“Your daughter is a problem.”
He chuckled. “What gave you that impression?”
“She has no idea what she’s doing, but thinks she knows it all.”
“I was a lot like her when I was twenty-five. I was married by then and thought I could do no wrong.”
“Why did you let her leave?”
“She’ll be back.”
He saw the curious look on Inna’s face, which dissolved into understanding. “You think Simon sent her?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. They spoke to each other in the church like old friends. She wanted to go with him, until he sold her out.”
And he wondered if that had been part of the act, too.
“When Alle found you in the catacombs, was she running or walking?”
“Walking. Why?”
“She calm?”
Inna nodded.
“We were being shot at. She ran away. But then she just walks right up to you, a stranger, and waits for me?”
He saw she grasped his point.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked.
He reached for another piece of bread. “I have no choice.” He then found a folded piece of paper in his pocket and handed it to her. “That’s the full message I found in the grave.”
She read.
“I did an Internet search. That part where it says,
“Prague.”
He was impressed.
“I know the tale of the golem,” she said. “It’s quite famous there. I’ve never heard of Berlinger, though.”
“He was head of the congregation for several decades. He could have known Abiram and Saki, my mother’s father, Marc Eden Cross. Berlinger is also still alive.”
“Strange how you call your father only by his name.”
“It’s how I think of him. Distant. A stranger. Now all I can see is his decaying face. I misjudged that old man, Inna. We both kept too damn much to ourselves.”
The room was quiet. Inna’s two children had left, visiting at a neighbor’s apartment. She’d already told him that he would spend the night here, on the sofa. Tomorrow they could retrieve his rental car. He was too fatigued to argue. Jet lag had caught up with him.
“This secret,” he said in a near whisper. “It’s time to expose it.”
“If not you, then Simon seems intent on doing it.”
“Which is all the more reason to find this Temple treasure first.”
He thought of Brian Jamison. “Why would American intelligence be interested in this? He said he worked for something called the Magellan Billet. Can you find out what that is?”
She nodded. “I have contacts in the American embassy.”
He was glad he’d called her. “There was a body in the catacombs. But something tells me it’s long gone. Still, someone should take a look.”
She nodded.
They sat for a few moments. He watched while she ate her tomatoes and rice.
“I’m going to Prague,” he said. “And I’ll take Alle with me.”
“That could lead to big trouble.”
“Probably so. But she’s my daughter, Inna, and that’s what I have to do.”
Inna smiled, then reached over and squeezed his hand. “Thomas, you sell yourself short. You are far more of a father than either your daughter or you even realize.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
ZACHARIAH LINGERED IN THE GARDENS AT SCHONBRUNN, HIS mind racing. He imagined the tranquil spot as it had been two hundred years ago, when Napoleon’s only son lived inside the palace. Or the Emperor Franz Joseph, who struggled here to hold the Austrian Empire together in the face of world war. Or 1918, when Charles I renounced his throne and left the palace for the last time, ending the monarchy.
But he cared nothing for Austrian history. For his people, this country had been nothing but an impediment. It had never cared for Jews, persecuting and slaughtering them throughout history by the tens of thousands. And though Austrians came to hate Hitler, it was not because he hated Jews. Few of the synagogues the Nazis razed
