“Then too,” he went on, “I would say that I obey the Father by listening to and observing Jesus, obeying the Father as he obeyed the Father. Added to that there is obeying what he told us to do, because his whole mission on earth was to demonstrate the life lived in obedience to the Father. Everything Jesus said and did was reflected straight from the Father, which makes our knowing of him and our obedience to his instructions a knowing of and an obedience to the Father as well.”

“I think I understand it as clearly as I ever have,” said the rabbi. “At least you have explained it very clearly. Now I am going to have to ponder it. You present Christianity in a way that cuts through all the theologies in all the textbooks, and all the treatises in comparative religions in which we learned types think we must steep ourselves. It is very practical for you, I see that most clearly.”

“Christianity is the most practical of all religions, Rabbi. Even, if I may say so without getting too close to those icebergs you spoke of, more practical than your Judaism.”

78 North Again!

78

North Again!

Emil Korsch hated to be made a fool of!

How he could ever have been tricked into following that red herring to Switzerland, he couldn’t imagine.

At least it had not been a total loss. While there he had followed his München connections toward Innsbruck, which was supposed to be interlaced with Jewish and Christian connections into the surrounding mountains.

The little village of Scharnitz bore more looking into in that regard. But it would all have to wait.

Once he’d realized his fatal error, he’d sped north again. If need be he’d return to Bavaria and Austria another time.

Rabbi Wissen remained his supreme and only priority!

But as the Gestapo chief raced northward, cursing his folly for wasting a year in Bavaria and Austria, the rabbi had the whole time been right under his nose.

How could he have guessed that his earlier miscue had nearly thrown him directly into the rabbi’s path? The two men had, in fact, been in Innsbruck at the same time, and one afternoon had actually come within half a kilometer of one another.

Neither could have known. Neither would ever know the irony of fate’s little trick of timing.

Now Korsch was back in Poznan and was more determined than ever to find the rabbi. He knew neither the box nor its contents had surfaced. At least neither Hitler nor anyone in the high command knew of them. He had his sources, and he would have heard if something that big had been discovered.