The Columbus Affair: A Novel

called Yiri, a Czech whom Berlinger knew from before the war. A simple, quiet man who’d made a huge mistake.

“What do you want?” Yiri said. “Why are you here?”

He was shoved to his knees.

“I have done nothing. I work my fields. I bother no one. Why are you here? I told the Nazis nothing.”

Berlinger caught the last part. “You speak to Nazis?”

They were all armed, even Erik who’d learned to handle a pistol with great skill. So far, all four had avoided detention, escaping into the forest and resisting. He wished more Jews could join them, but their number was dwindling by the day.

Yiri’s head shook. “No. No. I talk to no Nazis. I tell them nothing about the Jews in the forest.”

Which was why they’d come. A family had escaped Prague and managed to hide in the woods outside of town. Yiri had been supplying them with food, a good thing, what should be expected from a countryman. But when the family’s money ran out, Yiri had turned them in for the reward. He wasn’t alone. Others had done the same.

“Please. Please. I had no choice. They would have killed me. I had no choice. I helped that family for many weeks.”

“Until they couldn’t pay you anymore,” one of the men spit out.

Berlinger saw the hatred in his compatriots’ eyes. Even Erik’s were filled with disgust. He’d never seen that in his boy before. But the war was changing them all.

“What do you want me to do? You Jews have no chance. There’s nothing that can be done. You have to—”

A shot echoed in the night.

Yiri’s head exploded, then his body smacked the ground.

Erik lowered his gun.

“Yashar Koyach,” one of the men said, and the others joined in slapping Erik on the back.

May your strength increase.

What was said after reading from the Torah.

Now it had become a salutation for murder.

“We had not come to kill the man,” Berlinger said. “Or at least that’s what I thought. To do that would be no different than what the Germans were doing to us.”

“So why did you go there?”

“To hold him accountable, yes. But not to murder him.”

He considered that a bit naive, given the circumstances.

“I was sent to Terezin shortly after that,” Berlinger said. “My son escaped that fate. He became part of the resistance and fought the Germans for another year, until they finally killed him. He and I never spoke to each other after that night. He was proud of what he’d done, and I was ashamed. A division came between us, one that I regret to this day.”

“And what has time taught you?”

“That I was a fool. That man deserved to die. But I had yet to witness the horror of Terezin, and all that came after. I had yet to see how barren men’s souls can be. I had yet to realize how much I could come to hate.”

“It’s been only eight years for me and little is in focus. All I can say is that the past few days have changed everything.”

“For the better?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Marc would have liked you.”

“I only knew him for a short while as a boy.”

“He had a spirit about him. So adventurous. He was a good Jew, though not devoutly. Maybe it was the world in which he lived. I know my own beliefs were strained to the breaking point. Or maybe it was his profession. An archaeologist studies the past almost to the exclusion of the present. Maybe that clouded his mind. Still, he was a good man who did his duty.”

“As the Levite?”

Berlinger nodded. “I would have so liked to have seen our lost treasures. What sights they would have been.”

“You might get that chance. Saki changed the rules of this game. That means it’s okay to do that. So I’m going to change them again.”

“Are you not simply going to end the game?”

He stood silent for a moment, realizing the implications. Five hundred years this secret had stayed hidden.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”