Bloch had to get hold of the Minstrel.

But what will he do to get it? You gave him the names of the Peperkamps. He can find them. He can find Juliana.

“Juliana.”

Her name came out as a breath. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? She couldn’t be involved with this mess; she could have nothing to do with the Minstrel. Bloch had no reason to go after her.

Unless he has reason to believe she has the stone. He won’t be satisfied until he’s positive she doesn’t. Until he knows none of the Peperkamp women has the Minstrel, including Juliana.

Ryder inhaled deeply, then slowly swallowed a mouthful of Scotch. He had to hope Bloch would go to the mother and the aunt first and one of them would lead him to the Minstrel.

Besides, what Bloch did or didn’t do was not Sam Ryder’s responsibility.

He poured himself another glass of Scotch and took it to bed.

Eighteen

C atharina set her plastic bucket down hard on the sidewalk in front of her bakeshop. Hot soapy water splashed out onto her sneakers, but she paid no attention. It was early, just after dawn, and cold. She dropped her scrub brush into the bucket and knelt down, her heavy corduroy pants worn at the knee from this very ritual. Every other morning she scrubbed the sidewalk from the door of her shop out to the curb. It was an old Dutch custom. Adrian and Juliana teased her about having the cleanest patch of sidewalk in New York. Twice she’d almost been arrested for her odd activity. Yet Catharina was convinced a clean sidewalk helped business. And even if there was no financial gain to be made from her efforts, New York was never so quiet as it was in early morning. She could think then. Dream. Remember.

But this morning she worked quickly because it was cold and furiously because she was trying so desperately not to think, not to dream, not to remember. Rachel…Senator Ryder…Juliana…Wilhelmina…Johannes. My God, what was happening to her world?

Again…

Despite the cold and the ungodly hour, the man was out there, across the street, watching, not caring that she knew he was there. He was young, dark, and fine-featured, not very tall, and he wore clothes that didn’t make him stand out in the upper-income neighborhood. This morning’s outfit was a pair of heavy corduroy pants and a lambskin jacket. Nevertheless he looked tired and uncomfortable, and she’d thought, madly, of walking over to him and inviting him inside for coffee. But she remembered how young and innocent so many of the Nazis, Dutch as well as German, had looked, and she stopped herself.

Behind her, she heard a soft, distinctive laugh, and she paused, thinking she must have imagined it. It was a laugh of dreams and memories and a girlhood so short, so long ago, that every moment of it was etched in her mind, that much sharper, that much more bittersweet.

Hendrik…

Then the laugh came again, and Catharina tossed the brush into her bucket and rolled back onto her heels. She started to tuck a stray white-blond hair behind her ear but remembered her heavy rubber gloves, her hands warm inside them. Her nose felt cold and red. But as she looked up into the warm blue eyes of Hendrik de Geer, the years fell away. She saw none of his deep wrinkles, none of the scars the years had left, saw only the dashing, brave young man he had once been, at least to her.

“Aren’t you ever afraid?” she asked him.

“Only for you, sweet Catharina,” he’d told her, and she’d believed him.

“You’re amazingly clean,” he said now in English, “even for a Dutchwoman.”

“It’s my mother’s influence.” Her voice was hoarse and unnatural from the tension and an overwhelming sadness, not for the past that had been, but for the past that might have been. She spoke, too, in English. It helped to anchor her in the present. “Mother was always so busy with the Underground Resistance, you remember? I was the youngest, and so I kept house. I wasn’t very good at it, but Mother was an exacting woman and I learned quickly. If she found a loose button on a shirt, she would tear off all the other buttons, too, and I would have to sew them all back on.”

Hendrik laughed again, and this time she could see how his eyes crinkled up at the corners. “She always reminded me of Wilhelmina.”

Wilhelmina and their mother. Yes, they were alike, tough-minded and cynical, unwilling to give anyone the benefit of the doubt but, in their own way, loving. Realists, they called themselves. Perhaps it was so. They had guessed what Hendrik was long before anyone else.

Catharina started to her feet, the spell broken. Hendrik de Geer had never been dashing or brave, and her girlhood was long lost. She stumbled because she was stiff from kneeling and not so young anymore, and because Hendrik was there and hadn’t been in such a long, long time. From the moment she’d spotted him at Lincoln Center, she’d guessed he would come, eventually. Perhaps she’d even wished it.

He grabbed her arm and helped her up, and she stood close to him as the wind gusted down the wide empty avenue. She felt lightheaded and for no reason at all thought of the cinnamon rolls she’d planned to make that morning, an old, comfortable recipe, and wondered if she’d ever get to them.

“What are you doing here?” she asked softly.

He smiled, his hand lingering on her arm. Through her old, heavy fisherman’s sweater, she could feel the imprint of his thick fingers. He’d always been so solid. So strong. Even now, almost seventy, wearing his watch cap and old peacoat, he looked so very handsome and reliable. If only she didn’t know better.

He said, “I wanted to see you.”

“Yes.” She looked away, at nothing. “Rachel…”

“I’m sorry she’s gone.”

“You knew she was after you.”

He nodded, although she’d needed no confirmation. “Rachel wanted vengeance, Catharina.”

“No, Hendrik.” She pulled away from him, and his hand fell awkwardly to his side. “She wanted justice.”

He looked pained. “I did what I had to do in Amsterdam, to save you-”

“To save yourself! I won’t live with that guilt, Hendrik.” But she did, every day.

“They were difficult times, Catharina,” he said as if to a child. “The past is done.”

“The past isn’t over, not for any of us. It never will be, Hendrik.” Her eyes were fierce and unforgiving. “Did you kill Rachel?”

“No!” He seemed so appalled, as if he’d never contemplated such a wrong. “No, Catharina. I couldn’t.”

“Not even to save yourself?” she asked with contempt, but then fatigue crept in-and sorrow. “Oh, Hendrik, just go away. Disappear as you did before.”

He was shaking his head. “I’ve already tried. It’s what my mind tells me I should do, but my heart tells me otherwise. Catharina, the people I’m involved with have found out about the Minstrel’s Rough. They want it, and they’ll stop at nothing to get it. Believe me, my dear, I know these men.” He paused, his eyes as soft as they could ever be in a man who’d lived such a cold, hard life. “Let me take you away until I can satisfy them that the Minstrel doesn’t exist.”

Catharina blinked rapidly, over and over, but the tears flowed anyway, whipped from her eyes by the wind. She tried to brush them away but remembered the gloves and peeled them off, letting them drop onto the sidewalk. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. My God, she thought, will they never stop? It seemed they’d been shaking since Rachel had walked into her bakeshop after forty years.

The Minstrel’s Rough…damn that horrible stone!

“No,” she said at last, in a choked whisper. “You’re not going to save me and let others suffer. I won’t let you!”

“I can save everyone.”

She scoffed, sobbing. “As you did in Amsterdam?”

“Catharina, listen to me. Nothing will happen to you or your daughter-or to Wilhelmina. I promise you.”