“Better,” he said. The windows were set deep into a thick wall, and Nemo hoisted himself up until he stood in the window frame. “Look,” he said to Jean in a conciliatory voice, “it’s not even stained glass. Just an ordinary leaded glass window.” With that, he stabbed through the window with the branch and the sound of breaking glass rent the peaceful night. It took him a minute or two to clear all the glass out of the window frame with the branch, then he hopped through the open archway and disappeared into the darkness. In another moment, the thick wooden door swung open.

“Nothing but a latch on this side,” said Nemo as the others entered the pitch-black chapel.

Nemo played his flashlight beam around the room. The nave held three pews on each side of a narrow aisle. In front of them, a wide step led up to the altar and to one side of the nave a door stood ajar.

“The sacristy,” said Jean. “Maybe there are candles.”

Five minutes later, with candles and matches they had found in the tiny, windowless sacristy, they had illuminated the small space with warm light. Candles stood in the brass candlesticks on the altar, in brackets at the end of each pew, and in the votive rack on the opposite side of the nave from the sacristy. The whitewashed walls of the chapel reflected the light, and the space felt as brightly lit as if it had been outfitted with electric lights. All this light spilled onto the point of focus of the entire building—the space behind the altar. There, filling the entire wall from the stone floor to the arched ceiling, was a brightly colored fresco showing the three wise men presenting their gifts to the infant Jesus. In the middle of the trio stood a figure Nemo recognized from the Ripley Scroll—the purple-robed Melchior with his casket of gold.

april 1945

Helmut had many regrets about that day—regrets that reached back months before those final few hours at Dachau. Chiefly, he regretted allowing his younger brother, Albert, to join the SS. Early in the war, that would not have even been a possibility. His brother, though obviously of the same pure blood as Helmut, had a meager physical build. With his scrawny legs and arms and his sunken cheeks Helmut found it hard to believe that Albert came from the same stock he did. But just because Albert had a weak body did not mean he couldn’t talk his older brother into foolish things.

“I’m old enough to serve,” Albert had said five months ago when Helmut had stopped by the family home for a few hours. “I want to join the SS.”

“You’re fourteen,” said Helmut.

“The Wehrmacht wouldn’t turn me away,” said Albert. “Plenty of boys my age have enlisted.”

“The SS is not the Wehrmacht,” said Helmut with pride.