“Suddenly from the distance came voices, sounds to remind me that staying alive long enough to tell the world might be harder than making the world believe what I had just seen. The sergeant created a diversion and I escaped the mine only to be hunted down as I ran.”

Morgen was silent with private thoughts that he was tempted to reveal, but instead, held back once again. He was thankful that his own secret son had avoided the ravages of war and prayed that God would forgive a wayward priest for the weakness that had conceived him. He prayed also that God might overlook the pride he had felt each day as he watched the boy develop into a man.

It had been a torture back in Alt Aussee looking into the boy’s eyes, listening to his son call him “father” and not being able to tell him how true that was. He wanted to tell him, but he knew it would be years before the boy could accept the reality: that his real father was not the brave Oberleutnant who died valiantly fighting Polish barbarians but a village priest who had truly loved his mother more than her husband ever had. He’d had no right to do what he’d done, but sometimes …

Morgen remembered the inn by the lake that Anna had operated in her husband’s absence. Its steep chalet roof reached up and caught the first of the morning sun. He thought again of the fantasy that played day after day in his thoughts, of renouncing his vows, marrying Anna, raising his son.

And again he reminded himself that he was married to the church—even if certain highly placed men had compromised it for a “higher purpose.” No, there was no denying that his son was a sweet sin for which he truly needed forgiveness.

He turned away from the memory of Anna’s inn—and the thought of their son.

“Where were you running to, Father?” Braun prompted Morgen.

“Where?” Braun shook off the daydream. “I was running toward a small stone cottage on the lake’s southern shore, where Jacob Yost was waiting.”

Morgen felt his heart fall. He had been so absorbed in the thoughts of his son that he had let his guard down for an instant

“There!” Braun said triumphantly. “You have remembered something new!” The cardinal smiled broadly. “Now, just who is Jacob Yost?”

Caught in the slip, Morgen knew he had no choice but to continue, trying to keep the details as thin as possible while sticking to the truth.

“Yost had connections to the Resistance,” Morgen said. “I had talked to him not long after the Sergeant’s first confession. I was hoping he could get the secret to the Americans and through them to the rest of the world. I knew he would do it, even if it killed him. I almost got to him. The SS shot me, but not badly. But it slowed me down and they were rushing toward me when Divine Providence intervened.”