The Book of Ghosts Read Online Free PDF

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    Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany, 2009
    At first they assumed Al Qaeda was responsible for the bomb blast because the center of the powerful explosion was just meters away from a subway entrance. It was only the next day, after the rescue teams had pulled the survivors from the ruins of the old building and pieces of the device were collected that it was determined the blast was actually a long time in the making. The five-hundred-pound bomb had likely been dropped from the belly of a B-17 or B-24, been paved over, and laid dormant beneath the sidewalk for more than six decades. When the demolition and cleanup crews came to sort through the rubble, the fuse was lit to another type of dormant bomb. For in the piles of bricks, twisted metal, splintered wood, and plaster dust was a package wrapped in the tatters of concentration camp pajamas. In the report issued after a court-ordered investigation, a tentative link was established between The Book of Ghosts, Bronka Kaczmarek, and Daniel Epstein, who was murdered shortly after Kaczmarek’s own death. During an interview, the lead investigator said he was certain that the destroyed building had contained a flat that had once been rented by Daniel Epstein and Max Baumgarten. His best guess was that the book had been hidden beneath a floor board or behind a closet wall, but he had no way of knowing for certain. What was known for sure was that none of the dozens of people who had rented the flat since had ever stumbled onto the package.
    Manhattan, New York City, 2011
    They had arrived, finally, and so had judgment day. Quinby’s Auction House had someone waiting at the curb to help Jacob Weisen into the building, but the stooped, white-haired man rejected the offer with a curt snap of his head and a grunt.
    â€œZaydeh, please be polite,” Leah chided.
    â€œForgive an old man,” he said, admiring the willowy blonde who had been sent to see to him.
    â€œOf course, Mr. Weisen. Please, if you will follow me.”
    And as the blonde held the door for them, another Quinby’s employee went to park their car.
    This wouldn’t be the first time Jacob would see the package since it was unearthed in Berlin two years ago. No, he had been flown into Berlin to authenticate it and, he supposed, he could have ended his eternal nightmare by telling yet another lie. All he had needed to say was, “It’s a fake. A good one, but a fake.”
    He had planned to say it, meant to say it right up until he said, “That’s the package I put in the ash wagon in 1944.” He was too near death, too accustomed to the chaos he had made of his life, to lie about it now. Besides, like everyone else, he was curious to see what that idiot Isaac Becker had sacrificed his life for all those years ago. He recognized the silhouette of the star immediately and his heart raced at the sight of it. And though it had been sixty-five years since it had been put it in the cart, he swore the thing still smelled like ashes.
    Preservationists, historians, museum curators, religious leaders, and survivors disagreed about how to handle the find. Some argued the package should be carefully opened, with each of the component parts—the garment wrapping, the rubber sheeting, and the book itself—sent to undergo further analysis and preservation. Some argued that to divide the package up would be to destroy its value and historical significance. Still others claimed that to do anything at all to the package would ruin its spiritual nature. But the German government held that the decision was not rightly theirs to make. An intensive search was made to find the closest living blood relative of Isaac Becker. After nearly a year, a second cousin of Becker’s, a Hyman Jablonsky, who, at twelve was sent with his family to Treblinka and survived, was found living in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Although he had never met his cousin Isaac and had never heard the legend