The Furies

U-BOAT

You couldn't spread it around with high explosives, you couldn't spray it from aircraft, you couldn't disperse it from the Vergeltungswaffen that were now terrorizing London. Nevertheless, you had to make it blanket a city. The project had slipped into crisis, and only an imaginative leap would get it out. It needed a new idea.

Klein excelled as a receiver and transmitter of other people's ideas but, it soon turned out, was incapable of creating one of his own. The director was an acknowledged idiot and kept away from the discussions. It was down to Daniela, Edith, Bosch, and me, pacing the study, wandering the cloisters, riding out singly or in groups, arguing into the night, getting red-eyed and headachy and bad-tempered through lack of sleep.

Sometimes at night, after a long session, we couldn't switch off. We'd disperse, just to get away and think. One or other of us would ride out under the moon, or take a walk around the parapet. Often I wandered around the dark cloisters or the quadrangle. More than once I spotted Oberlin in the shadows, standing quietly. He could be anywhere. The man gave me the creeps. Sometimes, with moonlight throwing colored light on the stone floors, my imagination would see a ghost, and I'd wonder about Sister Lucy. Now and then Daniela played Chopin almost until dawn.

It was Bosch the literature man, the only nonscientist in the group, who came up with the idea. He did it on the fourth day of Hess's deadline. It was hand-waving and amateurish and it bristled with technical problems. I smashed through them like a panzer through a brick wall. We reported to Hess, who announced that the hand of fate was at work, that the Reich could now snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, render our women safe from the Slavic hordes, and reinstate Germania at the pinnacle of civilization for the next thousand years.

Provided, of course, that the damned thing would fit into a submarine.

"Have you people even set eyes on a U-boat hatch? Our eels are only fifty-three centimeters across and they're nightmares to load into our boats. How fat did you say your payload will be? Tell me again, I need a laugh in this job."

I looked out over row after row of U-boat hulls, and despite myself felt a momentary surge of pride. How could the war be lost with armaments like that prowling the seas? They looked like giant fish, or sharks. What terror the sight of one of these sleek, futuristic contours, rising from the deep, must cause to British merchantmen! The hulls were side by side, propped up by scaffolding over which men crawled like ants. Tall derricks dotted the landscape like creatures out of War of the Worlds — one of the books thrown on the bonfire in Unter den Linden, as I recalled. A big rectangle of metal was swinging on a chain, dangerously close to the window. Through a light haze, in the distance, I could make out the shattered outline of Hamburg.

"I told you, well over a meter across. Maybe two." Hess's tone was faintly disapproving: This officer's attitude was verging on the insubordinate.

"You've never been inside a boat, that's for sure. They don't come that wide."

"I would prefer a serious attitude from you, Obersteur-mann Walter. You have no idea what's riding on this."

"I am serious." The provisions officer stroked his beard. "A U-boat just can't take a payload that size."

"It can. Come up with a solution in ten minutes or I'll have you shot."

"That gives me time for coffee," Walter said. "Would you like some? It's real and American."

"American coffee? Where in hell's name did you get American coffee?" I asked.

"Don't ask, your colleague really would have me shot." Walter rummaged around in some shelving under a kitchen sink and came up with three cracked mugs, a bowl of lumpy sugar, and a jam jar half filled with coffee. The sounds of the construction yard were penetrating the big, grimy window, the hiss of bright blue welding arcs interspersed with the clang of hammers on rivets. "Type VIICs," the officer called over, "with the '41 modifications. We shaved twelve tons off them by using lighter equipment, and put that into strengthening the hull. An extra half centimeter of Krupps armaments steel, which lets them go deeper."

"How deep?" Hess asked.

"What are you, an English spy? That's classified."

"But you have our clearance. The aforementioned are to be given every …"

Walter was pouring boiling water into the mugs. "Yes, yes, yes, signed and sealed by Uncle Charles himself." The typed note was in his inside pocket, straight from the Befehlshaber der Kriegsmarine, his signature — Grossadmiral Karl Donitz — scrawled across the bottom of the sheet. "The hull buckles when subjected to a quarter ton of pressure on every square centimeter. That happens at 250 meters. At which depth …" Walter handed over mugs. "Black. American. At which depth men die."

The crush depth. I felt a twinge of claustrophobia. Better not try to imagine it.

Hess asked, "Could you modify the hatch? Make it bigger? These look like wide foredecks to me."

The officer sipped at the aromatic liquid; he gave a deep sigh, as if he had been relieved of a pain. "It's what we in the trade call the Atlantic bow. It has the width but we'd have to remove the Schnorkel and the eighty-eight-millimeter cannon from the foredeck. Meaning the crew couldn't defend themselves in the event of air attack."

"Never mind the gun. What is this Schnorkel?"

Walter joined us at the window. "Look over there. That thick thing sticking up. It pulls air in so the submarine can stay submerged. It was a Dutch invention, but it has problems. If the valve closes suddenly at sea, the diesels keep sucking air out of the boat. After a couple of minutes the crew can't breathe, their eardrums burst, their fillings pop out, and some of them turn purple and die. It's an unpopular device."

"So removing it won't cause too much grief," I suggested. I sipped the American coffee — the aroma, the taste! Oh God.

"Meaning you have to surface for air every night. Straightforward suicide nowadays. And what about the gun? What would removing the eighty-eight do to crew morale?"

"They only need to sail the damned boat."

"And your payload would take up the whole of the forward torpedo room, depriving aforesaid crew of their bunks while you're at it. And it's not just the guns and the bunks," the officer said, warming to the theme. "These boats carry up to fourteen torpedoes, but with your cuckoo in the nest there wouldn't be space for more than the ones stored in the tubes. You'd be sending the submariners out naked."

"But it could be done?" Hess's little eyes were focused keenly on the officer.

"Sending young men into the Atlantic without weapons? Of course it can be done, if that's what you want. And why not?" Walter waved an arm expansively. "Half of them'll be dead within the year anyway."

"Be careful what you say. Defeatist talk …"

"Defeatist? That's not quite the way I see it."

"Oh? And how do you see it, Obersteurmann Walter?" Hess had adopted a tone of exaggerated politeness.

I knew the tone. I interrupted quickly. "We'd want to keep security tight."

"Then you don't want Blohm and Voss." The petty officer nodded in the direction of the yard. "Some of these people are forced labor. They hate us with an intensity you wouldn't believe. God knows what will happen to us if we lose the war."

"Do you need to be reminded that we will not lose the war?"

"What's your point, Obersteurmann?" I asked. The young officer seemed determined on a course of self-destruction.

"The point is that some of these workers almost certainly have contact with enemy agents. I'd advise you to use one of the smaller yards, like Flensburger Schiffau in Denmark. Security is tighter, and you could sail your boat with its magic cargo through the Kiel canal straight into the North Sea. What is this payload anyway?"

"What are you, a spy? That's classified." Hess turned to me, a happy smile making his face almost unrecognizable. "We can transport the cargo, Max. The world belongs to us. Heil Hitler."

"Heil Hitler, and death to all Bolsheviks," I said, and Walter spluttered into his American coffee.

TREASON

January 26, 1945. The Americans and the British four hundred kilometers to the west, pushing through Alsace. The Russians four hundred kilometers to the east, approaching the Austrian border. A giant pincer squeezing, the wonder weapons not yet constructed.

And a treat as rare as a yellow diamond, a night out on the town.

It was our second winter in the convent. Over the year Hess had frequently disappeared, bustling in and out importantly in a six-seater Horsch normally reserved for generals. Bosch, too, was often away on procurement exercises, after which he'd return with black-market luxuries like perfume and silk stockings for the women. Daniela showed special pleasure with every bar of Swiss chocolate the little professor smuggled in. I'd had only two trips away from the convent and its brooding mountains — Natzweiler and Hamburg. Klein, Edith, and Daniela had left the area only once. It was a bitter winter, and I'd tried yet again to have the slave labor transferred to the empty dormitories, and Oberlin had yet again refused, indeed seemed baffled by my concern.

We took the six-seater to Salzburg, Daniela at the wheel, Hess in an expansive mood, his left arm now and then stretching possessively around her shoulder. The big car had a puncture in pouring rain next to a misty lake. We were soaked through and Daniela put the car's heating on full and the inside steamed like a tropical jungle and it was mid-afternoon before Daniela was trickling the big Horsch through the narrow, Baroque streets of Mozart's birthplace.

If there was a war on, Salzburg didn't know it: The city was equidistant between the pincers. We wandered the busy town, soaking up its Italianate atmosphere. We found a restaurant, crowded, hot, and noisy, ordered bacon dumplings and drank a lot of beer. Bosch and Daniela finished off with Salzburger Nockerl, a light, sweet regional soufflé, and argued loudly over the din about the merits of Salzburg versus Viennese cooking.

By mutual consent we went to a local cinema, as if reluctant to return to the convent and the war. We spread ourselves around the smoky, crowded little bug house. I sat wedged between a couple of farmworkers, one of them smelling of manure, the other spreading his fat arms into my space. In the gloom I could just make out Hess and Daniela near the front, over to my left. Hess had his arm around her, and not for the first time I wanted to lower him into a pool of crocodiles. The newsreel showed the defense of the Oder, cheerful young heroes stemming the Russian tide to the sound of gunfire and martial music. I looked around the darkened cinema. There was a curious, almost childish thrill in knowing that half a dozen of us in this little cinema can reverse that tide, can change history, and nobody knows but us.

The movie showed the unlikely adventures of Baron von Munchausen in Agfacolor, another triumph of German technology. A movie about the Baron of Lies, from an industry controlled by Goebbels. In the final shot the baron blew out a candle whose smoke streamed into the word ende, there was a round of patriotic applause, the lights came up, and we all stood for the "Lied der Deutschen."

We were back in the convent, through thickening snow, by midnight. Bosch and Daniela had continued the culinary argument all the way, Viennese sophistication versus Salzburg regionalism. Everyone collapsed into their rooms; everyone but Daniela, who unwound at the piano. Christmas music drifted through the empty cloisters for an hour. I wondered if they could hear it in the laundry, if "Alleluia" and "Stille Nacht" helped them endure the deadly cold.

I don't know what awakened me. The music had stopped. I was thirsty, maybe it was just that. I dressed, opened the door, and sensed rather than saw a figure disappearing silently up the stairs, leading to the dormitories above.

Something about that. Something about the stealth.

I slipped my shoes off and ran silently toward the stairs. I just glimpsed a figure disappearing around the stairwell. I took the steps two at a time, breathing quietly through my mouth. Again, the figure was just disappearing as I looked. It was silent as a ghost, and moving quickly. I followed, stopping cautiously at each turn of the corridor.

A complete circuit of the cloister was possible on the second floor, as it was on the first and ground floors. On the north corridor, the figure had vanished. This was occupied by the empty dormitories. Baffled, I moved along the corridor, torn between haste and stealth.

Halfway along there was a narrow set of stairs, which I'd never explored. I went quietly down these and found myself on the first floor again. The stairs continued down. They opened into the hallway at the entrance to the convent. I wondered if the mysterious figure was sneaking out of the convent, but that didn't make sense. There were guards at the front, and in any case why not just go straight out? Why climb to the top only to go down again? Confused, I stood quietly, trying to see movements among the pillars and tombs.

A slight movement thirty meters to my left. A door, not quite closed. Not the door leading to the remainder of the wing; a small side door. I ran over, opened it quietly, found myself at a back entrance to the kitchen. I peered into the dark corners. Nobody.

Somebody. A faint, metallic clink, like a pot lid being replaced quietly. A figure that had been crouching under the table straightened up and came straight toward me. I backed out, crouching low, ran to a tomb — Edouardo de Clari — and bent down behind it.

She'd passed within two meters of me and hadn't seen me. She was breathing heavily. I couldn't make her out but I recognized the scent. I'd been sniffing Daniela's perfume all day in the car.

And then the dream shifted the way that they do, and I was in my old room on the estate, surrounded by my books. The little stuffed elephant, the hunting pictures, the sailing ship on top of the bookcase — I saw them all in amazing detail, and yet it was dark, only a little light coming in from a moon peering shyly through the window. And in my dream Sister Lucy, her voluptuous, naked body reflecting the moonlight, was sliding between the sheets, and in the instant before it faded I thought it strange that dreams that seem to last for an age can lead inexorably toward some unpredictable waking event like a telephone ringing, a bump in the night, or a woman sliding in between the sheets.

A smooth warm thigh, riding over mine. Then she was on top of me. She was light — that perfume again! — and her hair tickled my nose. She was trembling, thighs straddling me, breasts squeezing against my chest. Her cheeks were moist; she'd been crying. She began kissing me, gently at first.

"Would you like a coffee, Daniela?" She was lying, sheets up to her nose, eyes shiny in the near dark, her hair black against the pillow.

"If you can make it the real stuff."

"I'll ask one of the — no, I can't."

She gave a nervous, deep-throated laugh.

I dressed quickly, slightly embarrassed, and hurried out of the door. Ten minutes later I was back with a tray, coffee, cheese sandwiches.

"We should do this again," Daniela said.

I set the tray down on a chair. She'd been back to her room and was half dressed, wearing a cotton underskirt, stockings but no shoes, and pearl earrings. Her garters were visible through the thin underskirt.

Stockings from Bosch, perfume from Bosch. She was rummaging through papers on my desk.

"What are you doing?" I was pouring coffee.

"Looking at your lab book. You've made a schoolboy mistake here, Max. Average rate isn't the inverse of average time. Hess hates you. He really does."

"How do you know that?"

She came back and sat down on the bed. Her eyelids were red. She didn't answer.

"What have I done to him?"

"Can't you see?"

I shook my head in bewilderment.

"God, you're insensitive. Hess is a failure, and you remind him of that fact every time you open your mouth. Nobody takes him seriously. Everybody knows how he got his directorship at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute."

"I don't."

Daniela laughed quietly. "By wearing a brown shirt. By singing the ‘Horst Wesselied' louder than anyone else. By shouting Zeig Heil to everyone he passed in the corridors. By racial attacks on his professor, thinly disguised as scientific criticism. And when the time came, and the non-Aryan professors were thrown out, he had made all the right friends to let him walk into the directorship. He's a third-rater and he knows it and so did the real scientists, what's left of them at the institute. But you, Max, look at you. You rub shoulders with Nobel Prize winners. You even met Einstein once, didn't you?"

"More than once."

"You treat Hess with contempt, I see it every time you speak to him. That's a dangerous mistake but you don't see it. You think he's a fool but he's not. He has this seething jealousy of you, and he's smart enough to know that you have one big weakness. You're not one of them. You lack conviction, political conviction."

"The devil with that stuff. I'm a loyal German."

"Even that, Max, even that. He's questioning it."

"What exactly is it between you and Hess?" The question came out more harshly, more jealous even, than I had intended.

She shook her head and pulled a cardigan around her shoulders as if she was cold. "It's not something I can tell you about, Max. I'm on a tightrope — don't ask why. I try to keep him at arm's length but I can't afford to antagonize him."

"What does that mean? I can't make sense of a statement like that."

She ignored my question. "Kurt told me about Natzweiler, about the way you reacted. He thought your behavior was treasonable. Edith had to talk him out of having you arrested. It's only the fact that the project is top secret and you're essential to it …"

"What I saw degrades everyone who takes part in it. Sugar?"

She put a finger to my lips. "No. Don't tell me any more. I get the idea. But what can you do?"

"I've seen the effects of our stuff in tiny doses. And we're going to spray cities with it."

"You're confused?"

"No. I'm at war."

"On the wrong side."

Alarm surged through my body; it was a distinct rush of adrenaline. "I didn't hear that, Daniela."

She put her coffee down, stood up to face me. "The gangsters are dragging our country down into hell, Max. They've created their own Götterdämmerung and we're all going down in flames."

"You don't jump ship just because things are going badly. You heard Goering. Our weapons are the big surprise, the things that will turn the tide and win the war for us."

"You mean win it for the Führer and Fat Hermann and the Poisonous Dwarf, and the people who run places like Natzweiler."

I felt self-conscious, ridiculous even, but also angry. "Loyalty to the state is a fundamental duty of every citizen. Always has been. No matter who runs it."

"Is this what you want for Germany?"

"What exactly are you saying?"

"We're talking about the complete moral collapse of our country. We'll be reviled for a hundred years. They're trying to exterminate whole peoples. Wake up, Max." She paused, bit her lip, and then said, "I want us to sabotage this project."

"Is that why you jumped into bed with me?" Treason talk! I was beginning to shake with anger.

She put her head in her hands, started to cry quietly.

"Not even a general's daughter can get off with that. You were joking, otherwise it would be my duty to report you. You'd hang." I rummaged in a drawer and passed her a handkerchief.

"Open your eyes, Max." She blew her nose. "Germany's been hijacked by gangsters. Do you seriously think we should be loyal to gangsters? Obey their laws?"

"How can they be gangsters? They've been recognized by other states as the legitimate government of Germany since before the war started. How can their laws be unlawful?" My heart was pounding. I was furious, not least because she was crystallizing my own half-formed thoughts …

"Keep your voice down." She stamped over to my desk, picked up a sheet of paper, and waved it angrily at me. It was the calibration curve. "This is all legal and authorized, on Reich-headed paper. I saw your face when Hess was showing it. Who is this cross? X equals thirty kilograms, Y equals six minutes. Who weighs thirty kilos, Max? Who weighed thirty kilos and took six minutes to die?"

"A starving child."

"So who comes first on your love list? A starving child or your precious country? Who do you save?"

"I don't know how to answer that. What are you, Satan?"

Daniela stared at me, eyes red and wet. "You bastard! How dare you even think about it! What are you, another gangster like the rest?"

"Daniela …"

She gave me a stinging slap on the cheek, she was out of control. "Something you should know about me, Max. I'm Jewish. Now you can hang me twice over."

OBERLIN

The high-backed chair was empty and I was startled to hear Oberlin's voice behind me. It was as if the man had been hiding behind the door. He was wearing his high-peaked cap and flicking through sheets of paper. "Do sit down, Herr Krafft."

I ignored the instruction. I walked over to a lead-lined window and looked out over the meadow. Some farmer had put cattle out to graze; I'd heard the cowbells the previous night, after Daniela had fallen asleep, drained, in my arms.

The security chief tossed papers onto the desk and began to pace up and down his long room thoughtfully, arms behind his back, as if he were alone. I wondered if this was part of the technique: make you wonder what was coming, make you feel unsettled. Then Oberlin stopped and, legs astride, said: "There's not much going on in this convent that escapes me, Herr Krafft."

"I don't doubt it. I'm sure you have informers."

"I know, for example, that you have been sharing a bed with Daniela Bauer."

"I'd have said that's none of your business, security chief or not."

"There you are very wrong, Krafft. Cigarette?"

"The Order doesn't approve of smoking, Herr Oberlin. Your body is the property of the state and must be kept fit and well. And you don't know everything. Otherwise you would know that I'm not a cigarette man."

Oberlin smiled for about a second, walked over to his desk, and opened a drawer. He lit a cigarette and offered me a small cigar. I took it and accepted a light from the security chief's match. "A Havana cheroot. I'm impressed."

"Confiscated from some little crook in Munich. I have an old school friend in the RSHA office there." Oberlin managed an unpleasant grin. "They let the smuggler have one of his own smokes while the firing squad waited."

I sensed that Oberlin was gathering his thoughts. I puffed on the black-market cigar — oh joy! — and waited.

The security chief sat on the edge of his desk. I felt a tinge of queasiness. It might have been the cigar; the last one had been three Christmases ago — or was it four? I stayed quiet.

Oberlin flicked ash into a tray full of cigarette stubs. "You are a member of the Nazi Party. You joined just before the war."

"Actually, my mother signed me up." It was the literal truth, but I tried to make it sound like a joke.

"I know."

How could Oberlin possibly have known that? Is there anything he doesn't know? "Forgive me, Herr Oberlin, but where is this getting us?"

Oberlin ignored the question. He resumed his pacing up and down the long room, heels clicking on the polished wooden floor. "I have the authority to put anyone in this institute up against a wall. Anyone. The Order has control of all agencies of state and party. However, it grieves me to say that the Waffen-SS sometimes owes only paper allegiance to the Reichsführer. Too many of the officer clique have no political education whatever. All they think of is drink and women. Social standing is still a criterion for promotion."

"What of it?"

"Your background is the Waffen-SS, Krafft. You are a conscript, not a volunteer. I have to consider that background in judging your degree of commitment to the state."

"Does this have something to do with the sabotage attempt, Herr Oberlin? Do you suspect me?" I kept my voice level.

Oberlin blew smoke and looked at me carefully. He didn't answer.

"I'm sure your spies will confirm that I was tucked up in bed on the night of the explosion."

"Something you should know about Daniela Bauer. She is Jewish."

He knows! Bluff it out.

"Don't be ridiculous. Her father's a Waffen-SS general." "But her mother is Helena Rosenberg, born in Vienna in 1905, the second child of Helga and Philip Rosenberg. Helga was a professional singer, Philip was a lawyer. Both Jews. Their daughter Helena Rosenberg — Daniela's mother — is listed in the birth register of Vienna's Jewish community. Helena Rosenberg moved to Frankfurt at age twenty where, I am sorry to say, she received permission from the kaiser to study medicine. She then moved to Berlin, where we believe she met Gustav Bauer. The Jewess ensnared him into marriage."

"You're making this up."

"Helena Rosenberg took on an Aryan identity just before she married."

"How could that be done?"

"She presented herself to a Kripo Identification Office as Gisela Adler, who later turned out to be an old friend from her Vienna days. She declared that she had lost all her papers in a boating accident. Gustav Bauer, at that time a colonel in the Wehrmacht, vouched for her as this Gisela Adler. She was then issued with new papers in that name, and she married in that name. Daniela's mother is a U-boat." Oberlin used the Berlin nickname for a Jew passing himself off as Aryan. "Which makes Daniela herself half Jewish."

"I think I'll have that seat."

Oberlin stood over me. "I know you're now having sexual relations with the Jewess. You will be aware that is strictly forbidden. In particular, as an SS man, even an honorary one, the penalties are severe."

"But I had no idea. Anyway, how can you be sure this is true?"

Oberlin took the cigarette from his mouth and stubbed it out. He coughed, and I felt a fine spray. "So long as Gisela Adler in Vienna was never connected with Gisela Adler in Berlin, there was no problem. But unfortunately for both of them, a connection was made. Helena Rosenberg was recognized in a Berlin street four months ago, by someone from her Viennese past, and heard using her false name. You see, Krafft, you can never be quite sure about anything."

"Has she been arrested?"

"Max," said Oberlin, "the Gestapo aren't stupid. She was followed and her background was investigated. Knowing my colleagues, it would all be done with the utmost discretion and without raising any suspicion. When it was realized that her daughter is engaged in work vital to the outcome of the war, everything was frozen. The matter went right to Hermann Goering. The decision has been made to let Daniela Bauer continue working on this project until it has been completed. We simply cannot afford to lose her."

"You've known this for four months?"

"Correct."

"What about the director? Has he been told?" I couldn't help myself. Get a grip, Max. Don't let this reptile control you.

A hint of a smile. "Why do you wish to know?"

"Just curious."

Oberlin was still smiling unpleasantly. "The director has made advances to Dr. Bauer. She has rejected them, but in a way that keeps him dangling. She pretends an interest in him. And in Bosch."

I'd seen both of them acting like adolescent schoolboys around her, but it was still stunning news. He blew smoke down his nostrils. "Perhaps it is the natural tendency for the Jew to insinuate into positions of influence, perhaps it is for reasons of self-preservation, against the day when her racial origins are discovered. Either way, our director is unaware of her racial background. In my business I sometimes find it convenient to keep information, shall we say, in reserve."

"Has anyone ever told you you're a weasel?"

Oberlin waved a hand dismissively. "You're not required to like me. Few people do."

"Not even your mother?"

"You must be wondering why I'm telling you this."

I stubbed out my cigar. Oberlin continued: "We never did identify the saboteur. But the Jewish roots of Daniela Bauer have made me suspicious — it's my job, you see, to be suspicious. And there is something else."

There was something in Oberlin's expression. I waited. "What's going on in that diseased brain of yours, Oberlin?"

"Once a week some of our kitchen workers are taken to Mittelwald under guard, to buy provisions. Every six weeks or so they go to Munich for the same reason. One of these staff, a Polish woman, was found to be in possession of secret papers. Unfortunately she was shot as she tried to flee, which means we have no means of finding how she acquired the papers, or whom she was intending to hand them to."

Daniela, that night in the kitchen. Leaving something in a cooking pot? Do I tell Oberlin? Does he already know? Is he testing me? I felt a tightness in my chest.

"What were they?"

Oberlin pulled over the drawer and tossed over a handful of papers, stapled together. I shifted an empty coffee cup and flicked through the pages. I looked up, bewildered.

"You recognize them?"

"Of course I do. It's my handwriting. And I drew that — " I pointed to a rough sketch.

Oberlin said, "Can you imagine the damage that could be done if the Americans found out what we're doing? How much information has already gotten out?"

"I don't understand this. Everything gets locked away in the bishop's safes at the end of the day. Every sheet of paper has to be accounted for. You know that." We each had our own safe, and our own key. "Do you think I'm a traitor? That I handed these over to one of the Poles?"

"No traitor would be so conspicuously critical of his superiors. However, there are only two keys to your safe. I have one, and you have the other."

"Which I carry on a chain around my neck, as we all do." I unbuttoned the top of my shirt to display the key, hanging on a steel chain. I have to tell him. My country comes first. I felt a light sweat beginning to develop on my brow.

Oberlin was watching me closely. "Who could remove the key from around your neck? Who but the woman who shares your bed?"

I stayed silent. It was horribly possible. Oberlin continued: "I have arranged for delivery of a new safe for you. From now on the safes will be guarded day and night. The conscripted labor force will be relocated to one of our work camps in the east. Replacements will arrive tomorrow. You will not fraternize with them."

"What do you want from me, Herr Oberlin?"

"I want you to continue your intimacy with the Jewess. Gain her confidence. Make her trust you completely — I doubt if she does as yet. And when she has faith in you, use her trust to find out what game she is playing. Is she, as I believe, passing information to someone else in the convent? How is she doing it? Does she have a contact outside these walls? Be discreet, and give her no hint that she is under suspicion. And whatever you find out, report it to me." The security chief attempted a friendly smile, and I felt my skin crawl. "You see, Krafft, I'm putting a considerable amount of trust in you."

SUMMONS TO BERLIN

Hess flung open Daniela's office door. "We have to be in the Reich Chancellery by noon tomorrow. We report to Goering." He was looking pompous, flustered, and scared all at once.

Bosch paled. "Oh mein Gott!"

I was holding a duster, at a blackboard thick with equations. "It would take at least two days to get there. What idiot asked for that?"

"Watch your tongue, Krafft. It was the Reichsmarschall himself. Speer is sending us his private train. We have to board it in Munich by noon today. I need a progress report for the Reichsmarschall now."

"It can't be done."

"Don't argue with me!" Hess shouted, in near panic. "Type up something now. And where zum Teufel is Daniela?"

"Max! Get a move on!" Bosch was strutting like Mussolini; I thought he'd either caught the atmosphere of hysteria or was trying to impress Hess. The impudent squirt! Two big soft-top cars were waiting, engines purring. Streaks of mud lined the wheel rims, and swastika pennants hung limply on their hoods. A few flakes of snow were drifting down, threatening more.

"Yes, yes!" I shouted in irritation, waiting at the entrance. Daniela appeared at last, turning up the collar of her long gray coat; between collar and fur hat, little more than eyes and nose were visible. We scurried across the courtyard. She joined Hess in the front car, pecking his cheek lightly. Altogether too intimate, Daniela. I climbed into the following car, next to Bosch, slamming the door hard. Bosch said, "You might have dressed a bit smarter, Max. You're meeting Goering, verdammt nochmal."

The cars took off swiftly down the steep winding road, pennants fluttering, a soldier saluting smartly as we passed the sentry box. Four kilometers down the hill, the road forked, left to Mittelwald, right to Munich. The cars turned right.

"This is what the war is about," Bosch declared. We were passing through a fairy-tale Alpine village. The cars swerved out to pass a group of Hitler Youths on bicycles, led by a man wearing a Tyrolean hat. "Can you imagine the Tatar-Mongol hordes let loose on this? Raping our women, murdering our children, pissing in the street? An obscenity! It must never be allowed to happen."

"I put in two years with Panzer Troop Thirty-three in Poland and Kiev. Don't talk to me about raping women and murdering children."

Bosch peered at me closely. "Sometimes I wonder about you, Max. You know what I mean?" He studied the back of the chauffeur's neck. "People are talking about you. People in a position to do you harm."

I stayed silent.

"How long have Daniela and you been intimate?"

"What sort of a damned question is that?" The army driver had glanced briefly in the rear mirror.

"Not one a gentleman should ask, I know, but these are dangerous times." Bosch paused. "All I can do is give you some advice. Drop her, Max. Drop her now, drop her absolutely. She's more dangerous than you know."

I lapsed into a sullen silence.

The station reeked of sulfur, and it was crowded with farmers and their wives, office workers, a cluster of sleek girls with bright red lipstick, a scattering of rootless itinerants. One of them, a small, gray-skinned man with fear in his face, was being questioned by railway police. And every type of uniform seemed to be in transit: green-trimmed polizei, black-uniformed SS men, another troop of Hitler Youths, a few disheveled, bearded U-boat men in single file like hunting dogs — here in Munich?

We arrived in Berlin three hours behind schedule, a slippage that propelled Hess into something like paranoia. He ran on to the station road and leapt around frantically, waving his arms and bringing traffic to a halt. We jumped into a black Mercedes and an ambulance — both empty apart from their drivers — and crossed the city at crazy speed to the Reichsmarschall's Air Ministry on the Willemstrasse.

"The Reichsmarschall expected you over three hours ago. He has left for Karinhall. He prefers to be out of Berlin before the Luftgangsters arrive. However, he expects you there this evening as his guests, eight o'clock sharp." The desk lieutenant glanced at Daniela's woolen scarf, my London jacket, Edith's ridiculous out-of-fashion hat. "Dress informal, fortunately. I'd advise you to leave soon. If you get caught in a raid, you won't get there at all."

The commandeered vehicles headed for Schonow, north of the city, where the Reich Minister's personal transport would collect us. The idiot driving the Mercedes managed to get lost in a maze of rubble-strewn streets. I could see Hess up front bawling hysterically at the man. Acrid smoke was drifting in, adding to the stale cigarette smell. I looked across at a three-story building, its side cleanly removed, making it look like a giant doll's house, exposing rooms on three floors, furniture in place, carpets hanging half out, a bath dangling by its plumbing like a man holding on by his fingertips. The driver finally connected with the Westhafen Canal and sped over it heading north, still at a lunatic speed, while we tried to keep up; no doubt he was urged on by Hess, no doubt he was equally desperate to clear the city before dark, away from the vampires that were surely now winging their way out of England.

It was almost dark by the time the little motorcade swept into the forest, flanked by motorcyclists, a bike with sidecar and mounted machine gun taking up the rear. Beside me, Bosch had lapsed into an awed silence.

Then the escort stopped at a tall gate bristling with Lufftwaffe: I recognized the Goering Regiment, the Reichsmarschall's private police force. Soldiers with torches waved us on. The forest air was damp and icy. A motorcyclist led us toward a huge, ugly building, a bizarre mixture of English thatched roofs and Taj Mahal without the grace.

We crunched along a gravel path past sundials, Cupids, Roman busts, and vases taller than men, just visible in outline between shrubs. Then into a warm atrium lined with amazing works of art, no doubt contraband from the great galleries of Europe — Goering had a personal looting unit. "Stay here, please," a bespectacled Lufftwaffe captain said; apart from the close-cropped hair, he had the bearing and appearance of a schoolteacher. We stood, nervous schoolboys awaiting the summons from the headmaster.

Hess sidled up to me. He spoke in a low, almost whispering tone, icy and nervous both at once. "You won't be making any stupid comments, will you, Max? You're here as a technical expert and nothing else. So halt das Maul on any other issue."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do. You will make no mention of any unpleasantness you may have seen, and you will say nothing about any misgivings you may have about our work. Have I made myself clear?"

The adjutant reappeared. "This way, gentlemen." We followed him. The corridor was ridiculously long and lined with paintings, at least one of which — Venus by Lucas Cranach — I'd last seen in Paris, prewar. My legs were shaking. Daniela, the Jewess summoned to meet Goering, was looking pale. Then we were into a great room lined with more paintings, with bronze nudes in each corner, a wall entirely lined with some medieval tapestry, and a long table set with food, candles burning and champagne in silver ice buckets.

We had entered the black heart of the Third Reich.

SUPPER WITH THE FAT ONE

You met Hermann Goering? You actually met him? That chasm again; the girl looking at me as if I come from Mars. To her, Goering is a figure from history as remote as Jesus Christ or Genghis Khan, or something out of a storybook. What was he like? the young man asks. I'm on my second pipe and my room has a light blue haze. Old men are entitled to their vices, and my little audience doesn't seem to mind. He was popular with the soldiers, I say, he was der Dicke to them. They sense something in my voice, and I add, But he terrified the life out of us. Yes, all of us: but especially our director. A safe seventy years after that night, I can smile at the memory. What was Goering like?

Creator of the Gestapo. Head of the Luftwaffe. Deputy head of the Third Reich and designated successor to Adolf Hitler. Cocaine addict.

Art lover; war hero; conservationist; faithful husband.

The man with power of life and death over two hundred million people had cheeks lightly tinged with rouge, and I thought he might be wearing lipstick. Certainly his nails were varnished. His stubby fingers were bedecked with rings. The pupils of his eyes were dilated. He was wearing a silver-gray uniform. It shimmered slightly with every movement, and had broad gold-braided epaulets, but it didn't conceal the wodges of fat underneath. The Grand Cross of the Iron Cross was at his neck — the only such decoration in existence, since Hermann Goering had created it simply for himself. He was lounging back in an armchair close to an open fire, face beaded with perspiration.

Apart from Goering and the convent visitors, there were four men in the enormous room. Three of them were officers; the fourth was wearing a suit and was looking at the visitors through cigarette smoke with narrowed eyes. Gestapo.

On the armchair across from Goering, sitting uncomfortably upright, was a man in the uniform of an SA general. The other two officers were standing at the table, heaping plates with food and cheese.

Goering heaved himself out of the armchair and approached his new guests. "Hess, you finally arrived."

"We had transport problems …"

Goering waved a hand. "Introduce your staff, please."

"This is Dr. Daniela Bauer. She's a mathematician." Goering nodded politely but didn't offer his hand.

"Dr. Edith Zimmerman, our microbiologist. Professor Bartholomew Bosch …" Bosch smiled nervously.

"Yes, I remember you, Bosch. You were a first-class procurement officer. I recommended you for the team. Has he done you all right?"

"Splendidly, Your Excellency. Here we have Dr. Max von Krafft, our engineer, and this is Dr. Otto Klein, a chemist from Farben."

Goering gave a little bow. A ringed hand pointed to the officers. "General Heinrici, Standartenführer Kammler, Colonel Heber. And Herr Hohne." This latter the Gestapo man.

His Excellency now waved his hand over the buffet. "Help yourself to nibbles. We should not stand on ceremony here. I will be most interested to learn of your progress. More than interested."

My last meal in Kharkov had been horse meat. Goering picked up a biscuit with a slab of meat and spread some chutney on it. It was the signal to cluster around the table.

"Reindeer's tongue." Goering smiled at Daniela's puzzlement.

Daniela nibbled a piece and said, "My first taste of it. And it's very good, Reichsmarschall."

"I am glad you like it. I shot her this morning. She was a difficult target, young and agile. And quite beautiful."

What does he mean? She returned his smile and swallowed the reindeer tongue with every sign of enjoying it.

Hess was pouring champagne for himself, Edith, Klein, and Bosch. There was no communication with the army officers. The Gestapo man stood alone.

"The salmon is very fresh," Goering told me. "I fly it in from the lakes around Helsinki." And the caviar? That puzzled me: Manstein's Army Group South had lost their toe-hold in the Black Sea around Odessa. But to inquire would have been tactless, if not disastrous.

One of the servants approached Goering. "They're coming in from the north, Excellency. Forty minutes."

Goering announced, "Bombers are on the way in. They'll pass overhead. But we have time." He snapped his fingers.

The pastry chef, a small, bearded man, came in carrying a silver tray. On it was an elaborate white cake decorated with meringue piping swirls and pink rosettes, topped with flowers made from sugar. "I stole him from Demel's in Vienna," Goering explained. "And this is his creation, Spanische Windtorte, surely the high point of Aryan civilization, Lebensart in the Viennese style." The Reichsmarschall had two helpings washed down with half a bottle of a sweet, golden Heuriger made, he informed us, from grapes grown on the vineyards of the Burgenland. Hess, having finished the champagne, thought he'd have a go at that.

As the buffet progressed I found it impossible to relax, but next to me, Daniela was keeping up an easy flow of chat with Goering.

At last, aides, thugs with close-cropped hair dressed in eighteenth-century Hanoverian livery, were removing the gold plates and the candlesticks, and cigarettes and cigars were being passed around. It seemed the Order's disapproval of smoking and sybaritic luxury stopped outside Karinhall. Goering adopted the air of a man settling down to business. He snapped his fingers again. The thugs scurried up with high-backed chairs bearing the PRussian crest, spread them in a semicircle around the fire as if by prior instruction, and then vanished. I reckoned we had about twenty minutes before the Lancasters. How useful that the leadership got that sort of advance warning. I'd heard that Himmler, Goebbels, and the like scarpered to surrounding villages whenever the RAF was due to appear.

Goering took a sip at the glass of wine. "Our soldiers are the best in the world. Does anyone disagree?"

Nobody was about to disagree with the Reichsmarschall; there was a murmur of assent round the fireplace. I nodded and meant it. Bosch was leaning back and smoking a cigarette that smelled of real tobacco, a beatific expression on his face. The fool.

"But they are being overwhelmed by sheer numbers and firepower. Germany is like a man in a room whose walls are closing in. Between the Bolshevik hordes on the one side and vast quantities of American weaponry on the other, we are being crushed." The Reichsmarschall's pudgy hands closed together like a man crushing a skull. "Defeatists might even say that without some new wonder weapon, the war is lost."

The words came as a shock. Goebbels's broadcasts never mentioned the possibility of defeat. Struggle yes, but not defeat. Goebbels, of course, was full of scheisse.

"If this happens to be true" — Goering's eyes ranged over his supper guests — "then responsibility for the future of the Third Reich, and hence of the Aryan race, rests on your shoulders."

Grandiose stuff. I caught Kammler glancing at my sports jacket. You might have dressed a bit smarter, Max.

Goering paused for a few seconds, letting his words sink in. Then, in a tone that carried the lightest touch of menace: "You have been excused military service. You have been given freedom to develop your ideas without outside interference. You have been given every facility and enjoyed every comfort while your brothers and sisters have toiled and many of them have bled to death. It is now time for you to return the favor. Standartenführer Hess. What have your people done?"

Hess was sitting as if he had a rod thrust up through his alimentary canal, gripping his wineglass in a clenched fist. He had adopted a deferential tone that I'd never before heard him use. "I have directed my group into two areas of research. One is the use of poison gas of a new type, the other is the dispersal of anthrax spores."

Goering leaned forward. "This new poison gas. Explain."

"I'm referring to the new gas invented by Dr. Gerhard Schrader of IG Farben. He has called it sarin after himself and his colleagues — Schrader, Ambros, Rudriger, and Linde. It is colorless and odorless. It acts not simply through inhalation, but by penetrating the skin. The first samples were prepared not far from here, in Spandau, while our army was liberating the former Poland."

The Reichsmarschall shook his head impatiently. "I am not interested in the history. I want to know what you have done with this gas. What you have devised."

Hess took a nervous sip. "We have designed a bomb that could wipe out a city."

Goering's expression didn't change. One of the officers, Kammler, said, "It took over a thousand enemy bombers to destroy Hamburg. And you say you can do it with a single bomb?"

"My colleague knows the technical details." Hess gave me a frightened look.

What a coward! I stood up, took a single sheet of paper from my inside pocket, unfolded it, and carried it across to the Reichsmarschall. It was a sketch of the weapon I'd drawn up that morning. To call it a report was to stretch the language to breaking point.

"What is this?" Goering asked. "A spinning top?"

"It is, Excellency. A spinning top that flies."

"And that can destroy a city?"

"Correct. We know that a cubic meter of the sarin gas, properly dispersed, could destroy all human life in, say, central London or Washington. The problem is dispersal. If we used high explosive to disperse the compound, we would simply destroy it. The same problem applies to anthrax spores — they're just killed close to an explosion. That was our big problem. To disperse without destroying."

"And your spinning top solves this problem?" The faces across from me were intense, hard, grim; their personal survival and that of the Reich were inextricably intertwined with that of the strange new device I had sketched.

"It does. Instead of one massive explosion, we use three stages of gentle acceleration. This keeps the organisms, or the chemical, intact. These things" — I indicated with my finger — "are horizontal rockets underneath the top, which will spin it up when they're fired. And these are flanges along the side, angled so that they push air downward when the top spins, forcing it to rise."

Kammler interrupted. "You have an ordnance background, ja? My devices are terrorizing London at this moment. But they required a huge labor force, a significant proportion of the wealth of the Reich, and a great deal of time to develop."

Hess muscled in, keen to collect the kudos: "But we're not into industrial production. We just need a handful of these weapons. And it doesn't have to travel three hundred kilometers to London. We only need it to rise a few hundred meters into the air, and drift for a few kilometers. Which means we can use simple technology. It also allows us to put the bulk of the weight into payload, not propulsion fuel as with your rockets." He snatched a glance at me. I gave a tiny, reassuring nod: You got it right, Director.

Goering's face was lined with concentration. Apart from the crackling of logs in the fire, the enormous room was as silent as death. Then: "Continue. The air pirates are still ten minutes away."

I took up the story. My mouth was dry. "Once the spinning top — I call it a flying volcano — is up, and spinning at huge speed, stage two kicks in: It shoots out hundreds of little canisters — I call them eggs — over a minute or so. These things that look like portholes are the exit points for the canisters. The spinning top glides erratically while it's doing so, and can cover several kilometers with very little further fuel expenditure."

"So you have canisters — eggs — up in the sky, covering some area?"

Hess again, anxious to appear the big man. "Correct, Excellency. Stage three happens when the eggs themselves disrupt. It's much like a big firework rocket. These eggs contain the microorganisms or the poison. They're made of thin aluminum and disrupt with a tiny quantity of detonator, which doesn't affect the gas or the pathogens. The wind does the rest. If the device is upwind from the target, in a moderate breeze, we could blanket a strip about ten kilometers long and five wide with a lethal dose of sarin gas."

Goering asked, "How do you propose to transport this bomb? In a Junker?"

I said, "It wouldn't make a practical aerial weapon. We suggest that these devices be smuggled into enemy cities. If you could smuggle one into the suburbs of London, say by way of a U-boat on a quiet coastline, you could wait until the meteorological conditions were right and then detonate it. A ten-by-five-kilometer strip would take out the whole of central London."

Heinrici said, "A devastating victory, but perhaps not the same as winning the war."

"But why stop at London?" Edith asked. Her silly hat was at her feet. Her nose and cheeks were red as if alcohol didn't agree with her.

Goering's ring-encrusted fingers were strumming on a fat thigh. "Destroying London, New York, and Washington … that and the threat of more to come. That would force a truce and give us time to rearm. We could then launch hundreds of these weapons. We could turn whole countries into waste-lands."

Heinrici, the SA general, was looking skeptical. "But you need to deliver and conceal the weapon, and that means clandestine activity on enemy-held territory. Suppose something went wrong? Suppose one was captured by the enemy? It could be turned against us."

Hess, a light sweat on his brow, shot the general a look of pure hatred. "Firing codes. We can arrange it so that if the wrong code is put in, the weapon self-destructs." The idea was Daniela's.

"Excellent! This is the most exciting news I have heard in a long time." Goering looked at Hess, beaming. "How many of these flying volcanoes have you built?"

Hess grew pale. "Ah, none. None just yet, Excellency. We're still at the design stage."

The silence went on for about fifteen seconds, while Goering's lips moved soundlessly, his face growing red and contorted with rage.

Hess had taken to grinning like an imbecile. "Dr. von Krafft unfortunately cost us a great deal of time. His early apparatus was faulty and exploded. Also he tells me he will have great difficulty handling sarin and anthrax. I believe …"

"Difficulty? Did I hear you use the word difficulty? Sit where I am and you'll find out what the word means, colonel Hess." The Reichsmarschall was shouting. "We're talking about survival. Survival!"

The silence that followed was unbearable. Kammler broke it: "How long would it take you to make, say, half a dozen such weapons?"

"Twelve months."

You liar, Hess. At least two years. Bosch and I exchanged glances.

"Useless!" Goering hurled his wineglass into the fireplace, the crystal shattering into tiny shards. The sudden violence shocked us into stillness. "Are you a complete idiot? In a year the war will be over and we'll have lost."

"Not a good idea to lose the war," said Hess, with a terrified grin. Heuriger from the vineyards of Burgenland spilled on his lap, making it look as if he'd wet himself. He looked as if he might faint.

The Gestapo man stood up, approached Goering, and whispered in his ear. Goering nodded and fixed a stare on the director. Hohne asked, "How many men are working on this project?"

"Eighty-three. About ten scientists, fifty technicians, five administrative staff, and the same number of security staff. In addition, we're guarded by a detachment of Volkssturm, about thirty men, along with some flak crews and anti-aircraft guns."

"But the key people are the scientists?"

It seemed impossible, but Hess's terrified grin intensified. "The key people are the six of us here, Herr Hohne."

The Gestapo man was playing with a small unlit cigarette. "Other scientists in Germany could do the same job?"

"They would be hard to find. Take von Krafft here. How many people have expertise in both weapons engineering and ballistics?"

"But you are still replaceable," the Gestapo man insisted. His small, dark eyes were fixed keenly on Hess.

Jesus Christ. What's coming? At the other end of the semicircle from me, Bosch had grown pale.

The more Hess gave his terrified smile, the more he looked like an imbecile. "Perhaps, given time."

Hohne leaned toward Goering again, resumed the whispering. Goering kept nodding. From time to time he glanced at Hess. Those shark's eyes. A shark addicted to cocaine, its behavior impossible to predict.

I thought, If Hess goes down, he'll take the rest of us down with him. Bosch again, across from me, his face showing unbearable tension. Thinking the same thought.

Now Goering was saying, in a terrifyingly calm voice, "No Vienna waltzes, no runarounds. Just the truth. Are you in a position to develop at least four of these spinning tops, each capable of destroying a city and capable of fitting into a U-boat? And to have them ready for use within four months?"

"Four months!"

Don't argue, Hess. Don't plead for more time, don't make excuses. But he'd have had to be made of stone to miss the vibrations. "Absolutely, Excellency. We can certainly do that."

Kammler, the V2 man: "What about you, von Krafft? You're the engineer. What do you think?"

A poisonous question. Yes was an appalling lie, No was the back of a truck heading for a concentration camp. Next to me I sensed Daniela freezing up. Edith was looking down at her hat in a fixed way. Bosch and Klein, terrified of being asked the question, had taken to staring into the fire, as if distancing themselves from the scene. The soldiers were watching me closely; grim, analytical, hard as nails. Not easy men to fool.

"We can do it. No Vienna waltzes." If you're going to lie, make it big.

Goering's ice melted. The transformation was amazing. "Splendid. Do it, and you will all live as honored citizens in the victorious Reich. Fail, and you will be shot."

"I met your father," Goering said. "He fought with distinction on the northwest sector, repulsing the Bolsheviks around the Neva. He has a good reputation as a soldier."

"He's also a very good father, Reichsmarschall."

"And which is more important, my dear? To be a good father or a good soldier?"

The bastard's toying with her, I thought. But Daniela was answering smoothly, a lighthearted smile on her face. "A National Socialist father protects both family and country, Reichsmarschall. Since the two are intertwined, your question is meaningless."

Goering slapped a fat thigh, laughing. "Would you listen to her, Heinrici!"

The drone was now overhead. They had come in huge numbers; their roar dominated everything in the room, reducing it to insignificance. Goering stood up, his face grim with the overhead passage of his Nemesis. "You cannot return to Berlin tonight. You will stay here as my guests. But before you are shown to your rooms, there's something I would like you to see. Come quickly, and bring your wine." Goering crooked his arm invitingly at Daniela and forced a smile.

Daniela took it. "You're too kind, Reichsmarschall."

"No, I'm too old." She managed a half laugh. Then Goering led her out of the room, along a corridor, and into a big elevator. The rest of us, not knowing what to expect, followed.

The room was at the top of the lodge, and it was dark, and Goering was now wheezing. Servants opened the shutters. Goering and Daniela shared a window, and I found myself momentarily squeezed up against the Gestapo man. My flesh crept.

Now the distant whump-whump-whump of the bombs began to reach us, almost merging into a steady thunder, over-lain with the crackling of the AA guns. Searchlights were probing the sky, and light cloud was reflecting white parachute flares and crimson flames. Suddenly a number of searchlight beams congregated to a point, predators homing in on a prey. Moments later little parabolae of white light rose lazily from the ground, fireflies converging to the spot defined by the searchlights. The darkness in the room began to be broken by flashes of light as if flashbulbs were going off.

"They're going for the administrative center," Heinrici said.

"God, not the Tiergarten." I had never seen such a demonstration of raw power; it was awesome. What chance did we have against that? I wondered why Goering wanted us to see it.

"I hope they don't get the Opera House," Goering said. "I heard Bruckner's Romantic Symphony there last year. What a wonderful final movement! Do you like music, my dear?"

There was a giggle in the dark. "I used to like American jazz, Reichsmarschall, before they called it degenerate."

You're pushing your luck, Daniela! But there was only a harsh laugh, and the distant sound of war.

Orange flickering lights were beginning to play along the horizon. So far as I could make out, central Berlin was turning into a sea of smoky, red and yellow flames. I watched, hypnotized. How long the raid went on I didn't know; maybe half an hour. But then the steady whump of the bombs and the crackle of the flak guns stopped, and the droning died away, and there was only the red horizon, illuminating the tops of the fir trees below us, giving them a Christmasy look, and then the distant all-clear wail of the sirens.

Daniela came to me in the early hours of the morning. The big room was suffused with a dull red light; the embers of Berlin were still glowing. She didn't speak a word, and there was no sex. She just lay in my arms. Eventually her breathing became regular, and she seemed to be asleep. The perfume she had sprinkled on for the visit was still lingering faintly.

I stared at the decorative plasterwork squares in the ceiling, trying to make out the pictures inside them. I had never slept in such a big room, it was gargantuan. Everything about this place was gargantuan. The Reichsmarschall was gargantuan; likewise his grotesque palace, and the scale of the art he had looted from Russia and Europe. Even the destruction of Berlin was a huge Götterdämmerung they had brought on themselves. My Berlin, what have they done to it?

And the hidden crimes: Were they gargantuan, too? How likely was it that Natzweiler stood alone, a solitary island of depravity in a sea of civilization? And if the Gypsy boy — what was his name, Bleeker? — hadn't borne such a startling resemblance to Little Bruv, would I be thinking this way?

Gangsters? Lunatics, running the asylum. I drifted into an uneasy sleep.

"Goering knows I'm Jewish."

"Daniela …"

"I can't explain it. Subtleties in the voice, in the way he looked at me."

"Daniela, Oberlin knows. He asked me to spy on you."

She lay quietly for some moments, assimilating this. Then: "They'll be after my parents, I must try to warn them. Me, Max, I'm finished, just as soon as I've done the work. I won't survive the war."