Freddie smiled up at Mr. and Mrs. Greene. “I’d like to sit with him, until he falls asleep, if that’s all right with you.”
“Of course, darling.” Mrs. Greene patted his cheek with a gloved hand. “How sweet of you—what a good friend you are,” she said, and then Mr. and Mrs. Greene departed.
Freddie bent down to David. “You gave me the scare of my life,” he whispered.
“Sorry,” David said, already drowsy from the morphine.
“I just want to tell you—that I love you.”
“I … love … you … too …” David replied.
Their lips touched just as Mr. Greene returned for his briefcase. The older man stared at the two young ones in shocked disbelief, which turned to anger. His cheeks turned red and his hands started to shake. “Get! Out!” he shouted at Freddie.
“Sir, I—”
“Get out! Don’t make me throw you out!”
Head down, Freddie left.
“David …” his father began.
But David had turned his head away. He let his father believe that morphine had done the trick and he was fast asleep, oblivious to what had just happened.
Generally, Herr Oberg ate an elaborate dinner alone, in the dining room. He didn’t eat with his daughter and, in fact, seemed to want as little to do with her as possible. When Maggie saw them interact, his face was crimson and his manner was stiff. Maggie’s own interactions with her employer were limited to “Good morning, sir,” and “Good evening, sir.”
Maggie bided her time until Oberg was out at the ballet. This time, she’d found a larding needle—used to poke lardoons of seasoned pork fat into roasts—in the kitchen. She took a flashlight she found there as well. She made sure Alexandra was tucked safely in her bedroom, snoring loudly, then crept, for the third time, to her employer’s locked office.
She held the flashlight in her teeth as she worked at the lock with the larding needle. It was the perfect size and shape. Finally, Maggie thought, as the lock clicked open. She pushed open the heavy oak door, slipped in, then closed the door softly behind her.
Oberg’s study was dark, and smelled of smoke and leather. Her heart was pounding. While she didn’t think anyone at the villa suspected her of being anything more than Fräulein Oberg’s companion, she’d been taught to anticipate the worst.
Flashlight in hand, Maggie walked over the carpeting to the massive desk. Without touching a thing, she looked for hairs, powder—some secret way that Oberg might be using to see if his things had been rifled.
She didn’t see anything. Not only that, but the desk itself was immaculate—no papers, no files. Just a photograph in a silver frame of a woman Maggie assumed was his late wife.
By the desk chair stood his briefcase—standard, black leather. Was it rigged to explode? Any special locks?
It appeared not. Maggie breathed a sigh of relief, the knot in her gut unclenching just the slightest bit.
With a hairpin, she was able to pick the locks open.
She sat down on the carpet and opened the briefcase in front of her.
There, flashlight still in her teeth, she went through the papers. Most of them were letters and memos from the Kraft durch Freude’s Central Office II, Division IV—Health and Social Welfare—of the Reich Interior Ministry, and Office IIb.
There were some from the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses, as well as memoranda from the various medical departments, transport department, inspections department, and calculations office, talking about “units” and delineating the various costs of “treatment.” Still more memos and letters that Oberg was carbon-copied on from other departments—bus drivers’ salary, bus repairs, cost of gasoline, cost of film, doctor and nurse salaries. Notices of inspection of various facilities. A special budget for staff parties and alcohol.
Numbers swarmed in front of her, calculations of costs. Histories of costs. Projections of future costs. Costs of what?
Maggie tried to figure out where the main office was located, but the best she could find was a postbox address: Berlin W 9, P.O. Box 101. That’s odd.
Maggie shook her head, confused. The language meant nothing. Only the mention of hospitals, like Charité, and institutions, such as the Hadamar Institute, and mention of the “Reich’s community and nursing homes” gave any indication they were talking about people. But this had nothing to do with the war—with soldiers, supplies, munitions factories, troop movements—nothing. Just internal German bureaucracy.
Damn! Maggie felt a hot flush of disappointment and anger. She’d risked so much for so little. Oberg, so important in his own mind, was a midlevel bureaucrat—a paper pusher—and none of the papers he was pushing were the least bit useful.