The Judas Kiss [antikvár]

1Around noon one day in the autumn of 1937, Carly left her bedroom clutching a small purse of petit point, hurrying through the apartment in Vienna's District I. She scooped up her coat and scarf from the chair beside the telephone in the foyer."Carly!"Her mother came after her. "Where are you going?" Carly opened the door. She hated to lie, so she didn't answer. "Wait!" said Helga Siefermann, and then, almost in a whisper, "Your father's birthday."Carlotta Siefermann, whom her mother had named after the Empress of Mexico, Maximilian's queen, had forgotten a present for her father in the past. "What should I get him?" She shoved the purse into her coat pocket."Oh, anything," Helga said. "A book."The sunny day was brisk and windy, raising the tail of Carly's scarf, which lay across her back as she ran down Kruger Strasse to a taxi. "The Dorotheum, please."In the taxi, riding to the huge government pawnshop, Carly took the purse from her coat pocket and opened it. Inside, wrapped in white tissue paper, lay a gold ring, a gift of her Grandmother Melzer. The ring was an heirloom, made for a Valkyrie, but Carly had never worn it."Which entrance?" she asked the driver.Carly had never been in the Dorotheum, had rarely ever passed the enormous building. "The busiest," she said."Dorotheergasse," said the driver.Carly had given herself thirty minutes for the Dorotheum, but she was back on the street in less than fifteen,