The Diaries - 01 (14 page)

“Yes, in the
servant quarters.”
 
He squeezed her
knee.
 
“Think, Monika.”

She rolled her
eyes, opening her hands, palms upward.
 
“You’re acting like my dad used to.”

“C’mon.
 
Think!
 
Speer
, the top man…Berlin…Elsa, the
girlfriend…Aldo, weirdo, making them both repent by pain…her churning fear over
his finding out she’s Jewish, fearing for her life.”

Monika’s face was
blank.
 
Her eyes twitched, widening as
her hands shot over her mouth.

“It couldn’t be.”

He nodded.

“No!”

He nodded again.

“There’s no way!”

He tapped the
diary with his finger.
 
“I looked up the
name Greta
Dreisbach
on Google.
 
It took awhile, but after some time I found
her listed as Adolf Hitler’s
personal
maid.
 
It said she disappeared in
1938.”
 
Gage lifted the diary from her
lap.
 
“Later in the diary, she meets a
man in Frankfurt after she fled, a kind man named Heinrich.”

Monika was
spellbound her head barely nodding with Gage’s words.
 
“Yes?”

Gage took a deep
breath, his chest falling heavily.
 
“The
house where I found all of the diaries, there was a stumble-stone out front.”

She rubbed her
forehead.
 
“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.
 
Listed on it was the name Heinrich
Morgenstern, killed in 1938.
 
His wife
was listed dead, killed just days later in one of the camps.”

“And you think it
was her, Greta?”

Gage nodded.
 
“Yeah…you’ll see when you get farther in.”

Monika used both
hands to quickly yank her hair, a flash of anger passing over her face.
 
“Fucking sick is what it was.
 
It never, ever ceases to amaze me.
 
How could they have done such a thing?”

“There’s one other
thing,” Gage said, his hand resting on the diary.
 
“She winds up having that baby.”

“Yes?”

“On the stumble
stone…”

Monika closed her
eyes, falling back on the pillows, hands covering her face.
 
“Oh God, no.
 
Don’t tell me the baby was killed as well.”

Gage remained
silent.
 
Monika opened her fingers,
peeking through them with one eye.

“The baby died,
didn’t it?”

Gage shook his
head, a wry grin coming over his face.

Monika shot bolt
upright.
 
“Shut up!
 
You’re kidding me, right?”

He held both palms
toward her in a defensive posture.
 
“I
don’t know anything for sure.
 
All I know
is both parents are listed dead, but the stumble-stone clearly says that the
Morgenstern
family
was taken.”

“Did he already
have kids?”

“I have no idea.”

She stood,
crossing the room with the sheet wrapped around her waist.
 
After a long look out of the window, Monika
turned back to him, her voice flat.
 
“Adolf Hitler, the world’s preeminent anti-Semite, may have fathered a
child…a
half-Jewish
child.”

“Who could be
alive
today
.”

Her hand went over
her mouth.

“That’s what I’ve
been dying to share with you.”

“Holy shit.”

“Indeed.”

Chapter 5

Near Homburg, Germany

Gage
was at the wheel of the
Volkswagen Golf as it puttered southwest on Autobahn-6.
 
Three inches of fresh, overnight snow
blanketed the earth in postcard beauty.
 
The road was gull gray and dry, cleared by the efficient workers of the
Strassenwesen
.
 
He turned the heating dial all the way to the
right.
 
There was no sunshine and, even
though it was already mid-morning, the day was getting colder as a Siberian
front raced westward nearly as fast as Monika’s Volkswagen.
 

“You trust your
cousin implicitly?” Gage asked, continuing their conversation.

No answer.
 
Monika’s head was tilted downward,
unwavering.

“Are you going to
read both of them before we get there?” he asked, feigning exasperation.

Monika looked up
from one of the diaries, wearing the cloudy, back to reality look someone does
when having been completely immersed.
 
“Did you know the affair started in 1936?
 
She mentions all sorts of things in
here.
 
The Olympics with Jesse Owens, things
‘Aldo’ said about liking your President Roosevelt at the beginning, his
admiration for that pilot Lindbergh…it’s almost unreal.”

Gage’s hands
twisted on the wheel.
 
“It is
almost
unreal, which is precisely why
you said we should visit your cousin.
 
Now, do you
trust
him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you think he
can speak to the authenticity of the diaries?”

Monika turned to
him in the passenger seat, pulling one of her legs up under the other.
 
“I’m certain he can.
 
Books have been his life since he’s been a
teenager, and his business has done very well.
 
He travels all over the world looking for rarities and, even though what
we have here aren’t printed books, the very content will send him over the moon.
 
I also know he is often asked to speak at
universities.
 
He’s quite brilliant.”
 
She leaned over, rubbing his leg.
 
“And you’re going to love Metz.
 
It’s beautiful, and charming, and ‘old French’
without all the overblown fuss of Paris or Marseilles.”

“I’m looking
forward to experiencing it with you.”

They rode on in
silence for many kilometers.
 
Rather than
read, Monika studied the diary in her hand.
 
She twisted it, touching the spine and the cover, finally laying her
palm over the book.
 
“That poor woman.”

“Yeah,” Gage
growled.
 
“Hard to wrap my mind around
some of it.”

“Are these now
your property?”

His eyes turned to
her.
 
“I found them, so I would say
yes.
 
Possession is the key element
regarding ownership, especially of something like this, which probably has no
remaining rightful owner.”

“But the building
belonged to the Americans.”

“And now it
belongs to the Germans.
 
But none of them
knew the diaries were there.
 
They
couldn’t have.
 
And imagine had they
razed the building.
 
The diaries could
have been lost forever.”
 
Gage allowed
the car to slow a fraction.
 
“Those
diaries, if genuine, are going to be worth a great deal.”

Monika’s eyebrows
popped up.
 
“Do you really think so?”

“A fortune.”

“Seriously?”

He turned his head
to her.
 
“Think about it, Monika, you
take our society’s obsession over reality shows and couple it with the
seemingly insatiable thirst for all things World War Two…hell, you’d have
publishers going to war with each other to publish this.
 
You said it yourself, the world’s foremost
and most famous anti-Semite, and probably the most famous man in the past
hundred years, is found to have an illegitimate, half-Jewish offspring?
 
Even if the diaries uncovered only the affair
they’d probably still be priceless.”
 

“Germany might
explode under the revelations.”

“I’m not so sure,”
Gage answered.
 
“I think Germany has done
an incredible job facing its past.
 
This
would only serve to further demonstrate how sick that tyrant was.”

She hefted one of
the diaries.
 
“Would they publish all of
the diaries in one book?”

“Hmm, hard to
say.”
 
Gage stared ahead, shaking his
head in wonderment.
 
“Think about it…there
would be movie deals to be made.
 
Documentaries.
 
You’d have all kinds of experts wanting to
write additional books focusing solely on the content of Greta’s diaries.”

“So you’re saying
the diaries could become more than just a shocking story?”

“I think so, yes.
 
They would be enormous, tantamount to one of
the biggest historical finds of our time, almost like the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

“Certainly not
equal to something like that!”

One reason he so
loved Monika was her mind.
 
He glanced at
her.
 
“Not in a historical sense, no, but
in a modern sense of value, possibly even more than the Scrolls.”

“As in a million
euro?”

He narrowed his
eyes.
 
“As in, I wouldn’t hazard a guess
because I think the amount, when you take in all the directions the diaries
could extend, will be more than I could probably fathom.”
 
Again he turned to her.
 
“So yes, millions.
 
Many
millions.”

Monika’s mouth
fell open in an exaggerated expression.
 
She twisted it into a smile, giving his arm a squeeze.
 
“Just think, Gage.
 
You’ll be rich.”

He tilted his
head, giving it a shake.
 
“Back to your
original question—I don’t truly
own
the diaries.”
  

“You said you do.”

“Well, I have them…we
have them.
 
And we will keep them, but
after we speak to your cousin, I think we should do some checking into the
remains of the Morgenstern family.”

Monika listened to
him, tucking her chin down to her chest as she replied with her eyes straight
ahead.
 
“Gage, that child, if he or she
exists and, assuming he or she is still alive, would be seventy-something.
 
This discovery, and the windfall, could mean
so much more for you, a man with his whole life ahead of him.”

Gage appreciated
Monika’s sentiment.
 
“Thank you, but I’d
feel better if we’d at least just check.
 
To me the most important thing is getting these into the right hands.”

“All of this is like
something from a movie.”

“Well, take good
notes, because you’re living it out, and maybe you could be the one to write a
script.”

She patted his
leg, giggling in her excitement.

Gage forced
himself to think about the tasks at hand.
 
It wouldn’t be long before they were at the border.
 
Metz, their destination in eastern France,
was just a short jaunt past the border, and only an hour from
Saarbrücken
, the city where Monika lived.

Monika cracked her
window and dropped her gum onto the autobahn.
 
The icy wind jarred Gage, making his mind change gears.
 
Something, a distant foreboding, about going
into France had been gnawing at him. “How long has it been since you crossed
the border by car?” he asked.

“A few months.”

“And did they stop
you?”

“Not at all.
 
The old buildings from the border crossing
are still there, but they’re no longer even manned.
 
We won’t even have to slow down.”
 

He lifted his foot
from the accelerator.
 

She lowered her
leg back to the floorboard, a concerned look growing on her face.
 
“Do you think there will be a problem?”

Gage thought of
Jean.
 
He was probably still back in
Frankfurt, camped out at Gage’s flat, wondering where the hell he was.
 
His man would have relayed to him that Gage
had burned him at the U-
bahn
station so, after his
not going home the night before, Jean would now have to at least consider that
Gage could be on the run.
 
Would he have
the wanton balls to set up a border checkpoint?
 
That would require incredible pull from higher, and would raise a major
stink.
 
No, Gage decided.
 
There would be no checkpoint.
 
If Jean did that, he’d have to set one at
every crossing on all of Germany’s borders.
 
There were probably hundreds.

“There won’t be
any checkpoint there.
 
But just in case,
if we get questioned at any time, I’m going to give them a made-up name and
tell them I don’t have any I.D. on me.
 
I’ll be German.”
 
He stared
forward, reviewing his alleged background in his mind.

Monika put her
hand behind his neck, scratching lightly with her nails.
 
“You’re beginning to scare me.”

“Don’t worry, Monika.
 
It’s just that there is one man who might
know I took something from the building, and he may be looking for me.
 
Casually looking for me.”

“Who?”

“He works for the people
who hired me.”

“And who are
they?”

“It doesn’t
matter.”

She pulled her
hand away.
 

As the pregnant
silence ensued, he thought further about Jean’s likely course of action.
 
Tagging anything related to Gage’s passport,
identifications, or credit cards would be simple and wouldn’t raise much
suspicion.
 
He could pull it off on his
own authority.
 
Gage knew Jean well
enough to know he would want it kept quiet, at least at this stage.
 
And unless he was grossly mistaken, that
meant electronic searches were his only fear at this stage.
 
No one would be physically looking for him
outside of Frankfurt.

He hoped.

Gage mashed the
accelerator of the underpowered car as the autobahn began a gradual climb.
 
Monika turned to face him.
 
“I want to help you find out about the Morgenstern
family.”

“I like when we do
things together.”

Monika poked his
arm with a rigid finger.
 
“I mean it,
Gage, not just some cursory assistance, I actually want to help.”
 
She turned, crossing her arms, smile fading.
 
“I forgave you for hiding your truth from me
for so long, but now I want you to let me in…all the way in.
 
Deal?”

Gage nodded, not
knowing what else to say but pleased at her resolve.
 

But behind the
sunglasses, the gnawing over France began again.
 
And his head began to pound.

***

Metz, France

The rare book
store was located on Rue de
Lancieux
, a
pedestrian-only cobblestone street just a few blocks from the gilded Cathedral
St. Etienne.
 
Even in his anxious state,
Gage couldn’t help but be impressed with Metz, perched on the scenic hills looking
over the underappreciated
 
Moselle
River.
 
A mist hovered over the hills in
the distance, framing the city in soft Renoir-like elegance.
 
Steeples rose above the ancient buildings,
their bells ringing in the hour.
 
Before
going to the book store, they rented a modest room a few blocks away, paid for
in euros from the money Jean had left for him at the dead drop.
 
Before he paid, Gage hesitated, wondering if
Jean had marked the bills.

Paranoia, Gage
, he thought, adjusting
his sunglasses.
 
Jean wouldn’t have gone that far over some books taken from a building.

Would he?

Guess we’ll find out.

As they walked the
curving streets near the hotel, hand in hand, Monika detailed her teenage
summers in Metz.
 
She knew a great deal
about the city, from its historical Roman origins to today’s best
restaurants.
 
After turning onto Rue de
Lancieux
, Gage saw the store.
 
From the front, he could tell it was exclusive
from the sparkling white lights and handsome display in the front window.
 
The normally busy streets of the hilly
shopping district were nearly empty on a Monday afternoon after the light snow.
 
The gray skies were beginning to give way to
strips of blue, but with the clearing came the Siberian wind that cut like
razorblades.
 

Monika had done as
Gage instructed her, resisting the temptation to phone her cousin Michel before
they arrived.
 
She pinched her long coat
tightly, stepping inside with Gage in tow.
 
Both of them wore chapped red faces, and the sudden contrast in
temperature made them feel instantly hot and cold at the same time.
 
The door made a bell jingle.
 
From the back a fifty-something man appeared,
frowning at the two average-looking individuals.
 
He was turned out immaculately in a heavy
wool suit, his Caesar-cut gray hair swept forward over an out-of-place tanned
forehead.
 
He looked as if he smelled
something unpleasant.