112
Present Day
Munich Airport
“We’re boarding soon,” I say to Ty on my phone. I’d paid an outrageously expensive fee to change my ticket to this flight. “I’ll be back in Chicago in eight hours.”
“It will be good to have you back home,” he says.
“Home with my tail between my legs. No proof. Mission not accomplished.”
“Home safe, Eleanor. Safe. That’s the most important thing.”
“Which is more than Franklin Linderman can say.” The image of poor Franklin lurching forward in the rear of that SUV, blood dripping from his face, will stay with me forever.
“He understood the risks.”
I sigh. It doesn’t make what happened any less tragic or shocking.
“And it wasn’t a total loss,” Ty adds. “He confirmed that there was a sixth item in Hitler’s safe, that his father took it, and that it was a film reel.”
“Yes, but he didn’t give it to me. Or tell me where it was. Or what was on it.”
“Well, what did he say?”
I think back. “I asked him if the sixth item taken from Hitler’s safe was a reel of film. He said—he said, ‘it was,’ like it was obvious. As in, why would I ask him that?”
“What’s to understand?”
“Then…” I breathe out. “He asked Jenny something. And then the bullet came through the back window, and he was dead.”
“Wow. And you have no idea what he said to Jenny?”
“No. I don’t even know what language they were speaking. It wasn’t German, but sounded a little like German.”
“I’m sorry, El. I mean, jeez, if ever there were a time for a translator—”
“Hang on!” I pop out of my chair. “I have to go, Ty.”
I hang up the phone. I’d forgotten that I’d recorded my conversation with Franklin Linderman. With everything that happened, I’d forgotten it had been left recording.
I pull up the file. After skipping ahead a bit, I land on the spot and listen to my conversation with Franklin:
Me:
“Franklin, may I get to business? There was a sixth envelope in Hitler’s safe the night that Thomas Bauer stole it, correct? Your father took it, yes?”
Franklin:
“He did, of course. And kept it.”
Me:
“Was it a reel of film?”
Franklin:
“It was.” [Pause.]
“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
At this point, Franklin speaks to Jenny:
Franklin:
“Heb je de professor het filmrolletje gegeven?”
Jenny:
“Ja natuurlijk. Ik gaf het haar in de kerk.”
I replay those words over and over again.
“Ah, een landgenote!”
I look up to see a woman in a puffy blue jacket and white ski cap. She smiles and says, “Kom je uit Nederland? Spreek je Nederlands.”
She gestures to my phone when she sees the confusion on my face. “I’m sorry, I thought you were Dutch, like me,” she says.
“Could you—please.” I put my hand on my heart. “If I replay the recording, could you translate?”
“Uh, sure?” She seems amused, but listens carefully, leaning in. “The man is saying—he is asking, did you give the teacher—or professor?”
“Yes, professor.”
“He is asking, ‘Did you give the professor the film?’”
“Yes, yes, that’s right. And what does the woman say?”
I play Jenny’s response again. The woman listens, eyes closed, and nods. “She says, ‘Yes, of course, I gave it to her… at the church.’”
My mouth drops open. Jenny gave me the film at the church?
I thank the young woman and start pacing, remembering. The only church she could mean is St. Stephen’s Cathedral, that huge Gothic church in Vienna where I went to meet Franklin. He didn’t show, and Stranger Danger gave me a dire warning instead.
That was when I saw the young Asian woman with the face piercings and the lime-green hair. When Jenny bumped into me, I thought she might be an assassin, might stab me or inject me with—
She bumped into me.
Could that be it? Did she hand off something?
I remember what I was wearing, because my clothing instructions were specific: brown jacket, orange hat, so I would stand out. And I was wearing jeans, the same ones I’m wearing right now.
I pat my pockets, but there’s no way she could’ve slipped it in them without me knowing it.
My heart racing, I open my carry-on roller bag. There it is, folded—more like crammed—inside. The beige corduroy jacket, the one my darling daughter Annabelle gave me as a present a year before she died.
I pull it out and examine the pockets. There, in an interior pocket I have never used, I feel a bulge. There’s something in there.
She slipped it into my pocket days ago in the church, and all this time, I had no idea.
“Eleanor,” I whisper, “you are the worst spy in the history of spies.”
I carefully reach in and pull it out. Light as a feather, which is why I didn’t feel it. A flat metal canister, not much bigger than a stack of coasters.
A reel of film.