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radio station in New York,” but Willinger was pretty sure that wasn’t true. “Pretending to be someone else was totally his character.”
    However, Christian had apparently been experimenting with the idea of escape for some time. In order to get a taste of the world beyond Bergen, he would simply walk down the street in front of his family home to the nearby autobahn and stick out his thumb. Within minutes, a car, truck, or motorcycle would stop, and just like that, he’d be off to another town, another world, away from little Bergen. At first he would hitch his way to larger neighboring villages such as Traunstein, or to the city of Rosenheim, where he attended classes. His range grew along with his ambitions, and he became a regular presence on the autobahn, looking for anyone or anything that might help him escape. It was there that Elmer and Jean Kelln, the tourists from Loma Linda, California, drove into his orbit.
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    It was a torrential downpour, so much rain that the windshield wipers of the tiny rental car couldn’t keep up. Elmer and Jean could barely make out the autobahn through the blinding storm. They were trying to make their way from Munich to Berchtesgaden to visit the Eagle’s Nest, Adolf Hitler’s majestic country home high in the Bavarian Alps. At around 5 p.m., the Kellns exited the highway near Bergen, looking for shelter.
    Elmer was driving, and he spotted a young man on the shoulder with his thumb in the air. He wouldn’t normally pick up a hitchhiker, but he had never been stuck in Germany in a blinding thunderstorm before. “Maybe he can tell us where we can spend the night,” Elmer said to his wife. Before she could voice an objection, he pulled over and stopped the car. The drenched young man flung open the back door and climbed inside.
    He couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He was wearing white sunglasses, tight jeans, and a floppy hat, from beneath which spilled a mass of stringy brown hair. His clothing had been plastered to his thin frame by the rain.
    â€œI’m Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter,” he said, extending a damp hand from the backseat, and the way he said the name, the couple felt, he was somebody . From the moment they met him they were impressed.
    Jean was struck by how handsome he was. He had a long aquiline nose and full lips that broke into a wide grin when he began speaking, which he did practically nonstop. He said he worked as a tour guide for English-speaking visitors in Rosenheim and sometimes in Munich, and his flawless English gave the Kellns little reason to doubt him. Now he was heading home to Bergen, just a few miles down the road.
    He wasn’t just charming, he was alluring. Although he was a foreigner decades younger than they were, Elmer and Jean Kelln somehow felt that they had something in common with him and wanted to get to know the young man better. “Where would you suggest we spend the night?” asked Elmer.
    â€œYou will stay at my house,” Christian said. The Kellns were hesitant, but he insisted. In any other circumstances they would have demurred, but the rain was unrelenting, darkness was descending, and something about the young man was practically magnetic. So they accepted.
    The Kellns were charmed when they pulled up in front of his family home: an adorable, typically Bavarian house with geraniums in flower boxes outside the windows. By then the rain had subsided. The hitchhiker’s father was working on the roof and his mother was in the kitchen. Christian said little more than hello to them as he escorted the Americans inside. It was immediately clear that the son was the man of the house.
    Jean marveled at how he had taken over the entire living room and turned it into his room, apparently with the blessing, or at least the acquiescence, of his parents. He had set up a large desk as his workstation and hooked up all manner of machinery—most important, a film