“There was no place for me to go. I stayed in Friesland until I was eighteen. Then I attended university and eventually became a teacher. I thought many times about emigrating to Israel or America. But in the end, I decided to stay. I felt it was my duty to remain in Amsterdam with the ghosts of the dead.”

“Did you ever try to reclaim your family home?”

“It wasn’t possible. After the war the Dutch government declared that the rights of current owners were equal to those of the prior Jewish owners. It meant that unless I could prove that the man who purchased our home had done so in bad faith, I couldn’t dislodge him. Furthermore, I had no proof my father had ever owned the house or even proof of his death, both of which were required by law.”

“And the Rembrandt?”

“I came to regard the woman in that painting as an accomplice in my family’s murder. I never wanted to see her again.”

“But you kept the receipt,” Gabriel said.

The child of the attic fixed him with a suspicious stare.

“Isn’t that what your father placed in your pocket as you were saying good-bye?”

Still she didn’t answer.

“And you kept it with you in hiding, didn’t you, Lena? You kept it because it was the only thing of your father’s you had.” Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Where’s the receipt, Lena?”

“It’s in the top drawer of my nightstand. I look at it every night before I go to sleep.”

“Will you let me have it?”

“Why would you want such a thing?”

“Your Rembrandt is out there somewhere. And we’re going to find it.”

“That painting is covered in blood.”

“I know, Lena. I know.”

CHAPTER 22

22

AMSTERDAM

It was approaching eleven o’clock when they left Lena Herzfeld’s house and a hard rain was hammering on the pavement. Chiara wanted to find a taxi but Gabriel insisted on walking. They stood for a long time outside the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater, now a memorial to those who had been imprisoned there, before making their way to Rembrandt’s old house at the top of Jodenbreestraat. Gabriel could only marvel at the shortness of the distance. A kilometer, no more. He was certain the next link in the chain would be longer.

They ate with little appetite at a quiet restaurant near their hotel, talking about anything but the horror they had just heard, and climbed into bed shortly after one. Chiara’s sleep was disturbed by nightmares, though much to her surprise she found that Ivan Kharkov had been displaced from his starring role by a man in black attempting to rip a child from her arms. She forced herself awake to find Gabriel seated at the writing desk in their room, the lamp burning brightly, a pen scratching furiously across a sheet of paper.

“What are you doing?”