Late one night, a team of men showed up at Yost’s cottage with a knapsack full of plastic explosive and fuses. Before dawn could replace the candlelight in the room, Yost had learned how to set the charge and its timer.

“The next day,” Yost related, as he tried to make himself more comfortable, “I put the charges in my briefcase and made an excuse to visit the mine. Just before I left, I set the timer and left my briefcase by the entrance of the mine just as the Resistance men had instructed me.”

Yost’s explosives blew up the entrance of the mine without harming any of the paintings and prevented the colonel’s demolition expert, or anyone else, from reaching the bombs to install detonators.

Days later, Yost received a desperate message from Morgen, delivered by a small boy whose mother ran the inn in the village.

“Morgen had always been so calm,” Yost said, “but when I read the message he had left at my cottage, I could read the hysteria in his writing, the extreme anxiety in the wildness of his penmanship. He had a terrible secret, the note said. Something about a relic stored in a salt mine near Habersam Mountain in the hills above Alt Aussee.

“I knew nothing about the mine, which naturally aroused my curiosity. I started making inquiries. The questions I asked nearly killed me and Hans.” Yost’s face had grown long with remembered sorrow, as if the weight of the memory had stretched his face out of shape.

Yost’s questions brought him to the attention of the SS commander of the secret mine at Habersam Mountain. An SS Oberleutnant was dispatched to Yost’s cottage to question him.

Yost had not yielded to the Oberleutnant’s threats and finally found himself handcuffed to the heavy iron bed as they waited for Morgen to come.

Just before dawn there had been the sounds of artillery from the direction of Bad Aussee. The Allies were coming soon; Yost could read the news from the worried way the Oberleutnant paced the floor of the cottage. Then, just after the sky had turned blood red with the dawn, a thunderous explosion rumbled off Habersam Mountain and rattled the windows of Yost’s cottage.

“I strained to see what was happening,” Yost said. “I must have stood with my face to the window for an hour or more, staring out at the stark flat whiteness of the frozen lake.”

Finally he saw people. At first, they were too far away to recognize. But as they grew closer, Yost could make out a lone figure pursued by soldiers in uniform. And to his horror, he realized the figure being pursued was Morgen.

The SS Oberleutnant walked into the bedroom, his face covered with the first smile he had worn since they had heard the Allied artillery earlier in the still dim morning. “We will have some answers soon, no?” the Oberleutnant jested.

Yost had been sure they had killed Morgen when he heard the crack of a pistol and saw the black-robed priest fall into a snowdrift. The band of killers grew closer to Morgen when he slowly staggered to his feet and turned toward them. Yost stood, his heart wound like a spring, as Morgen raised his hands above his head and staggered back toward the killers, who had stopped, momentarily stunned by their quarry’s unexpected action.