By the time they got to the farmer’s truck, the tracks it had left in the snow were already obliterated. Parked in front of the truck at the curb were a battered Mercedes and a brand-new Fiat.

They stopped in front of a restaurant with a steep peaked roof and windows composed of scores of small diamond-shaped panes set in a dark wood lattice. Snow had gathered in the lower portions of the diamond shapes and left them with the natural decorations that Americans tried so hard to imitate with aerosol cans of fake plastic snow.

Through the window, they watched the farmer greeting the people inside. Two uniformed policemen sat at one table nursing cups of coffee and shot glasses filled with a clear liquid, probably schnapps. They accounted for the locked door of the police station across the street. Three more people—rough, heavy types with red faces and the green loden clothes of the Alps—sat at a large picnic-type table with benches along either side. They drank from nearly empty beer steins.

The innkeeper and a dumpling-shaped woman who had to be his wife stood behind the bar and greeted the new arrivals with broad smiles and waves of their hands.

Seth and Zoe went through the door and traded the crisp cold world of snow for a warm one, redolent with the yeasty aroma of beer, the spicy, slightly sulfurous aroma of cabbage, wursts in all their many permutations, and the humid, earthy odors of human beings warming up, drying out after a bout with inclement weather. All heads turned as they walked through the door. The looks they got were not unfriendly, Seth noted. Just curious. Alt Aussee was a place where the roads came to an end before dwindling into footpaths that led into the rugged hills and mountains beyond. Strangers didn’t often come to such a place on Christmas Eve.

“Gruss Gott,” Seth said, offering them the traditional Austrian greeting.

“Gruss Gott,” came a ragged chorus of replies. Seth and Zoe walked to the bar behind which the proprietor and his wife stood. As they crossed the floor, Seth noticed a wizened old man sitting by himself in the corner of the café, nursing a half-liter mug of beer.

“May I help you?” The proprietor offered in the soft accents of the Austrian countryside that made German sound almost lyrical.

“Yes, please,” Seth replied. “I hope you can help. We’re looking for a man. Father Morgen.” He saw the proprietor’s face stiffen almost imperceptibly. “Do you know him?”

“Yes.” The proprietor’s answer was slow. “I know him … I know of him.” The man said nothing more.

Seth felt the eyes of the people behind him boring into his back. When he finally spoke, his voice was shaky. “Have… have you seen him?”

The proprietor looked at him seriously for several moments and then laughed cheerlessly.

“Yes, I have seen him.” He paused. “I was a small child the last time I saw him. I do not believe I have seen him since then.” He paused again. “That would have been in the last weeks of the war.”