The Things We Cherished (17 page)

“And the rest of your family?”

“My mother, Hannah, passed a few years ago from a heart condition. And my older brother, Stefan, left Germany before the war. He was trying to make it to England, or at least that’s what we thought; I’ve not heard from him since he went.”

Roger studied Magda, considering her anew. The raven hair now seemed a liability, a sign that somehow she did not fit in. He was seized with the longing to shave her locks, for even shorn she would still be beautiful.

“Does Hans know?”

She nodded. “We spoke about it once, long ago. We don’t talk about it anymore, though. He has enough to worry about.”

Roger contemplated what she had said. Suddenly he imagined standing in her shoes, living with the fear day by day, alone. Then a vision swept him of Magda disappearing, and he was seized with an emptiness and terror such as he had never known in his entire life.

“Magda.” He took a step toward her and wordlessly she folded into his arms, trembling like a bird that might break if he held her too hard. She pulled back and looked up at him and in that moment it was impossible to breathe.

Then without speaking further, she turned on her heel and was gone.

MUNICH
,
2009

“So Roger was in love with Hans’s wife,” Charlotte remarked as the taxi sped down the autobahn. It was not, of course, the first time they had discussed it. After Jola left, Charlotte and Jack had agreed that the best approach would be to return to Munich and confront Roger with what they had found. So they had inventoried the rest of the attic hurriedly, bringing back with them a few of the boxes that seemed more significant than the rest.

“Yeah,” Jack replied, drumming his fingers against his knee. “Talk about motive.”

“The fact that Roger had an affair with Hans’s wife doesn’t mean he turned his own brother in to the Nazis,” Charlotte said, her defender instincts rising.

“We don’t even know if there was an affair,” Jack pointed out. “The feelings could have been one-sided, or perhaps things never went that far.” There was a pull to his voice that Charlotte could not quite comprehend.

“Regardless, he was in love with a Jewish woman, which suggests he wouldn’t have been in collaboration with the Nazis,” she insisted, hearing her own exasperation. Despite the kiss, arguing still seemed to be their default state.

“But why didn’t he mention it to us?”

“It’s not exactly something that one brings up in casual conversation,” she retorted. “He was probably embarrassed. Anyway it was so long ago. Maybe he just forgot, or didn’t think it was relevant.” But the words did not ring true, even to her. Magda, from what they knew, had been Roger’s only love. One didn’t simply neglect to mention something like that.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want it coming out in court,” Jack replied grimly. With this Charlotte could not disagree. “We need to find something to clear his name, and fast.”

She did not respond but faced forward, trying not to fidget in what now seemed like an uncomfortably close confinement with Jack. They had not spoken of what happened the night before, and a few times she wondered if the fleeting kiss had been a dream. Earlier as they busily combed the attic and made preparations to leave, the tension between them had been easier to push aside. But sitting beside each other on the plane and in the cab, it had grown until it was impossible to ignore.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the low ringing of Jack’s phone.
“Ja?”
he said, turning away and lowering his head.
“Jetzt? Aber
—” Charlotte could tell that he wanted to argue with whoever was on the other end of the line but couldn’t.
“Danke schön.”
He closed the phone. “This just keeps getting better,” he muttered in a low voice.

“What is it?”

“That was the lead judge’s clerk,” he answered. “The prosecutor has filed an emergency motion to elevate Roger’s case to the higher court. The judge wants to have a telephone conference at once.”

“Now?” That seemed quick, even by the standards of the rough-and-tumble criminal justice system in which she was used to practicing.

He nodded. “The clerk said she would call me back momentarily and get both parties on the line.” He looked out the window for several seconds, stroking his chin.

“Are you all right?” she asked, sounding more concerned than she’d intended.

“This isn’t good,” he replied. “So far Roger’s case has been before the Landgericht, or regional court. But the fact that the prosecutor’s office wants to raise the case to the appellate level—and that the court seems inclined to entertain the notion—suggests that they’re contemplating a guilty verdict.”

And a far more serious sentence, Charlotte thought. “Appellate court?” she asked. “But we haven’t even had a trial yet. What is there to appeal?”

“The word
appellate
is just a rough translation,” Jack explained. “Really it’s the next-higher-level court, the Oberlandgericht. They do have original jurisdiction over certain more significant matters, as well as hearing appeals.”

“And they’re just beneath the national or supreme court, right?” Charlotte asked, mustering her scant knowledge of the German legal system. Jack nodded. “What’s driving this?”

“Politics, I suspect. The German foreign minister was just in Washington for meetings with the secretary of state and there’s a lot of pressure from the States for the chancellor to show she’s serious about war crimes prosecutions. A case like Roger’s is a chance to do just that. Plus there are elections here next spring.” He trailed off, looking down at some notes that he’d pulled from his bag.

A minute later Jack’s phone rang again and he set down the papers and answered it. “Can you put it on speaker?” she asked, wanting to hear what was going on.

“Too much noise,” he replied, tilting his head toward the window. He turned up the volume on the phone and gestured for her
to come closer to hear. She hesitated, then slid across the seat, trying to get as close to the phone as possible without touching him. His now-familiar scent, cotton and tweed with a hint of sweat from the night spent in the attic, tickled her nose.

On the other end of the line, a woman spoke shrilly in German, too quickly for Charlotte to understand what she was saying. “Prosecutor,” Jack mouthed, his breath warm against her neck.

When the woman finished, Jack cleared his throat and began to speak at a speed and in a dialect that made it somewhat easier for Charlotte to comprehend. The prosecution’s motion was without basis, he argued, and would unfairly prejudice his client, who had spent months preparing for trial before this court. And, he added, the transfer of the case would result in inevitable delay, needless further incarceration of an old man.

He’s amazing, Charlotte realized as she listened. It was more than just Jack’s ease with the foreign language. He had the perfect balance of advocacy and reserve, his easygoing style a sharp contrast to the prosecutor’s hawkish tone. And he seemed to come alive, as if he were actually before the court, any doubts he might have about Roger’s case thoroughly undetectable. She had seen dozens if not hundreds of litigators in action and Jack was clearly among the best.

“What if,” the judge asked, interrupting, “the appellate court could expedite the case?”

Charlotte’s breath caught. Jack’s argument about the potential delay had backfired. In fact, they needed as much time as possible to find any evidence that might help exonerate Roger. “Even if the court could guarantee such a speedy trial,” Jack began, “there is simply no basis to elevate the case.” He was speaking slowly, as if trying to find the right words in German, but Charlotte could tell that he was actually stalling for time, trying to collect his thoughts.
“We’re still gathering evidence and we believe that we will have something shortly that will exonerate our client without having to burden this court—or the higher court—further.”

Charlotte stifled a gasp. What was he doing? They had just come from Roger’s boyhood home and had nothing—other than the arguably damaging discovery that Roger was in love with Hans’s wife.

“What evidence?” the judge asked.

“Respectfully,” Jack replied, “I’d rather not say until I can present the court with something more concrete.”

The prosecutor jumped in, speaking rapidly, and though Charlotte could not understand her exact words, she could tell the woman was arguing that Jack had months to produce evidence to support Roger’s defense and had failed to do so.

“
Wie lange
?” the judge asked Jack. How long will this take?

This time Jack did not hesitate. “One week.”

“One week,” the judge said, relenting. “If there’s no new evidence to support the defense of the accused, we will proceed to grant the prosecution’s request to elevate the case.”

“A week?” Charlotte asked incredulously after Jack hung up a minute later. “How can we possibly work that quickly?”

“I don’t think we have a choice. We talk to Roger again, go through the last few boxes. Either we’re going to find something that proves his innocence or not.”

He was playing all in, Charlotte realized, the ultimate hand in a poker game. Only so far, all they had was a bluff. It was guts ball, the dangerous kind of stakes for which she herself almost never had the stomach. But he hadn’t asked her. She was suddenly angry. It was her case too. For a minute, she considered calling him on it, but there was no point—he had already made the representation to the court and she would have to live with it.

One week, she thought. When she’d accepted Brian’s invitation to come here, a week was all she wanted to put in before fleeing home. But now it seemed a drop in the bucket, hardly enough time to do what they needed to do.

“Are you going to tell Roger?” Charlotte asked.

“Not right now,” Jack said. “I don’t see the point. If we find what we’re looking for, then the case will stay here and it’s all a moot point.”

“And if not?”

Jack pressed his lips together. “I’d rather not think about it.”

Twenty minutes later they entered the prison. As they reached the door to the conference room, Charlotte’s arm brushed against Jack’s. “After you,” he said, stepping back, his eyes not meeting hers.

Roger sat at the far end of the room. Seeing them, he rose. “You visited the house in Poland? A lovely restoration, isn’t it, if I do say so myself?”

Charlotte fought the urge to jump in and barrage him with questions as she might a witness on the stand. “You’ve done a beautiful job,” she agreed instead, trying to build his trust.

“Herr Dykmans,” Jack began, and she could hear the edge of impatience in his voice. “Can you tell us about Magda?”

An indescribable mix of pleasure and pain crossed Roger’s face. Charlotte’s stomach twisted. She recognized the emotion as one she had felt for Brian over the years, the paradox of reconciling a memory so filled with joy with the tragic ending it had suffered. “Magda,” he said slowly and with great effort, “was my brother’s wife.”

Charlotte empathized silently with how hard it was for Roger to acknowledge that marriage, which carried more legitimacy than his own relationship with Magda, whatever that had been. Like admitting to herself that Brian and Danielle were married.
Enough, she thought. This isn’t about me. She forced her attention to the elderly man seated across from her. “Herr Dykmans,” she tried gently, “we understand that Magda may have been something more to you.”

“No, no,” he said, his first reaction after all these years still to deny it.

Jack pulled out the letter and slid it across the table. As Roger scanned the paper, the years seemed to unfold across his face, his misgivings about committing such things to writing in the first place, the strong emotions that had prompted him to take the risk. “This was nothing,” he protested, lifting his eyes from the paper. “The foolish musings of a young man. I never even sent it.”

“Herr Dykmans,” Charlotte said, “we understand from someone we met in Wadowice that what existed between you and Magda was more than just feelings, that there was a relationship.” She willed her expression to be neutral, hoping he would not see through the bluff.