Read Soul Intent for Free Online Page A

determining the f-stop and shutter speed, and revolving the lens mount to the right focus.
    Most of all, Flora loved capturing moments within her photographs. Every time she looked through the view finder and pressed the exposure lever, she felt as if she was stopping time in its tracks and recording a piece of history.
    And the photographs she’d taken! She started with buildings and landscapes. Mr. Morgan suggested she practice taking pictures in both bright sunlight and shadows, and she rambled all around Nuremberg’s bombed-out ruins. Sometimes James came with her, and when he did, sometimes he let her drive the Jeep.
    Flora loved going out in the early mornings, when the golden sun cast long shadows from the wreckage, before the weight of the day crept into the homeless Germans’ faces.
    Her black and white photographs covered the walls of her bedroom in the Soul Identity house. She had pictures of the ruins and the reconstruction, of stray cats and dogs, of fields and trees and soldiers and the homeless. And of children. Lots of children.
    James helped her earn some money by selling framed copies of her photos to the American soldiers and VIPs who came to gawk at the Nazis on trial.
    But with all of her picture-taking practice, she had been unable to capture a photograph of James’s eyes detailed enough for Baba to calculate his soul identity.
    For starters, Baba needed color. The war had destroyed the German photography laboratories, and Kodak only processed color film in the States. It had taken Soul Identity’s best procurement team the entire month to pay for and establish a Kodak branch office in Nuremberg.
    Then, the first ten rolls of the Kodachrome film produced fogged slides. Mr. Morgan found another source, and the images had cleared up.
    Now the problem was the detail. To get close enough for clear eye images, the Six-16 needed a portrait lens, but the first lens arrived with a built-in diffusion filter. Its soft-focus effect left Baba unable to see any iris details. Mr. Morgan scrambled to order a replacement, and it just arrived yesterday.
    She and Mr. Morgan planned to pose as a photographer and reporter so they could get into the Reichsmarschall’s cell. She would have just one chance to capture a clean picture of the Nazi’s eyes, because Goering’s lawyer, Dr. Otto Stahmer, could only request a single meeting for any individual. Dr. Stahmer’s message had come this morning: the Nuremberg Prison Commandant, Colonel Andrus, had approved their application. She and Mr. Morgan would meet Goering at noon tomorrow.
    Based on photographs she had gleaned from various news magazines, she had arranged half of the dining room to resemble Goering’s cell: a small table and chair against a white wall with almost no outside illumination.
    Flora pointed at a chair against the wall. “Sit there and lean back,” she told James.
    He sat.
    She placed the Six-16 on the back of another chair exactly six feet from James’s head. The lighting in Goering’s cell would be poor, and the chair would help her keep the camera steady during the long exposure.
    “Now look into the lens and don’t blink,” she said.
    Flora shot all six pictures in the roll, experimenting with the shutter speed and the f-stops. She rewound the film into the cartridge and placed it in its canister. “Let’s get to the laboratory,” she said.
     
    While they waited for the technicians to develop the film, James took Flora on a walk through Nuremberg’s downtown. The economy had recovered in this district, mostly because of the trials and the money the press and tourists spent. Flora saw construction crews working on almost every building in the square.
    James stood with his hands on his hips in the center of the platz and slowly turned a full circle. “You’d hardly know that over ninety percent of this city was destroyed,” he said. “This old town district is beginning to look pretty spiffy.”
    Flora nodded and they walked on.