“Of course,” Morgen said gently. ‘Would you like to sit down? I have some fresh coffee brewing.” He indicated two ladder-backed chairs next to a rough-hewn table on which sat a stack of cups, bottles, hard sausages, and a partially sliced loaf of dark bread.

They seated themselves at the table and watched silently as Morgen used a padded mitt to pluck a battered coffeepot with chipped enamel from a grate in the fireplace. He selected chipped crockery cups for Zoe and Seth and poured them cups full of the steaming black liquid. He then replenished his own cup and sat down at the table with them. The other men—the two who had brought them to the cabin and Gunther, who had been with Morgen when they entered—all remained standing. Periodically, they would part the curtains and peer out of the cabin. There were apparently people outside, sentries, for one of the men inside the cabin would periodically motion outside to acknowledge some communication.

“I understand you have gone to some extraordinary lengths to recover the Sophia Passion.” Zoe and Seth nodded in unison. “Why don’t you tell me how it all came to be?”

“I don’t want to be an ungrateful guest,” Seth replied. “But since you’ve brought us here in such a… bizarre manner, I’d feel a lot more comfortable if you told us about yourself and”—he looked around the room at the men standing there—”your group.”

Morgen’s eyes softened. “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me for being both too anxious and such a poor host I understand your reluctance completely.” He looked over at Gunther and motioned with his head for the man to join them. Gunther shambled over and took a chair next to Seth.

“Gunther may be able to add the colorful details I leave out.”

“I gather my late friend Jacob Yost filled you in on the beginning of all this.” He looked around him as if the alpine hut were the symbol of all that had afflicted him for more than four decades.

“Let me begin where Yost undoubtedly left off,” Morgen said. “The past decades have been hard to believe, but they will be more comprehensible if you have some context within which to put them.” He took a sip from his coffee mug, made a sour face, and leaned back in his chair.

George Stratton squinted over the light snow that fell through his headlights. The snow had nearly stopped. He drove the Volvo slowly over the uneven, rocky path that headed steeply up the hillside. Boughs caked with snow reached out from either side and slapped against the side of the car.

Stratton had followed Seth and Zoe’s footsteps, only barely obscured by the slackening snow up to the meeting spot. His practiced eye took in the tire treads, the scuff marks in the snow, and the tire tracks leading away from the store. There were no footprints leading away from the site, so Stratton assumed that Ridgeway and his wife had gone—willingly or unwillingly with the people in the car.