“Please smile, Luzi,” he begged as a young border guard stepped toward his window, and she forced her mouth to move, though it wasn’t exactly a smile.
“I remember you,” the man said. “You’re the fellow with the canary.”
Max smiled in return. “No animals with me tonight, but I’d like to introduce you to my lovely wife.”
Luzi lifted her hand, waving.
“It’s a late hour for you to be driving.”
“We’re only able to get away for a few days before I join the Wehrmacht. We’re honeymooning at my family’s estate—”
“You have all your papers in order?”
“I believe so.”
He dug into his rucksack and handed the man his baptismal certificate and the forged paper saying that he and Luzi were husband and wife. As the man studied them, Max glanced in his rearview mirror. No sign yet of anyone following them.
“This says you married in August.”
Max nodded. “And we are quite anxious now to depart.”
“Where is your wife’s baptismal certificate?”
Max opened his rucksack again. “Surely I packed it....”
When he looked back up, the guard’s eyes had narrowed.
Instead of showing him the certificate, Max slipped the marks out of his wallet and slid them across the door. “I only want to honeymoon with my wife before I leave....”
The guard eyed the money for a moment before taking it. Then he returned the papers. “Enjoy the estate.”
Luzi leaned back against the seat as they drove out of Vienna,cruising through mountains and valleys. And anger raged inside Max.
He’d been faithfully hiding things for his Jewish friends, thinking they would recover them later, but what value did these items have when lives were being stolen? Luzi had lost both her parents this week, and he feared she was fading away as well.
An hour later, Luzi tugged at his shoulder, and he stopped the car, waiting as she vomited in the weeds.
“My stomach must not like the medication,” she said, though he suspected her body was erupting from the fear that crested inside her.
“We’ll be there soon,” he promised.
Hitler had ruined his plans for him and Luzi, but for now, at least she was safe with him.
CHAPTER 30
LAKE HALLSTATT, AUSTRIA
NOVEMBER 1938
Annika hadn’t been through the doors of Hallstatt’sEvangelische Pfarrkirchesince her mother died, but she crept into the gray stone church early this morning, her heart aching. The bells rang in the tower above her, resonating down to the floor and streaming through her veins like the brine that flowed through the pipeline above town to the salt factory below.
Every Sunday when Annika was a child, her mother had brought her over to this simple sanctuary settled along the lake. Her mother would sit with her Bible in her lap, and they’d worship together with the small congregation on wooden pews.
As a girl, she had felt peace inside these walls, like she felt inthe woods. So different from the cold, stark chapel beside Schloss Schwansee. She could see, through the clear windows, the castle across the water, a place that looked tranquil from afar. But today, even though the flames were long gone, the ashes that had rained down over the forest were piled into blackened mounds. And a tendril of smoke still curled up through the trees.
She touched the gold and diamond star that hung around her neck, concealed under her sweater. Few things had survived the fire in her cottage, but Frau Dornbach’s necklace along with Annika’s metal box defied the flames. She would wear this star until she could return it to either Max or his mother.
The cottage was destroyed, but she and Hermann had been able to stop the fire in the castle before it traveled outside the salon. Hermann had gotten her father out as well, but it was too late to save his life. The fire had consumed Vati inside and out.
