The cardinal raised his eyebrows as if he hadn’t read this from the previous interview transcripts.

“The Americans were battling their way through the village and a round of their artillery went astray, landing on the frozen lake surface between me and the SS who chased me. The round landed closer to them. I will always remember how the explosion split the thin ice covering the lake. The explosion lifted giant slabs of ice that shed the men, flinging them into the black olive-green waters beneath. Then, almost majestically the slabs settled back like battered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and they were gone.

“I reached the cottage where I was supposed to meet Yost When I stepped on the porch, the door to the cottage opened, but instead of Yost I saw a tall figure wearing the unmistakable uniform of an SS officer. I turned to run.”

Morgen’s voice cracked. “Then he shot me in the head.”

The room hung with the priest’s final declaration. The brilliance of the day had started to fade with the winter sunset They sat there for a long time, watching the sun disappear, neither man wishing to look at the other.

When Braun spoke again, his voice seemed to echo. “Father, I appreciate the enormous strain this recounting has been and I want to say how important it is, especially the recovery of a new recollection.” He paused, searching for the best words. “As valuable as that memory was, the biggest question is this—of all the hundreds of salt mines in the region, do you remember which one contained the relics of the Secret Messiah?”

Morgen tried his best to give the Cardinal the impression of a man trying earnestly to remember.

“No, Your Eminence. That is one of many details that the wounds have kept from me.”

He lied.

TWELVE

Seth Ridgeway lay on his back, staring blankly through the darkness at the ceiling. As usual, the sheets were coiled around him, twisted and knotted like rope, and the blanket lay in a heap at the foot of the bed. Again he swiped at his face to clear away the perspiration that beaded on his forehead and upper lip. He wiped his hand on the sheet and turned, trying to get comfortable enough to sleep.

But sleep would not come. In his dream he saw rats crawling over Tony Bradford, tearing off pieces of flesh, and then the image took the form of Rebecca Weinstock and he saw her on the dock, clutching at a throat that was no longer there.

Seth turned again and lay on his side. He closed his eyes, but every time he did, he saw the faces of death. He had gotten to sleep once that night, right after returning home with the painting. But the sleep had been shattered by a nightmare.

In the nightmare, he was sleeping. Then someone threw on a light Seth opened his eyes and found himself lying in the philosophy department’s ground floor storage room. Tony Bradford hovered over him.