Contents ( 44)
- DAUGHTER OF GOD
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- CONTENTS
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
“Unlike the icy secretive SS units guarding the Habersam mine, the Wehrmacht units accompanying the art were frightened boys, thankful to be away from the thick of the fighting, yet actually aware of their role as guardians of a fortune in stolen goods. They rushed about frantically, confiscating salt mines all over the countryside, storing much of the art in the mines near Bad Ischl and Bad Aussee, and especially in the large deep mines at Steinberg and Moosberg. Accompanying them were museum curators—many of them now prisoners of war—traveling in the back of boxcars and transport trucks over steep mountain roads lethal with winter to take up their assigned task of protecting the Fuhrer’s acquisitions.
“The trucks thundered purposefully through town day and night, making the merchants happy. All of these new visitors filled my small church and kept me very busy. So busy, in fact, that I had almost forgotten the mine at Habersam Mountain. But with the many new Wehrmacht parishioners I had, I heard confessions of such tales of anguish and horror and evil I found myself wondering if God could possibly find enough forgiveness to absolve them.”
“The Heavenly Father’s infinite grace can forgive all sins,” the cardinal said, a bit too pompously for Morgen’s liking.
“Begging Your Eminence’s pardon, I am well aware of that,” Morgen snapped back. “But I was only a man—I am only a man—and infinite patience and wisdom are not at my disposal.”
“So I have learned,” Braun said with a condescending smile.
“Do you really want this story or did you bring me here to needle me?”
The cardinal gave him a fiat even look for a very long moment. “Please. Continue.”
Morgen sighed. “A local teenager’s curiosity about the mine started it all. About two months after the art started to arrive, the local boy, thirteen-year-old Johann Hoffer, had been skiing the trails above Alt Aussee one afternoon when he veered too close to the Habersam mine. He was shot and killed. About 4 A.M. the next morning, I opened my door to a young SS sergeant named Willi Max who was torn by Johann’s death. The sergeant had witnessed the killing of the boy. It had been for sport, he told Morgen, two lieutenants taking target practice on a local. As the young German begged for forgiveness, he told me about the Secret Messiah. I have spent the rest of my life wishing I had never heard the boy’s confession, but I knew I had to do something.”
Since the SS contingent was forbidden to enter the village, Morgen had the sergeant arrange for him to hold mass and hear confessions at the garrison. The day of his arrival, news of Allied advances had brought the young soldiers to the edge of panic. They prayed with the faith of desperate men. Losers. The Allies had entered Austria already, it was rumored, and grew closer every day. More than anything, the SS seemed terrified that they would be treated as they had treated others. It was a difficult fate to accept for men who, in six years of ruthless war, had all but forgotten the meaning of mercy.