Frau Vogt went on. “I received a letter from her after the war, hand delivered. She wrote that it would be better for me if she stayed away.”
Ian wanted to shout, dance, punch the air in triumph. The Ziegler girl had been paid to deliver that letter by one Lorelei Vogt. We have a name. We have a name—
Tony: “Did your daughter tell you where she was going?”
“She said she didn’t want me to have to lie, if people asked questions. Naturally a mother misses her only child, but it was still most considerate of her. There has never been any talk about me, and for that I’m very grateful. I’m just a simple widow, living quietly. The war had nothing to do with me. My daughter made sure it stayed that way.”
Disappointing. Ian leaned one elbow up against the window frame, keeping well out of sight, listening to Tony tack a new course.
“You know, your daughter and I talked of books once, at one of her parties in Posen? I think she sensed a young soldier like me was a long way from home, so she tried to put me at ease. She spoke such beautiful English—”
“Yes, she was always clever!” Frau Vogt’s stiffness eased. “She studied literature at Heidelberg, her father insisted on an education for her . . .”
“Why isn’t he pushing?” Nina whispered. “Where’s the bribe?”
“She was getting defensive. He’s smoothing her down, letting her ramble.”
“This is carrot method? It takes too long.” Nina padded down the hall, disappearing into the first bedroom where Ian heard the sound of drawers sliding. Below, Tony was talking of university between bites of Frau Vogt’s cake.
“. . . my dream to continue my studies, but the war . . . It was right from the HJ to the army for me, and then Poland.” Tony hit just the right note of tacit awkwardness, his face anxious under the untidy hair he’d razor-parted and oiled back like a proper lad who’d grown up in the Hitler Youth. It wasn’t the first time he’d presented himself as a former soldier for the Reich. It took more than a German name and details about a regiment. It was all in the things one didn’t say, Ian thought. The veiled phrases that said You know it wasn’t my fault, don’t you? “You understand, of course,” Tony said, all schoolboy earnestness. “The war didn’t have anything to do with me either, not really. I just did my duty, I was very young.”
“Those were difficult times,” Frau Vogt said with the same tacit note in her voice. “People forget that now. Another piece of cake?”
“If you’ll join me in an aperitif. Just a dash of brandy for your coffee—” Tony produced the flask he always carried to lubricate such interviews.
“Oh, I shouldn’t . . .”
“Of course you should, Frau Vogt!” Tony scolded, and die J?gerin’s mother let him add a generous splash to her cup. He began admiring her china as she cut him a second slab, and he dug in with the kind of schoolboy enthusiasm that had made mothers all across Europe pinch his cheek fondly. Ian sensed Nina’s soundless snort at his shoulder.
“He lies better than a Muscovite fishmonger,” she whispered. “Help me look in her room now—”
“I may have broken into this house, but I will not ransack a stranger’s bedroom.”
“Just stand by while I do it,” Nina said, amused. “You’re a hypocrite, luchik.”
Ian slanted an eyebrow. “I will cling nevertheless to my shreds of the moral high ground.”
“Shreds are on the ground at your feet.”
“Noted.”
Frau Vogt was chattering freely below. Ian was willing to bet she hadn’t had such an appreciative audience in a long time. Loneliness was as effective a tongue loosener as brandy. “My daughter studied English literature, though I hoped she’d prefer Schiller and Heine as I did. It was Heine where I got her name, of course! Lorelei the water nymph. The maiden on the rock.”
“Your Lorelei was far from just a maiden on a rock to be rescued. What a wonderful shot she was—I remember a hunt at one party—”
“Yes, she was her father’s daughter. His father was a Freiherr in Bavaria, you know—my husband was the younger son, he didn’t inherit the family Wasserburg, but he used to hunt there as a young man. He taught Lorelei to shoot.”
“I thought she was Diana herself. I admit I was quite starry-eyed!”
Frau Vogt sighed. “She should have brought a nice young man like you home from Heidelberg. I was not always approving of the choices she made.” Another tacit silence, broken by a sniff. “Her Obergruppenführer was very dashing, but he was old enough to be her father, and not to mention, well . . .”
Married. Ian shared Frau Vogt’s wish that he hadn’t been, just as devoutly, because if die J?gerin had been Obergruppenführer von Altenbach’s wife rather than his mistress, she would have been much easier to trace. Paperwork flew like confetti at SS weddings; her name and photograph would have been filed in a hundred places.
Tony allowed a tactful silence to fall, not saying a word about the daughter who had become a married man’s mistress. He tipped a little more brandy into both coffee cups, murmuring instead, “Obergruppenführer von Altenbach was much admired. His work in Poland was exemplary, and his generosity unmatched. In fact, that’s what brings me here today, Frau Vogt.” Straightening his tie; the young man of business at last coming to the matter in hand. “Before his death, the Obergruppenführer laid certain provisions in place, looking to the future. Financial provisions for friends and loved ones. And no one, of course, was more important to him than your daughter.”
Ian’s fingers tightened on the curtain’s lace edge. Here it was . . .
“The Obergruppenführer set money aside for your daughter, gn?dige Frau. So you see why I’m looking for her.”
Silence below. Ian craned his gaze as far as he could, but all he could see was Frau Vogt’s neat head, the sudden stillness of her shoulders. “Money,” she said at last, and the prickles were back in her voice. “After five years?”
“You know how slowly legalities move.” Tony sighed. “No one was even certain if Lorelei Vogt was alive, especially after the Obergruppenführer’s . . . unfortunate end, in Altaussee. So many people disappearing, so many opportunists. There was a real danger of fraud, with no way to identify your daughter even if she could be found. Which is why it took so long to find someone who knew her.” He gave a modest bow. “Naturally I am being compensated, but truly, it would make me most happy to know I could aid your daughter in claiming what is rightfully hers. She was once kind to a lonely young soldier when he was very far from home—if I can aid her to a life of comfort as the Obergruppenführer wished, it would be my pleasure.”
It wasn’t the first time Ian and Tony had used an inheritance as a lure. In the straitened aftermath of a war, everyone dreamed of unexpected money descending on their lives. The whisper of wealth from dead Nazis was especially potent because everyone had heard of the fortunes squirreled away by the powerful and the prescient high in the Reich. Never mind that I never found a single war criminal living in luxury behind gold-gated estates, Ian thought wryly. Everyone had still heard stories of secret Swiss accounts, priceless paintings down mine shafts, gold held in reserve for . . . someone.
Why not your daughter? Tony’s confiding tone implied. Why not you?
Damn, but you’re good at this, Ian thought with a flash of pride in his partner.
“I wouldn’t expect you to take my word,” Tony went on, slipping a card across the table. “The firm who hired me would be pleased to reassure you.”
“A quick telephone call . . .” Her voice was a blend of caution and appeasement. She wanted to trust this nice young man and everything he was telling her . . . But she wasn’t a stupid woman.
Tony smiled, sitting back. “I’m happy to wait.”
Frau Vogt rose, bustling inside. Ian prepared to dive behind the nearest door if she came up, but the telephone was downstairs; he heard the muffled sound of her voice as she picked up. Outside, Ian saw Tony add another slug from his flask to his hostess’s coffee, pour his own out in the flower bed, and replace it with undoctored coffee from the pot. Frau Vogt’s voice fluttered, sounding reassured. Ian smothered a laugh, imagining Fritz Bauer’s avuncular rasp on the other end—it wasn’t the first time he’d backed them up if a story needed verification.
The receiver clicked below, and she came back out to the garden. “Thank you, Herr Krauss. I don’t mean to imply you were trying to . . .”
“A lady’s trust must be earned,” Tony said with another boyish laugh. “I hope Herr Bauer was able to reassure you? There is also, of course, the matter of your compensation.”
She’d been reaching for her coffee cup; her hand paused. “Mine?”