Morgen was a strange man, the young novice priest thought, as he walked quickly to the end of the hall and up the stairs to the third floor. He had kind blue eyes that always seemed on the verge of tears. The abbot had told him it was due to the injuries Morgen had received at the end of World War II.

The young priest stopped before the plain wooden door with the cross, which was located at the end of the third-floor corridor. He paused a moment before knocking. From inside the room, he could hear Morgen humming to himself. It sounded like a Brandenburg concerto. The young priest wondered why the abbot didn’t give Father Morgen his own telephone. He was old and frail and received many telephone calls. Surely an exception could be made, the young priest thought, as he raised his hand and knocked gently on the door. It couldn’t cost very much. Besides, the parish wouldn’t have to pay for it for very long. How much longer could Father Morgen live?

“Come in,” Morgen called.

The young priest opened the door and found Morgen sitting at a plain desk next to the window overlooking the Frauenkirche.

“Phone call, Father,” said the young man as he walked forward and stopped in front of Morgen’s chair to offer him a hand up.

Morgen smiled and waved away the young priest’s offer of assistance. He wasn’t an invalid. They never seemed to realize that.

As Morgen got up and made his way to the door, he stopped for a moment and took a look at the picture of his son that hung on the wall. He had grown into a fine, handsome, powerful man—a man who stood on the verge of greatness. Morgen felt his heart tear a little, as it always did when he realized that his son would never know his true father.

That was impossible now. The mother of the man whose picture hung on the wall—the only otter person who knew the truth—had died of a stroke a decade before. Now, only Morgen and God knew the terrible secret.

Taking one last glance at the picture, as he always did when he left the room, Morgen made his way down the stairs to the telephone, hoping that good news would take the edge off his physical pain.

The pain and weakness shifted from day to day as did Morgen’s memory and vision. It was the fragments, they told him. The Oberleutnant’s bullets had shattered against his skull and against his ribs that day so long ago at the cottage by the lake. There were six of them that could have been, and still might be, fatal had they gone or should they move another millimeter. He would be dead if Yost hadn’t killed the Oberleutnant and hadn’t gotten him to the American army doctors. He allowed himself a small smile as he carefully descended the stairs. In five decades he had learned not to make sudden movements that could encourage the fragments to shift.