Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 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
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“It might take several weeks,” he said. “After that you’ll need a visa. Probably it will be Argentina you’re going to. Right now everyone’s going there, I believe. The government there is very sympathetic to German emigration. Then of course you’ll need passage on a ship. The Comradeship will organize that, too.” He smiled encouragingly. “I think you should reconcile yourself to being with us with for a month or two at least.”
“My father lives near here,” I said. “In Garmisch-Partenkirchen. I should like to see him before I leave the country. It’ll be my last chance I think.”
“You’re right, Garmisch is not all that far away. As the crow flies, fifty or sixty miles. We deliver our beer to the American army base down there. They’ve a real taste for beer, those Amis. Perhaps you could go with the beer truck on our next delivery. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, Father, I appreciate it.”
Of course, as soon as I had my new identity and passport I was going to head for Hamburg. I’d always liked Hamburg. And it was as far away as I could get from Munich and Garmisch and whatever I was going to do in Garmisch, without actually leaving Germany. There was no way on earth that I was going to end up on a slow boat to a banana republic like the old comrades to whom I was about to be introduced.
Father Bandolini knocked quietly on a door and then opened it to reveal a cozy little sitting room, and two men taking it easy in armchairs with the newspapers. There was a bottle of Three Feathers on the table and an open packet of Regents. A good sign, I thought. On the wall was a crucifix and a picture of Pope Pius XII wearing what looked like a beehive on his head. Maybe it was the little rimless glasses and the ascetic face, but there was always something about the pope that reminded me of Himmler. The pope’s face was also quite like the face of one of the two men who were in the room. The last time I had seen him was January 1939, and he’d been standing between Himmler and Heydrich. I remembered thinking him to be a relatively simple, intellectually uninteresting sort of man, and even now, I found it hard to believe that he could be the most wanted man in Europe. To look at he was quite ordinary. He was sharp-faced, narrow-eyed, with somewhat prominent ears, and, above a small Himmler-like mustache—always a mistake—a longish nose on which sat a pair of black-framed glasses. He looked like a Jewish tailor, which, I knew, was a description he’d have hated because the man was Adolf Eichmann.