Rudolf did not know I wrote as Peter Weill. He thought I made a living selling poems and sketches. His previous indifference to my existence was useful after all. I struggled to keep my expression neutral. "Indeed."

He sniffed and ran his hand over through his thick hair. "I had a pertinent conversation with the editor of the paper. He will take care of Herr Weill."

"How nice for him."

"He is fired, Hannah." Rudolf clucked his tongue. "Poor man. Maybe you can find him and tell him before your editor does. The editor wouldn't tell me his name, but he promised that Peter Weill will be written by a new hand."

"Peter's a big boy," I said, although a cold chill settled in my stomach. "He can take care of himself."

"Would you like to tell him more?" Rudolf asked. "Would you like to tell him how Sweetie Pie died? How I paid her to procure something for me? How instead of delivering it she spent the money on drugs?"

"What did you need her to procure?"

"My messenger paid her too much, I see that now. She spent it all in one place, against the old caution. She bought enough cocaine to kill a cow."

"Why are you telling me this?" Rudolf would not give me information without a goal.

"So you can tell your Weill friend where he got it wrong."

"If he got it wrong."

Rudolf waved his hand. "She is no good to me dead. Alive, she had one function to perform. One I can't get from the boys."

"How lucky for her."

"Tell Ernst he can't trust his Nazi boy to bail him out of this."

He turned and strode out of the building, his soft leather shoes silent on the marble floor.

I rode the elevator to the newsroom in a daze. Peter Weill had been my identity for so long. Herr Neumann would keep his word to Rudolf and fire me. I was amazed that he had not given Rudolf my name. He had a shred more integrity than I'd expected.

Peter Weill had provided me with food when I was hungry. The fan mail that I received for him made me feel like a real writer. Now I was just one of five million other unemployed workers in Germany. And I had no identity papers to show when I applied for jobs. At least I had jewelry to sell. Even without the ring, the jewelry would feed us for a time.

Plus, there were other newspapers. Peter Weill was not the only crime reporter in Berlin. And I would get my papers back soon enough. I hoped.

"Your floor, Fraulein Vogel," said Xavier. "Is that where you're going . . . today?"

"Yes, thank you, Xavier." I stepped out of the elevator and took a deep breath to steady myself. From force of long years of habit, I walked through the newsroom and opened the window. Smoke drifted out into the sunny morning.

"Hannah," called Maria from across the room. "I need to talk to you." Her happy tone told me that she knew I was fired.

"Good day, Maria." I turned to face her. I left one hand on the wet windowsill.

"Herr Neumann will tell you officially, but I wanted to break it to you sooner." She placed her hand next to mine on the windowsill, not quite touching. "So that you wouldn't cry in front of him."

"I can think of nothing you or Herr Neumann can say to make me cry," I said in an icy voice. I wiped my damp hand on my skirt and crossed my arms across my chest, glad that Rudolf had warned me.

"I'm so sorry," she said, not sounding sorry, "but you are fired from the paper."

"So I gathered."

Her perfectly plucked eyebrows shot up in surprise. I'd stolen her scoop. "Someone is threatening to sue about your prostitute piece, someone with power."

"Rudolf von Reiche, the lawyer."

"Really?" She looked ready to pull out a notebook and interview me. "Is he the rich man from the article?"

"What good would it do you to know?" I asked. "Really?"

A shadow crossed her face. "None at all."

"I can see by your barely disguised glee that you are the new Peter Weill." I reached out and closed the window with a clunk. Let them suffocate in their own smoke, after all. "Congratulations."

"I didn't want it this way," she said, sounding almost genuine. "But I'd be a fool not to take it."

"And you, Maria, are no fool," I said. "Ask Paul to pick up my mail for me."

Herr Neumann's bony finger tapped my shoulder. When I turned to face him he smiled.

"You're lucky I don't sue you," he said. "For exposing the paper."

"To what? The truth?"

"To a lawsuit." Herr Neumann puffed himself up like a toad. "Why-"

"So firing me is as bad as it gets?" I interrupted.

Herr Neumann looked surprised by my tone. "Well. Yes."

"Thank God for that." I left the newspaper office for the last time, stopping in accounting to pick up my final paycheck. For the first time in my adult life, I had no job. I wondered how I would feed myself, and Anton. Then I laughed. The way things were going, I would be lucky to stay alive long enough to go hungry.

15.

I took the bus to Alexanderplatz, then walked past the police station to the heart of the Jewish quarter. Sarah used to live here, as did our jeweler friend, Mordecai Klein. Like Sarah, he had dark suspicions of what would become of the Jews if the Nazi party gained power.

An old woman, her body bent double with age and the weight of her display case, tried to sell me shoelaces. I shook my head as she first entreated me in guttural Polish, which I did not understand, and then in Yiddish, which I did because it's close to German. But I had no use for shoelaces in any language and could ill afford to buy something I did not need. Eventually she walked away, her black head scarf fluttering in the breeze.

A young Orthodox Jew stood on the sidewalk, dark forelocks bouncing as he chatted with a man in modern business clothes. Ignoring automobiles and the occasional horse, a man pushed a handcart full of green apples down the street. I smelled the apples' wholesome scent through the poisonous automobile exhaust. Haggling agreeably before handing over a few of my last remaining pfennigs, I bought an apple for Anton. It might be a long time before Anton got apples again. I tucked it into my satchel.

In the Jewish quarter I blended in. I'd been coming for years with Sarah, and people trusted me. Nowadays, that was a huge gift. Many of them had been through much, losing homes and families in Russia and Poland. Now they waited for a chance to leave Berlin and settle somewhere permanent, somewhere safe. I feared for them. Sarah was right to leave. If the Nazis came into power there was no telling what they would do.

I stopped at Herr Klein's shop. Wrought-iron bars clad the gleaming windows. I knocked on the thick wooden door and waited while someone opened a hinged peephole and studied my face. Heavy bolts rasped as they were drawn back.

"Hannah!" Herr Klein pulled me in and closed the door in one swift movement. "I haven't seen you in weeks." He pushed the bolts into place before turning to me. "Are you well?"

It was such a delight to see him whole and healthy that I almost forgot my own troubles. "I am, thank you," I answered, smiling into his wrinkled old face, pleased that he had not yet emigrated. "How is that cough?"

"Coming along," he said. "I expect it will be strong enough to break windows soon."

I glanced around the tiny room. Two pine stools stood next to an old pine table. The table held a single black velvet display board and a powerful lamp. He had removed the cases of jewels the previous September, after the election made the Nazis the second largest party in the Reichstag.

A thick oak door almost disappeared into the back wall. Behind it lay the room where Herr Klein cut precious stones. Although I'd been visiting him for over ten years, I had never seen behind the door.

"I have something for you," I said, glad the shop was empty. "Questions."

"Maybe I have answers, although it's hard to say." He gestured to the simple stools and perched on one himself, like a friendly black crow. "How are Sarah and Tobias?"

"I expect they are very busy," I said, not meeting his eyes. With their lives, I did not trust even Herr Klein. I had refused to let Sarah tell me her final destination. If anything went wrong, I had nothing to reveal to the police.

"I expect they are." Herr Klein looked at me over the tops of his round, rimless spectacles and cleared his throat. "What are your questions?"

"I have many," I said and took the jewelry, except the ruby ring, out of my satchel and set it on the table. The onyx looked dull in the light, but the diamonds and rubies flashed. "Can you tell me what these are worth?"

Herr Klein picked up each piece and examined it with his loupe, his hands swift and confident, tilting each piece to and fro to watch the light glint on them. He quickly made two piles. "This pile." He pointed to the pile that had been in the top of the jewelry case, the ones I assumed came from Rudolf: the onyx-and-diamond choker, the onyx-and-diamond bracelet, and the diamond bracelets. "Is all fake, as I told your brother the first time he brought them in."

"Ernst came here with them?" So Rudolf thought he was stealing back his worthless jewelry. Perhaps he was more sentimental than I'd thought.

"Many times." Herr Klein laughed. "He wants me to bring glamour into this room." He gestured at the bare wooden walls. "He says it looks like a poor old peddler's house. Tells me I need to buy a leather club chair, an antique table, and a silver tea service."

"But then everyone walking by outside would know that you have items of value in here. Your tea service if nothing else."

Herr Klein nodded his grizzled head. "That is what I told him, and he said, 'A brave understands the value of camouflage' like someone out of a Karl May book."

I smiled. That sounded like something Anton would say. I was glad to know that he and Ernst had spent time together. "So he asked you to authenticate the pieces?"

"Your brother learned to spot fakes himself, my dear," he said. "We spent time with these pieces, and real ones too, learning how to establish authenticity. They are quite good fakes. And worth some amount of money."

I smiled, surprised and proud of Ernst. He'd known that Rudolf's pieces were fake, and he'd known to identify and hide the real ones.

"These." He pointed to the other pile, the pile Ernst hid. It included pieces from Mother and the pieces with diamonds and rubies. "All real. We can go over the value of each of them, separately."

He pulled out a pad of paper and wrote a brief description of each piece. I fingered the red handkerchief wrapped around the ruby ring.

"Here we are," he said. "Now we can talk about the value of the pieces."

"Before we do that, I have one more thing." I pulled Ernst's ruby ring out of my satchel and placed it on the spotless table with a clunk. "What can you tell me about this ring?"

"Oh, a mystery!" He held the ring where the tails intertwined on the back and examined it with his jeweler's loupe. "I love the unexplained."

"Always glad to be of service." I glanced around the room while he studied the ring. The room was dark, but immaculately clean. Even Ursula would be unable to find dust.

Herr Klein coughed, spitting into a fine linen handkerchief. He took a moment to catch his breath.

"Is this from one of your stories?" he wheezed.

"Perhaps," I answered. "You know I cannot tell you that."

He gazed at the ring in silence for several minutes. Did he know I still stood there? It must be a clever fake, and he wondered at its artifice.

"Hannah," he said. "This ring is priceless."

"It is?" I searched his face for a sign that he jested, but I found only openness and a hint of fear.

"It is Ernst's?"

"I cannot tell you," I said. "How do you know it's priceless?"

"See the color? That deep, rich red is unusually rare. It's called pigeon's blood."

"Can you tell where it came from?"

He turned the golden ring over and over in his hands as if shocked by its authenticity. Light glinted off the snakes' fangs, poised to pump venom into the ruby.

"Rubies of this size and quality are almost unheard of. I've never held one this size in all my life, and I've been cutting precious gems longer than you have been alive." The rumble of automobiles passing by made me suddenly grateful for the thick bars on the windows.

My heartbeat sounded loud in my ears. "Where did it come from?"

"It came from Burma." He smiled grimly. "But I'm sure that doesn't interest you. It's an old stone. See how it's cut? It's called a native cut. They cut them to get the biggest possible stone, without regard for the optic properties."

"Do you know who it belongs to?"

"How could I not?" he asked, pausing dramatically. "This stone is famous. It's called the Burmese Python. The setting was designed with the name in mind."

"The stone has a name?"

"All rubies of this size have a name." He coughed again. "They're profoundly rare. How did you come upon it?"

"I cannot tell you that."

He shook his head. The corners of his eyes tightened into a worried squint. "Hannah, this ring belongs to Count von Heinberg from Bavaria. Have you heard of him?"

"Of course." He was one of the richest men in Germany. Nobility for hundreds of years. His family lived in a fairy-tale castle that had been featured in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung a few months ago. Of course I knew who he was. What did that have to do with Ernst? He did not know the von Heinbergs. As far as I knew, he'd never been to Bavaria. But there was the ring.

"The inscription reads 'To Bootsie, from Ernst, with love.' And there's a tiny swastika next to it. Do you know what that means?"

"No." Was Ernst a Nazi? That I could not believe.

Herr Klein sighed, a wheezy exhalation that I worried would set off another coughing fit. "You are in some kind of trouble, Hannah? Give it back to Ernst. Tell him to hide the ring. Drop it off at the Pergammon Museum. Get rid of it."

"Why? Is it stolen?"