The German Suitcase by Greg Dinallo Page A

echoed with concern.
    “Don’t worry, the war will be over before I ever get there.” Max hugged her, reassuringly, then smiled at a thought. “What about that cabin at the bottom of the gorge? It’s miles from our place; and it’s been abandoned for years.”
    The elder Kleist grimaced. “No. No, that’s still too close for comfort.”
    “Konrad, please,” Gisela Kleist implored. “Just for a short time, until my people can prepare their documents.”
    Her husband winced, then nodded. “All right, but I don’t want to know which room they’re sleeping in,” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I have to preserve some degree of plausible deniability.”
    Max was smiling at his father’s joke when the doorbell rang. Anxious looks darted between them as the sound reverberated through the house. The dog got to its feet, and took up a position in the doorway that led to the corridor.
    The housekeeper was replacing Christmas candles in the small chapel adjacent to the library. The perfectly scaled space with its straight-backed wooden pews and solemn stained glass windows was where Max and his sister Anika were baptized. A crucifixion by Cranach The Elder hung above the altar. A Madonna and child by Michael Pacher, and an Annunciation by Mathias Grunewald hung on the sidewalls. When the doorbell rang, Tovah left the chapel and hurried down the corridor toward the foyer.
    The elder Kleist caught sight of her through the open doors of the library. “One moment, Tovah,” he called out with a glance to his wife. “Are we expecting anyone, Gisela?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Max?”
    “It could be Eva and Jake. Professor Gerhard said he’d bring them here if he could.”
    “You told them to come here?”
    “Of course,” Max replied, angry at being chastised. “For obvious reasons, I’ve avoided inviting them to my home; but today I had no choice. They’re lives are in danger! They’ve nowhere else to go!”
    “What if they’ve been caught?” his father asked, suddenly unnerved. “What if they were caught coming here, and talked?”
    You really think it’s the Gestapo, his wife asked calmly.
    “I’ve no idea,” Konrad replied as the doorbell rang again. “Sometimes they ring. Sometimes they knock. Sometimes they knock the door down.”
    Gisela Kleist nodded resolutely, determining her strategy. If it was Himmler’s henchmen, she would remind them of Germany’s greatness, of its depth of character, of its soulful humanity; she would force them to acknowledge it; and dare them to destroy it. With quiet confidence, she went to the Bechstein, sat on the upholstered bench, and began to play. The room filled with the dream-like Adagio sostenuto of Beethoven’s Sonata #14 in C sharp minor, the Mondschein Sonate.
    Konrad Kleist took a deep breath and went to see who was at the door.
    The German Shepherd followed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Since the mid-1990s when the last wedding reception in the Temple of Dendur was held, private functions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art had been limited to corporate events. A fifty thousand dollar sponsorship entitled a company to one event, annually. Held in the evenings when the museum was closed, they had proved to be an effective fund raising tool. Now, in these difficult financial times, and in recognition of Dr. Epstein’s generosity and longtime service as a trustee, the Museum agreed to make the Temple available for his granddaughter’s reception; and on this sunny Sunday evening in June, the limousines and town cars were depositing guests at the Museum’s rarely used north entrance that afforded them direct access to the Sackler Wing.
    This magnificent extension to the Museum had been designed specifically to house the Temple which would have been lost beneath the rising waters of the Nile River when the Aswan Dam was completed in 1965. Commissioned by the Emperor Augustus the Temple deified two Nubian princes who, ironically, had suffered the same