “Did your husband ever mention any of his activities at the Klausen Synagogue? Even something that may seem utterly insignificant could be an important clue.”

“I don’t recall him mentioning anything specific about what he was doing there. Like I said, he couldn’t tell me what he was doing there. But . . .”

“But what?” Hermann murmured while leaning forward in his chair.

“He would often tell me how frustrated he was with the whole project as he called it. Every night this got worse, and it seemed he came home later and later, until he didn’t come home at all.”

“You mentioned before that he feared for his life.”

“He thought, he thought something was watching him in the synagogue.”

“‘Something’?” Hermann uttered with surprise. “Don’t you mean ‘someone’?”

Dita shook her head. “It’s so, so bláznivé. Just crazy. But he thought there was a golem in the synagogue.”

Hermann and Klaus reacted to this in the same way, by glancing at each other. But Hermann spun back to Dita. “Why would he think that?”

“He said he often heard loud footsteps when he was there at night, footsteps that couldn’t be human. He thought this golem was pursuing him in the building. He told me it was getting closer to him every night. He even told me that he saw it once lurking in the shadows, a big giant monster. But like I told you, I thought this was Max’s nerves. I thought he was anxious about being married so suddenly and that this golem was a manifestation of it.”

Hermann had only one more question for Dita. “Do you have any of your husband’s belongings?”

“I have some of his clothes.”

“Anything else?”

Dita thought about this, and she mentioned, “I might have some of his papers too.”

“May we see them?”

Dita nodded and slowly rose from the table, and Hermann for the first time noticed she was pregnant.

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DITA RETURNED WITH a handful of papers before she and her mother took their leave.

One of the papers stuck out to Hermann: a folded blueprint.

He unfolded it, and he saw that it was of the Klausen Synagogue. He also noticed something else about it and so did Klaus. “There’s a cellar,” the man said with surprise while pointing to it on the blueprint.

“Yes,” Hermann said back, “now we know why the captain was so insistent about its existence.”

“But where did he get this?”

“He must’ve found it somewhere, and this led to his obsession with getting inside the cellar.”

Quickly, Hermann collected the papers and returned them to Dita, and the two left the apartment and made their way down the hallway and the stairs. Near the bottom of the latter, Hermann saw fear growing on the face of Klaus, and he asked him what was wrong.

“You still think a golem is preposterous?” Klaus mumbled.

“I still think it,” Hermann exclaimed. “This is the twentieth century, Klaus, and I reside firmly within it. So do you. Besides, if there really were a golem roaming around town, I can tell you for certain that I wouldn’t be the last Jew in Prague. The killer was just trying to scare Fischer away from whatever he was looking for. That’s all there is to it.”

Hermann said this, but he didn’t quite believe it, as he knew the existence of a golem wasn’t any more preposterous than the button he found in his hand the night before or the old brass compass and rose petal that were right now in his pockets. A golem was perhaps less preposterous, which made him feel a fear even stronger than what Klaus was expressing.

“So how do we find out what Fischer was looking for?” Klaus groaned.

Hermann answered, “That, of course, is the klíčová záležitost as Czechs would say. The key to this whole mystery. But I’m thinking that it perhaps has something to do with that ducat I found in Kleiner’s pocket. I would like to go back to the Klausen so I could ask Lieutenant Krieg some more questions.”

“I’m sure she’ll be overjoyed.”

chapter forty: returning to the scene of the crime

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OUTSIDE THE KLAUSEN Synagogue, Hermann and Klaus exited the Mercedes and approached the building.

“What will happen to Dita?” Hermann asked.

“I told her that I wouldn’t put her name in my report,” Klaus answered, “and I meant it.”

“That’s not what I mean. Did you not notice her state and how bare the cupboards were in that kitchen?”

“Do you really care what happens to the widow of an SS man?” Klaus snapped.

“Maybe I do,” Hermann snapped back.

“Well, I have no idea if they really were married. But Fischer certainly submitted no notice of such a marriage to the SS, nor did he request its approval. Which is what he would’ve had to have done and probably why he never did.”

“Why is that? Because as a common Czech girl, she’s not Aryan enough for you?”

“As far as we’re concerned, it never happened.”

Hermann made no response, and the men entered both the synagogue and the prayer hall.

This led Lieutenant Krieg to let out a big sigh, which echoed through the large and cavernous room.

“We won’t take much of your time today, Lieutenant,” Hermann insisted as he and Klaus walked up to her.

“Very well,” she replied with another sigh. “What is it that you want to know now?”

“Did you ever have conversations with Captain Fischer while he was here?” Hermann asked while again avoiding looking at her or the pictures on the walls.

“Infrequently, but from time to time.”

“Did he ever mention or ask about fine jewelry, gold, or heirlooms, or anything of that nature?”

Lieutenant Krieg thought about this for many seconds before saying, “No, I can’t recall any conversations of that nature.”

Deflated by the answer, Hermann took a step toward the door. But he stopped himself and uttered, “Did he ever talk with anyone else while he was here?”

“He often hollered at that idiot,” she uttered back. “Not that I blame him.”

“Anyone else?” Hermann pleaded, with exasperation overwhelming his voice.

Again, the lieutenant pondered Hermann’s question. She pondered it longer than she had his first, and she mentioned, “There was this archivist. He was here for a few days many weeks ago. If I remember correctly, Captain Fischer spoke with him quite a bit while he was here.”

“An archivist?”

“He was helping me catalog various items. He’s an expert on Josefov and its history.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Of course, I remember his name, Lieutenant Becker.”

“Do you know where we could find him?”

“At Černín Palace. That’s where he works.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. You’ve been of great help.”

Hurriedly, the two men left the building. As they came upon both the late afternoon sun and the Mercedes, Hermann cracked a smile. He also turned to Klaus, who said, “What’s so amusing?”

“It’s possible,” Hermann told him, “it’s possible that the key to this whole mystery has been sitting in SS Headquarters from the beginning.”

chapter forty-one: a large number of valuables

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HERMANN AND KLAUS returned to the palace, and they found Lieutenant Becker in an office that was much like Hermann’s.

Becker was a man in his mid-twenties, who was tall with blond hair and blue eyes. Hermann would say that he looked almost like a young Klaus, which I bet Klaus noticed as well.

As briefly as possible, Klaus introduced himself and Hermann, who showed the lieutenant a picture of Captain Fischer while asking him the same question he had asked Lieutenant Krieg: whether the captain had ever asked him about jewels or gold or other such things while he was working at the Klausen Synagogue.

The lieutenant didn’t have to think long to answer this. “Captain Fischer did ask me about something like that. He wanted to know if I knew anything about a Jewish treasure.”

“A Jewish treasure?” Hermann uttered.

“He said that he recently heard a rumor about a group of wealthy Jewish families in Josefov who’d pooled their resources together. According to him, they collected a large number of valuables that they hoped to use to facilitate their escape, but they never got the chance to use it. He said this treasure, as he called it, consisted of fine jewelry, gold bullion, and antiques, and that many of these items were priceless heirlooms. He wanted to know if, through my research, had I heard of such a thing.”

“Had you?”

“Never, and I told him so. I also told him that if there had been such a treasure, he could be assured that the Reich would have found it by now and would’ve properly taken care of it.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. You’ve been most helpful. You have no idea how.”

Quickly, Hermann and Klaus left the office, and Klaus closed the door before they stopped a short distance from it.

“So you think Captain Fischer was looking for this treasure?” Klaus whispered with excitement he couldn’t hide.

“It all seems to fit, doesn’t it?” Hermann whispered back with just as much excitement.

“Do you think this treasure is real?”

“I don’t know. But from the beginnings of the occupation, I’ve heard rumors of such things.”

“I’ve heard them as well, and I’m sure Colonel Reidl has too.”

“There were indeed quite a few wealthy people in Josefov. Some very wealthy. A treasure of a significant magnitude is certainly plausible.”

“We always thought that people were hiding their wealth.”

“At least I can believe in a set of murders driven by greed. And now we have a pretty good idea as to why the men were found near synagogues, including Captain Kleiner. They must have thought that this treasure was hidden in or near one of them. It wouldn’t surprise me if that jeweler on Pařížská Street was part of this pool and that’s how Kleiner ended up with the ducat. We also now know why Reidl and Kleiner framed Maier. They must’ve been worried that we were getting close to the truth, and he was their escape hatch, the only way they could get us off their backs. It’s also probably why Reidl sent for your replacement early.”

“What do you suppose is Mr. Malý’s involvement in all this?”

“Well, rumors are one thing, but someone had to give Reidl and Kleiner very specific details about the treasure in order to get them to act the way they did. It was likely Malý. Perhaps he became aware of the treasure through his responsibilities with the synagogues, and perhaps he needs Reidl’s help to ‘properly take care of it’ as Lieutenant Becker would say.”

“Then why would Reidl be looking for it?”

“Maybe they don’t know where it is exactly. Or maybe Reidl wants to steal it from Malý. It could even be both.”

“That would give Malý a pretty strong motive for killing those men.”

“Your hunch may have been right, after all. But the murderer could still be someone else. There’s only one way to find out for sure. If we find the treasure, I bet we’ll find that the murderer is not far away.”

“And how do you propose we find the treasure?”

“All we can do is follow all known suspects and hope they lead us to it. Fortunately, our list is short. Are you still going to have someone follow Malý?”

“I’ll call the Czech police as soon as I get back to my office.”

“What about Reidl? Are you willing to follow him?”

“I’m willing,” Klaus said after thinking about it. “But it would have to be us who does the following. I couldn’t have anyone else do it for lots of reasons.”

“It would mean following him day and night continuously,” Hermann told him. “Are you willing to do that?”

“Yes.”

“All right. We’ll need another car, something inconspicuous so he doesn’t know we’re following him. And let’s make sure we have a flashlight with us this time, one with a fresh battery.”

Klaus checked his watch and saw that it was just after 4:30. “We can start right after the dinner party.”

“You’re not really planning on bringing me to that party, are you?” Hermann asked with both surprise and unease.

“Reidl will be there. Gertrud invites him to all her parties.”

chapter forty-two: the circumstances of his death

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KLAUS RETURNED TO his office while telling Hermann that he’d come get him at six.

Hermann nodded and headed to his own office. Though on his way he stopped at Marta’s desk, where he glanced down the empty corridor in both directions before opening the top drawer and taking out the folded-over piece of paper that she had left him.

This he unfolded and read.

Herr Weiss,

The first thing I did was check police records, to see if we had a file on this Gertrud Gross. It turns out we did, but the Gestapo pulled it soon after the occupation, and no one could tell me why. Nor could anyone recall what was in the file.

Of course, I did not let this deter me. Because you said she was a socialite, I decided to call Pavel Bezstarosti. He’s the Society Editor at Lidové Noviny, and he was able to provide me with some details about her.

While he didn’t know much about her background, he said that she was married to Artur Gross, whose family not only had lots of money but plenty of royal blood as well. The man didn’t need to work, but he was a senior deputy in one of the government ministries anyway. He was also well respected by both Czechs and Germans. According to Bezstarosti, in spite of Herr Gross’ German heritage, the man was one of the most patriotic people he ever met.

Bezstarosti further told me that the couple lived at a beautiful villa in Vinohrady and that they were known for giving some of the best parties in the city. He himself had been to a number of them and says that it was impossible to dislike either of the two.

He also says that Herr Gross died soon after the occupation. Though the circumstances of his death are murky. The most prevalent rumor is that he shot himself after learning his wife was having an affair with Reich Minister Frank. But Bezstarosti is dubious of this, to say the least.

After her husband’s death, Frau Gross sold the villa and bought a building in Old Town, where she continues to hold lavish parties. An invitation to one is said to be prized among the Nazi elite. She is also known as someone who goes through men faster than the weather changes. But Bezstarosti is as dubious of this as he is of her alleged affair.

Hermann found the note interesting. He found it so interesting that for many seconds he stared at it.

Finally, he tore it into shreds and dropped these into a garbage pail.

While he wasn’t certain whether what he had read would be helpful, he knew one thing for sure: he was now even more fascinated by the woman and was almost looking forward to the dinner party.

chapter forty-three: pretending it all away

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LIKE THE DAY before, Klara stared blankly, this time through the front window of a boarding house, from an easy chair a few steps from it. Though unlike then, there was no melancholy in her eyes. There was even some wonder in them.

“She’s been acting strange since last night,” Mrs. Jimelová told Gertrud at the other end of the room. “I mean even stranger than how she was acting when you brought her here. She’s either been staring into the street through that window or into the river through the window in her room.”

“What happened last night?” Gertrud asked after turning in surprise toward a woman her age who was wearing a long black dress and had her dark-brown hair styled in a tight bun.

“I found her roaming the streets of Josefov.”

“Josefov? What was she doing there?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. I came upon her as I was returning home after babysitting for my sister. She was talking to some odd-looking man. He wasn’t even wearing pants.”

“Really? She’s barely said a word to me.”

“Me neither.”

“It took me a long time just to get her name.”

“Anyway, I took her home right afterward, and that’s when the staring started.”

“At least she looks happier today.”

Mrs. Jimelová smiled. “Thanks to you, I’m sure.”

“I have a feeling that she’s been through something awful,” Gertrud went on after returning her attention to Klara and feeling her own awfulness rushing back.

“What makes you say that?”

“I just know. But maybe she’s starting to move a little past it.”

“Are you a relative of hers?”

“No, we just have a lot in common.”

“I would never figure that someone like you would have a thing in common with someone like her.”

“You’d be wrong.”

“Well, you needn’t worry. I’ll take good care of her.”

“I know you will,” Gertrud said with a grin. “I’m counting on it.” She then started toward the door and called out, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Klara.”

Klara didn’t respond, and Gertrud left the house while noticing that Mr. Malý’s car was down the street in front of his office building. Which led her to think about paying the man a visit. But realizing that she had way too much to do that day, she instead jumped into her own car and drove the handful of blocks to her home.

Not far from it she parked, and she hurried into her building with an array of shopping bags. Like the day before, she pretended too. She pretended many things, such as that her encounter with Klara hadn’t affected her and that she was once more in control of herself. But most of all she pretended that she was just another dumb socialite preparing for another empty night of fun.

“Mr. Malý has been calling you every five minutes,” Kamča told her while taking the bags from her in the doorway.

“He can be awfully persistent when he wants to be,” Gertrud said. “Which unfortunately isn’t often enough.”

Kamča shook her head. “The way you juggle men, Gertie. I can’t even handle one husband.”

“I can assure you that it’s nothing more than an optical illusion.”

“If you say so.”

“How are we looking for tonight?”

“There must be an entire deer in that kitchen,” Kamča answered while pointing in its direction. “I have enough food cooking right now to feed a battalion.”

“That’s exactly what’s coming tonight. Except that they’re all officers, apart from the women, of course.”

“There are going to be women too?”

“A few. Oh, and there will be one surprise guest as well.”

“And who would that be?”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it? How are we doing with booze?”

“I just restocked the liquor cabinet the other day.”

“We’ll need at least twice that much for this bunch.”

“I’ll call it in.”

The phone rang in response, which caused Kamča to add, “Right after I pick that up.”

“I’ll get it,” Gertrud told her. “It’s likely for me anyway. Why don’t you just put those things away.”

“All right. I’ll call in the liquor order as soon as you’re through.”

“I don’t know how I’d get by without you.”

“Please remember that when I ask for my next raise.”

“I’m already looking forward to it.”

Both women chuckled as Gertrud marched up to the phone and picked it up. Right away, she recognized both the voice and its state. “So where’s the fire this time, Tonda?” she asked.

“Your gentleman friend paid me a visit this morning,” he cried out.

“Which one?”

“You have more than one?”

“Do you really need to ask such a question?”

“It was Captain Stamm, along with that Jewish colleague of his you mentioned. A most fascinating man, to say the least.”

“You needn’t tell me that either. But why were they visiting you?”

“They suspect me of murder,” Tonda gasped.

“Is that all? And here you had me worried.”

“They’ve also connected me to certain entities in Josefov and to some unvoiced conspiracy related to them,” he went on, with more than a little fear in his voice.

“Hermann is indeed a fine detective,” Gertrud noted before hearing her front door open and close. Which caused her to step toward a window facing the front of her building as she added, “But I do hope this won’t scuttle that big deal you’ve been working on.”

“It could very well affect it. Hence, the call. I wanted to get your expert advice.”

“Like I told you before, I think you should hasten that deal of yours. Hasten it as much as you can. Interestingly, both Klaus and Hermann will be here in a few hours for dinner, along with a big VIP.”

“How big of a VIP are we talking about?”

“As big as they come, at least in this neck of the woods.”

“You don’t know how badly I would love to join you.”

“I have a feeling it’ll be explosive enough without you.”

Tonda sighed. “Oh, well, I have a big day tomorrow.”

“So tomorrow it will be?”

“Tomorrow it will be. I’ve just decided, thanks to you. Perhaps I’ll call you after the deal’s complete. So we can celebrate.”

“I’ll be waiting, as they say, with bells on.”

Quickly, the two said their goodbyes and Gertrud hung up.

But she didn’t move. She was still staring out the window into the street, where she saw Kamča talking to a Nazi officer in front of her home. She saw, too, that the woman was pointing at her unit.

While neither of these things were a big surprise to her, she began to wonder whether she needed to be prepared for one.

chapter forty-four: dinner with hegel and heisenberg and a man named saul

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NIGHT HAD DESCENDED upon Old Town Square when Klaus’s Mercedes parked on the north side of it.

With a long evening awaiting them, Hermann and Klaus slowly exited the car, and Klaus told the driver he could leave.

“Where did your aide park that car you were telling me about?” Hermann asked Klaus while glancing around the area.

Klaus glanced as well, and he pointed to a small late-model Škoda Popular up the road. “That’s the one.”

“The Škodovka?”

“Will it do?”

“It’ll more than do. What about Reidl’s car?”

Again, Klaus looked. He looked around the entire square, including down Železná Street across from it. But he shook his head. “I don’t see it. Perhaps he hasn’t gotten here yet.”

“Then we better wait. If he parks on the other side of the square, we’d never be able to follow him.”

“Why couldn’t we just cut across the square?”

“I’m guessing you’ve never followed someone before. The whole point is not to be noticed.”

Grudgingly, Klaus nodded, and the two stepped into the car, where they waited. They waited with Hermann’s mind on anything but the task in front of him. He was wishing he were anywhere but where he was about to go.

Klaus, too, seemed elsewhere. He looked as if he had moved even further away. Though this changed to a look of both surprise and ambivalence when he saw a pair of Nazi officers walking across the square toward Gertrud’s building. “Maybe we could just sit here until the party ends,” he muttered.

“You knew there would be Nazis here,” Hermann said.

Klaus nodded toward the officers. “I didn’t know they would be here. Usually, Colonel Reidl is the highest-ranking officer there.”

“If we don’t show up, Gertrud could say something. And this could make Reidl suspicious, which is the last thing we want.”

Klaus had no reply, and the two returned to their waiting.

Finally, Colonel Reidl’s Mercedes parked a short distance away on Pařížská Street, and the two waited for the colonel to lumber his way across the square and up Železná before following him.

“You’ll likely be very uncomfortable tonight,” Klaus told Hermann as they began crossing the ancient cobblestones in the cooling air, with Klaus looking far more uncomfortable than what Hermann felt.

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” Hermann said with a shake of his head.

“Just keep as invisible as you can and as quiet as you can. We’ll leave at the earliest possible moment.”

Hermann nodded, and they reached Gertrud’s home.

Outside this stood a large security detail, so it took some time before the two could make their way through it and enter the building. But not long after that they were at the woman’s door, which Kamča answered while smiling at Klaus. Though this faded when she noticed Hermann. She looked as if she weren’t sure what to think, and she gaped at him silently, a state quite uncommon for her.

“Who, who’s this?” she mumbled.

Klaus told her and indicated that Gertrud had invited him as well.

With an awkward nod, Kamča led the two inside, and she brought them into the large and crowded living room, where a handful of well-dressed women were cavorting with a dozen Nazi officers. Some of these were even more senior than the two Klaus saw crossing the square. One, in particular, shocked him. It shocked him so much that Hermann could tell that he was desperately trying to come up with an excuse for leaving.

Hermann, too, felt something upon viewing the guests. It was rage, and he felt this intensely. At first, he wasn’t sure what had brought it on, as he had seen plenty of Nazis at the palace and at other places around town since his return to Prague without feeling this. He thought it might’ve been related to the anger he had felt earlier when reexperiencing Ana’s death, but he quickly realized that it was something else: the gaiety of the occasion and how everyone was drinking in excess. While he knew from experience that men could be made to do atrocious things under order and in the midst of battle, here were people under no duress enjoying themselves in spite of all the misery they were causing, and this infuriated him.

It wasn’t long before Hermann wasn’t the only person upset. Both the Nazis and their female companions had a strong reaction to Hermann as soon as they noticed him, and they fell silent as they glared at him.

“You people act like you’ve never seen a Jew before,” Gertrud called out with a big smile as she swept inside the room wearing an elegant black gown that she had bought earlier that day. “It’s all right. He’s working with Captain Stamm on an important case for the benefit of the Reich, and I invited them both.”

This placated most of the guests. Though their conversation and frivolity were more muted than before, even if their drinking was not.

But one guest wasn’t placated at all: Colonel Reidl, who marched up to Klaus and loudly whispered, “What do you think you’re doing? Have you left your mind somewhere?”

“Gertrud invited him,” Klaus whispered back, even though he knew Reidl already knew this.

“So? Have you not heard of the word ‘no’?”

“It’s she who has a hard time understanding it.”

“How do you plan on explaining his presence here?”

“Like she said, he’s helping us on an important case for the benefit of the Reich.”

“Do you not see General Daluege standing just a few steps from you?” the colonel quietly howled while nodding toward the man who had just become the head of what was known during the war as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. “Do you really think he’s going to believe such nonsense?”

“That nonsense happens to be the truth. If anyone presses me on the subject, I’ll simply explain that Hermann’s a collaborator and that I cannot leave his side until the services he’s providing us have been completed.”

“And if they ask you what services he’s providing, then what will you say?”

Klaus thought about this. He thought about it for a few moments before saying, “Maybe, maybe I’ll tell them that he’s helping us track down some missing Jewish property. A treasure perhaps. One that would greatly enrich the Reich if it were found.”

Reidl didn’t exactly reply. But his face became flush, and he scurried off.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Klaus murmured to Hermann while shaking his head once Reidl was out of earshot.

“It’s all right,” Hermann murmured back. “I think a little fright is better than any amount of suspicious. It just might cause him to do something rash tonight, and this would almost certainly help us.”

“What are you two murmuring about?” Gertrud asked as she came between the men and took each of their arms.

“I was just now asking Hermann a question,” Klaus said while staring at General Daluege.

“And what was that?”

“I was asking him how could someone be stupid enough to invite him and me to a dinner party attended by a man who was effectively the absolute ruler of both the country and all our fates?”

“And what did Hermann say?”

“He had no more of an idea than I had. I’m only surprised not to see Reich Minister Frank here as well.”

Just the mentioning of this man’s name caused Gertrud to wince. But she overcame it, and she smiled as she made her way toward General Daluege. “I’m going to advance your career tonight, dear. Just you watch.”

Klaus did just that. He watched Gertrud stride up to the man as if they had been friends since childhood.

“What am I going to do with her?” he muttered to Hermann as he pointed at her.

Hermann didn’t answer. Though much like the first time he met Gertrud, he felt a visceral dislike toward her.

Despite this, he was even more fascinated by her than before. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her nor prevent himself from listening to all she and the general had to say.

“You certainly know how to make a scene,” the general said with a sly grin on his long and narrow face.

“It’s early,” Gertrud said back. “The real scene will come later.”

“I really should have you arrested for pulling this stunt. Or even shot.”

“Then you’d miss dinner, and trust me, you’d regret it.”

They both chuckled, and Gertrud continued through the crowd.

The party continued as well and so did the drinking, which only got heavier. So everyone quickly forgot about Hermann and became just as giddy as before.

Though the coming of dinner forced them to be reminded of him once again, and they were all hesitant to sit anywhere near him. Gertrud had to place him at one end of the dining table next to Klaus while she herself sat across from him.

As Klaus had warned, and as he had expected long before this, Hermann felt great discomfort. Actually, he again felt rage. Just the thought of eating with these people made him sick to his stomach, to the extent that he couldn’t imagine eating a thing.

But this vanished when Kamča served him a plate of her venison in a red wine sauce, a dish that intoxicated him on both sight and smell.

“The sauce,” Gertrud whispered after noticing him gazing at his food, “it’s made from the same wine you enjoyed last night.”

Hermann responded by trying a small bite, and he discovered that it was even better than what he had had at U Bílého Lva. Never had he tasted venison so tender and ungamelike. It was so good that it made him swoon. Also, for the first time since returning to Prague, he found his appetite, and he devoured everything in front of him. Like others there, he even had a second serving, during which he forgot all about the company he was keeping. There was only the food and how it made him once more enjoy being alive.

But his discomfort returned as soon as he finished eating. The silence among the guests returned too. Almost everyone looked uncomfortable. The exception was Colonel Reidl, who looked as if he were somewhere else.

Tiring of the silence, the middle-aged woman next to Gertrud glanced at the cause of it before turning toward her. “Isn’t it amazing how distinguishable Jews are? I swear I could spot one from blocks away, as easily as I could spot a rat.”

“Now that wasn’t very nice, Lina,” Gertrud uttered with a forced grin. “Hermann’s a guest here, and he’s obviously on our side, or he wouldn’t be working with Klaus. Is that not true, darling?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that he’s on our side,” Klaus replied.

“I can attest to that,” Hermann said.

“Then what are you doing with him?” Gertrud asked after taking a sip of the wine that everyone was enjoying other than Klaus.

“He’s helping us sort out an investigation,” Klaus answered, not only to Gertrud but to everyone there. “An investigation that only he could sort out, as a man who was once one of the best police detectives in the city.”

“Even Protector Heydrich,” General Daluege interjected, “who was certainly no lover of Jews, had personal relationships with a number of them, which he maintained even as he was orchestrating their race’s destruction.”

“Is that so?” Gertrud blurted out with surprise.

“More than once I had dinner with him and Paul Sommer, the champion fencer. Heydrich always believed that you could isolate certain exceptional Jews from the race as a whole. After all, even an individual rat can be exceptional. So it doesn’t surprise me that Captain Stamm would want to make use of an exceptional Jewish police detective if it would further the ends of the Reich. I commend him, in fact, for both his ingenuity and boldness.”

“And how’s that case coming, dear?” Gertrud asked Klaus.

“It’s fast approaching its conclusion,” Klaus told her. “I’m hopeful it will be resolved presently.”

Gertrud turned toward Hermann. “What about you?”

“What about me?” he muttered.

“Why are you helping us?”

“Let’s just say they made a compelling offer.”

“Don’t you hate us?”

“What do you mean by ‘us’?”

“Germans, of course.”

“I don’t hate all of you. I don’t hate Hegel or Schopenhauer or Kant. And I especially don’t hate Eckhart. I admire all of them.”

“Ah, Hegel. I’ve long admired him too, and his dialectics. What a charming concept that is.”

“Isn’t that a Marxist concept?” Lina groaned while rolling her eyes.

“You’re thinking of dialectical materialism, my dear,” Gertrud explained after putting her hand on the woman’s wrist.

“Oh.”

“Hegelian dialectics describe the development of things. You see, first you have a thesis, an instance of something. This party, for example. Countering this is an antithesis. Hermann here stands as the antithesis to everything this party represents. And the synthesis is the outcome of the thesis and antithesis reacting to one another. In our case, we are right now experiencing an actual synthesis in progress.”

“How interesting,” Lina said, with an expression that suggested she didn’t find it interesting at all.

“But tell me, Hermann,” Gertrud went on, “are there any living Germans you don’t hate?”

“There are some,” Hermann told her while thinking of one in particular. Someone who was close to him in more ways than one. Someone who could infuriate and enrage him but never for long. “I can’t hate them regardless of how much I want to hate them. To be honest, I really don’t believe that even the average German is bad. It’s just that the loudest voices are the only ones heard.”

“You know, I bet if we turned off all the lights right now, we wouldn’t even know you’re Jewish.”

Hermann smiled.

This confused Gertrud, who said, “Did I say something funny?”

“It’s just that I used to wish the same thing,” Hermann told her. “I wished that people could somehow not see my face and all its Semitic features and would only notice the man underneath it. I actually did everything I could to make this happen. Every choice I made in life was to facilitate this and fit in with you, if not become one of you. You see, I didn’t choose to be Jewish. I didn’t even want to be Jewish, any more than I chose or wanted to be left-handed.”

“But Jewish you are.”

“Jewish I am. And you know what? I’ve stopped being ashamed of it and at how I look. I stopped the moment I stepped into Theresienstadt. The very moment itself. It was then that I was forced to accept what I am. And I’ve since discovered something more extraordinary. I actually like what I am. I’m even proud of it.”

“‘Pride goeth before a fall,’” spoke one of the Nazis from the other end of the table, causing laughter to erupt through the room.

As it subsided, without looking at the man, Hermann countered with his own quote from the Bible. “‘But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace wasn’t given to me in vain.’”

“That line is from our Bible,” insisted the Nazi with anger all over his face, which was replicated on the faces of many others.

“Yes,” Hermann replied while calmly ignoring the anger, “but the man who wrote it was a Jew just like me.”

Again, the conversation fell silent, with everyone looking even more uncomfortable. A few people even made gestures that intimated they were getting ready to leave, including General Daluege.

Desperate to breathe life back into her party, Gertrud turned to Lina and said, “Klaus and Hermann are old friends.”

“Now that’s interesting,” Lina said back while gazing at Klaus with a look that combined surprise and suspicion.

“We were roommates in college,” Klaus told everyone before taking a sip from the glass of milk in front of him. “For a short time.”

“And then you found out he was Jewish,” Gertrud exclaimed.

“No.”

“Then what happened between you two?”

“It’s an old story, one that’s best forgotten.”

“Last night, Hermann, you mentioned a wife. Where is she?”

“She passed away,” Hermann murmured.

“I’m sorry,” Gertrud murmured back. “Did it happen at Theresienstadt?”

Slowly, Hermann shook his head. “She wasn’t even Jewish. She could’ve lived a life mostly unaffected by you and others like you. She suffered all she did, and she suffered a lot, for my sins alone.”

“Can we please change the subject,” Klaus pleaded.

“To what?” Gertrud asked.

“To you perhaps,” Hermann suggested. “You know all about me, but I know almost nothing about you, other than that you are utterly charming.”

Gertrud grinned. “Well, you know what Heisenberg says? The more you know about one aspect of an object, the less you can know about all its other aspects. The same applies to people, I’m afraid. Besides, I’m actually quite uninteresting.”

Hermann shook his head. “I doubt that.”

“I’m just your average brainless socialite living off my family’s money.”

“I don’t know many brainless people who can not only articulate Hegelian dialectics and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle but make them understandable for the average person.”

“I picked them up from a former lover. He was a rather boring man as you can imagine, but he did have his usefulnesses.”

“She’s being modest,” Klaus interjected, “and more than a little. I have colleagues who are less knowledgeable about the war, and I can assure you that this didn’t happen through osmosis.”

General Daluege added, “Her role in presiding over the protectorate’s National Socialist Women’s League provides her with significant access. Even I’ve been surprised by the things she knows.”

“You also pick up a lot when you travel as much as I do,” Gertrud mentioned.

“You travel with a war going on?” Hermann asked.

“I’m not easily frightened,” Gertrud answered, with conviction Hermann felt compelled to admire.

“And she knows everyone,” Lina noted. “She was even on a first-name basis with Protector Heydrich. Didn’t you have dinner with him just before that ill-fated trip of his?”

“Hmmm,” Hermann muttered while gazing at Gertrud as if a veil had just come off her face. “With connections like that, I bet you could open lots of doors.”

Klaus glared at Hermann, which Hermann noticed right away. But he chose to ignore it, and he continued to gaze at Gertrud while Klaus seethed beside him. He was seething much as he had on the day of their falling-out.

“What dinner was this?” General Daluege wondered.

“The dinner was actually well before his, his mishap,” Gertrud told the man with some defensiveness. “And it wasn’t a private dinner or anything of the kind. It was a state dinner in celebration of the visit of Grand Mufti Husseini. We were barely in the same room together. I think you were there, in fact.”

“Ah, yes, I remember.”

The conversation’s sudden turn piqued the interest of Colonel Reidl, who turned to Hermann. “Being that you were in Theresienstadt, I guess you didn’t hear what happened to our dear beloved protector, who governed your nation with such a gentle hand.”

“It actually happened right before I left for Theresienstadt,” Hermann told him, with what he would only later recognize as a surprising lack of fear, which likely came from him not having much left to fear. “I heard all about how he was killed, in broad daylight, no less. On the road to Berlin, wasn’t it?

“Everyone in Josefov heard about it. And if I again can be honest, we all had smiles on our faces for days afterward. But then, then we heard what you did to Lidice in response to his killing.”

“A little town no one will miss,” the colonel said, “along with its people. I can barely recall watching it all burn.”

These words and the grin on the colonel’s face made Gertrud squirm in her seat. “They certainly learned their lesson, didn’t they?” she growled.

Gertrud was now looking more uncomfortable than Klaus, and Klaus must’ve taken this as a sign to leave. He left quickly with Hermann in tow and with Gertrud leading the two toward the door and through it.

“Goodnight, darling,” she whispered to Klaus in the doorway before hurriedly kissing him, which caused Hermann to turn from the two and cross his arms.

“Goodnight,” Klaus whispered back. “Please don’t keep Colonel Reidl up late. He’s got a lot to do.”

“He’s not the only one.”

Quickly, Gertrud closed the door, and Klaus angrily started down the steps followed by Hermann.

“Don’t think that I didn’t catch that insinuation you made in there,” Klaus snarled while looking like he were fighting the urge to shoot Hermann. He was shaking with rage.

“It wasn’t an insinuation,” Hermann said. “It was only an observation.”

“It was nonsense.”

“You must investigate a crime objectively. I’m not accusing her of anything or even calling her a suspect. I was simply making an observation.”

“I would suggest you leave her out of your observations. That is, if you want to keep making them.”

chapter forty-five: different turns of the same phrase

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KLAUS WAS STILL seething as he reached the car and swung open the driver-side door.

“You better let me drive,” Hermann called out from a handful of steps behind him.

“Why?” Klaus barked.

“Do you not remember when I asked you if you had ever followed someone?”

Klaus answered with a loud sigh, and he stormed around the car toward the other side. As he passed Hermann, he dropped the keys into his hand without saying a word or even looking at him.

The silence continued after they entered the car. They stared at the square for many minutes without saying a word. Which was only broken when Klaus, with his anger barely concealed, uttered, “We’ll be doing a lot of waiting tonight, I suppose.”

“Your supposition is right,” Hermann uttered back. “Detective work can be boring, and this is as dull as it gets.”

“How do you pass the time?”

“We can talk if you’d like.”

“About what?”

“Anything you want. For instance, I don’t know, you could tell me what you’ve been doing since that little blow up of ours. Well, I guess it wasn’t so little.”

“You don’t care,” grumbled Klaus after lowering his eyes.

Hermann turned from him. “You’re wrong. I’ve often wondered what happened to you. Ana, too, wondered. She told me so more than once.”

“I never graduated from Charles.”

“Neither did I.”

“What was your excuse?”

“Ana got pregnant unexpectedly. The funny thing is that everyone thought that this was why we had moved the wedding up. Perhaps that’s why no one came. But she actually got pregnant just after we married, and I had to take a job with the police. It was the only thing I was qualified to do.”

“You have a child?”

“He was stillborn.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too. I was planning to return to school afterward, just like we were planning to have more children, and just like I was planning to finally take Ana to Bled like I had promised her. But none of this happened. It’s amazing all the things you put off while telling yourself that there will always be time to do them. What about you?”

“Me?” mumbled Klaus.

“What was your excuse for leaving Charles?” Hermann asked.

“I didn’t exactly leave. I was asked to leave. There’s a reason why I don’t drink anything harder than milk.”

“And?”

“And what?” Klaus groaned.

“What have you been doing the past twenty years?”

“That’s a good question.”

“You don’t know?”

“There are flashes of memory, but I can’t tell which are real and which have been distorted. There were years in which I’m not sure that I was ever fully sober. I only became so when I woke one morning in a jail near Dresden. It was sometime in early 1936 I think. It was cold outside, I remember that. I also remember being told by a local party leader when he visited me in my cell that I was singlehandedly diluting the strength of the great and magnificent Aryan race and that I could either cease this on my own or the Reich would do it for me.”

“So they gave you a choice similar to the one you gave me,” Hermann said.

“And I chose similarly,” Klaus said back.

“But how did you end up in the SS?”

“I needed a job, just like you did. When they found out about my military background, they were all too willing to offer me a position in the army. One thing led to another and another after that. Once you start rolling down a hill, you’ll likely keep rolling.”

“But why the SS?”

“Why not the SS? Why shouldn’t I be more respected and better paid than those who commit the same atrocities? It was an easy choice.”

“Easy? It was easy to become a monster?”

“Surprisingly so,” Klaus growled. “All you need to become a monster, as you put it, is for someone to tell you that you are above the rules of right and wrong and for them to pat you on the back after breaking them while telling you each time how good a job you’re doing. With proper affirmation, we are capable of anything.”

“Even braining a defenseless woman with a butt of a rifle and dragging her body down the sidewalk like she was garbage.”

“Yes, even killing Ana,” Klaus said.

“You know about her?” Hermann gasped.

“I read everything about you, including what had happened to her. You can bet that the man who killed her felt that he was doing the right thing, that he was doing a good thing. And don’t think it’s just Nazis and Germans that can become like him. It can happen to anyone. Even you.”

Hermann shook his head over and over. “No.”

“You think so now,” Klaus countered, “but just wait till you’ve committed your first murder. Wait till you see how meaningless it is and how there are no repercussions for it and no remorse. Wait till you realize that life and death are just different states of the same rotting and that truth and lies are just different turns of the same phrase. You see, Hermann, your Hebrew has got it wrong. Truth doesn’t come from death. It doesn’t come from anything at all.”

“Speaking of lies,” Hermann replied, “that visa in your jacket pocket, it doesn’t exist, does it?”

Klaus didn’t reply back. But it was the only reply Hermann needed. So he grinned. “It’s all right. I guessed the truth from the moment you made me the offer. But I was certain of it when you told me that I needed to keep quiet about this case. If you wanted me quiet then, you’d surely want me quiet always.”

“So why’d you ask?” Klaus snarled.

“Maybe I wanted to hear you ‘turn the phrase,’” Hermann snarled back.

“Listen to you talk so righteously,” Klaus bellowed with his old hatreds of Hermann overwhelming him, “like you’re so much better than me. Were you truthful with me? How long were you seeing Ana behind my back?”

“The difference is that I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” Hermann cried out. “Nor was I being indifferent toward your feelings. It was the exact opposite.”

“You stabbed me in the back, like the blackhearted Jew you are.”

“You never loved Ana.”

“How would you know?” Klaus hollered.

“Because I know who you loved,” Hermann hollered back. “We both know.”

Klaus grabbed Hermann by the lapels of his jacket and howled, “What are you trying to say?”

“You know exactly what I’m trying to say!” Hermann howled back with even more anger than Klaus. For the third time that night, he felt rage, and like Klaus, he could no longer hold it back. Nor did he care where it would lead him, even if it meant complicity in his death. “You never kissed Ana or held her hand or even tried to do these things. You were just using her, like you’re using Gertrud, because you can’t accept what you are!”

Shaking with wrath, Klaus threw Hermann against the driver’s door with tears in his eyes. “I could kill you right now! It’d be so easy! I wouldn’t even need a pat on the back or a good word afterward!”

“So do it! I’m not stopping you! Do it!”

Instead, Klaus released Hermann, and he grumbled, “You only want me to kill you because you’re too cowardly to do it yourself.”

These words caused Hermann to lower his eyes while wondering if Klaus was right. He wondered, too, if the promise he had made to Ana not to give up was nothing more than a way to mask his fear.

“Ana,” Klaus continued, “she at least had the courage to control her fate instead of living in fear of it.”

Suddenly, Hermann started falling apart, as he recalled Ana’s actions at the train station and the lack of his own. Which led him to silently and tearlessly weep, not just for her but for himself as well.

“Look at you,” added Klaus with a sneer that let loose more than twenty years of built-up contempt. “Just look at you. The hero of Verdun, nothing more than a sniveling coward. Ana would be ashamed of you. She’d be ashamed of you!”

Just as suddenly as Hermann fell apart, he roared. He roared both inside and out.

Releasing a fury not just from that day but from years of days like it, he turned to Klaus and punched him as hard as he could in the face, knocking him backward against the passenger door. “You can take anything you want from me, Klaus,” he screamed as he grabbed the man by the collar. “Anything you want, including my life. But I won’t let you take my memories of her. I won’t!”

Klaus tried to fling his own punch in reaction to this.

But Hermann blocked it, and he started pounding Klaus’s face with a flurry of punches, sending Klaus’s cap to the floor and blood down his face. Though not even the latter could diminish Hermann’s anger. If anything, it drove him wilder. Blinded by hate, he hit Klaus everywhere at once, causing the man to tumble about in his seat.

Like outside The Eldorado club in Berlin, Klaus could’ve easily defended himself and stopped the onslaught. At least that’s what Hermann always thought. But like then, he was likely enjoying it too much. I think he wanted Hermann to pummel him. He wanted him to finish the job that the two men on Kant Street couldn’t complete. He wanted Hermann to destroy not only him but everything about himself he hated.

But just as love isn’t always reciprocated, self-destruction isn’t always realized. Hermann stopped his punching. He stopped when he heard an engine start.

This shifted his eyes forward, and he saw Colonel Reidl’s Mercedes backing out of its spot.

“So, are you going to shoot me or are we going to follow Reidl?” Hermann demanded while watching the Mercedes leave.

Klaus didn’t answer. He just sat by the door dazed, with blood dripping onto his pristine black uniform.

“What do you want me to do?” Hermann called out as the colonel’s car drove off.

Klaus thought about this. He thought about it for many seconds before muttering, “Follow him.”

Hermann complied. He started the car and backed it up before speeding forward. As he eyed the Mercedes up ahead, he noticed that Klaus was reaching inside his jacket.

Slowly, he reached.

He reached for a handkerchief.

chapter forty-six: cutting to the chase

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COLONEL REIDL’S MERCEDES coasted down Dvořák Quay as the road hugged the winding riverbank.

Trailing more than a block behind was Hermann and Klaus in the Škoda, with Hermann again hearing the sounds of Smetana’s “Vltava.” They were as clear as they had been on the morning he left the camp.

Gently, the Mercedes came to a stop at the foot of Mendel Bridge, which before the occupation had been known as Čech Bridge. The Škoda was now even farther behind as Hermann pulled over to the side of the road, where he and Klaus watched the colonel step out of his car and lumber toward the edge of the bridge, where he gazed at the water.

What the man was thinking I can’t know. But I think he was trying to convince himself that everything he had planned was not lost, despite Klaus’s remark at the party and all the men killed in the wake of him carrying out his plans. He was still alive, and from everything I’ve read about him and his military career during both wars, that was all that mattered to him.

There was also the matter of a number of actions he had taken during this war, such as at Lidice, which he must’ve known would be seen as serious war crimes after Germany’s inevitable defeat. To hide from these would take money. Lots of it. So it’s not likely he harbored any thoughts of changing course.

Reidl continued his gazing, and Hermann continued his watching of it. He watched as a huge barge passed the man with a heavy load on its deck, and he noticed how the man was seemingly traveling along with it.

Hermann noticed something else. His anger at Klaus had faded. He could tell, too, that Klaus’s had as well.

“What’s he doing?” Klaus asked with his hand covering his swollen eye, after he clumsily picked up his cap off the floor and put it on.

“Something tells me that he’s not admiring the view,” Hermann answered as the barge disappeared.

The colonel kept up his gaze after it was gone. He was again gazing at the quiet river, along with the even quieter docks beside it. He gazed at them for many minutes before returning to the back seat of the car, which again began sputtering down the quay.

Hermann didn’t react. He didn’t even start his car.

“What are you waiting for?” grumbled Klaus.

“I don’t want the driver to get suspicious of me,” Hermann said. “He might already be.”

Hermann waited until the Mercedes was completely out of view before starting his car and moving forward. Then, as soon as the rear of the Mercedes came back into his view, he made a sharp left down Břehová Street.

Klaus turned to Hermann in surprise. “Now what are you doing?”

Hermann didn’t answer. He just made a quick right onto Sanytrová Street.

“I asked you a question,” Klaus snapped with his anger again rising.

“They’re likely driving down the quay to at least Mánes Bridge Road,” Hermann explained. “The driver’s only other options are making a left onto Na Rejdišti Street or Rejdiště Square. And if he does either, he’ll drive right into my view. There are no other possibilities besides stopping. And if he does that, we’ll find them soon enough.”

Hermann sped right onto Mánes Bridge Road, and he saw Reidl’s car up the street finishing its own right. He saw, too, that the car was mixing in with the light traffic heading toward the bridge, and he once more followed it as it began crossing the river. Like before, he followed it a safe distance back, this time with a trio of cars in between them.

Hermann reached the bridge and the water, where he noticed that the music had grown louder. It and its approaching climax were roaring, to the extent that it seemed Karel Ančerl and his orchestra were right beneath him as he finished crossing the water, where he saw that the Mercedes had reached the other side of town and was making its way down Klár Place.

After reaching this street as well, Hermann made a hard right onto Strak Quay. He followed this with a hard left onto U Železné Lávky, and he sped down the road while eyeing the Mercedes driving along the parallel street through the barrenness between them.

“Now what?” Klaus uttered.

“Just watch,” Hermann uttered back before slamming his foot onto the gas.

While keeping it there, and with the dissonance of the music reaching a crescendo, he spun left onto Kramář Quay before speeding in front of Reidl’s car by making a right onto Klár.

“If you want to follow someone in this part of Prague without being noticed,” Hermann told Klaus as he glanced at the Mercedes in his rearview mirror, “sometimes you have to be ahead of them.”

“If only you weren’t Jewish, Hermann,” mumbled a bewildered Klaus while shaking his head in wonder. “We really could use a man like you in my office.”

“Yet another reason to be thankful for being Jewish,” Hermann said while continuing to follow the Mercedes. He followed it by anticipating every move it would make as the two cars wended their way into Malá Strana and drove through a set of twisting old streets.

Eventually, they reached a cobblestone road called Tržiště, where the Mercedes finally diverted from Hermann’s lead by veering right as the road flowed into a narrow outlet.

Calmly, Hermann continued onto Břetislav Street, where he turned around and stopped by the corner.

Klaus didn’t even ask Hermann what he was doing. He just gave him a look that expressed it.

Hermann nodded toward the road. “Tržiště is a dead end up there. If he’s coming out, he has to come back from where he came.”

But Reidl didn’t come back.

“Is there a reason he’d stop here?” Hermann asked after they waited for more than a minute.

“This is not where he lives,” Klaus answered. “I can tell you that much. But perhaps his mistress lives here. I know he has one, but I know nothing about her. Not even her name or what she looks like.”

“Then we could be here a long time.”

“Or maybe not,” Klaus quipped.

This made Hermann grin. “You want me to take the first watch?”

“I’ll do it.”

Hermann nodded, even though he knew Klaus was far more tired than him, and he said, “Wake me in a few hours.” He then closed his eyes, and sleep overtook him.

Though this didn’t mean he was to get any rest.

chapter forty-seven: the last goodbye

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HERMANN THOUGHT HE was dreaming. Not just because he was walking into the setting sun but because he was walking along a frozen path toward his old family home in the shtetl he lived as a boy.

But he started to question whether it really was a dream, as he could feel the cold in his bones and could even see his breath. He could see, too, the smoke churning from his house’s chimney and Mr. Jacobs from next door, who was smiling and waving at him in front of his freshly-shoveled walkway.

“Thank you, Hermann!” the man called out.

Hermann didn’t reply. He just stepped inside his old home.

“Is that you, Hermann?” came a familiar female voice from the kitchen.

Surprised by the voice, Hermann followed it. He followed as well the smells and the crackling sounds of chicken and potatoes roasting in the oven until he found his mother lighting the Shabbat candles, which she did before guiding the light into their home with her hands.

This was a ritual Hermann always loved. It was one of the few he did. He loved it from the time he watched it as a boy through seeing it performed every Friday night at Theresienstadt, and he continued enjoying it right up until my grandmother died.

But the gentle waves of his mother’s hands at this moment especially fascinated him. He thought she really was bringing God upon them as she recited the prayer.

Barukh ata Adonai

Eloheinu Melekh ha-olam,

Asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav

V’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.

“Amen,” Hermann murmured.

Turning toward him with a big smile, his mother cried out, “Next year in Jerusalem! Next year we will welcome the Sabbath in Jerusalem!”

Hermann said nothing. He just recalled how his mother had said this every Sabbath night and wondered why he’d be dreaming of it now when he couldn’t recall dreaming of it before or even thinking about it.

He had no answer as he continued into the house over his mother singing “Hatikvah,” which perplexed him for a reason he couldn’t understand. He continued until he came to the door of his old room, which he opened and stepped through.

But instead of his bedroom, he walked into his Prague apartment just as it was a few years before the occupation. He noticed not only this but how he was wearing Mr. Jacobs’ suit, which didn’t fit him so well due to the beginnings of a belly he was developing at the time.

Again, he thought he was dreaming. But again he wondered whether it really was a dream, as he had never experienced one in which he actually thought he was dreaming.

Farther, he went on, and he strode into the kitchen, where he saw Ana in the bright midday sun. She was wearing her flowered apron as she prepared another jar of utopence by chopping onions on a big wooden carving board.

Carefully, she cut each onion. She cut them as thin as possible, as if how they were cut mattered, before emptying them into the jar, which seemed to have no room for anything else.

All this seemed so real to Hermann. He could smell not only the sausages but also Ana’s favorite perfume, the kind she only wore on special occasions, such as on their wedding day and when she tried to join him in Theresienstadt. He could even feel the warm summer sun on his cheeks and forehead. But most of all he could feel the warmth of once again being in Ana’s presence, and he marveled at how she could aspire him after so many years of marriage.

Hurriedly, he rushed up to her, as if he were afraid she would disappear. He also took her hands, which were even warmer than the feelings she had evoked.

“Just one more day,” she insisted as she removed her hands from his so that she could close the lid of the jar. “Surely, you can hold out till then.”

He grabbed her hands again and began pulling her away. “I can’t even hold out for another few seconds.”

“Are you being naughty, Herr Weiss?” she joked while playfully dragging her feet.

He answered by sweeping her into his arms, much as he had done on their wedding day when they first stepped into their home as husband and wife. Like then, he spun her in circles as they giggled. He spun her right into the bedroom.

But instead of finding themselves there, they found themselves on Bled Island, in front of the 99 steps that had so captured Hermann’s imagination as a young man when he read about them in a book he had otherwise forgotten.

With a big smile on his face, Hermann carried Ana up the staircase while noticing she was once again wearing her wedding dress and gripping her white rose bouquet. He noticed, too, that his heart was beating as fast as it had on their wedding day.

“What are you doing?” she cried out.

“Sshhh!” he cried back before rushing down the stairs to the bottom. “Don’t you remember what I told you? To have a successful marriage, the Slovenians believe that the groom must carry the bride up all 99 steps without her saying a word.”

“We already had a successful marriage.”

“This will prove it!”

Without waiting for a reply, Hermann rushed up the steps with Ana.

For the first half of these, it was easy. The two steadily rose above Lake Bled toward the towering mountains surrounding it, and he could see Bled Castle in the distance at the top of them. But after he passed the halfway point, he began to tire, which made him once more question whether he really was experiencing a dream, as he couldn’t recall ever being tired in one.

Slowly and with great exertion, he continued upward with sweat pouring down his face and stinging his eyes. He thought he’d collapse at any moment and so did Ana. She even braced herself for a fall.

But he didn’t fall. With all his remaining strength, he ran up the last steps and made it to the top.

Conveying his bride through a set of doors, he and Ana finally found themselves in their bedroom, where he gently lowered her upon their well-made featherbed.

“This is real, isn’t it?” he whispered as he kissed and touched her everywhere.

Suddenly, she broke their embrace, and she gave him the look she’d always give him when she was about to disappoint him.

“It’s real,” he insisted. “It is.” To prove this, he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the rose petal, which he showed her. “I know it’s real.”

“Knowing has got nothing to do with it,” she mumbled as she took his hand and shook her head. “You must let me go. You must let you go. This, this is sbohem.”

What she was telling him was that there would be no more na shledanou. No more until we meet again. This was farewell and forever.

“No,” he told her while shaking his head over and over, and he kept repeating it hoping to make it so.

“You must live, miláčku můj,” she told him back while caressing his cheeks with the warmth of her palms. “I’ll be with you wherever you’ll be. But you must live, not in what was but always in ‘now’ and continue to make me proud.”

“You, you’re proud of me?” he muttered as he tried to hold back his tears.

She answered him with a kiss, one that made him swoon much more than the venison had hours earlier.

chapter forty-eight: the kindness of his smile

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IVO LOCKED THE doors of the Pinkas Synagogue, and he put his keys in his coat pocket next to the other set, the one he had taken from the body of Captain Kleiner the night before.

Like the night before, he made his way to the gates of the synagogue, where he noticed Klara walking toward him along Široká Street from the direction of the river.

She stopped when she saw him from a block away, at the corner of Valentinská Street. She smiled as well, which caused him to nervously smile back, and he smiled even more when she strode up to him.

“Good evening,” he said to her with his hands behind his back as she came to another stop.

“Good evening to you as well,” she told him.

“Have you been visiting the synagogues this evening?”

“I was about to visit some. I was at the river just now. It’s lovely there tonight. You can see the moon reflecting off the water.”

“Which synagogues are you planning to visit?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she muttered as she gazed at the building in front of her. “This is my favorite, actually. I come here all the time. I also visit the High Synagogue often. But perhaps I’ll visit the Maisel tonight as well. It’s on my way home.”

“I cleaned the walls there this morning.”

“I’ve noticed just how clean all the buildings look, both inside and out. You do a nice job. A lesser man might’ve slacked off by now, considering there’s no one to check your work.”

“There’s always someone watching.”

“Who?”

Ivo glanced upward, and Klara again smiled.

“Besides,” Ivo added, “the buildings are so lonely these days. They need love just like everyone else, and I try to give it to them.”

Once more, Klara smiled, and she mentioned, “I like your shoes.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair quite like them.”

“Dr. Brod made them for me.”

“You weren’t wearing them last night.”

“I had to work last night, and I don’t wear them when I work. I don’t want to get them dirty or hurt.”

“So what are you doing now?”

“I don’t know.”

Klara giggled.

Thinking she was laughing at him, Ivo lowered his eyes. “I’m afraid I’m not a very smart man.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she insisted.

“You’d be the only one,” he insisted back as he raised his eyes. “You and that Jewish policeman.”

“Jewish policeman?”

“He’s investigating the killings at the synagogues.”

“There have been killings at the synagogues?” she gasped.

“Many,” he told her.

“How terrible.”

“Don’t feel so sad. The people who died in them were not nice men.”

“Still, I wouldn’t wish them harm. I wouldn’t even wish harm to the men . . .”

“What men?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re a very nice person if you can feel sad for bad people. You’re like the man in the book Mrs. Mlýnková is always reading to me.”

“What man is that?”

“The one who’s always forgiving people, no matter what terrible things they do.”

“That’s very kind of you to say.”

“Would you like me to walk you to the Maisel?”

“Actually,” she stammered while suddenly looking frightened, “I, I’m very tired. I’ll probably just glance at the building and go straight home.”

“All right,” he said. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she said back, and she started toward Maisel Street.

But once again she stopped, and she turned back to Ivo and the kindness of his smile. “Maybe tomorrow night we could visit the synagogues. We could even take a walk. To the river perhaps.”

“I’d like that very much,” he murmured to the woman who would become his wife. “You can find me here. If not at this time, then sometime a little later.”

chapter forty-nine: the papers on the floor

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HERMANN WAS GRINNING when he woke with the rising sun as it streamed through the windshield of the car.

The grinning ended when he noticed Klaus asleep next to him. He noticed, too, that the man was shaking in fright from another of his nightmares, with this seemingly worse than what he had been experiencing on the ride from Theresienstadt. He looked as if he were struggling for his life.

Hermann noticed something else: a set of papers at Klaus’s feet, which he assumed fell there during their struggle the night before.

With some hesitance, he picked these up while wondering if Klaus had actually been truthful about what he had promised him in Janeček’s office. The wondering grew until, with even more hesitance, he unfolded the first page.

This was a bill of lading for a shipment Klaus had recently sent to a Karl Schmidt in Basel, Switzerland, which was described as “a belated wedding gift.”

Hermann gazed at this, unaware that it was how Klaus saved Ana’s two paintings from the flames. The ones I had seen at the National Gallery, whose existence Hermann would never learn.

Next, Hermann looked at the paper underneath the bill of lading, a pension request that Klaus had filled out for Dita. A woman whose role in this story was small but whose role in my life would be great, as she would give birth to the little girl who’d become my mother.

Hermann smiled, at both the form and Klaus. But he didn’t do it for long, as he heard an engine start up the road. This led him to place the papers in Klaus’s jacket pocket and shake the man awake.

“What?” Klaus cried out while looking stuck in his nightmare.

“You fell asleep,” Hermann told him as the Mercedes drove past them. “But you got lucky.”

“It’s about time.”

Quickly, Hermann started the car, and again Colonel Reidl led the two through the ancient and winding streets of Malá Strana, this time with Hermann following behind him.

Because of the daylight and because he thought Reidl would be driving to the palace, Hermann didn’t think he’d need the same kind of maneuvers as the night before. He could just sit back and enjoy the goldish tint that came over the buildings as the sun rose over them, which made them look even more fairytale-like than normal.

But Reidl wasn’t heading toward the palace. Instead, his Mercedes led Hermann and Klaus back over the river to the other side of Prague, crossing a bridge a little south of Mánes Bridge, which had once been named Legií Bridge and was now called Smetana Bridge. Hermann followed until the Mercedes parked in front of Café Slavia on Národní Avenue.

As Hermann watched Reidl step out of his car, he made a left at the intersection and parked on Smetana Quay, which left him and Klaus facing the other side of the café.

With their weary eyes, the two glanced through the windows of the building and saw the colonel saunter inside and make his way toward Mr. Malý, who stood and grinned.

The men greeted each other like the best of friends before they sat down and talked.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Hermann told Klaus as he opened his door and stepped outside.

“Where are you going?” Klaus grumbled.

“To have a look around. Just keep watching them.”

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HERMANN RETURNED INSIDE the car. “Anything happen?”

“Not a thing,” Klaus said. “Where did you go?”

“I don’t see anyone watching the building, from either side of it. Didn’t you say that you arranged a tail on Malý?”

Klaus shrugged. He shrugged while glancing at Hermann and his annoyance, and he mentioned, “You’ve read The Good Soldier Švejk too. I guess this is all part of their passive resistance.”

Hermann smirked. He did while knowing that, even after all that had happened the night before, he really liked Klaus. He knew, too, that this was mutual.

Again, the two turned their attention to the café, where they saw a waiter leave a cup in front of Malý before rushing off. He left without even glancing at the colonel, who had clearly wanted to order something.

“I could really use some of that myself,” Klaus muttered.

“You’d get it faster by flying to Turkey,” Hermann insisted, “than you would by walking through that door.”

Both men laughed, and they laughed even more when Hermann added, “And you’d get real coffee.”

The laughing came to an end when Reidl reached inside his coat for an envelope, which he placed on the table before pushing it toward Malý, who snatched it and stuffed it into his jacket pocket while glancing around the café suspiciously.

“What do you think is in that?” Klaus asked while leaning forward.

“It could be the key to this whole mystery,” Hermann answered. “Or it could be nothing more than payment for some legal services Malý provided.”

Slowly, the colonel rose along with Malý, and the two said their goodbyes as warmly as they had said their hellos before Reidl exited the café and returned to the Mercedes.

“It’s decision time,” Hermann said. “Either we continue to follow Reidl or we follow Malý. It’s your choice.”

Klaus thought it over and mumbled, “What do you suggest?”

“Malý.”

“Why?”

“Because if Reidl had had some legal affair he wanted handled, he would’ve gotten himself a better lawyer.”

Klaus didn’t respond, and the Mercedes took off.

“What’s it going to be?” Hermann uttered.

“Malý,” Klaus uttered back. “Let’s follow Malý.”

chapter fifty: in pursuit of mr. malý

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I MET ANTONÍN Malý when he flew to America for my grandfather’s funeral.

This was a difficult time for me. My grandfather and I had become close after that night on the staircase, and we became even closer after my grandmother died. So I felt particularly alone on that day as I recalled the man who had done so much to make me feel anything but. The man who really was my grandfather.

The funeral service was a somber one, held on a snowy morning in early March, with only a few people attending. At its conclusion, the rabbi led them out of the prayer hall while reciting Psalm 23.

I barely noticed this and didn’t follow the procession. I just sat in the front pew while clutching an old brass compass. The same one I was clutching on that freezing and rainy desert night.

I only came out of my funk when a tall old man limped into the hall with the aid of a cane. I could hear his slow shuffling footsteps over the plush carpet as he steadily made his way toward me.

The steps came to a stop beside me. With a shortage of breath and a thick German accent, the man asked me who I was.

I told him.

“I’m your Great-Uncle Tonda,” was his response.

My jaw unhinged, and I muttered, “I thought you were dead. My grandparents thought so.”

Tonda chuckled as he sat next to me. “There are times I wonder myself.”

“How did you even know my grandfather had died?”

“I kept close tabs on him, as you Americans say. And on your grandmother. I would have been here for her funeral too, if I had not been incognito, if you will.”

It took some time for Tonda to catch his breath. But once he had, he asked to see my grandfather.

So we walked up to the altar and I opened the casket, and I found my eyes drawn to two things: my grandmother’s gold Star of David pin in Hermann’s lapel and the freshly-plucked white rose petal in his hand, both of which I had found among his possessions after he died.

Silently, Tonda and I stood there. We did until I closed the casket and drove Tonda to my grandparents’ house.

During the day and night that followed, the two of us got to know each other over a bottle of 100-year-old cognac that Tonda had been saving for others to drink at his funeral. What was interesting about this was that we didn’t mourn my grandfather. Instead, we celebrated his life. We told each other countless stories about him, and we kept telling them well past the rising sun and long after the bottle had been finished. Just as importantly, we laughed a lot, and I’d like to believe that my grandfather was laughing with us. I certainly felt he was.

After this, on my urging, Tonda continued to stay with me. He died a few months later and is buried a short distance from my grandparents. But in the time we had together, he provided me with much-needed comfort as well as details about this case that my grandfather never knew. This included events after the colonel’s departure from the café.

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HERMANN AND KLAUS didn’t have to wait long outside Café Slavia for my future great-uncle to leave. He drained his cup the moment he saw Reidl and his Mercedes drive off, and he dropped some coins onto the table before rushing out of the building.

While hustling as fast as he could, he crossed Národní before scurrying into his office building, watched by Hermann and Klaus from their car, which Hermann had moved from the other side of the café. Tonda’s heart was racing as he returned to his office while clutching his jacket pocket. Unable to believe what was inside it, he kept clutching it as he grabbed his phone and dialed Gertrud.

No one answered, not even Kamča. So he hung up and glanced out his window while arguing with himself over whether he should wait for Gertrud to return. Though this was short-lived, and he made two last phone calls.

“I’m going to get it right now,” he told the person on the other end of the line during his final call. “I’ll meet you at the Spanish Synagogue in two hours.”

Quickly, Tonda finished the conversation and hung up.

After opening a desk drawer, he took out a large and ancient iron key as well as a ram’s horn. He put these in his briefcase, and he left his office with it and took the paternoster to the lobby. From there he scurried outside the Palác Dunaj into a Tatra 77 parked outside the building, and he sped across the same bridge that Hermann and Klaus had recently followed Reidl over, with Hermann now following him.

Instead of leading Hermann and Klaus back into Malá Strana and down its ancient roads, Tonda drove south of it, into an industrial part of town called Smíchov.

He parked on Holeček Street, in front of a decrepit and empty grocery store, and he waited. He waited for more than an hour, with Hermann and Klaus parked about a block and a half back. He waited until a small truck came rumbling toward him from the opposite direction, which was spewing thick black smoke from its exhaust and kept doing this even after it came to a rest across the street from the Tatra.

As soon as he saw the truck, Tonda jumped out of his car with his briefcase, and he carefully looked around the block.

Seeing nothing in either direction, he scampered toward the driver’s window of the truck, which rolled down as he approached, exposing a scruffy little man in his twenties.

“You’re late, Luděk,” Tonda growled in a tone of voice that was both foreign and forced. “You know how important this is for me.”

“It couldn’t be helped, boss,” Luděk insisted. “I had engine problems. You’re lucky I got here at all.”

“You don’t expect there will be any more of these problems, do you?”

Luděk shrugged, which caused Tonda to sigh. But he climbed inside the truck, and it took off before passing Hermann’s Škoda as it continued to singlehandedly spread smog across the city.

Hermann waited. He waited until the truck was completely out of sight in the rearview mirror before he made a U-turn and followed the smoke. He followed it for a handful of blocks, to a large building on Plzeňská Street that was surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence and whose entrance was guarded by a pair of SS soldiers.

At the gate, Luděk showed one of the soldiers a piece of paper, along with both men’s identification documents.

The soldier read through these carefully. He did multiple times while repeatedly glancing at the men. He even made a phone call before returning everything and opening the gate, which allowed the truck to stutter inside.

“What is this place?” Hermann asked Klaus while watching the truck disappear.

“An SS warehouse,” answered Klaus with a look of confusion.

“A warehouse of what?”

“Weapons, uniforms, equipment. Anything we could possibly need during the course of our operations.”

“And someone like Malý can just drive inside it?”

“Not even I could just drive inside it. Not without proper authorization.”

“Could Reidl provide such authorization?”

“Yes.”

“So that could’ve been what he gave him inside the café.”

“I should arrest Malý the second he leaves, with whatever he takes from there.”

“You can arrest him anytime. After he leads us to the killer.”

chapter fifty-one: good king wenceslas

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GERTRUD TOOK A long walk around town.

She would say that she did to help her forget the night before and to cleanse both her body and soul. But I think even she knew there was more to it than that.

The reasons, though, didn’t matter. The only thing that did was that the early spring air seemed fresher than it had the day before and that every building seemed more beautiful than normal.

Eventually, she found herself at the foot of Wenceslas Square, and she absentmindedly made her way toward the top while recalling all the walks she and her husband had taken on it. Just about every night they did, where they would discuss the day’s happenings. No matter how busy he was, he would carve out an hour for it. Often it was late at night, but he always made time for it and for her, even when the Wehrmacht was massing on the border.

Only now did Gertrud realize how spoiled her husband had left her. No man she met since was like Artur. Though she would say that Hermann shared some of his better qualities, such as his intelligence and strength of character and his reverence of women. She had come to discover that Hermann was even more interesting than she had found him outside Černín Palace, and she lamented at how she’d never see him again.

Without realizing it, Gertrud found herself at the top of the square. She was now facing the statue of the man the square was named after, who continues to sit there on his galloping horse.

At this moment, it struck her at how the man, who we in the English-speaking world know as Good King Wenceslas, looked a lot more like Don Quixote than the patron saint of the Czechs. Which caused her to giggle and wonder if this had been what Myslbek had intended when he sculpted the statue over the course of the many years he labored over it.

I think Gertrud saw a lot of herself in both the star-crossed monarch and the starry-eyed knight-errant, and perhaps this was why she giggled some more. Though she didn’t do this for long.

Knowing that she had a lot to do, she hurried down the square to her home, where she found a note Kamča had left her, which mentioned that the woman had gone food shopping.

Gertrud responded by penning her own note for Kamča. This took time, as she had to forgive the woman for all the spying she had been doing since in her employ, and she needed this to come across sincerely for both their sakes.

But Gertrud never got the chance to finish the note, as she heard a loud vehicle come to a sharp stop outside. Which sent her scurrying to a window, where she saw a trio of Nazi soldiers rush into her building.

This was not a big surprise to her. So, after she grabbed her coat and purse and placed in the latter an old jewelry box that her mother had given her long ago, she calmly made her way into the bedroom and through a window. She then climbed to the third floor of the building and to a window that had been left ajar for this purpose.

Carefully, she entered it, and she hurried to the front door of the unit, where she listened to the soldiers as they banged on the door below. They banged on it for about a minute before they broke through and marched inside.

Right then, Gertrud whisked off her shoes. While carrying these, she quietly swung open the door and scurried down the stairs and out her building.

After putting her shoes back on, she jumped into her car and drove to Národní, where she stopped in front of the Palác Dunaj while noticing that Tonda’s car was gone.

Gertrud well knew that she had to leave and do so at once, but she had something a little more important to do. This led her inside the boarding house, where she saw something that did surprise her. She saw Klara sitting by the window, staring out of it much as she had the day before. What surprised her was that the woman was smiling.

“Klara?” Gertrud gasped.

Klara didn’t respond, but she didn’t stop smiling either.

Gertrud came up to her and sat on the armrest of her easy chair, and she smiled too. “Is there a reason why you’re smiling?” Gertrud asked, even though she knew what it was, as more than once she had seen this smile on her own face.

Klara shrugged.

“It starts that way, you know,” Gertrud went on.

“What does?” Klara softly asked.

“You think to yourself that all is lost and that you’ll never be the same again. But then one day you smile without even realizing it, and this is how it starts.”

“What?”

“The road home. It’s a long journey, but it has to start somewhere.”

Klara shook her head. “I relive what happened to me every day.”

“Believe it or not, so do I. But instead of it horrifying me, it now motivates me. Everything I do, including helping you, comes from the hate I’ve turned on its head.”

“I don’t think I could do that. Or even begin to. I’m not as strong as you.”

“That’s what I used to think about myself. I thought it right up until I saw, in the light that had been shined upon me, that I was stronger than I thought. This moment will come for you too. I just know it.”

Gertrud hugged Klara, and she kissed her cheek, and it didn’t matter to her at all that the affection was not reciprocated. She knew this would come sometime in the future, when Klara would turn the light given to her upon someone else. For now, Gertrud would take comfort in Klara’s smile as she scampered out of the house, where she noticed that Tonda’s car was still not in front of his building.

With her own smile, Gertrud jumped into her own car, and she sped off, not even caring where she was going.

chapter fifty-two: a sense of something familiar

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WITH THE SUN beginning to descend, Luděk’s truck stammered out of the warehouse and again billowed smoke as it headed down Plzeňská Street.

Following a good distance back were Hermann and Klaus. They followed it to the other side of town over what had previously been known as Palacký Bridge and was now called Mozart Bridge. They followed it as it made its way northward to the ghost town, which was a destination that I’m sure surprised neither man.

The truck parked on U Starého Hřbitova, about equidistance from the Old-New Synagogue above it and the High Synagogue below. Parking more than a block back were Hermann and Klaus, who sat in their car watching. They watched for many minutes, without any movement coming from the truck.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Klaus asked, unable to restrain his anxiousness.

“I’m more interested in what they’re going to do,” Hermann answered, “and where they’re going to do it.”

Seemingly in response, Tonda and Luděk exited the truck and headed to the back of it before stepping inside it, where they spent even more time than they had in the front of it.

Finally, they left, and they took out a large and heavy covered cart with old and creaky wheels, which they rolled toward the entrance of the Old-New Synagogue.

“What do you think is in that?” Klaus blurted out while tilting his head in confusion.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Hermann told him as he watched the two men open the synagogue and enter it with the cart.

Tonda closed the door behind them, after which Hermann opened his door and started toward the synagogue while saying, “Bring the flashlight.”

Klaus nodded before grabbing the device and following Hermann. But suddenly he stopped. Something familiar had caught his eyes or perhaps there was a certain scent in the air he recognized. But whatever it was he stopped in fright.

“What’s wrong?” Hermann asked.

“Nothing,” Klaus answered before continuing toward the synagogue while looking as if he were trying to make himself believe it.

chapter fifty-three: from deep inside the building

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WITH KLAUS STANDING over his shoulder, Hermann peeked into a window of the Old-New Synagogue, and he glanced at the unlit chandeliers hanging from inside the small 700-year-old prayer hall. He glanced as well at the hall’s ark and noticed that the Torah, not unexpectedly, was missing.

“Do you see them?” whispered Klaus.

“They’ve probably already went to the cellar,” Hermann whispered back before the two walked to the front doors of the synagogue, where they heard something that made them freeze: a strange sound coming from deep inside the building.

“What was that?” Klaus uttered in fright.

“I’m not sure,” Hermann uttered back while vaguely recognizing the sound. Which caused him to pause before grabbing the handle of the door and pushing it.

Slowly, the door screeched open, and Hermann and Klaus stepped inside the synagogue. They turned on the lights too, and they started looking for the arched door that they were certain was there.

They found it in the back of the building. Not unexpectedly, they also found it locked.

“We could get another battering ram,” Klaus said.

“It would take too long,” Hermann told him before rushing off and adding, “and I don’t think it’ll be necessary.”

“Where are you going?” Klaus cried out as he followed him.

Instead of answering, Hermann stopped outside a room and glanced inside it. It was a kitchen of sorts, which they had passed on the way to the door.

He pointed inside the room. “This is where I’m going.”

“Why?” Klaus wanted to know.

“Remember when we were in the cellar of the Pinkas Synagogue the other night?” Hermann replied while nodding toward a small door on the wall. “There was a dumbwaiter just like this one.”

Without waiting for a reply, Hermann grabbed the flashlight from Klaus and marched up to the door and opened it, and he lifted himself inside the tiny cabinet, causing it to creak more than a little.

“You’re not really going down in that, are you?” Klaus muttered while not even trying to hide the worry on his face.

“Why not?” Hermann answered while both recognizing and appreciating the worry. “Thanks to the Reich putting me on a strict diet regimen, I should be plenty light enough.”

“And if you’re not?”

“Then I’ll get there a little faster.”

Again, Hermann didn’t wait for a reply. He just crawled into a tight fetal position. “If I’m in one piece afterward, I’ll meet you by the cellar door.”

chapter fifty-four: limitless unknowns and no equations

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IN THE DARKNESS, Hermann focused the flashlight’s beam onto the handle of the arched door, which he both unlocked and opened. This exposed Klaus, and the two hurried down a short set of stairs to the cellar, which was much like the one in the Pinkas Synagogue.

With the aid of the light, they saw stacks of supplies as well as the same flat, deep, and immense footprints in the dirt floor that they had seen in the Pinkas Synagogue. Like the prints there, these, too, led to a stone wall upon which was painted a large Star of David. Also leading to it were a set of wheel marks and two pairs of normal footprints.

“This was where our friends went,” Hermann said as he and Klaus stepped up to the wall.

“Now what?” Klaus asked.

“Clearly, there must be something behind it, just like there must’ve been something behind the wall in the cellar of the Pinkas Synagogue.”

While feeling along the stones with his palms, Hermann tried to push and slide the wall in multiple places. But he couldn’t budge it.

Klaus pounded his fist against the wall. “It’ll take a lot more than a battering ram to bring this down.”

“There must be some easier way to open it,” Hermann insisted. But he couldn’t figure this out. So he just stood there and searched for an answer, knowing that the only path to solving the mystery led through the wall. He knew, too, that it was the only way for him to reach wherever fate had been leading him.

Slowly, the minutes passed, and the hours followed even slower. But Hermann didn’t notice. There was only the wall and all it represented.

Klaus didn’t have the same problem. He noticed how long they’d been there all too well, and he let Hermann know it.

Hermann didn’t respond, so obsessed was he with the puzzle in front of him, which seemed to have limitless unknowns and no equations. But even this obsession had limits, and he became compelled to give up. Though before he could voice this, something grabbed his attention: methodic and heavy footsteps descending a wall of the building.

“What’s that?” Klaus muttered.

Hermann opened his mouth to answer, just as the sound changed to that of someone coming down a wooden ladder.

“There are metal rungs on the back wall of the synagogue,” Hermann explained. “They used to run up the entire wall but now they start about three meters from the ground.”

“What happened to the others?”

“They removed them.”

“Why?” gasped Klaus.

“Because,” Hermann groaned after an accentuated sigh, “because people kept climbing up them to break into the attic, to see if there really was a golem hidden inside it.”

“And that’s where he’s coming from, the attic.”

“It’s just a legend, Klaus.”

“Then how come we didn’t hear any footsteps going up?”

“That’s a good question. Let’s find out.”

Hermann started toward the stairs. But he stopped when he noticed Klaus wasn’t following, and he turned and shined the flashlight on him.

Seeing the man’s frightened face, he went back for him and grabbed his arm, and he dragged him up the stairs. Then, once they had reached the ground floor, he dragged him outside and into the darkness of the evening, where they heard the same stomping feet they had heard the night before.

With these fading, the two hurried to the back of the building, where they saw the ladder, the metal rungs, and the closed attic door. While pointing at the door with the flashlight, Hermann started up the ladder. Though he stopped when he realized that Klaus once more was not following, and he turned to him with exasperation.

“I’ll wait here,” Klaus called out with fright once more covering his face.

Hermann nodded, and he climbed the remainder of the ladder as well as the metal rungs.

Finally, he reached the attic door, and he grabbed the handle and found it unlocked, and he opened it.

While moving the flashlight across the room, he discovered that it was remarkably uninteresting apart from the floor, where he saw two things: immense footprints of dried mud similar in shape to those they had found in the cellars and a pair of slippers.

Ivo’s.

chapter fifty-five: a burst of excitement

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HERMANN RETURNED DOWN the metal rungs and the wooden ladder. With some reluctance, he told Klaus what he had found in the attic.

“I knew I should’ve arrested him,” Klaus growled with a shake of his head.

“I still don’t believe Ivo committed the murders,” Hermann said.

“But he must be involved.”

“I told you that from the beginning of this. But we’ll only find out how he’s involved by getting through that wall downstairs.”

“I think we should just wait in the car for those two to return. They have to come out sometime. At least it’s more comfortable in the car.”

“What if they don’t come out?”

“What do you mean? Where else could they go?”

“That wall downstairs leads somewhere, and I have a good idea where. Like the cellar in the Pinkas Synagogue, this one isn’t at river level. There’s likely another structure underneath it, and this likely leads somewhere else, as it would explain why we’ve been seeing footprints leading to the walls but not from them. We must get through that wall downstairs, and I think we need to do this now.”

“Why now? If you’re worried about my replacement—”

“—As Kant described in that book Dita wrote her paper about, there are two types of knowledge: a posteriori and a priori. That is, knowledge gained through experience and knowledge that exists independently of it. Through both, through both my instincts and my experiences as a police detective, I know if we don’t follow them tonight, we’ll lose the trail and possibly for good.”

“And how are we supposed to follow them?” Klaus bellowed after once again reacting negatively to the mentioning of Kant’s name.

Hermann didn’t answer and for the obvious reason. Instead, he walked back inside the synagogue followed by Klaus, and the two once more descended the stairs to the cellar, where Hermann once more walked up to the wall.

But now having given his mind a little time to unwind, he suddenly grasped at what he hoped was a step toward the solution he’d been seeking.

I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days like the phoenix.

“I wonder,” he mumbled while recalling the passage he had read in the cellar of the Pinkas Synagogue, “I wonder if the means to open the wall is related to something in the Bible. What in that book dealt with walls?”

Nothing came to mind, and he cried out, “If only I had paid more attention in cheder when I was a boy.”

“Joshua,” Klaus uttered.

Hermann spun toward him. “What?”

“The book of Joshua deals with walls.”

“That’s right. Joshua and his army brought down the walls of Jericho. But how?”

“Horns. They blew horns and the walls came tumbling down.”

“Sound. We heard a sound when we were at the synagogue doors. Maybe the wall is sound activated.”

With a burst of excitement, Hermann rummaged through the boxes on the floor with the flashlight.

“What are you looking for?” Klaus asked.

“I’ll know when I find it,” Hermann answered.

It took many minutes, but he did just that. He found a box with a ram’s horn and brought it over to Klaus, and he gave him the flashlight. “Point it at the wall.”

Instead, Klaus pointed the light at the horn. “What’s that?”

“A shofar. We use it on the High Holidays.”

“Use it for what?”

Hermann answered by taking out the shofar and blowing it, which caused not only a roar but also the wall to open from the edge.

With his mouth agape, Hermann dropped the shofar back in its box, and he and Klaus rushed up to the wall. Which they slid all the way open, exposing a shaft that led to an area below the cellar. It also exposed a cable made of thick rope.

Grabbing the flashlight from Klaus, Hermann used it to follow the cable downward, and he found a wooden enclosure a handful of meters below. “It must be an elevator of sorts,” he said. “Like what they use in mines.”

“How do we call it?” Klaus asked.

“I don’t know,” Hermann answered before slowly moving the light around the area.

Eventually, he came upon an inset on the side of the wall, where a metal dial was mounted on an arched concrete slab.

Over and over, he tried moving the dial to various spots along the slab. But this did nothing, and he got the same result when he slowly moved the dial along the entire surface of the slab in both directions.

“Now what?” Klaus muttered.

Hermann didn’t answer. As with the wall earlier, he was too obsessed with coming up with one. He kept this going until his head throbbed, which was when his attention shifted to the concrete slab, even if he didn’t know why.

If only finding the truth in men were as easy as finding the area under a curve.

Recalling Gertrud’s words from their dinner a few nights earlier, Hermann pointed to the slab. “How would we calculate the area under this curve?”

“Why are you asking me?” grumbled Klaus.

“You studied geophysics.”

“That was more than twenty years ago. And if you recall, I never did much studying.”

I’d simply take the definite integral between the two of you and discover everything I wanted to know.

“Integration,” Hermann uttered after recalling what Gertrud had also said. “We need to integrate f(x). But what is f(x)?”

Klaus pointed at the slab. “This looks like a simple sine curve.”

“So we need to integrate sin(x) from zero to . . .”

“From zero to pi.”

“But how? What is the antiderivative of sin(x)?”

Klaus didn’t answer. So Hermann asked again, only louder.

“I don’t remember!” Klaus yelled.

“You must!” Hermann yelled back.

But the only answer was silence.

“Is it cos(x)?” Hermann screeched.

Again, Klaus didn’t answer. But a moment later, he mumbled, “−cos(x).”

After grabbing the papers from his jacket and a pen that was there as well, Klaus began writing against the wall in the light. “So,” he said while doing this, “we need −cos(π) − −cos(0) . . . which gives us . . . −(−1) − −(1) . . . 2. The answer is 2.”

“2?” Hermann muttered while gazing at the dial in confusion. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“In degrees,” Klaus answered before scribbling once more, “2 radians is . . . it’s 115 degrees.”

While holding his breath, Hermann moved the dial 115 degrees.

But again nothing happened. So he jiggled the dial a little. He jiggled it until he felt a slight click, which caused the elevator to rise.

“I knew you could do it,” he told Klaus with a grin.

Klaus grinned back. “Let’s just hope the math doesn’t get any harder than that.”

chapter fifty-six: following the suspects

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HERMANN STEPPED OUT of the elevator in shock.

Klaus, too, looked shocked as he followed, with the two staring at a narrow tunnel, which had a low ceiling and was lit by a set of carbide lamps hanging along its length.

But this wasn’t what shocked them. It was that on both sides of the tunnel stood a combination of old storefronts and the remains of former buildings.

“What is all this?” Klaus gasped.

“I can only guess,” Hermann softly answered while noticing not only the use of Yiddish on many of the remains but the age of them. “Around fifty years ago, the city began reconstructing Josefov. They knocked down whole streets as well as many shops and other buildings, including a number of synagogues. They also knocked down all the bordellos my father once gleefully told me about. But it would seem that the community made use of the carnage. It’s likely what’s holding this tunnel up, which must connect this building with others in the district.”

Hermann’s explanation frightened Klaus. He looked as frightened as he had when Hermann woke him from his nightmare that morning.

“Is something wrong?” Hermann asked.

“What reason would they have for a tunnel?” Klaus asked back.

“That I can’t answer. Why it was built or even when, I don’t know. But I wonder if they were using this as a means of worship after you closed the synagogues, much like the Roman catacombs were once used. You’d be surprised at the lengths people went to worship in Theresienstadt. I know I was.”

Hermann recalled all he had witnessed on the Friday evenings he had spent at the camp. He recalled how people would gather every Sabbath, in defiance of not just the rules but also of the misery they were suffering. Some would gather in an old garage while others would in a small storage space. Still others would meet in the attic of the hospital. They created makeshift synagogues out of each of these, and Hermann remembered them all while reexperiencing the envy he felt at those who could have faith at such times when he couldn’t find any in the best of them.

Suddenly noticing something, Hermann started down the left end of the tunnel, doing so as quietly as he could.

“Now where are you going?” whispered Klaus.

Hermann pointed to the wheel marks and footprints on the ground and whispered back, “I’m following our suspects.”

Klaus followed too, though unsurely. Hermann saw not just this but how the man was glancing at the storefronts as if he recognized them.

“Is something wrong?” Hermann again asked.

Again, Klaus avoided answering the question by asking his own. “Where do you think this tunnel leads?”

“I think we’re heading toward the High Synagogue.”

As this was only a block away, it didn’t take them more than a few minutes to reach the end of the tunnel. Which led to another that was somewhat perpendicular to the first, where they found a closed elevator.

The two stopped in front of it, and they glanced around. Hermann noticed that the wheel marks and footprints were now heading down the second tunnel to their right. He noticed, too, that these had been joined by another set of footprints that began at the elevator and belonged to a woman.

“It looks like our suspects have company,” Hermann said while pointing at the footprints before he and Klaus followed them while again making as little noise as possible. “I think we’re now moving in the direction of the Pinkas Synagogue.”

“Whose footprints do you think those are?” Klaus asked, in a way that suggested he already knew the answer.

“Whose do you think they are?” Hermann asked back, in a way that suggested he also had a good idea as to the answer.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

The men continued on. This tunnel was far longer than the first, so they spent many minutes traversing it. But eventually they approached another intersection, where in the distance they saw another tunnel. Though these weren’t the only things they noticed.

They noticed voices as well, a trio of them. Two men and a woman. They were faint at first, but they got stronger as the two got closer, which caused them to move slower and quieter.

Finally, they came upon the edge of the intersection, which they did with an abundance of caution. The voices were now not only louder but clearer too, and Hermann recognized two of them before he peeked around the corner. So he wasn’t surprised to see Gertrud, along with Tonda and Luděk. But what did surprise him was seeing the two men carrying Torahs toward Gertrud, who was standing over a black wooden crate, which was inside the cart the two men had rolled into the synagogue.

Klaus was even more surprised to see this than Hermann, and he gasped Gertrud’s name.

“Sshhh,” Hermann whispered as Tonda and Luděk reached Gertrud, who did something that surprised Hermann even more. First, she kissed two separate pairs of her fingers before gently laying them onto the Torahs as the men, just as gently, placed them in the crate.

“What are those things?” Klaus breathlessly asked while pointing at the Torahs.

“Those are the prayer scrolls I was telling you about in the Spanish Synagogue,” Hermann explained. “That was what was missing from the ark there and from all the other arks in all the other synagogues we’ve been. Now we know why they were missing.”

The two kept watching. They watched Tonda and Luděk walk up to a table and the set of Torahs on top of it.

Carefully, they each picked up one and carried them to Gertrud.

“There are a lot more than six,” Klaus noted.

“Like I told you,” Hermann reminded him, “some of the other synagogues in the district were destroyed by the city. There are also other synagogues in Prague and elsewhere in the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the country’s entire collection of Torahs. I bet some are more than a thousand years old.”

“Are they valuable?”

“I guess they may have some nominal value. But they’re really only valuable to us.”

Again, Tonda and Luděk reached Gertrud with the Torahs, and again she kissed them as they gently placed them in the crate.

“Why is she kissing them?” Klaus muttered.

“We Jews kiss the Torah out of love for it,” Hermann let him know as Tonda and Luděk once more headed toward the table.

“But why is she kissing them?”

Hermann turned toward Klaus. “Apparently, apparently she’s Jewish.”

Klaus shook his head over and over. “She can’t be.”

“Why can’t she be?”

Klaus tried to come up with an answer. He even opened his mouth to express one. But nothing came out. He had to realize that everything he had thought he had known about Gertrud had been a lie and that this was the least of them. So he just stood in shock while watching the men continue to pack the crate.

Once they were done, they lifted a heavy black wooden board beside the crate, which had the insignia of the SS painted on it.

This took some time. But after they got the board over their waists, they placed it on the crate. They then picked up some hammers and nails from the cart and began nailing the crate shut.

“Unbelievable,” Klaus mumbled.

“What is?” Hermann mumbled back.

“They must have gotten that crate from the warehouse. It’s effectively like a diplomatic pouch. No one would search it. Not the army, not the border police. Not even the SS.”

Hermann smiled, as now most of the mystery had become mostly clear to him.

“What’s so funny?” Klaus quietly cried out.

“She’s tricked Colonel Reidl into helping her transport the country’s Torahs,” Hermann cried back, just as quietly and with a glee he refused to hide.

“But how?”

“The treasure must’ve been a ruse. I bet she had Malý feed Reidl information about it, taking advantage of how the two were connected through their responsibilities for the synagogues.”

“But what about that ducat you found in Kleiner’s pocket?”

“I bet they planted it for Reidl and Kleiner to find, to convince them that the treasure was real. Along with that blueprint Captain Fischer had, which must’ve acted like a treasure map. In conjunction with all this, Malý probably made up some story about needing a way to transport the treasure. Which Reidl likely supplied in exchange for a cut of it. I wonder if those murdered men got too close to the truth.”

“It’s strange that Reidl would trust Malý.”

“I doubt he did. That could be why he was looking for the treasure.”

“But he trusted him with the crate.”

“I doubt that as well.”

“I’m going to arrest them right now,” Klaus blurted out, and he started toward the three.

But Hermann stopped him. He stopped him by saying, “What’s the hurry? Don’t you want to see the end of the opera?”

“Not really. Listen, Hermann, this has gone on too far already. I have a responsibility to arrest them.”

“We still don’t know how they plan on getting that crate out of here.”

“They’d take it up in the elevator.”

“The elevator only went to the cellar, and there’s no way that they’re getting that crate up in the dumbwaiter. Nor are they going to carry it up any stairs. It must weigh a ton.”

“What difference does it make how they plan on getting the crate out of here?”

“We don’t know who else is involved in this. We can’t even be sure that they were the murderers. They could still lead us to them.”

“Clearly, they were the murderers. You yourself said that the victims got too close to the truth. Who else could’ve done it?”

“That’s what I want to find out. If we follow them to the end of this, we’ll know for sure. Isn’t that worth a little longer wait? It isn’t like they’re going to escape your grasp, especially not while dragging that cart around.”

Klaus thought about this. He thought about it for a long time. It looked as if he were thinking through every permutation and all that could go right and wrong.

Finally, he sighed. “All right.”

He and Hermann went back to watching. They watched Tonda and Luděk put the last nails in the crate.

“I just don’t understand,” Klaus said.

“What don’t you understand?” Hermann asked.

“Why would someone go through all this trouble for a bunch of prayer scrolls?”

“You couldn’t understand. Nor could I, for that matter. We’d have to have faith.”

Despite saying this, Hermann couldn’t deny he felt something. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew that he was feeling something after seeing all Gertrud had done and risked to save things whose value were only spiritual. He might’ve even been tempted to call this a twitch of faith or an impulse toward it if he had ever experienced such a thing.

What he didn’t know was that he was taking the first step toward the man I would know all my life. A man who was devout, in spite of his weakness for utopence, and who would become moved whenever anyone took out the Torah during service and carried it through the congregation. This wasn’t just a ceremony to him. He was reliving the miracle he had witnessed in the tunnel, which was probably why he never once failed to kiss the Torah when it came by.

Tonda and Luděk finished fastening the crate, and they began rolling it forward, followed by Gertrud.

“You were right,” Klaus mumbled. “They’re not taking it back to the Old-New Synagogue. They must be taking it to the Klausen.”

“I don’t think so,” Hermann said as he took a step around the corner and saw both the cart and the three people in the distance. He afterward took out the old brass compass from his jacket pocket. The one he would give me on my bar mitzvah, which came with the inscription: “May it always give you direction.”

Klaus pointed at the compass in surprise. “Where did you get that? It looks like the one you had in college.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hermann insisted before gazing at the device and adding, “The Klausen isn’t in that direction. I don’t know where they’re taking the crate. But there’s one way to find out.”

chapter fifty-seven: a stunning realization

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THE TUNNEL LEADING from the Pinkas Synagogue to whereabouts unknown was even longer than the one that connected the synagogue with the High. Hermann and Klaus followed Gertrud and the men for more than a half hour without seeing an end to it.

“Where could they possibly be going?” Klaus whispered to Hermann in exasperation while looking more overwhelmed with every step he took. Like before, it also appeared as if the many signs they passed along the tunnel’s walls reminded him of something.

“I’m not sure,” Hermann told him. “But we’re heading in the direction of the river. Last night, if you recall, Reidl stopped by the Čech Bridge or whatever you people are calling it now, and he looked out over the water. There are a number of docks in that area. Maybe that’s how they’re planning to move the Torahs, by ship.”

“It would certainly be faster than trying to get them through all the checkpoints on the roads. It’d be safer too.”

“And once they reach the Elbe, they could take them all the way to the North Sea and beyond. They could conceivably take the Torahs anywhere in the world, assuming they didn’t get torpedoed or bombed from the air. Which is a pretty big assumption. It would be an enormous risk, but perhaps they believe that something will not only guide them but protect them as well.”

Klaus made no response, and Hermann turned toward him and saw that he was shaking in fright.

“Didn’t you hear that?” Klaus screeched.

“Hear what?” Hermann asked.

“Something is following us.”

“I don’t hear a thing.”

“It’s the golem, I tell you. It’s following us.”

“Stay in this century, Klaus. I beg you.”

It seemed that Klaus tried to do this, but he still kept looking back. While he still couldn’t see anything, he not only could still hear something but could sense it was getting closer, and he let Hermann know it.

Suddenly, Gertrud and her companions came to the end of the tunnel and a stone wall.

Tonda withdrew his shofar from the cart, and he blew into it, causing the wall to open from the edge. Which he and Luděk opened fully, exposing both the river and a boat waiting by the docks. A boat named the Phoenix.

I shall multiply my days like the phoenix.

Again, Hermann recalled the passage he had read in the cellar of the Pinkas Synagogue. He did while noticing a look of determination come across Klaus’s face.

Without saying a word, Klaus rushed toward Gertrud and the men. With increasing speed and desperation he moved, and he reached them just as they wheeled the cart outside onto the dock. “That’s far enough,” he called out while both gasping for breath and whipping out his pistol, which he pointed at them.

The three stopped, and they slowly turned to Klaus, who was joined by Hermann, who was also out of breath from trying to keep up with Klaus.

“Hello, darling,” Gertrud said with a grin, as if seeing him there were the most normal of things.

“Darling?” Klaus uttered with as much contempt as he could muster, which wasn’t much. “I don’t even know you.”

“Don’t be too upset. Sometimes I’m not sure if I know me either.”

“You used me.”

“We used each other, dear. You needed someone to call your girlfriend, and I needed a connection into your office. I call that quid pro quo.”

Right then, some more things made sense to Hermann. It was as if the veil that covered what remained of the mystery and Gertrud had been lifted or mostly lifted. Which led him to think back to the conversation at dinner the night before. “Was it you who told the Allies that Heydrich was driving to Berlin on the day he was ambushed?” he asked.

Gertrud turned from Hermann. “I simply confirmed what they had already suspected.”

“This country owes you a debt it can never repay.”

“The debt lies with me alone. I will live with the faces of Lidice etched in my head till the end.”

“If Heydrich were alive, he’d be doing worse. Much worse.”

“You do realize that you won’t live through the night?” Klaus hollered at Gertrud with his anger rising with each word. “What’s more, you’ll wish it would end a lot sooner than that.”

Gertrud spun toward Klaus and snarled. “Spare me your threats. I’ve already watched my husband murdered in my own home.”

“What are you talking about? He committed suicide. You told me so yourself.”

“I told you what I was told to tell everyone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My husband was the deputy minister of defense under General Syrový when the Germans invaded,” Gertrud explained, specifically to Hermann. “Because he was German, they expected he would take over for the general. So they all came to our house one morning, Reich Minister Frank and his henchmen. I wanted to send them away, but my husband was more diplomatic. He decided to hear Frank out in his study, and I was sent to the bedroom. That’s when I heard the gunshot.”

“So how do you know that he didn’t shoot himself?” Klaus screeched.

“Because upon hearing the gunshot,” Gertrud calmly replied, “I ran into the study, and I saw Frank hovering over my husband’s body with his Luger in his hand. There was still smoke coming out of it. My husband, he would’ve never worked for you. He despised you. He was ashamed to call himself German.”

“I still don’t understand. How were you able to ingratiate yourself among us? It certainly wasn’t my doing.”

“It was Frank’s. He was supposed to recruit my husband, not kill him. But my husband got him so mad that he lost his head. Calling it a suicide was the only way he could save face and his career.”

“But why did you play along?”

“Because he made me a deal: tell everyone it was a suicide and I could be the ‘belle of the ball,’ as he put it.”

“It seems all three of us made deals,” Hermann noted.

“But I made mine,” Gertrud noted back, “for this moment alone.”

Klaus had only one question left. “How were you able to hide that you’re a Jew?”

“I never hid it,” Gertrud answered. “Everyone just assumed what I was because of my husband and because of the men I’ve dated and because of how I look and act. They could’ve easily discovered the truth if they had wanted to discover it. But that would’ve run counter to all the filth you spew about how different we are.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing more to say, Klaus. So, you see, you can do nothing more to me than what’s already been done. Shall we go now?”

But Hermann realized that he hadn’t asked Gertrud the most important question, so he asked it now. “Did you murder those men or not?”

“Murder what men?” she howled.

“We’ll be the ones asking the questions,” Klaus growled. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s not,” came a deep baritone voice to Klaus’s left.

Everyone turned toward it, and they saw Colonel Reidl pointing a pistol at Klaus with a big smile on his face.

“Put the gun down, Captain,” he ordered.

Klaus didn’t do a thing.

“I will shoot you, you know,” Reidl said matter-of-factly. “I could’ve had you shot long ago. I’ve known all about your proclivities. You’ve just been a little more useful to me alive. But not anymore. So drop the gun.”

Carefully, Klaus thought through his options, and just as carefully he placed the gun on the ground.

“Good girl,” Reidl murmured as Luděk rushed up to him.

While grinning at this and pointing at the man, the colonel turned to Tonda. “You made just one mistake, my friend. You didn’t know that your man was working for me the whole time.”

“No one’s perfect,” Tonda muttered with a shrug.

Reidl grinned even more. “I sure hope you didn’t think I believed all that ‘honest broker’ nonsense you were spewing or any of the lies you were telling me about delivering the crate.”

“About that crate—” Luděk interjected.

“—Just put it on the boat,” Reidl interrupted.

“We’ve been double-crossed, Colonel,” Luděk yelped. “There’s only junk in the crate.”

This more than shocked Reidl, who turned his gun toward Gertrud and snapped, “Where is it? Where’s the treasure?”

Gertrud didn’t say a word. So Reidl aimed his gun at her head. “I suggest you come up with an answer and quickly.”

“Sometimes silence is an answer,” noted Hermann.

Angrily, Reidl turned toward Hermann, and he turned his gun on him. “Speaking of silence . . .”

Hermann didn’t flinch at this. He had long been ready for fate to catch up with him. But Klaus wasn’t so ready.

“No!” he yelled, and he jumped in front of Hermann as Reidl fired.

The bullet pierced the right side of Klaus’s body just below his shoulder, sending him into the arms of Hermann, who was barely able to hold on. He would say that the only thing that kept him up was the stunning realization that came as a result of Klaus’s actions.

“I should’ve known he was your lover,” Reidl barked at Klaus as he started backing up toward the entrance of the tunnel while continuing to hold his gun on the others.

Luděk followed, and the colonel told him, “We’ll find the treasure ourselves.”

“There is no treasure, you idiot!” Gertrud cried out, causing both men to stop. “At least none you would value. You’ve been conned and by a bunch of Jews. Please never forget that.”

“We’ll see who gets the last laugh,” groaned Reidl. Again, he pointed his gun at Gertrud’s head. But before he could shoot, a rock landed not far from his feet, causing him to both jump and misfire.

He and everyone else turned in the direction from which the rock had come, and they saw a lone woman standing above them on the embankment, who was wearing a yellow shawl.

“Klara,” Gertrud murmured in surprise. What surprised her the most was that the reciprocation for her kindness had come much sooner than she had anticipated.

Without hesitation, Reidl fired his gun at Klara, just missing her, and she ran down the sidewalk with a face full of horror. But this wasn’t good enough for the colonel, who was about to fire at her again when Gertrud rushed up to the rock and picked it up.

Hearing her approach, Reidl spun toward her, just as she smashed the rock into his head, releasing all her pent-up hate and knocking the man onto the ground unconscious, amid a growing pool of blood.

Watching this, a frightened Luděk reached down and grabbed the gun from Reidl, and he pointed it at Gertrud. “Put it down,” he demanded while directing his shaking hand toward the rock. “Put it down!”

Gertrud dropped the rock.

But Luděk wasn’t sure what to do next. So he just stood there, getting more frightened with each second that passed. Which got worse when he heard the sound of stomping feet coming from inside the tunnel. They all heard it as it got louder.

Dropping the gun, Luděk ran down the riverbank.

No one else moved, including Hermann, who was still holding on to Klaus. They were all far more curious as to who was behind the stomping feet than they were frightened of it. This curiosity kept rising until a figure appeared in the entrance of the tunnel.

It was Ivo. But it wasn’t the Ivo Hermann and Klaus had come to know or the one Tonda knew. This Ivo wasn’t limping. He was standing tall in a pair of large and shapeless shoes, which Hermann supposed were constructed with specialized cushions and foot orthoses.

Without saying a word, Ivo marched up to Colonel Reidl’s body and effortlessly lifted it into his arms. Only then did he say something. “You needn’t worry. They won’t find the tunnel. I’ll do with him what I did with the dead men in the synagogues so they wouldn’t soil your holy places and bring you shame.”

No one said anything in reply, and Ivo carried the colonel back to the entrance of the tunnel, where he stopped and turned around. “You people, you’re my friends. You’ve helped me since I was a boy. You gave me a job and respect and love too. You gave me everything I have. Like these shoes Dr. Brod made for me. He finished them just before he left the city. He worked late at night so I could walk right and without pain. I only wish I could wear them more. They’re too nice for work. I’m afraid I’ll hurt them. And Mrs. Mlýnková, she don’t like any shoes in her house. I have to keep them in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, and I can only enjoy them at night while remembering everyone I love. If you happen to see Dr. Brod sometime, please tell him that I enjoy his gift very much and that I will never forget his kindness.”

Slowly, Ivo turned around, and he stepped inside the tunnel. As he closed the wall behind himself with his shoulder, he added, “I will take care of all your buildings until you return. I will care for them like they are my own.”

Just like that, he was gone. There was only the sound of his stomping feet, which kept waning until it, too, was gone.

“It seems,” mumbled Klaus, who was not only fading but slipping from Hermann’s grasp, “it seems there really was a golem, after all.”

“Why?” Hermann mumbled back as he gently fell to one knee with his friend. “Why did you jump in front of me?”

“You don’t think I had a choice, do you?”

Hermann wasn’t sure how to respond. So instead he said, “Tell me something, were you the one who killed those men?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve run out of suspects. I might’ve even started suspecting myself if I had had the opportunity. But you had the opportunity, the capability, and I just realized that you had the motive as well: to get me out of Theresienstadt.”

“I actually did it for myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the only way I could make up for what had happened to us and relieve my guilt.”

“Make up?” Hermann muttered while trying to hold back his tears. “But, but it was me who betrayed you.”

“No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t your fault that you couldn’t love me.”

Hermann lowered his eyes. “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ve been haunted by this dream. I’ve been haunted by it since I got stationed in Prague and learned what had happened to you and Ana.

“In the dream, I was running through the darkened streets of Josefov, chased by some unseen man. I could hear his breathing and his footsteps and could tell he was close by and getting closer. That’s how it always ended.

“This morning, though, I saw streets and street names I didn’t know. Like you were saying earlier, there were more streets than normal, and they were all crowded together, with the buildings almost on top of each other. And many of the shop signs were in Yiddish, just like in the tunnels.”

“Then what happened?” Hermann asked.

“I ran until I reached a road from which there was no exit,” Klaus answered. “It was a dead end in every direction, and I saw from the street sign that I was on Ulice Prokletých. The Street of the Damned.

“Once again, I could hear the footsteps. They were right behind me. So I spun toward them and finally saw who’d been chasing me. It was me. A gruesome caricature of me, who had a distorted face and skin rotting so badly that it was dripping over his clean black uniform.

“‘What do you want from me?’ I screamed at him while backing up.

“‘I haven’t been coming for you,’ he howled as I fell to the ground. ‘I’ve been running from you.’”

“What do these dreams have to do with the murders?” Hermann wanted to know.

“The nightmares got so bad that I couldn’t sleep,” Klaus replied. “I would walk and walk all night. On one of these, I found myself in Josefov, even though this was the last place I wanted to be. That’s when I saw them, the SS men lurking in the synagogues. It came to me at once, by killing them I could save you from Theresienstadt and myself from the nightmares. All I needed for my plan to work was for you to find a plausible suspect to blame, one that wasn’t exactly guilty but wasn’t exactly innocent either.”

“How could you know I would?”

“I knew those men had no good reason to be in the synagogues. From everything I had read about your career, I knew, too, that you would discover why they were there and that this would lead to a suspect. And I was right. You did find one. More than one. My plan almost worked. Actually, it did. There will be no more nightmares.”

Hermann could no longer hold back his tears. But Klaus shook his head at them and mumbled, “Don’t. My . . . my pocket.”

“What?” Hermann mumbled back.

“Look in my jacket pocket.”

Hermann did, and he pulled out the papers that Klaus had earlier written the equations on and that had been lying on the floor of the car that morning.

“Among them you’ll find the visa,” Klaus said. “It’ll get you to Switzerland, where you’ll find a certain something waiting for you.”

“There really was a visa?” Hermann uttered in shock.

“I was actually hoping to leave with you. But now, now maybe you can find a better traveling companion.”

Hermann shook his head. He shook it over and over, and he looked on as Klaus, with the gentlest of smiles, closed his eyes and died. Which caused Hermann to cry even more as he embraced the man and whispered, “Goodnight, my friend, and . . . and sbohem.”

“I’m sorry, Hermann,” Gertrud whispered as she touched his shoulder, “but we have to leave. You as well.”

Hermann responded by looking up at her and Tonda, who told him, “I need you to help me get the Torahs on board.”

“This is my brother Tonda,” Gertrud said to Hermann.

“Shalom,” he said to them both.

chapter fifty-eight: the road from home

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THE BOAT DISEMBARKED from the dock, with Hermann and Gertrud looking on from the center of the deck.

“Who will pay Ivo?” Hermann asked as the thought struck him.

“The caretaker?” Gertrud asked back.

Hermann nodded.

“My brother and I have been planning this for a long time,” Gertrud told him. “Ivo will be well taken care of. I promise you. All our friends will be well taken care of.”

Again, Hermann nodded, and he reached inside his jacket for a folded piece of paper, which he handed to Gertrud. “Do you think you could take care of her as well?”

“What’s this?” she uttered before unfolding the paper and reading it with surprise. “A pension request for the widow of a Nazi?”

“She didn’t deserve the fate she got.”

“We’ll take care of her as well,” Gertrud said as she put the paper in her purse.

Hermann thanked her, and he turned toward the body of his friend on the dock. It was the most peaceful he had seen Klaus, which reminded him of when he first met him, when he looked so desperate for a rest.

Steadily, the boat continued down the river, and Hermann drifted toward its stern so he could continue to look at Klaus. He realized, too, that he was looking at Josefov and the city he loved for the last time. The city where his Ana lay.

With her in mind, he clutched the rose petal in his pants pocket as he watched everything fade. They were almost gone when the waters of the river began slapping against the ship. Along with this, he again heard the song that only he could hear. Smetana’s “Vltava.”

Like the night before, it was as clear as it had been on the morning he left Theresienstadt. He could feel the beats and the rhythms of the song rising from the currents of the river, and he could feel Karel Ančerl directing them, and he started to hum along. He did while recognizing the truth that had lifted him from the bottom: that, like the river, we are born again and again to experience the magic of beginnings like these.

“That song,” Gertrud called out as she approached Hermann from behind, causing the music to end, both inside his head and out.

“What about it?” Hermann said as she stopped beside him.

“Do you know that its melody actually comes from an older piece and that this piece is also the basis of ‘Hatikvah’?”

“‘Hatikvah’?” he muttered. “You know, my mother liked to sing that song around the house. I hadn’t thought about it in years until last night. But you’re right. The melodies are indeed the same. I always knew there was something odd about that Smetana song.”

Hermann thought about this in wonder for many moments, and he mumbled, “Isn’t it strange?”

“What is?” Gertrud wondered.

“How two very different people found their dreams of self-determination in the very same melody.”

“‘Hatikvah’ is going to be the national anthem of the state we’re building in Palestine.”

“Is that where you’re taking the Torahs?”

“And myself. I hope never to see Europe again. What about you?”

“Me?”

“Where will you go?”

Hermann shook his head. “I really don’t know. Prague is the only home I’ve ever wanted. I will miss her dearly.”

“I’m an officer in the Haganah. That’s the army we’ve been forming over there. We could use a man like you in my division.”

“Is that so?”

“Assuming you can take orders from a woman.”

“I was married for twenty years,” he told her with a grin.

She grinned back, and he thought about his dream from the night before and what his mother had said in it as well as what had long been her dream. “Next year in Jerusalem,” he murmured.

“What was that?” she murmured back.

He sighed. “I guess I wouldn’t be getting any utopence over there.”

“Or venison. But just wait till you try my chicken soup and knaidels.”

“You can cook?”

“I can do a little of everything.”

Again, they both grinned. Which was when my grandfather and grandmother first leaned against each other. I can tell you that it wouldn’t be the last.

In these first moments of their life together, as she continued to lean against the man with whom she would try to repair a little piece of this world, by raising the daughter and the grandson of their enemy as their own, Gertrud took out her mother’s jewelry box and opened it. This exposed a gold Star of David pin, which she put on her coat right after tearing off the National Socialist Women’s League pin and tossing it into the river.

While watching this sink into the abyss, Hermann once more could hear the music. Though it was changing slightly, into the other song. The one that was both different and the same. The one his mother had sung to him. The one that was leading him toward something that only days earlier was unimaginable. The same something that was keeping me above water on that freezing desert night.

The possibility that comes with every tomorrow.

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the end

thank you

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Thank you for taking the time to read my book. You can contact me at colinjcohen@icloud.com.

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You can find me as well at https://colinjcohen.github.io.

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Also available: All the Beautiful Words

Copyright © 2022-24 by Colin J Cohen.

All rights reserved.

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The cover art was adapted from a photograph by Ryan Song.