It was not an invitation, but something of far more import.

We have identified the wife of the late Pietre Grabarek, whose name is on your list. Her name is Ania Grabarek and she is accompanied by two sons. She is currently at the Tollingen Displaced Persons Camp.

The news was exciting but also puzzling. Grabarek was a Polish name, and one Marianne did not immediately recognize. But apparently she had given it to Peterman. She had lifted the names directly from Albrecht’s journal, and not all his associates and contacts were known to her. She felt a pang of disappointment that it was not someone she knew—Carlotta Biedermann, for example, whom she had always liked and had lost track of completely. But this was selfish. The list was not about providing her with friends. It was about finding the women she had sworn to help.

She read the note aloud.

“Oh.” Elisabeth harrumphed in disappointment. “I thought it was an invitation.”

The children did not understand their mother’s quest. They were, in fact, discomfited by it. Now that school had begun, such as it was, taught by the sorriest lot of old maids and barely literate numbskulls (all the old teachers had been defrocked as fervent Nazis, this being Ehrenheim), they were surrounded by people who mourned Hitler in secret and viewed Albrecht as a traitor. The children craved distance from their father’s reputation.

“Who is Ania Grabarek?” Katarina asked politely.

“I don’t know,” Marianne confessed. “Do you remember him, Benita? Pietre Grabarek?”

Benita shook her head with disinterest. Of course Benita didn’t remember. The girl had no interest in politics.

“The wife of Pietre Grabarek,” Marianne mused aloud.

Suddenly an image came to her: a short man, dark haired, bearing urgent news. He had brought word of Kristallnacht as it was unfolding across Germany. A Polish envoy, or some sort of diplomat. An associate of Connie’s rather than Albrecht’s.

“I think maybe I do remember,” Marianne said. “He came late—straight from Munich.”

Benita shrugged and kept her eyes on the buttons she was counting. “Could be.”

“He was a particular friend of Connie’s,” Marianne persisted.

“That doesn’t mean I would know him,” Benita said.

“No.” Marianne looked down. “Well, we will find out who she is soon enough.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

BURG LINGENFELS, AUGUST 1945

To Ania Grabarek, it was clear that the woman leading them out of the Tollingen Displaced Persons Camp was accustomed to giving orders. She had a wide, confident stride and the sort of commanding tone Ania was not used to hearing from members of her own sex. Even her name conveyed forcefulness: Marianne Falkenberg von Lingenfels.

“Your father was a brave man,” the woman said over her shoulder to Ania’s boys. “It is my honor to host his family.”

Ania glanced at her sons with their pale, thin faces. They looked stricken. Fear and confusion had rendered them mute. Poor Anselm had barely spoken since Dresden, and Wolfgang—Wolfgang, her baby, her fierce one—had fallen into the sullen glower of a trapped animal.