“Anna Collier,” she said.
“Most pleased to meet you, fraulein,” Kruger said. He turned and gestured toward the double doors that led into the building. “Please.”
The military officer stationed himself at the door after they passed through it, but Wald accompanied them into the building and up the stairs, always at a discreet distance, so although he was often out of sight, he was always somehow present, like a noise in the woodwork.
The paintings were in a large room; upon entering, Danforth estimated that there were perhaps forty of them. They had been framed tastefully and with obvious professionalism in the sort of frames used by the best museums.
The windows of the hall were high, so exterior light streamed in with crystal clarity. No other source was necessary, and it seemed to Danforth that someone had probably thought this through, the fact that natural scenes, which most of the paintings depicted, should be illuminated by the closest one could get to outdoor light.
“You may walk about at your leisure,” Ernst said. “And, please, take as long as you wish.” He looked at his watch, then nodded to Wald, who now stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
“One has to have time with a painting,” Ernst added with a courtly smile. “One cannot be rushed in such things.”
“Thank you,” Danforth said.
Danforth stepped forward with Anna at his side; she was now thoroughly in her role as special assistant, studying the same painting Danforth studied, saying nothing, as if waiting for him to speak.
He stopped at a small painting of a bridge, its double arches made of stone, unthreatening woods behind it, everything done in the muted colors to which the artist seemed most inclined.
As if to test her, he said, in German, “What do you think of this?”
She peered at the painting for a moment, then said, “Constable.”
Danforth felt a wave of boyish playfulness wash over him. “Any Constable painting in particular?” he asked.
“The Cornfield,” Anna answered with complete authority, as if she hadn’t learned of both the artist and the painting only days before.
Danforth decided to press the issue. “The browns?” he asked.
Anna shook her head. “The peace,” she answered. “The sense that even if things turn out badly later, still, for a moment” — she drew her eyes away from the painting and looked at Danforth — “there was this.”
She said it softly, and it was correct enough as a description of the painting, but in Danforth it produced that romantic shock of recognition when a man knows with all the certainty that life allows that although he might one day love again, it will never be like this.
He knew that she was still looking at him, but he did not turn to her, instead moving on to the next painting, this one very ordinary, a vase of flowers.
She followed him as he progressed along the line of paintings: more buildings, more flowers, more landscapes, each curiously impersonal, as if the painter were determined to strip all feeling from his subjects.
They’d reached the back wall when the great doors swung open and Wald, accompanied this time by four soldiers and a woman in a long wool coat, strode into the room.
“Put your hands up,” Wald ordered in German as he closed in on them. “And turn around. Face the wall.”
A trap, Danforth thought, they had been caught in a trap.
“Do not move,” Wald said.
Danforth obeyed instantly, Anna somewhat more slowly, though Danforth couldn’t tell if her less rapid response was the product of terror, shock, or some aspect of a new role she’d decided to play.
The woman now stepped forward. She took Anna firmly by one shoulder, and with her other hand, she patted down the opposite side; she found nothing, reversed the process, again found nothing, and then stepped back behind Wald.
One of the soldiers then moved forward and did the same to Danforth, with the same result.
“Turn around,” Wald commanded them after the soldier took his place with the others.
Danforth and Anna turned to face him.
“Passports,” he said.
They gave them to him.
“You came by way of France?” Wald asked as he looked at Danforth’s passport.
Danforth nodded.
“Your purpose there?”
“I am an art dealer,” Danforth answered.
“Art?” Wald said. “You are an importer, is that not so?”
“Yes, and art is one of the things I import,” Danforth said coolly.
Wald’s eyes ranged over the paintings that hung on the surrounding walls. “What do you have to say of these paintings?” he asked.
“German naturalism,” Danforth answered. “They remind me of the work of a great American naturalist, William Bliss Baker.”
“What is this painter’s most famous work?” Wald demanded.
“Fallen Monarchs.”
“Fallen kings?” Wald asked as if he’d caught Danforth in a political opinion.
“No, it’s a painting of fallen trees,” Danforth answered. “A very beautiful painting.”
Wald simply stared at Danforth a moment, then turned and left the room with his accompanying entourage.
“Don’t act as if anything has happened,” Danforth told Anna. “Let’s just go on around the room.”
With that, they continued to move along the side of the room, and though Danforth knew she must have been as shaken by Wald’s interrogation as he’d been, she appeared quite calm.
Seconds later, they heard footsteps coming, the hard precision of military boots, but when they turned around, they saw only a few soldiers standing guard as a group of civilians came through the door.
As the group moved forward, its ranks thinned, and suddenly the wall broke entirely, and there he was, coming toward them. His head was turned and he was talking to Ernst, saying something amusing, evidently, because there was a very slight smile on Ernst’s face when he turned to them, a smile that was still there when he made the introductions.
“Herr Danforth,” he said, “it is my honor to present the chancellor of the German Reich and the Führer of the German people.”
Danforth had never heard the word Führer spoken, but what surprised him was how profoundly serious the man seemed, despite the comical Charlie Chaplin mustache. He clearly had little time for this.
“So,” the chancellor said, “what do you think of these paintings?”
There was a brusque quality to his voice, though Danforth heard nothing threatening in it, only the tone of a man who was very busy but who had found the time to drop in on these Americans because he couldn’t help but be curious about what they made of his work.
“I find them quite interesting,” Danforth said, working very hard to keep his voice and manner relaxed, looking for all the world as if he weren’t trembling at the very thought of the man who now faced him. “As I said to Herr Kruger, I think many Americans would find them quite to their liking.”