Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

8

1941 (I)

On a cold winter Sunday, Carla von Ulrich went with the maid, Ada, to visit Ada’s son, Kurt, at the Wannsee Children’s Nursing Home, by the lake on the western outskirts of Berlin. It took an hour to get there on the train. Carla made a habit of wearing her nurse’s uniform on these visits, because the staff at the home talked more frankly about Kurt to a fellow professional.

In summer the lakeside would be crowded with families and children playing on the beach and paddling in the shallows, but today there were just a few walkers, well wrapped up against the chill, and one hardy swimmer with an anxious wife waiting at the waterside.

The home, which specialized in caring for severely handicapped children, was a once-grand house whose elegant reception rooms had been subdivided and painted pale green and furnished with hospital beds and cots.

Kurt was now eight years old. He could walk and feed himself about as well as a two-year-old, but he could not talk and still wore diapers. He had shown no sign of improvement for years. However, there was no doubt of his joy at seeing Ada. He beamed with happiness, burbled excitedly, and held out his arms to be picked up and hugged and kissed.

He recognized Carla, too. Whenever she saw him she remembered the frightening drama of his birth, when she had delivered him while her brother Erik ran to fetch Dr Rothmann.

They played with him for an hour or so. He liked toy trains and cars, and books with highly coloured pictures. Then the time for his afternoon nap drew near, and Ada sang to him until he went to sleep.

On their way out a nurse spoke to Ada. ‘Frau Hempel, please come with me to the office of Herr Professor Doctor Willrich. He would like to speak to you.’

Willrich was Director of the home. Carla had never met him and she was not sure Ada had either.

Ada said nervously: ‘Is there some problem?’

The nurse said: ‘I’m sure the Director just wants to talk to you about Kurt’s progress.’

Ada said: ‘Fräulein von Ulrich will come with me.’

The nurse did not like that idea. ‘Professor Willrich asked only for you.’

But Ada could be stubborn when necessary. ‘Fräulein von Ulrich will come with me,’ she repeated firmly.

The nurse shrugged and said curtly: ‘Follow me.’

They were shown into a pleasant office. This room had not been subdivided. A coal fire burned in the grate, and a bay window gave a view of the Wannsee lake. Someone was sailing, Carla saw, slicing through the wavelets before a stiff breeze. Willrich sat behind a leather-topped desk. He had a jar of tobacco and a rack of different-shaped pipes. He was about fifty, tall and heavily built. All his features seemed large: big nose, square jaw, huge ears, and a domed bald head. He looked at Ada and said: ‘Frau Hempel, I presume?’ Ada nodded. Willrich turned to Carla. ‘And you are Fräulein . . . ?’

‘Carla von Ulrich, Professor. I’m Kurt’s godmother.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘A little young to be a godmother, surely?’

Ada said indignantly: ‘She delivered Kurt! She was only eleven, but she was better than the doctor, because he wasn’t there!’

Willrich ignored that. Still looking at Carla, he said disdainfully: ‘And hoping to become a nurse, I see.’

Carla wore a beginner’s uniform, but she considered herself to be more than just hopeful. ‘I am a trainee nurse,’ she said. She did not like Willrich.

‘Please sit.’ He opened a thin file. ‘Kurt is eight years old, but has reached the developmental stage of only two years.’

He paused. Neither woman said anything.

‘This is unsatisfactory,’ he said.

Ada looked at Carla. Carla did not know what he was getting at, and indicated as much with a shrug.

‘There is a new treatment available for cases of this type. However, it will necessitate moving Kurt to another hospital.’ Willrich closed the file. He looked at Ada and, for the first time, he smiled. ‘I’m sure you would like Kurt to undergo a therapy that might improve his condition.’

Carla did not like his smile: it seemed creepy. She said: ‘Could you tell us more about the treatment, Professor?’

‘I’m afraid it would be beyond your understanding,’ he said. ‘Even though you are a trainee nurse.’

Carla was not going to let him get away with that. ‘I’m sure Frau Hempel would like to know whether it would involve surgery, or drugs, or electricity, for example.’

‘Drugs,’ he said with evident reluctance.

Ada said: ‘Where would he have to go?’

‘The hospital is in Akelberg, in Bavaria.’

Ada’s geography was weak, and Carla knew she had no sense of how far that was. ‘It’s two hundred miles,’ she said.

‘Oh, no!’ said Ada. ‘How would I visit him?’

‘By train,’ said Willrich impatiently.

Carla said: ‘It would take four or five hours. She would probably have to stay overnight. And what about the cost of the fare?’

‘I cannot concern myself with such things!’ said Willrich angrily. ‘I am a doctor, not a travel agent!’

Ada was close to tears. ‘If it means Kurt will get better, and learn to say a few words, and not to soil himself . . . one day we might perhaps bring him home.’

‘Exactly,’ said Willrich. ‘I felt sure you would not wish to deny him the chance of getting better just for your own selfish reasons.’

‘Is that what you’re telling us?’ said Carla. ‘That Kurt might be able to live a normal life?’

‘Medicine offers no guarantees,’ he said. ‘Even a trainee nurse should know that.’

Carla had learned, from her parents, to be impatient with prevarication. ‘I don’t ask you for a guarantee,’ she said crisply. ‘I ask you for a prognosis. You must have one, otherwise you would not be proposing the treatment.’

He reddened. ‘The treatment is new. We hope it will improve Kurt’s condition. That is what I am telling you.’

‘Is it experimental?’

‘All medicine is experimental. All therapies work on some patients but not on others. You must listen to what I tell you: medicine offers no guarantees.’

Carla wanted to oppose him just because he was so arrogant, but she realized that was not the basis on which to make a judgement. Besides, she was not sure that Ada really had a choice. Doctors could go against the wishes of parents if the child’s health was at risk: in effect, they could do what they liked. Willrich was not asking Ada’s permission – he had no real need of it. He was speaking to her only in order to avoid a fuss.

Carla said: ‘Can you tell Frau Hempel how long it might be before Kurt returns from Akelberg to Berlin?’

‘Quite soon,’ said Willrich.

It was no answer at all, but Carla felt that if she pressed him he would become angry again.

Ada was looking helpless. Carla sympathized: she herself found it difficult to know what to say. They had not been given enough information. Doctors were often like this, Carla had noticed: they seemed to want to hug their knowledge to themselves. They preferred to fob patients off with platitudes, and became defensive when questioned.

Ada had tears in her eyes. ‘Well, if there’s a chance he could get better . . .’

‘That’s the attitude,’ Willrich said.

But Ada had not finished. ‘What do you think, Carla?’

Willrich looked outraged at this appeal to the opinion of a mere nurse.

Carla said: ‘I agree with you, Ada. This opportunity must be seized, for Kurt’s sake, even though it will be hard for you.’

‘Very sensible,’ said Willrich, and he got to his feet. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’ He went to the door and opened it. Carla felt he could not get rid of them quickly enough.

They left the home and walked back to the station. As their nearly empty train pulled away, Carla picked up a leaflet that had been left on the seat. It was headed How to Oppose the Nazis, and it listed ten things people could do to hasten the end of the regime, starting with slowing down their rate of work.

Carla had seen such flyers before, though not often. They were placed by some underground resistance movement.

Ada snatched it from her, crumpled it, and threw it out of the window. ‘You can be arrested for reading such things!’ she said. She had been Carla’s nanny, and sometimes she behaved as though Carla had not grown up. Carla did not mind her occasional bossiness, for she knew it came from love.

However, in this case Ada was not overreacting. People could be imprisoned not just for reading such things but even for failing to report that they had found one. Ada could be in trouble merely for throwing it out of the window. Fortunately, there was no one else in the carriage to see what she had done.

Ada was still troubled by what she had been told at the home. ‘Do you think we did the right thing?’ she said to Carla.

‘I don’t really know,’ Carla said candidly. ‘I think so.’

‘You’re a nurse, you understand these things better than I do.’

Carla was enjoying nursing, though she still felt frustrated that she had not been allowed to train as a doctor. Now, with so many young men in the army, the attitude to female medical students had changed, and more women were going to medical school. Carla could have applied again for a scholarship – except that her family was so desperately poor that they depended on her meagre wages. Her father had no work at all, her mother gave piano lessons, and Erik sent home as much as he could afford out of his army pay. The family had not paid Ada for years.

Ada was a naturally stoical person, and by the time they got home she was getting over her upset. She went into the kitchen, put on her apron, and began to prepare dinner for the family, and the comfortable routine seemed to console her.

Carla was not having dinner. She had plans for the evening. She felt she was abandoning Ada to her sadness, and she was a bit guilty; but not guilty enough to sacrifice her night out.

She put on a knee-length tennis dress she had made herself by shortening the frayed hem of an old frock of her mother’s. She was not going to play tennis, she was going to dance, and her aim was to look American. She put on lipstick and face powder, and combed out her hair in defiance of the government’s preference for braids.

The mirror showed her a modern girl with a pretty face and a defiant air. She knew that her confidence and self-possession put a lot of boys off her. Sometimes she wished she could be seductive as well as capable, a trick her mother had always been able to pull off; but it was not in her nature. She had long ago given up trying to be winsome: it just made her feel silly. Boys had to accept her as she was.

Some boys were scared of her, but others were attracted, and at parties she often ended up with a small cluster of admirers. She, in turn, liked boys, especially when they forgot about trying to impress people and started to talk normally. Her favourites were the ones who made her laugh. So far she had not had a serious boyfriend, though she had kissed quite a few.

To complete her outfit she put on a striped blazer she had bought from a second-hand clothing cart. She knew her parents would disapprove of her appearance, and try to make her change, saying it was dangerous to defy the Nazis’ prejudices. So she needed to get out of the house without seeing them. It should be easy enough. Mother was giving a piano lesson: Carla could hear the painfully hesitant playing of her pupil. Father would be reading the newspaper in the same room, for they could not afford to heat more than one room of the house. Erik was away with the army, though he was now stationed near Berlin and due home on leave shortly.

She covered up with a conventional raincoat and put her white shoes in her pocket.

She went down to the hall, opened the front door, shouted: ‘Goodbye, back soon!’ and hurried out.

She met Frieda at the Friedrich Strasse station. She was dressed similarly with a stripey dress under a plain tan coat, her hair hanging loose; the main difference being that Frieda’s clothes were new and expensive. On the platform, two boys in Hitler Youth outfits stared at them with a mixture of disapproval and desire.

They got off the train in the northern suburb of Wedding, a working-class district that had once been a left-wing stronghold. They headed for the Pharus Hall, where in the past Communists had held their conferences. Now there was no political activity at all, of course. Nevertheless, the building had become the centre of the movement called Swing Kids.

Kids of between fifteen and twenty-five were already gathering in the streets around the hall. Swing boys wore check jackets and carried umbrellas, to look English. They let their hair grow long to show their contempt for the military. Swing girls had heavy make-up and American sports clothes. They all thought the Hitler Youth were stupid and boring, with their folk music and community dances.

Carla thought it was ironic. When she was little she had been teased by the other kids and called a foreigner because her mother was English: now the same children, a little older, thought English was the fashionable thing to be.

Carla and Frieda went into the hall. There was a conventional, innocent youth club there, with girls in pleated skirts and boys in short trousers playing table tennis and drinking sticky orange cordial. But the action was in the side rooms.

Frieda quickly led Carla to a large storeroom with stacked chairs around the walls. There her brother, Werner, had plugged in a record player. Fifty or sixty boys and girls were dancing the jitterbug jive. Carla recognized the tune that was playing: ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me.’ She and Frieda started to dance.

Jazz records were banned because most of the best musicians were Negroes. The Nazis had to denigrate anything that was done well by non-Aryans: it threatened their theories of superiority. Unfortunately for them, Germans loved jazz just as much as everyone else. People who visited other countries brought records home, and you could buy them from American sailors in Hamburg. There was a lively black market.

Werner had lots of discs, of course. He had everything: a car, modern clothes, cigarettes, money. He was still Carla’s dream boy, though he always went for girls older than she – women, really. Everyone assumed he went to bed with them. Carla was a virgin.

Werner’s earnest friend Heinrich von Kessel immediately came up to them and started to dance with Frieda. He wore a black jacket and waistcoat, which looked dramatic with his longish dark hair. He was devoted to Frieda. She liked him – she enjoyed talking to clever men – but she would not go out with him because he was too old, twenty-five or twenty-six.

Soon a boy Carla did not know came and danced with her, and the evening was off to a good start.

She abandoned herself to the music: the irresistible sexual drumbeat, the suggestively crooned lyrics, the exhilarating trumpet solos, the joyous flight of the clarinet. She whirled and kicked, let her skirt flare outrageously high, fell into the arms of her partner and sprang out again.

When they had danced for an hour or so Werner put on a slow tune. Frieda and Heinrich began dancing cheek to cheek. There was no one available whom Carla liked enough for slow dancing, so she left the room and went to get a Coke. Germany was not at war with America so Coca-Cola syrup was imported and bottled in Germany.

To her surprise, Werner followed her out, leaving someone else to put on records for a while. She was flattered that the most attractive man in the room wanted to talk to her.

She told him about Kurt being moved to Akelberg, and Werner said the same thing had happened to his brother, Axel, who was fifteen. Axel had been born with spina bifida. ‘Could the same treatment work for both of them?’ he said with a frown.

‘I doubt it, but I don’t really know,’ Carla said.

‘Why is it that medical men never explain what they’re doing?’ Werner said irritably.

She laughed humourlessly. ‘They think that if ordinary people understand medicine they won’t hero-worship doctors any longer.’

‘Same principle as a conjurer: it’s more impressive if you don’t know how it’s done,’ said Werner. ‘Doctors are as egocentric as anyone else.’

‘More so,’ said Carla. ‘As a nurse, I know.’

She told him about the leaflet she had read on the train. Werner said: ‘How did you feel about it?’

Carla hesitated. It was dangerous to speak honestly about such things. But she had known Werner all her life, he had always been left-wing, and he was a Swing Kid. She could trust him. She said: ‘I’m pleased someone is opposing the Nazis. It shows that not all Germans are paralysed by fear.’

‘There are lots of things you can do against the Nazis,’ he said quietly. ‘Not just wearing lipstick.’

She assumed he meant she could distribute such leaflets. Could he be involved in such activity? No, he was too much of a playboy. Heinrich might be different: he was very intense.

‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m too scared.’

They finished their Cokes and returned to the storeroom. It was packed, now, with hardly room enough to dance.

To Carla’s surprise, Werner asked her for the last dance. He put on Bing Crosby singing ‘Only Forever’. Carla was thrilled. He held her close and they swayed, rather than danced, to the slow ballad.

At the end, by tradition, someone turned off the light for a minute, so that couples could kiss. Carla was embarrassed: she had known Werner since they were children. But she had always been attracted to him, and now she turned her face up eagerly. As she had expected, he kissed her expertly, and she returned the kiss with enthusiasm. To her delight she felt his hand gently grasp her breast. She encouraged him by opening her mouth. Then the light came on and it was all over.

‘Well,’ she said breathlessly, ‘that was a surprise.’

He gave his most charming smile. ‘Perhaps I can surprise you again some time.’

(ii)

Carla was passing through the hall, on her way to the kitchen for breakfast, when the phone rang. She picked up the handset. ‘Carla von Ulrich.’

She heard Frieda’s voice. ‘Oh, Carla, my little brother’s dead!’

‘What?’ Carla could hardly believe it. ‘Frieda, I’m so sorry! Where did it happen?’

‘In that hospital.’ Frieda was sobbing.

Carla recalled Werner telling her that Axel had been sent to the same Akelberg hospital as Kurt. ‘How did he die?’

‘Appendicitis.’

‘That’s terrible.’ Carla was sad for her friend, but also suspicious. She had had a bad feeling when Professor Willrich spoke to them a month ago about the new treatment for Kurt. Had it been more experimental than he had let on? Could it have actually been dangerous? ‘Do you know any more?’

‘We just got a short letter. My father is enraged. He phoned the hospital but he wasn’t able to speak to the senior people.’

‘I’ll come round to your house. I’ll be there in a few minutes.’

‘Thanks.’

Carla hung up and went into the kitchen. ‘Axel Franck has died at that hospital in Akelberg,’ she said.

Her father, Walter, was looking at the morning post. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Poor Monika.’ Carla recalled that Axel’s mother, Monika Franck, had once been in love with Walter, according to family legend. The look of concern on Walter’s face was so pained that Carla wondered if he had had a slight tendresse for Monika, despite being in love with Maud. How complicated love was.

Carla’s mother, who was now Monika’s best friend, said: ‘She must be devastated.’

Walter looked down at the post again and said in a tone of surprise: ‘Here’s a letter for Ada.’

The room went quiet.

Carla stared at the white envelope as Ada took it from Walter.

Ada did not receive many letters.

Erik was home – it was the last day of his short leave – so there were four people watching as Ada opened the envelope.

Carla held her breath.

Ada drew out a typed letter on headed paper. She read the message quickly, gasped, then screamed.

‘No!’ said Carla. ‘It can’t be!’

Maud jumped up and put her arms around Ada.

Walter took the letter from Ada’s fingers and read it. ‘Oh, dear, how terribly sad,’ he said. ‘Poor little Kurt.’ He put the paper down on the breakfast table.

Ada began to sob. ‘My little boy, my dear little boy, and he died without his mother – I can’t bear it!’

Carla fought back tears. She felt bewildered. ‘Axel and Kurt?’ she said. ‘At the same time?’

She picked up the letter. It was printed with the name of the hospital and its address in Akelberg. It read:

Dear Mrs Hempel,

I regret to inform you of the sad death of your son, Kurt Walter Hempel, age eight years. He passed away on 4 April at this hospital as a result of a burst appendix. Everything possible was done for him but to no avail. Please accept my deepest condolences.

It was signed by the Senior Physician.

Carla looked up. Her mother was sitting next to Ada, arm around her, holding her hand as she sobbed.

Carla was grief-stricken, but more alert than Ada. She spoke to her father in a shaky voice. ‘There’s something wrong.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Look again.’ She handed him the letter. ‘Appendicitis.’

‘What is the significance?’

‘Kurt had had his appendix removed.’

‘I remember,’ her father said. ‘He had an emergency operation, just after his sixth birthday.’

Carla’s sorrow was mixed with angry suspicion. Had Kurt been killed by a dangerous experiment which the hospital was now trying to cover up? ‘Why would they lie?’ she said.

Erik banged his fist on the table. ‘Why do you say it is a lie?’ he cried. ‘Why do you always accuse the establishment? This is obviously a mistake! Some typist has made a copying error!’

Carla was not so sure. ‘A typist working in a hospital is likely to know what an appendix is.’

Erik said furiously: ‘You will seize upon even this personal tragedy as a way of attacking those in authority!’

‘Be quiet, you two,’ said their father.

They looked at him. There was a new tone in his voice. ‘Erik may be right,’ he said. ‘If so, the hospital will be perfectly happy to answer questions and give further details of how Kurt and Axel died.’

‘Of course they will,’ said Erik.

Walter went on: ‘And if Carla is right, they will try to discourage inquiries, withhold information and intimidate the parents of the dead children by suggesting that their questions are somehow illegitimate.’

Erik looked less comfortable about that.

Half an hour ago Walter had been a shrunken man. Now somehow he seemed to fill his suit again. ‘We will find out as soon as we start asking questions.’

Carla said: ‘I’m going to see Frieda.’

Her mother said: ‘Don’t you have to go to work?’

‘I’m on the late shift.’

Carla phoned Frieda, told her that Kurt was dead too, and said she was coming to talk about it. She put on her coat, hat and gloves then wheeled her bicycle outside. She was a fast rider and it took her only a quarter of an hour to get to the Francks’ villa in Schöneberg.

The butler let her in and told her the family were still in the dining room. As soon as she walked in, Frieda’s father, Ludwig Franck, bellowed at her: ‘What did they tell you at the Wannsee Children’s Home?’

Carla did not much like Ludwig. He was a right-wing bully and he had supported the Nazis in the early days. Perhaps he had changed his views: many businessmen had, by now, though they showed little sign of the humility that ought to go with having been so wrong.

She did not answer immediately. She sat down at the table and looked at the family: Ludwig, Monika, Werner and Frieda, and the butler hovering in the background. She collected her thoughts.

‘Come on, girl, answer me!’ Ludwig demanded. He had in his hand a letter that looked very like Ada’s, and he was waving it angrily.

Monika put a restraining hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Take it easy, Ludi.’

‘I want to know!’ he said.

Carla looked at his pink face and little black moustache. He was in an agony of grief, she saw. In other circumstances she would have refused to speak to someone so rude. But he had an excuse for his bad manners, and she decided to overlook them. ‘The Director, Professor Willrich, told us there was a new treatment for Kurt’s condition.’

‘The same as he told us,’ said Ludwig. ‘What kind of treatment?’

‘I asked him that question. He said I would not be able to understand it. I persisted, and he said it involved drugs, but he did not give any further information. May I see your letter, Herr Franck?’

Ludwig’s expression said he was the one who should be asking questions; but he handed the sheet of paper to Carla.

It was exactly the same as Ada’s, and Carla had a queer feeling that the typist had done several of them, just changing the names.

Franck said: ‘How can two boys have died of appendicitis at the same time? It’s not a contagious illness.’

Carla said: ‘Kurt certainly did not die of appendicitis, for he had no appendix. It was removed two years ago.’

‘Right,’ said Ludwig. ‘That’s enough talk.’ He snatched the letter from Carla’s hand. ‘I’m going to see someone in the government about this.’ He went out.

Monika followed him, and so did the butler.

Carla went over to Frieda and took her hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ Frieda whispered.

Carla went to Werner. He stood up and put his arms around her. She felt a tear fall on her forehead. She was gripped by she did not know what intense emotion. Her heart was full of grief, yet she thrilled to the pressure of his body against hers, and the gentle touch of his hands.

After a long moment Werner stepped back. He said angrily: ‘My father has phoned the hospital twice. The second time, they told him they had no more information and hung up on him. But I’m going to find out what happened to my brother, and I won’t be brushed off.’

Frieda said: ‘Finding out won’t bring him back.’

‘I still want to know. If necessary, I’ll go to Akelberg.’

Carla said: ‘I wonder if there’s anyone in Berlin who could help us.’

‘It would have to be someone in the government,’ Werner said.

Frieda said: ‘Heinrich’s father is in the government.’

Werner snapped his fingers. ‘The very man. He used to belong to the Centre Party, but he’s a Nazi now, and something important in the Foreign Office.’

Carla said: ‘Will Heinrich take us to see him?’

‘He will if Frieda asks him,’ said Werner. ‘Heinrich will do anything for Frieda.’

Carla could believe that. Heinrich had always been intense about everything he did.

‘I’ll phone him now,’ said Frieda.

She went into the hall, and Carla and Werner sat down side by side. He put his arm around her, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. She did not know whether these signs of affection were merely a side-effect of the tragedy, or something more.

Frieda came back in and said: ‘Heinrich’s father will see us right away if we go over there now.’

They all got into Werner’s sports car, squeezing on to the front seat. ‘I don’t know how you keep this car going,’ Frieda said as he pulled away. ‘Even Father can’t get petrol for private use.’

‘I tell my boss it’s for official business,’ he said. Werner worked for an important general. ‘But I don’t know how much longer I can get away with it.’

The von Kessel family lived in the same suburb. Werner drove there in five minutes.

The house was luxurious, though smaller than the Francks’. Heinrich met them at the door and showed them into a living room with leather-bound books and an old German woodcarving of an eagle.

Frieda kissed him. ‘Thank you for doing this,’ she said. ‘It probably wasn’t easy – I know you don’t get on so well with your father.’

Heinrich beamed with pleasure.

His mother brought them coffee and cake. She seemed a warm, simple person. When she had served them she left, like a maid.

Heinrich’s father, Gottfried, came in. He had the same thick straight hair, but it was silver instead of black.

Heinrich said: ‘Father, here are Werner and Frieda Franck, whose father manufactures People’s Radios.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Gottfried. ‘I have seen your father in the Herrenklub.’

‘And this is Carla von Ulrich – I believe you know her father, too.’

‘We were colleagues at the German embassy in London,’ Gottfried said carefully. ‘That was in 1914.’ Clearly he was not so pleased to be reminded of his association with a social democrat. He took a piece of cake, clumsily dropped it on the rug, tried ineffectually to pick up the crumbs, then abandoned the effort and sat back.

Carla thought: What is he afraid of?

Heinrich got straight down to the purpose of the visit. ‘Father, I expect you’ve heard of Akelberg.’

Carla was watching Gottfried closely. There was a split-second flash of something in his expression, but he quickly adopted a pose of indifference. ‘A small town in Bavaria?’ he said.

‘There is a hospital there,’ said Heinrich. ‘For mentally handicapped people.’

‘I don’t think I was aware of that.’

‘We think something strange is going on there, and we wondered if you might know about it.’

‘I certainly don’t. What seems to be happening?’

Werner broke in. ‘My brother died there, apparently of appendicitis. Herr von Ulrich’s maid’s child died at the same time in the same hospital of the same illness.’

‘Very sad – but a coincidence, surely?’

Carla said: ‘My maid’s child did not have an appendix. It was removed two years ago.’

‘I understand why you are keen to ascertain the facts,’ said Gottfried. ‘This is deeply unsatisfactory. However, the likeliest explanation would seem to be clerical error.’

Werner said: ‘If so, we would like to know.’

‘Of course. Have you written to the hospital?’

Carla said: ‘I wrote to ask when my maid could visit her son. They never replied.’

Werner said: ‘My father telephoned the hospital this morning. The Senior Physician slammed the phone down on him.’

‘Oh, dear. Such bad manners. But, you know, this is hardly a Foreign Office matter.’

Werner leaned forward. ‘Herr von Kessel, is it possible that both boys were involved in a secret experiment that went wrong?’

Gottfried sat back. ‘Quite impossible,’ he said, and Carla had a feeling he was telling the truth. ‘That is definitely not happening.’ He sounded relieved.

Werner looked as if he had run out of questions, but Carla was not satisfied. She wondered why Gottfried seemed so happy about the assurance he had just given. Was it because he was concealing something worse?

She was struck by a possibility so appalling that she could hardly contemplate it.

Gottfried said: ‘Well, if that’s all . . .’

Carla said: ‘You’re very sure, sir, that they were not killed by an experimental therapy that went wrong?’

‘Very sure.’

‘To know for certain that is not true, you must have some knowledge of what is being done at Akelberg.’

‘Not necessarily,’ he said, but all his tension had returned, and she knew she was on to something.

‘I remember seeing a Nazi poster,’ she went on. It was this memory that had triggered her dreadful thought. ‘There was a picture of a male nurse and a mentally handicapped man. The text said something like: ‘Sixty thousand Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the people’s community during his lifetime. Comrade, that is your money too!’ It was an advertisement for a magazine, I think.’

‘I have seen some of that propaganda,’ Gottfried said disdainfully, as if it were nothing to do with him.

Carla stood up. ‘You’re a Catholic, Herr von Kessel, and you brought up Heinrich in the Catholic faith.’

Gottfried made a scornful noise. ‘Heinrich says he’s an atheist now.’

‘But you’re not. And you believe that human life is sacred.’

‘Yes.’

‘You say that the doctors at Akelberg are not testing dangerous new therapies on handicapped people, and I believe you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But are they doing something else? Something worse?’

‘No, no.’

‘Are they deliberately killing the handicapped?’

Gottfried shook his head silently.

Carla moved closer to Gottfried and lowered her voice, as if they were the only two people in the room. ‘As a Catholic who believes that human life is sacred, will you put your hand on your heart and tell me that mentally ill children are not being murdered at Akelberg?’

Gottfried smiled, made a reassuring gesture, and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Carla knelt on the rug in front of him. ‘Would you do that, please? Right now? Here in your house with you are four young Germans, your son and his three friends. Just tell us the truth. Look me in the eye and say that our government does not kill handicapped children.’

The silence in the room was total. Gottfried seemed about to speak, but changed his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, twisted his mouth into a grimace, and bowed his head. The four young people watched his facial contortions in amazement.

At last he opened his eyes. He looked at them one by one, ending with his gaze on his son.

Then he stood up and walked out of the room.

(iii)

The next day, Werner said to Carla: ‘This is awful. We’ve talked of the same thing for more than twenty-four hours. We’ll go mad if we don’t do something else. Let’s see a movie.’

They went to the Kurfürstendamm, a street of theatres and shops, always called the Ku’damm. Most of the good German film-makers had gone to Hollywood years ago, and the domestic movies were now second-rate. They saw Three Soldiers, set during the invasion of France.

The three soldiers were a tough Nazi sergeant, a snivelling complainer who looked a bit Jewish, and an earnest young man. The earnest one asked naive questions such as: ‘Do the Jews really do us any harm?’ and in answer received long, stern lectures from the sergeant. When battle was joined the sniveller admitted to being a Communist, deserted, and was blown up in an air raid. The earnest young man fought bravely, was promoted to sergeant, and became an admirer of the Führer. The script was dire but the battle scenes were exciting.

Werner held Carla’s hand all the way through. She hoped he would kiss her in the dark, but he did not.

As the lights came up he said: ‘Well, it was terrible, but it took my mind off things for a couple of hours.’

They went outside and found his car. ‘Shall we go for a drive?’ he said. ‘It could be our last chance. This car goes up on blocks next week.’

He drove out to the Grunewald. On the way, Carla’s thoughts inevitably returned to yesterday’s conversation with Gottfried von Kessel. No matter how many times she went over it in her mind, there was no way she could escape the terrible conclusion all four of them had reached at the end of it. Kurt and Axel had not been accidental victims of a dangerous medical experiment, as she had at first thought. Gottfried had denied that convincingly. But he had not been able to bring himself to deny that the government was deliberately killing the handicapped, and lying to their families about it. It was hard to believe, even of people as ruthless and brutal as the Nazis. Yet Gottfried’s response had been the clearest example of guilty behaviour that Carla had ever witnessed.

When they were in the forest Werner pulled off the road and drove along a track until the car was hidden by shrubbery. Carla guessed he had brought other girls to this spot.

He turned out the lights, and they were in deep darkness. ‘I’m going to speak to General Dorn,’ he said. Dorn was his boss, an important officer in the Air Force. ‘What about you?’

‘My father says there’s no political opposition left, but the churches are still strong. No one who is sincere about their religious beliefs could condone what’s being done.’

‘Are you religious?’ Werner asked.

‘Not really. My father is. For him, the Protestant faith is part of the German heritage he loves. Mother goes to church with him, though I suspect her theology might be a bit unorthodox. I believe in God, but I can’t imagine He cares whether people are Protestant or Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist. And I like singing hymns.’

Werner’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘I can’t believe in a God who allows the Nazis to murder children.’

‘I don’t blame you.’

‘What is your father going to do?’

‘Speak to the pastor of our church.’

‘Good.’

They were silent for a while. He put his arm around her. ‘Is this all right?’ he said in a half-whisper.

She was tense with anticipation, and her voice seemed to fail. Her reply came out as a grunt. She tried again, and managed to say: ‘If it stops you feeling so sad . . . yes.’

Then he kissed her.

She kissed him back eagerly. He stroked her hair, then her breasts. At this point, she knew, a lot of girls would call a halt. They said if you went any further you would lose control of yourself.

Carla decided to risk it.

She touched his cheek while he was kissing her. She caressed his throat with her fingertips, enjoying the feel of the warm skin. She put her hand under his jacket and explored his body, her hand on his shoulder blades and his ribs and his spine.

She sighed when she felt his hand on her thigh, under her skirt. As soon as he touched her between her legs she parted her knees. Girls said a boy would think you cheap for doing that, but she could not help herself.

He touched her in just the right place. He did not try to put his hand inside her underwear, but stroked her lightly through the cotton. She heard herself making noises in her throat, quietly at first but then louder. Eventually she cried out with pleasure, burying her face in his neck to muffle the sound. Then she had to push his hand away because she felt too sensitive.

She was panting. As she began to get her breath back she kissed his neck. He touched her cheek lovingly.

After a minute she said: ‘Can I do something for you?’

‘Only if you want to.’

She was embarrassed by how much she wanted to. ‘The only thing is, I’ve never . . .’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’

(iv)

Pastor Ochs was a portly, comfortable clergyman with a large house, a nice wife and five children, and Carla feared he would refuse to get involved. But she underestimated him. He had already heard rumours that were troubling his conscience, and he agreed to go with Walter to the Wannsee Children’s Home. Professor Willrich could hardly refuse a visit from an interested clergyman.

They decided to take Carla with them, because she had witnessed the interview with Ada. The Director might find it more difficult to change his story in front of her.

On the train, Ochs suggested he should do the talking. ‘The Director is probably a Nazi,’ he said. Most people in senior jobs nowadays were party members. ‘He will naturally see a former social-democrat deputy as an enemy. I will play the role of unbiased arbitrator. That way, I believe, we may learn more.’

Carla was not sure about that. She felt her father would be a more expert questioner. But Walter went along with the pastor’s suggestion.

It was spring, and the weather was warmer than on Carla’s last visit. There were boats on the lake. Carla decided to ask Werner to come out here for a picnic. She wanted to make the most of him before he drifted off to another girl.

Professor Willrich had a fire blazing, but a window was open, letting in a fresh breeze off the water.

The Director shook hands with Pastor Ochs and Walter. He gave Carla a brief glance of recognition then ignored her. He invited them to sit down, but Carla saw there was angry hostility behind his superficial courtesy. Clearly he did not relish being questioned. He picked up one of his pipes and played with it nervously. He was less arrogant today, confronted by two mature men rather than a couple of young women.

Ochs opened the discussion. ‘Herr von Ulrich and others in my congregation are concerned, Professor Willrich, about the mysterious deaths of several handicapped children known to them.’

‘No children have died mysteriously here,’ Willrich shot back. ‘In fact, no child has died here in the last two years.’

Ochs turned to Walter. ‘I find that very reassuring, Walter, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Walter.

Carla did not, but she kept her mouth shut for the moment.

Ochs went on unctuously: ‘I feel sure that you give your charges the best possible care.’

‘Yes.’ Willrich looked a little less anxious.

‘But you do send children from here to other hospitals?’

‘Of course, if another institution can offer a child some treatment not available here.’

‘And when a child is transferred, I suppose you are not necessarily kept informed about his treatment or his condition thereafter.’

‘Exactly!’

‘Unless they come back.’

Willrich said nothing.

‘Have any come back?’

‘No.’

Ochs shrugged. ‘Then you cannot be expected to know what happened to them.’

‘Precisely.’

Ochs sat back and spread his hands in a gesture of openness. ‘So you have nothing to hide!’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Some of those transferred children have died.’

Willrich said nothing.

Ochs gently persisted. ‘That’s true, isn’t it?’

‘I cannot answer you with any certain knowledge, Herr Pastor.’

‘Ah!’ said Ochs. ‘Because even if one of those children died, you would not be notified.’

‘As we said before.’

‘Forgive me the repetition, but I simply want to establish beyond doubt that you cannot be asked to shed light on those deaths.’

‘Not at all.’

Once again Ochs turned to Walter. ‘I think we’re clearing matters up splendidly.’

Walter nodded.

Carla wanted to say Nothing has been cleared up!

But Ochs was speaking again. ‘Approximately how many children have you transferred in, say, the last twelve months.’

‘Ten,’ said Willrich. ‘Exactly.’ He smiled complacently. ‘We scientific men prefer not to deal in approximations.’

‘Ten patients, out of . . . ?’

‘Today we have one hundred and seven children here.’

‘A very small proportion!’ said Ochs.

Carla was getting angry. Ochs was obviously on Willrich’s side! Why was her father swallowing this?

Ochs said: ‘And did those children suffer from one common condition, or a variety?’

‘A variety.’ Willrich opened a folder on his desk. ‘Idiocy, Down’s syndrome, microcephaly, hydrocephaly, malformations of limbs, head and spinal column, and paralysis.’

‘These are the types of patient you were instructed to send to Akelberg.’

That was a jump. It was the first mention of Akelberg, and the first suggestion that Willrich had received instructions from a higher authority. Perhaps Ochs was more subtle than he had seemed.

Willrich opened his mouth to say something, but Ochs forestalled him with another question. ‘Were they all to receive the same special treatment?’

Willrich smiled. ‘Again, I was not informed, so I cannot tell you.’

‘You simply complied . . .’

‘With my instructions, yes.’

Ochs smiled. ‘You’re a judicious man. You choose your words carefully. Were the children all ages?’

‘Initially the programme was restricted to children under three, but later it was expanded to benefit all ages, yes.’

Carla noted the mention of a ‘programme’. That had not been admitted before. She began to realize that Ochs was cleverer than he might at first appear.

Ochs spoke his next sentence as if confirming something already stated. ‘And all handicapped Jewish children were included, irrespective of their particular disability.’

There was a moment of silence. Willrich looked shocked. Carla wondered how Ochs knew that about Jewish children. Perhaps he did not: he might have been guessing.

After a pause, Ochs added: ‘Jewish children, and those of mixed race, I should have said.’

Willrich did not speak, but gave a slight nod.

Ochs went on: ‘It’s unusual, in this day and age, for Jewish children to be given preference, isn’t it?’

Willrich looked away.

The pastor stood up, and when he spoke again his voice rang with anger. ‘You have told me that ten children suffering from a range of illnesses, who could not possibly all benefit from the same treatment, were sent away to a special hospital from which they never returned; and that Jews got priority. What did you think happened to them, Herr Professor Doctor Willrich? In God’s name, what did you think?’

Willrich looked as if he would cry.

‘You may say nothing, of course,’ Ochs said more quietly. ‘But one day you will be asked the same question by a higher authority – in fact, by the highest of all authorities.’

He stretched out his arm and pointed a condemning finger.

‘And on that day, my son, you will answer.’

With that he turned around and left the room.

Carla and Walter followed him out.

(v)

Inspector Thomas Macke smiled. Sometimes the enemies of the state did his job for him. Instead of working in secret, and hiding away where they were difficult to find, they identified themselves to him and generously provided irrefutable evidence of their crimes. They were like fish that did not require bait and a hook but simply jumped out of the river into the fisherman’s basket and begged to be fried.

Pastor Ochs was one such.

Macke read his letter again. It was addressed to the Justice Minister, Franz Gürtner.

Dear Minister,

Is the government killing handicapped children? I ask you this question bluntly because I must have a plain answer.

What a fool! If the answer was No, this was a criminal libel; if Yes, Ochs was guilty of revealing state secrets. Could he not figure that out for himself ?

After it became impossible to ignore rumours circulating in my congregation, I visited the Wannsee Children’s Nursing Home and spoke to its director, Professor Willrich. His responses were so unsatisfactory that I became convinced something terrible is going on, something that is presumably a crime and unquestionably a sin.

The man had the nerve to write of crimes! Did it not occur to him that accusing government agencies of illegal acts was itself an illegal act? Did he imagine he was living in a degenerate liberal democracy?

Macke knew what Ochs was complaining about. The programme was called Aktion T4 after its address, Tiergarten Strasse 4. The agency was officially the Charitable Foundation for Cure and Institutional Care, though it was supervised by Hitler’s personal office, the Chancellery of the Führer. Its job was to arrange the painless deaths of handicapped people who could not survive without costly care. It had done splendid work in the last couple of years, disposing of tens of thousands of useless people.

The problem was that German public opinion was not yet sophisticated enough to understand the need for such deaths, so the programme had to be kept quiet.

Macke was in on the secret. He had been promoted to Inspector and had at last been admitted to the Nazi party’s elite paramilitary Schutzstaffel, the SS. He had been briefed on Aktion T4 when he was assigned to the Ochs case. He felt proud: he was a real insider now.

Unfortunately, people had been careless, and there was a danger that the secret of Aktion T4 would get out.

It was Macke’s job to plug the leak.

Preliminary inquiries had swiftly revealed that there were three men to be silenced: Pastor Ochs, Walter von Ulrich, and Werner Franck.

Franck was the elder son of a radio manufacturer who had been an important early supporter of the Nazis. The manufacturer himself, Ludwig Franck, had initially made furious demands for information about the death of his disabled younger son, but had quickly fallen silent after a threat to close his factories. Young Werner, a fast-rising officer in the Air Ministry, had persisted in asking awkward questions, trying to involve his influential boss, General Dorn.

The Air Ministry, said to be the largest office building in Europe, was an ultra-modern edifice occupying an entire block of Wilhelm Strasse, just around the corner from Gestapo headquarters in Prinz Albrecht Strasse. Macke walked there.

In his SS uniform he was able to ignore the guards. At the reception desk he barked: ‘Take me to Lieutenant Werner Franck immediately.’

The receptionist took him up in an elevator and along a corridor to an open door leading into a small office. The young man at the desk did not at first look up from the papers in front of him. Observing him, Macke guessed he was about twenty-two years old. Why was he not with a front-line unit, bombing England? The father had probably pulled strings, Macke thought resentfully. Werner looked like a son of privilege: tailored uniform, gold rings, and over-long hair that was distinctly unmilitary. Macke despised him already.

Werner wrote a note with a pencil then looked up. The amiable expression on his face died quickly when he saw the SS uniform, and Macke noted with interest a flash of fear. The boy immediately tried to cover up with a show of bonhomie, standing up deferentially and smiling a welcome, but Macke was not fooled.

‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ said Werner. ‘Please be seated.’

‘Heil Hitler,’ said Macke.

‘Heil Hitler. How can I help you?’

‘Sit down and shut up, you foolish boy,’ Macke spat.

Werner struggled to hide his fear. ‘My goodness, what can I have done to incur such wrath?’

‘Don’t presume to question me. Speak when you’re spoken to.’

‘As you wish.’

‘From this moment on you will ask no further questions about your brother Axel.’

Macke was surprised to see a momentary look of relief pass over Werner’s face. That was puzzling. Had he been afraid of something else, something more frightening than the simple order to stop asking questions about his brother? Could Werner be involved in other subversive activities?

Probably not, Macke thought on reflection. Most likely Werner was relieved he was not being arrested and taken to the basement in Prinz Albrecht Strasse.

Werner was not yet completely cowed. He summoned the nerve to say: ‘Why should I not ask how my brother died?’

‘I told you not to question me. Be aware that you are being treated gently only because your father has been a valued friend of the Nazi party. Were it not for that, you would be in my office.’ That was a threat everyone understood.

‘I’m grateful for your forbearance,’ Werner said, struggling to retain a shred of dignity. ‘But I want to know who killed my brother, and why.’

‘You will learn no more, regardless of what you do. But any further inquiries will be regarded as treason.’

‘I hardly need to make further inquiries, after this visit from you. It is now clear that my worst suspicions were right.’

‘I require you to drop your seditious campaign immediately.’

Werner stared defiantly back but said nothing.

Macke said: ‘If you do not, General Dorn will be informed that there are questions about your loyalty.’ Werner could be in no doubt about what that meant. He would lose his cosy job here in Berlin and be dispatched to a barracks on an airstrip in northern France.

Werner looked less defiant, more thoughtful.

Macke stood up. He had spent enough time here. ‘Apparently General Dorn finds you a capable and intelligent assistant,’ he said. ‘If you do the right thing, you may continue in that role.’ He left the room.

He felt edgy and dissatisfied. He was not sure he had succeeded in crushing Werner’s will. He had sensed a bedrock defiance that remained untouched.

He turned his mind to Pastor Ochs. A different approach would be required for him. Macke returned to Gestapo headquarters and collected a small team: Reinhold Wagner, Klaus Richter and Günther Schneider. They took a black Mercedes 260D, the Gestapo’s favourite car, unobtrusive because many Berlin taxis were the same model and colour. In the early days, the Gestapo had been encouraged to make themselves visible and let the public see the brutal way they dealt with opposition. However, the terrorization of the German people had been accomplished long ago, and open violence was no longer necessary. Nowadays the Gestapo acted discreetly, always with a cloak of legality.

They drove to Ochs’s house next to the large Protestant church in Mitte, the central district. In the same way that Werner might think he was protected by his father, so Ochs probably imagined his church made him safe. He was about to learn otherwise.

Macke rang the bell: in the old days they would have kicked the door down, just for effect.

A maid opened the door, and he walked into a broad, well-lit hallway with polished floorboards and heavy rugs. The other three followed him in. ‘Where is your master?’ Macke said pleasantly to the maid.

He had not threatened her, but all the same she was frightened. ‘In his study, sir,’ she said, and she pointed to a door.

Macke said to Wagner: ‘Get the women and children together in the next room.’

Ochs opened the study door and looked into the hall, frowning. ‘What on earth is going on?’ he said indignantly.

Macke walked directly towards him, forcing him to step back and allow Macke to enter the room. It was a small, well-appointed den, with a leather-topped desk and shelves of biblical commentaries. ‘Close the door,’ said Macke.

Reluctantly, Ochs did as he was told; then he said: ‘You’d better have a very good explanation for this intrusion.’

‘Sit down and shut up,’ said Macke.

Ochs was dumbfounded. Probably he had not been told to shut up since he was a boy. Clergymen were not normally insulted, even by policemen. But the Nazis ignored such enfeebling conventions.

‘This is an outrage!’ Ochs managed at last. Then he sat down.

Outside the room, a woman’s voice was raised in protest: the wife, presumably. Ochs paled when he heard it, and rose from his chair.

Macke pushed him back down. ‘Stay where you are.’

Ochs was a heavy man, and taller than Macke, but he did not resist.

Macke loved to see these pompous types deflated by fear.

‘Who are you?’ said Ochs.

Macke never told them. They could guess, of course, but it was more frightening if they did not know for sure. Afterwards, in the unlikely event that anyone asked questions, the whole team would swear that they had begun by identifying themselves as police officers and showing their badges.

He went out. His men were hustling several children into the parlour. Macke told Reinhold Wagner to go into the study and keep Ochs there. Then he followed the children into the other room.

There were flowered curtains, family photographs on the mantelpiece, and a set of comfortable chairs upholstered in a checked fabric. It was a nice home and a nice family. Why could they not be loyal to the Reich and mind their own business?

The maid was by the window, hand over her mouth as if to stop herself crying out. Four children clustered around Ochs’s wife, a plain, heavy-breasted woman in her thirties. She held a fifth child in her arms, a girl of about two years with blonde ringlets.

Macke patted the girl’s head. ‘And what is this one’s name?’ he said.

Frau Ochs was terrified. She whispered: ‘Lieselotte. What do you want with us?’

‘Come to Uncle Thomas, little Lieselotte,’ said Macke, holding out his arms.

‘No!’ Frau Ochs cried. She clutched the child closer and turned away.

Lieselotte began to cry loudly.

Macke nodded to Klaus Richter.

Richter grabbed Frau Ochs from behind, pulling her arms back, forcing her to let go of the child. Macke took Lieselotte before she fell. The child wriggled like a fish, but he just held her tighter, as he would have held a cat. She wailed louder.

A boy of about twelve flung himself at Macke, small fists pounding ineffectually. It was about time he learned to respect authority, Macke decided. He put Lieselotte on his left hip then, with his right hand, picked the boy up by his shirt front and threw him across the room, making sure he landed in an upholstered chair. The boy yelled in fear and Frau Ochs screamed. The chair went over backwards and the boy tumbled to the floor. He was not really hurt but he began to cry.

Macke took Lieselotte out into the hall. She screamed at the top of her voice for her mother. Macke put her down. She ran to the parlour door and banged on it, screeching in terror. She had not yet learned to turn doorknobs, Macke noted.

Leaving the child in the hallway, Macke re-entered the study. Wagner was by the door, guarding it; Ochs was standing in the middle of the room, white with fear. ‘What are you doing to my children?’ he said. ‘Why is Lieselotte screaming?’

‘You will write a letter,’ Macke said.

‘Yes, yes, anything,’ Ochs said, going to the leather-topped desk.

‘Not now, later.’

‘All right.’

Macke was enjoying this. Ochs’s collapse was complete, unlike Werner’s. ‘A letter to the Justice Minister,’ he went on.

‘So that’s what this is about.’

‘You will say you now realize there is no truth in the allegations you made in your first letter. You were misled by secret Communists. You will apologize to the minister for the trouble you have caused by your incautious actions, and assure him that you will never again speak of the matter to anyone.’

‘Yes, yes, I will. What are they doing to my wife?’

‘Nothing. She is screaming because of what will happen to her if you fail to write the letter.’

‘I want to see her.’

‘It will be worse for her if you annoy me with stupid demands.’

‘Of course, I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.’

The opponents of Nazism were so weak. ‘Write the letter this evening, and mail it in the morning.’

‘Yes. Should I send you a copy?’

‘It will come to me anyway, you idiot. Do you think the minister himself reads your insane scribbling?’

‘No, no, of course not, I see that.’

Macke went to door. ‘And stay away from people like Walter von Ulrich.’

‘I will, I promise.’

Macke went out, beckoning Wagner to follow. Lieselotte was sitting on the floor screaming hysterically. Macke opened the parlour door and summoned Richter and Schneider.

They left the house.

‘Sometimes violence is quite unnecessary,’ Macke said reflectively as they got into the car.

Wagner took the wheel and Macke gave him the address of the von Ulrich house.

‘And then again, sometimes it’s the simplest way,’ he added.

Von Ulrich lived in the neighbourhood of the church. His house was a spacious old building that he evidently could not afford to maintain. The paint was peeling, the railings were rusty, and a broken window had been patched with cardboard. This was not unusual: wartime austerity meant that many houses were not kept up.

The door was opened by a maid. Macke presumed this was the woman whose handicapped child had started the whole problem – but he did not bother to enquire. There was no point in arresting girls.

Walter von Ulrich stepped into the hall from a side room.

Macke remembered him. He was the cousin of the Robert von Ulrich whose restaurant Macke and his brother had bought eight years ago. In those days he had been proud and arrogant. Now he wore a shabby suit, but his manner was still bold. ‘What do you want?’ he said, attempting to sound as if he still had the power to demand explanations.

Macke did not intend to waste much time here. ‘Cuff him,’ he said.

Wagner stepped forward with the handcuffs.

A tall, handsome woman appeared and stood in front of von Ulrich. ‘Tell me who you are and what you want,’ she demanded. She was obviously the wife. She had the hint of a foreign accent. No surprise there.

Wagner slapped her face, hard, and she staggered back.

‘Turn around and put your wrists together,’ Wagner said to von Ulrich. ‘Otherwise I’ll knock her teeth down her throat.’

Von Ulrich obeyed.

A pretty young woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform came rushing down the stairs. ‘Father!’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’

Macke wondered how many more people there might be in the house. He felt a twinge of anxiety. An ordinary family could not overcome trained police officers, but a crowd of them might create enough of a fracas for von Ulrich to slip away.

However, the man himself did not want a fight. ‘Don’t confront them!’ he said to his daughter in a voice of urgency. ‘Stay back!’

The nurse looked terrified and did as she was told.

Macke said: ‘Put him in the car.’

Wagner walked von Ulrich out of the door.

The wife began to sob.

The nurse said: ‘Where are you taking him?’

Macke went to the door. He looked at the three women: the maid, the wife and the daughter. ‘All this trouble,’ he said, ‘for the sake of an eight-year-old moron. I will never understand you people.’

He went out and got into the car.

They drove the short distance to Prinz Albrecht Strasse. Wagner parked at the back of the Gestapo headquarters building alongside a dozen identical black cars. They all got out.

They took von Ulrich in through a back door and down the stairs to the basement, and put him in a white-tiled room.

Macke opened a cupboard and took out three long, heavy clubs like American baseball bats. He gave one to each of his assistants.

‘Beat the shit out of him,’ he said; and he left them to it.

(vi)

Captain Volodya Peshkov, head of the Berlin section of Red Army Intelligence, met Werner Franck at the Invalids’ Cemetery beside the Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal.

It was a good choice. Looking around the graveyard carefully, Volodya was able to confirm that no one followed him or Werner in. The only other person present was an old woman in a black headscarf, and she was on her way out.

Their rendezvous was the tomb of General von Scharnhorst, a large pedestal bearing a slumbering lion made of melted-down enemy cannons. It was a sunny day in spring, and the two young spies took off their jackets as they walked among the graves of German heroes.

After the Hitler–Stalin pact almost two years ago, Soviet espionage had continued in Germany, and so had surveillance of Soviet Embassy staff. Everyone saw the treaty as temporary, though no one knew how temporary. So counter-intelligence agents were still tailing Volodya everywhere.

They ought to be able to tell when he was going out on a genuine secret intelligence mission, he thought, for that was when he shook them off. If he went out to buy a frankfurter for lunch he let them shadow him. He wondered whether they were smart enough to figure that out.

‘Have you seen Lili Markgraf lately?’ said Werner.

She was a girl they had both dated at different times in the past. Volodya had now recruited her, and she had learned to encode and decode messages in the Red Army Intelligence cipher. Of course Volodya would not tell Werner that. ‘I haven’t seen her for a while,’ he lied. ‘How about you?’

Werner shook his head. ‘Someone else has won my heart.’ He seemed bashful. Perhaps he was embarrassed about belying his playboy reputation. ‘Anyway, why did you want to see me?’

‘We have received devastating information,’ Volodya said. ‘News that will change the course of history – if it is true.’

Werner looked sceptical.

Volodya went on: ‘A source has told us that Germany will invade the Soviet Union in June.’ He thrilled again as he said it. It was a huge triumph for Red Army Intelligence, and a terrible threat to the USSR.

Werner pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes in a gesture that probably made girls’ hearts beat faster. He said: ‘A reliable source?’

It was a journalist in Tokyo who was in the confidence of the German ambassador there, but was in fact a secret Communist. Everything he had said so far had turned out to be true. But Volodya could not tell Werner that. ‘Reliable,’ he said.

‘So you believe it?’

Volodya hesitated. That was the problem. Stalin did not believe it. He thought it was Allied disinformation intended to sow mistrust between himself and Hitler. Stalin’s scepticism about this intelligence coup had devastated Volodya’s superiors, souring their jubilation. ‘We seek verification,’ he said.

Werner looked around at the trees in the graveyard coming into leaf. ‘I hope to God it’s true,’ he said with sudden savagery. ‘It will finish the damned Nazis.’

‘Yes,’ said Volodya. ‘If the Red Army is prepared.’

Werner was surprised. ‘Are you not prepared?’

Once again Volodya was not able to tell Werner the whole truth. Stalin believed the Germans would not attack before they had defeated the British, fearing a war on two fronts. While Britain continued to defy Germany, the Soviet Union was safe, he thought. In consequence the Red Army was nowhere near prepared for a German invasion.

‘We will be prepared,’ Volodya said, ‘if you can get me verification of the invasion plan.’

He could not help enjoying a moment of self-importance. His spy could be the key.

Werner said: ‘Unfortunately, I can’t help you.’

Volodya frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t get verification, or otherwise, of this information, nor can I get you anything else. I’m about to be fired from my job at the Air Ministry. I’ll probably be posted to France – or, if your intelligence is correct, sent to invade the Soviet Union.’

Volodya was horrified. Werner was his best spy. It was Werner’s information that had won Volodya promotion to captain. He found he could hardly breathe. With an effort he said: ‘What the hell happened?’

‘My brother died in a home for the handicapped, and the same thing happened to my girlfriend’s godson; and we’re asking too many questions.’

‘Why would you be demoted for that?’

‘The Nazis are killing off handicapped people, but it’s a secret programme.’

Volodya was momentarily diverted from his mission. ‘What? They just murder them?’

‘So it seems. We don’t know the details yet. But if they had nothing to hide they wouldn’t have punished me – and others – for asking questions.’

‘How old was your brother?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘God! Still a child!’

‘They’re not going to get away with it. I refuse to shut up.’

They stopped in front of the tomb of Manfred von Richthofen, the air ace. It was a huge slab, six feet high and twice as wide. On it was carved, in elegant capital letters, the single word RICHTHOFEN. Volodya always found its simplicity moving.

He tried to recover his composure. He told himself that the Soviet secret police murdered people, after all, especially anyone suspected of disloyalty. The head of the NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria, was a torturer whose favourite trick was to have his men pull a couple of pretty girls off the street for him to rape as his evening’s entertainment, according to rumour. But the thought that Communists could be as bestial as Nazis was no consolation. One day, he reminded himself, the Soviets would get rid of Beria and his kind, then they could begin to build true Communism. Meanwhile, the priority was to defeat the Nazis.

They came to the canal wall and stood there, watching a barge make its slow progress along the waterway, belching oily black smoke. Volodya mulled over Werner’s alarming confession. ‘What would happen if you stopped investigating these deaths of handicapped children?’ he asked.

‘I’d lose my girlfriend,’ Werner said. ‘She’s as angry about it as I am.’

Volodya was struck by the scary thought that Werner might reveal the truth to his girlfriend. ‘You certainly couldn’t tell her the real reason for your change of mind,’ he said emphatically.

Werner looked stricken, but he did not argue.

Volodya realized that by persuading Werner to abandon his campaign he would be helping the Nazis hide their crimes. He pushed the uncomfortable thought aside. ‘But would you be allowed to keep your job with General Dorn if you promised to drop the matter?’

‘Yes. That’s what they want. But I’m not letting them murder my brother then cover it up. They’ll send me to the front line, but I won’t shut up.’

‘What do you think they’ll do to you when they realize how determined you are?’

‘They’ll throw me in some camp.’

‘And what good will that do?’

‘I just can’t lie down for this.’

Volodya had to get Werner back on side, but so far he had failed to get through. Werner had an answer for everything. He was a smart guy. That was why he was such a valuable spy.

‘What about the others?’ Volodya said.

‘What others?’

‘There must be thousands more handicapped adults and children. Are the Nazis going to kill them all?’

‘Probably.’

‘You certainly won’t be able to stop them if you’re in a prison camp.’

For the first time, Werner did not have a comeback.

Volodya turned away from the water and surveyed the cemetery. A young man in a suit was kneeling at a small tombstone. Was he a tail? Volodya watched carefully. The man was shaking with sobs. He seemed genuine: counter-intelligence agents were not good actors.

‘Look at him,’ Volodya said to Werner.

‘Why?’

‘He’s grieving. Which is what you’re doing.’

‘So what?’

‘Just watch.’

After a minute the man got up, wiped his face with a handkerchief, and walked away.

Volodya said: ‘Now he’s happy. That’s what grieving is about. It doesn’t achieve anything, it just makes you feel better.’

‘You think my asking questions is just to make me feel better.’

Volodya turned and looked him in the eye. ‘I don’t criticize you,’ he said. ‘You want to discover the truth, and shout it out loud. But think about it logically. The only way to end this is to bring down the regime. And the only way that’s going to happen is if the Nazis are defeated by the Red Army.’

‘Maybe.’

Werner was weakening, Volodya perceived with a surge of hope. ‘Maybe?’ he said. ‘Who else is there? The British are on their knees, desperately trying to fight off the Luftwaffe. The Americans are not interested in European squabbles. Everyone else supports the Fascists.’ He put his hands on Werner’s shoulders. ‘The Red Army is your only hope, my friend. If we lose, those Nazis will be murdering handicapped children – and Jews, and Communists, and homosexuals – for a thousand more blood-soaked years.’

‘Hell,’ said Werner. ‘You’re right.’

(vii)

Carla and her mother went to church on Sunday. Maud was distraught about Walter’s arrest and desperate to find out where he had been taken. Of course the Gestapo refused to give out any information. But Pastor Ochs’s church was a fashionable one, people came in from the wealthier suburbs to attend, and the congregation included some powerful men, one or two of whom might be able to make inquiries.

Carla bowed her head and prayed that her father might not be beaten or tortured. She did not really believe in prayer but she was desperate enough to try anything.

She was glad to see the Franck family, sitting a few rows in front. She studied the back of Werner’s head. His hair curled a little at the neck, in contrast with most of the men who were close-cropped. She had touched his neck and kissed his throat. He was adorable. He was easily the nicest boy who had ever kissed her. Every night before sleeping she relived that evening when they had driven to the Grunewald.

But she was not in love with him, she told herself.

Not yet.

When Pastor Ochs entered, she saw at once that he had been crushed. The change in him was horrifying. He walked slowly to the lectern, head bent and shoulders slumped, causing a few in the congregation to exchange concerned whispers. He recited the prayers without expression then read the sermon from a book. Carla had been a nurse for two years now and she recognized in him the symptoms of depression. She guessed that he, too, had received a visit from the Gestapo.

She noticed that Frau Ochs and the five children were not in their usual places in the front pew.

As they sang the last hymn Carla vowed that she would not give up, scared though she was. She still had allies: Frieda and Werner and Heinrich. But what could they do?

She wished she had solid proof of what the Nazis were doing. She had no doubts, herself, that they were exterminating the handicapped – this Gestapo crackdown made it obvious. But she could not convince others without concrete evidence.

How could she get it?

After the service she walked out of the church with Frieda and Werner. Drawing them away from their parents, she said: ‘I think we have to get evidence of what’s going on.’

Frieda immediately saw what she meant. ‘We should go to Akelberg,’ she said. ‘Visit the hospital.’

Werner had proposed that, right at the start, but they had decided to begin their inquiries here in Berlin. Now Carla considered the idea afresh. ‘We’d need permits to travel.’

‘How could we manage that?’

Carla snapped her fingers. ‘We both belong to the Mercury Cycling Club. They can get permits for bicycle holidays.’ It was just the kind of thing the Nazis were keen on, healthy outdoor exercise for young people.

‘Could we get inside the hospital?’

‘We could try.’

Werner said: ‘I think you should drop the whole thing.’

Carla was startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Pastor Ochs has obviously been scared half to death. This is a very dangerous business. You could be imprisoned, tortured. And it won’t bring back Axel or Kurt.’

She stared at him incredulously. ‘You want us to give it up?’

‘You must give it up. You’re talking as if Germany were a free country! You’ll get yourselves killed, both of you.’

‘We have to take risks!’ Carla said angrily.

‘Leave me out of this,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a visit from the Gestapo, too.’

Carla was immediately concerned. ‘Oh, Werner – what happened?’

‘Just threats, so far. If I ask any more questions I’ll be sent to the front line.’

‘Oh, well, thank God it’s not worse.’

‘It’s bad enough.’

The girls were silent for a few moments, then Frieda said what Carla was thinking. ‘This is more important than your job, you must see that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I must see,’ Werner replied. He was superficially angry but, underneath that, Carla could tell he was in fact ashamed. ‘It’s not your career that’s at stake,’ he went on. ‘And you haven’t met the Gestapo yet.’

Carla was astonished. She thought she knew Werner. She would have been sure he would see this the way she did. ‘Actually, I have met them,’ she said. ‘They arrested my father.’

Frieda was appalled. ‘Oh, Carla!’ she said, and put her arm around Carla’s shoulders.

‘We can’t find out where he is,’ Carla added.

Werner showed no sympathy. ‘Then you should know better than to defy them!’ he said. ‘They would have arrested you, too, except that Inspector Macke thinks girls aren’t dangerous.’

Carla wanted to cry. She had been on the point of falling in love with Werner, and now he turned out to be a coward.

Frieda said: ‘Are you saying you won’t help us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because you want to keep your job?’

‘It’s pointless – you can’t beat them!’

Carla was furious with him for his cowardice and defeatism. ‘We can’t just let this happen!’

‘Open confrontation is insane. There are other ways to oppose them.’

Carla said: ‘How, by working slowly, like those leaflets say? That won’t stop them killing handicapped children!’

‘Defying the government is suicidal!’

‘Anything else is cowardice!’

‘I refused to be judged by two girls!’ With that he stalked off.

Carla fought back tears. She could not cry in front of two hundred people standing outside the church in the sunshine. ‘I thought he was different,’ she said.

Frieda was upset, but baffled too. ‘He is different,’ she said. ‘I’ve known him all my life. Something else is going on, something he’s not telling us about.’

Carla’s mother approached. She did not notice Carla’s distress, which was unusual. ‘Nobody knows anything!’ she said despairingly. ‘I can’t find out where you father might be.’

‘We’ll keep trying,’ Carla said. ‘Didn’t he have friends at the American Embassy?’

‘Acquaintances. I’ve asked them already, but they haven’t come up with any information.’

‘We’ll ask them again tomorrow.’

‘Oh, God, I suppose there are a million German wives in the same situation as me.’

Carla nodded. ‘Let’s go home, Mother.’

They walked back slowly, not talking, each with her own thoughts. Carla was angry with Werner, the more so because she had badly mistaken his character. How could she have fallen for someone so weak?

They reached their street. ‘I shall go to the American Embassy in the morning,’ Maud said as they approached the house. ‘I’ll wait in the lobby all day if necessary. I’ll beg them to do something. If they really want to they can make a semi-official inquiry about the brother-in-law of a British government minister. Oh! Why is our front door open?’

Carla’s first thought was that the Gestapo had paid them a second visit. But there was no black car parked at the kerb. And a key was sticking out of the lock.

Maud stepped into the hall and screamed.

Carla rushed in after her.

There was a man lying on the floor covered in blood.

Carla managed to stop herself screaming. ‘Who is it?’ she said.

Maud knelt beside the man. ‘Walter,’ she said. ‘Oh, Walter, what have they done to you?’

Then Carla saw that it was her father. He was so badly injured he was almost unrecognizable. One eye was closed, his mouth was swollen into a single huge bruise, and his hair was covered with congealed blood. One arm was twisted oddly. The front of his jacket was stained with vomit.

Maud said: ‘Walter, speak to me, speak to me!’

He opened his ruined mouth and groaned.

Carla suppressed the hysterical grief that bubbled up inside her by shifting into professional gear. She fetched a cushion and propped up his head. She got a cup of water from the kitchen and dribbled a little on his lips. He swallowed and opened his mouth for more. When he seemed to have had enough, she went into his study and got a bottle of schnapps and gave him a few drops. He swallowed them and coughed.

‘I’m going for Dr Rothmann,’ Carla said. ‘Wash his face and give him more water. Don’t try to move him.’

Maud said: ‘Yes, yes – hurry!’

Carla wheeled her bike out of the house and pedalled away. Dr Rothmann was not allowed to practise any longer – Jews could not be doctors – but, unofficially, he still attended poor people.

Carla pedalled furiously. How had her father got home? She guessed they had brought him in a car, and he had managed to stagger from the kerbside into the house, then collapsed.

She reached the Rothmann house. Like her own home, it was in bad repair. Most of the windows had been broken by Jew-haters. Frau Rothmann opened the door. ‘My father has been beaten,’ Carla said breathlessly. ‘The Gestapo.’

‘My husband will come,’ said Frau Rothmann. She turned and called up the stairs. ‘Isaac!’

The doctor came down.

‘It’s Herr von Ulrich,’ said Frau Rothmann.

The doctor picked up a canvas shopping bag that stood near the door. Because he was banned from practising medicine, Carla guessed he could not carry anything that looked like an instrument case.

They left the house. ‘I’ll cycle on ahead,’ Carla said.

When she got home she found her mother sitting on the doorstep, weeping.

‘The doctor’s on his way!’ Carla said.

‘He is too late,’ said Maud. ‘Your father’s dead.’

(viii)

Volodya was outside the Wertheim department store, just off the Alexander Platz, at half past two in the afternoon. He patrolled the area several times, looking for men who might be plain-clothes police officers. He was sure he had not been followed here, but it was not impossible that a passing Gestapo agent might recognize him and wonder what he was up to. A busy place with crowds was the best camouflage, but it was not perfect.

Was the invasion story true? If so, Volodya would not be in Berlin much longer. He would kiss goodbye to Gerda and Sabine. He would presumably return to Red Army Intelligence headquarters in Moscow. He looked forward to spending some time with his family. His sister, Anya, had twin babies whom he had never seen. And he felt he could do with a rest. Undercover work meant continual stress: losing Gestapo shadows, holding clandestine meetings, recruiting agents, and worrying about betrayal. He would welcome a year or two at headquarters, assuming the Soviet Union survived that long. Alternatively, he might be sent on another foreign posting. He fancied Washington. He had always had a yen to see America.

He took from his pocket a ball of crumpled tissue paper and dropped it into a litter bin. At one minute to three he lit a cigarette, although he did not smoke. He dropped the lighted match carefully into the bin so that it landed in the nest of tissue paper. Then he walked away.

Seconds later, someone cried: ‘Fire!’

Just when everyone in the vicinity was looking at the fire in the litter bin, a taxi drew up at the entrance to the store, a regular black Mercedes 260D. A handsome young man in the uniform of an air force lieutenant jumped out. As the lieutenant was paying the driver, Volodya jumped into the cab and slammed the door.

On the floor of the cab, where the driver could not see it, was a copy of Neues Volk, the Nazi magazine of racial propaganda. Volodya picked it up, but did not read it.

‘Some idiot has set fire to a litter bin,’ said the driver.

‘Adlon Hotel,’ Volodya said, and the car pulled away.

He riffled the pages of the magazine and verified that a buff-coloured envelope was concealed within.

He longed to open it, but he waited.

He got out of the cab at the hotel, but did not go inside. Instead, he walked through the Brandenburg Gate and into the park. The trees were showing bright new leaves. It was a warm spring day and there were plenty of afternoon strollers.

The magazine seemed to burn the skin of Volodya’s hand. He found an unobtrusive bench and sat down.

He unfolded the magazine and, behind its screen, he opened the buff-coloured envelope.

He drew out a document. It was a carbon copy, typed and a bit faint, but legible. It was headed:

DIRECTIVE NO. 21: CASE ‘BARBAROSSA’

Friedrich Barbarossa was the German Emperor who had led the Third Crusade in the year 1189.

The text began: ‘The German Wehrmacht must be prepared, even before the completion of the war against England, to overthrow Russia in a rapid campaign.’

Volodya found himself gasping for breath. This was dynamite. The Tokyo spy had been right, and Stalin wrong. And the Soviet Union was in mortal danger.

Heart pounding, Volodya looked at the end of the document. It was signed: ‘Adolf Hitler.’

He scanned the pages, looking for a date, and found one. The invasion was scheduled for 15 May 1941.

Next to this was a pencilled note in Werner Franck’s handwriting: ‘The date has now been changed to 22 June.’

‘Oh, my God, he’s done it,’ Volodya said aloud. ‘He’s confirmed the invasion.’

He put the document back into the envelope and the envelope into the magazine.

This changed everything.

He got up from the bench and walked back to the Soviet Embassy to give them the news.

(ix)

There was no railway station at Akelberg, so Carla and Frieda got off at the nearest stop, ten miles away, and wheeled their bicycles off the train.

They wore shorts, sweaters, and utilitarian sandals, and they had put their hair up in plaits. They looked like members of the League of German Girls, the Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM. Such girls often took cycling holidays. Whether they did anything other than cycle, especially during the evenings in the spartan hostels at which they stayed, was the subject of much speculation. Boys said BDM stood for Bubi Drück Mir, Baby Do Me.

Carla and Frieda consulted their map then rode out of town in the direction of Akelberg.

Carla thought about her father every hour of every day. She knew she would never get over the horror of finding him savagely beaten and dying. She had cried for days. But alongside her grief was another emotion: rage. She was not merely going to be sad. She was going to do something about it.

Maud, distraught with grief, had at first tried to persuade Carla not to go to Akelberg. ‘My husband is dead, my son is in the army, I don’t want my daughter to put her life on the line too!’ she had wailed.

After the funeral, when horror and hysteria gave way to a calmer, more profound mourning, Carla had asked her what Walter would have wanted. Maud had thought for a long time. It was not until the next day that she answered. ‘He would have wanted you to carry on the fight.’

It was hard for Maud to say it, but they both knew it was true.

Frieda had had no such discussion with her parents. Her mother, Monika, had once loved Walter, and was devastated by his death; nonetheless, she would have been horrified if she knew what Frieda was doing. Her father, Ludi, would have locked her in the cellar. But they believed she was going bicycling. If anything, they might have suspected she was meeting some unsuitable boyfriend.

The countryside was hilly, but they were both in good shape, and an hour later they coasted down a slope into the small town of Akelberg. Carla felt apprehensive: they were entering enemy territory.

They went into a café. There was no Coca-Cola. ‘This isn’t Berlin!’ said the woman behind the counter, with as much indignation as if they had asked to be serenaded by an orchestra. Carla wondered why someone who disliked strangers would run a café.

They got glasses of Fanta, a German product, and took the opportunity to refill their water bottles.

They did not know the precise location of the hospital. They needed to ask directions, but Carla was concerned about arousing suspicion. The local Nazis might take an interest in strangers asking questions. As they were paying, Carla said: ‘We’re supposed to meet the rest of our group at the crossroads by the hospital. Which way is that?’

The woman would not meet her eye. ‘There’s no hospital here.’

‘The Akelberg Medical Institution,’ Carla persisted, quoting from the letterhead.

‘Must be another Akelberg.’

Carla thought she was lying. ‘How strange,’ she said, keeping up the pretence. ‘I hope we’re not in the wrong place.’

They wheeled their bikes along the high street. There was nothing else for it, Carla thought: she had to ask the way.

A harmless-looking old man was sitting on a bench outside a bar, enjoying the afternoon sunshine. ‘Where’s the hospital?’ Carla asked him, covering her anxiety with a cheery veneer.

‘Through the town and up the hill on your left,’ he said. ‘Don’t go inside, though – not many people come out!’ He cackled as if he had made a joke.

The directions were a bit vague, but might suffice, Carla thought. She decided she would not draw further attention by asking again.

A woman in a headscarf took the arm of the old man. ‘Pay no attention to him – he doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ she said, looking worried. She jerked him to his feet and hustled him along the sidewalk. ‘Keep your mouth shut, you old fool,’ she muttered.

It seemed these people had an inkling of what was going on in their neighbourhood. Fortunately their main reaction was to act surly and not get involved. Perhaps they would not be in a hurry to give information to the police or the Nazi party.

Carla and Frieda went farther along the street and found the youth hostel. There were thousands of such places in Germany, designed to cater for exactly such people as they were pretending to be, athletic youngsters on a vigorous open-air holiday. They checked in. The facilities were primitive, with three-tiered bunk beds, but the place was cheap.

It was late afternoon when they cycled out of town. After a mile they came to a left turn. There was no signpost, but the road led uphill, so they took it.

Carla’s apprehension intensified. The nearer they got, the harder it would be to seem innocent under questioning.

A mile later they saw a large house in a park. It did not seem to be walled or fenced, and the road led up to the door. Once again there were no signs.

Unconsciously, Carla had been expecting a hilltop castle of forbidding grey stone, with barred windows and ironbound oak doors. But this was a Bavarian country house, with steep overhanging roofs, wooden balconies, and a little bell tower. Surely nothing as horrible as child murder could go on here? It also seemed small, for a hospital. Then she saw that a modern extension had been added to one side, with a tall chimney.

They dismounted and leaned their bikes against the side of the building. Carla’s heart was in her mouth as they walked up the steps to the entrance. Why were there no guards? Because no one would be so foolhardy as to try to investigate the place?

There was no bell or knocker, but when Carla pushed the door it opened. She stepped inside, and Frieda followed. They found themselves in a cool hall with a stone floor and bare white walls. There were several rooms off the hall, but all the doors were closed. A middle-aged woman in spectacles was coming down a broad staircase. She wore a smart grey dress. ‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Hello,’ said Frieda casually.

‘What are you doing? You can’t come in here.’

Frieda and Carla had prepared a story. ‘I just wanted to visit the place where my brother died,’ Frieda said. ‘He was fifteen—’

‘This isn’t a public facility!’ the woman said indignantly.

‘Yes, it is.’ Frieda had been brought up in a wealthy family, and was not cowed by minor functionaries.

A nurse of about nineteen appeared from a side door and stared at them. The woman in the grey dress spoke to her. ‘Nurse König, fetch Herr Römer immediately.’

The nurse hurried away.

The woman said: ‘You should have written in advance.’

‘Did you not get my letter?’ said Frieda. ‘I wrote to the Senior Physician.’ This was not true: Frieda was improvising.

‘No such letter has been received!’ Clearly the woman felt that Frieda’s outrageous request could not possibly have gone unnoticed.

Carla was listening. The place was strangely quiet. She had dealt with physically and mentally handicapped people, adults and children, and they were not often silent. Even through these closed doors she should have been able to hear shouts, laughter, crying, voices raised in protest, and nonsensical ravings. But there was nothing. It was more like a morgue.

Frieda tried a new tack. ‘Perhaps you can tell me where my brother’s grave is. I’d like to visit it.’

‘There are no graves. We have an incinerator.’ She immediately corrected herself. ‘A cremation facility.’

Carla said: ‘I noticed the chimney.’

Frieda said: ‘What happened to my brother’s ashes?’

‘They will be sent to you in due course.’

‘Don’t mix them up with anyone else’s, will you?’

The woman’s neck reddened in a blush, and Carla guessed they did mix up the ashes, figuring that no one would know.

Nurse König reappeared, followed by a burly man in the white uniform of a male nurse. The woman said: ‘Ah, Römer. Please escort these girls off the premises.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Frieda. ‘Are you quite sure you’re doing the right thing? I only wanted to see the place where my brother died.’

‘Quite sure.’

‘Then you won’t mind letting me know your name.’

There was a second’s hesitation. ‘Frau Schmidt. Now please leave us.’

Römer moved towards them in a menacing way.

‘We’re going,’ Frieda said frostily. ‘We have no intention of giving Herr Römer an excuse to molest us.’

The man changed course and opened the door for them.

They went out, climbed on their bikes, and rode down the drive. Frieda said: ‘Do you think she believed our story?’

‘Totally,’ said Carla. ‘She didn’t even ask our names. If she had suspected the truth she would have called the police right away.’

‘But we didn’t learn much. We saw the chimney. But we didn’t find anything we could call proof.’

Carla felt a bit down. Getting evidence was not as easy as it sounded.

They returned to the hostel. They washed and changed and went out in search of something to eat. The only café was the one with the grumpy proprietress. They ate potato pancakes with sausage. Afterwards they went to the town’s bar. They ordered beers and spoke cheerfully to the other customers, but no one wanted to talk to them. This in itself was suspicious. People everywhere were wary of strangers, for anyone might be a Nazi snitch, but even so Carla wondered how many towns there were where two young girls could spend an hour in a bar without anyone even trying to flirt with them.

They returned to the hostel for an early night. Carla could not think what else to do. Tomorrow they would return home empty-handed. It seemed incredible that she should know about these awful killings yet be unable to stop them. She felt so frustrated she wanted to scream.

It occurred to her that Frau Schmidt – if that really was her name – might have further thoughts about her visitors. At the time, she had taken Carla and Frieda for what they claimed to be, but she might develop suspicions later, and call the police just to be safe. If that happened, Carla and Frieda would not be hard to find. There were just five people at the hostel tonight and they were the only girls. She listened in fear for the fatal knock on the door.

If they were questioned, they would tell part of the truth, saying that Frieda’s brother and Carla’s godson had died at Akelberg, and they wanted to visit their graves, or at least see the place where they died and spend a few minutes in remembrance. The local police might buy that story. But if they checked with Berlin they would swiftly learn the connection with Walter von Ulrich and Werner Franck, two men who had been investigated by the Gestapo for asking disloyal questions about Akelberg. Then Carla and Frieda would be deep in trouble.

As they were getting ready to go to bed in the uncomfortable-looking bunks, there was a knock at the door.

Carla’s heart stopped. She thought of what the Gestapo had done to her father. She knew she could not withstand torture. In two minutes she would name every Swing Kid she knew.

Frieda, who was less imaginative, said: ‘Don’t look so scared!’ and opened the door.

It was not the Gestapo but a small, pretty, blonde girl. It took Carla a moment to recognize her as Nurse König, out of uniform.

‘I have to speak to you,’ she said. She was distressed, breathless and tearful.

Frieda invited her in. She sat on a bunk bed and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her dress. Then she said: ‘I can’t keep it inside any longer.’

Carla glanced at Frieda. They were thinking the same thing. Carla said: ‘Keep what inside, Nurse König?’

‘My name is Ilse.’

‘I’m Carla and this is Frieda. What’s on your mind, Ilse?’

Ilse spoke in a voice so low they could hardly hear her. She said: ‘We kill them.’

Carla could hardly breathe. She managed to say: ‘At the hospital?’

Ilse nodded. ‘The poor people who come in on the grey buses. Children, even babies, and old people, grandmothers. They’re all more or less helpless. Sometimes they’re horrid, dribbling and soiling themselves, but they can’t help it, and some of them are really sweet and innocent. It makes no difference – we kill them all.’

‘How do you do it?’

‘An injection of morphium-scopolamine.’

Carla nodded. It was a common anaesthetic, fatal in overdose. ‘What about the special treatments they’re supposed to have?’

Ilse shook her head. ‘There are no special treatments.’

Carla said: ‘Ilse, let me get this clear. Do they kill every patient that comes here?’

‘Every one.’

‘As soon as they arrive?’

‘Within a day, no more than two.’

It was what Carla had suspected but, even so, the stark reality was horrifying, and she felt nauseated.

After a minute she said: ‘Are there any patients there now?’

‘Not alive. We were giving injections this afternoon. That’s why Frau Schmidt was so frightened when you walked in.’

‘Why don’t they make it harder for strangers to get into the building?’

‘They think guards and barbed wire around a hospital would make it obvious that something sinister was going on. Anyway, no one ever tried to visit before you.’

‘How many people died today?’

‘Fifty-two.’

Carla’s skin crawled. ‘The hospital killed fifty-two people this afternoon, around the time we were there?’

‘Yes.’

‘So they’re all dead, now?’

Ilse nodded.

An intention had been germinating in Carla’s mind, and now she resolved to carry it out. ‘I want to see,’ she said.

Ilse looked frightened. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I want to go inside the hospital and see those corpses.’

‘They’re burning them already.’

‘Then I want to see that. Can you sneak us in?’

‘Tonight?’

‘Right now.’

‘Oh, God.’

Carla said: ‘You don’t have to do anything. You’ve already been brave, just by talking to us. If you don’t want to do any more, it’s okay. But if we’re going to put a stop to this we need proof.’

‘Proof.’

‘Yes. Look, the government is ashamed of this project – that’s why it’s secret. The Nazis know that ordinary Germans won’t tolerate the killing of children. But people prefer to believe it’s not happening, and it’s easy for them to dismiss a rumour, especially if they hear it from a young girl. So we have to prove it to them.’

‘I see.’ Ilse’s pretty face took on a look of grim determination. ‘All right, then. I’ll take you.’

Carla stood up. ‘How do you normally get there?’

‘Bicycle. It’s outside.’

‘Then we’ll all ride.’

They went out. Darkness had fallen. The sky was partly cloudy, and the starlight was faint. They used their cycle lights as they rode out of town and up the hill. When they came in sight of the hospital they switched off their lights and continued on foot, pushing their bikes. Ilse took them by a forest path that led to the rear of the building.

Carla smelled an unpleasant odour, somewhat like a car’s exhaust. She sniffed.

Ilse whispered: ‘The incinerator.’

‘Oh, no!’

They hid the bikes in a shrubbery and walked silently to the back door. It was unlocked. They went in.

The corridors were bright. There were no shadowy corners: the place was lit like the hospital it pretended to be. If they met someone they would be seen clearly. Their clothes would give them away immediately as intruders. What would they do then? Run, probably.

Ilse walked quickly along a corridor, turned a corner, and opened a door. ‘In here,’ she whispered.

They walked in.

Frieda let out a squeal of horror and covered her mouth.

Carla whispered: ‘Oh, my soul.’

In a large, cold room were about thirty dead people, all lying face up on tables, naked. Some were fat, some thin; some old and withered, some children, and one baby of about a year. A few were bent and twisted, but most appeared physically normal.

Each one had a small sticking-plaster on the upper left arm, where the needle had gone in.

Carla heard Frieda crying softly.

She steeled her nerves. ‘Where are the others?’ she whispered.

‘Already gone to the furnace,’ Ilse replied.

They heard voices coming from behind the double door at the far end of the room.

‘Back outside,’ Ilse said.

They stepped into the corridor. Carla closed the door all but a crack, and peeped through. She saw Herr Römer and another man push a hospital trolley through the doors.

The men did not look in Carla’s direction. They were arguing about soccer. She heard Römer say: ‘It’s only nine years ago that we won the national championship. We beat Eintracht Frankfurt two-nil.’

‘Yes, but half your best players were Jews, and they’ve all gone.’

Carla realized they were talking about the Bayern Munich team.

Römer said: ‘The old days will come back, if only we play the right tactics.’

Still arguing, the two men went to a table where a fat woman lay dead. They took her by the shoulders and knees, then unceremoniously swung her on to the trolley, grunting with the effort.

They moved the trolley to another table and put a second corpse on top of the first.

When they had three they wheeled the trolley out.

Carla said: ‘I’m going to follow them.’

She crossed the morgue to the double doors, and Frieda and Ilse followed her. They passed into an area that felt more industrial than medical: the walls were painted brown, the floor was concrete, and there were store cupboards and tool racks.

They looked around a corner.

They saw a large room like a garage, with harsh lighting and deep shadows. The atmosphere was warm, and there was a faint smell of cooking. In the middle of the space was a steel box large enough to hold a motor car. A metal canopy led from the top of the box through the roof. Carla realized she was looking at a furnace.

The two men lifted a body off the trolley and shifted it to a steel conveyor belt. Römer pushed a button on the wall. The belt moved, a door opened, and the corpse passed into the furnace.

They put the next corpse on the belt.

Carla had seen enough.

She turned and motioned the others back. Frieda bumped into Ilse, who let out an involuntary cry. They all froze.

They heard Römer say: ‘What was that?’

‘A ghost,’ the other replied.

Römer’s voice was shaky. ‘Don’t joke about such things!’

‘Are you going to pick up the other end of this stiff, or what?’

‘All right, all right.’

The three girls hurried back to the morgue. Seeing the remaining bodies, Carla suffered a wave of grief about Ada’s Kurt. He had lain here, with a sticking-plaster on his arm, and had been thrown on to the conveyor belt and disposed of like a bag of garbage. But you’re not forgotten, Kurt, she thought.

They went out into the corridor. As they turned towards the back door, they heard footsteps and the voice of Frau Schmidt. ‘What is taking those two men so long?’

They hurried along the corridor and through the door. The moon was out, and the park was brightly lit. Carla could see the shrubbery where they had hidden the bikes, two hundred yards away across the grass.

Frieda came out last, and in her rush she let the door bang.

Carla thought fast. Frau Schmidt was likely to investigate the noise. The three girls might not reach the shrubbery before she opened the door. They had to hide. ‘This way!’ Carla hissed, and she ran around the corner of the building. The others followed.

They flattened themselves against the wall. Carla heard the door open. She held her breath.

There was a long pause. Then Frau Schmidt muttered something unintelligible, and the door banged again.

Carla peeped around the corner. Frau Schmidt had gone.

The three girls ran across the lawn and retrieved their bicycles.

They pushed the bikes along the forest path and emerged on to the road. They switched on their lights, mounted up, and pedalled away. Carla felt euphoric. They had got away with it!

As they approached the town, triumph gave way to more practical considerations. What had they achieved, exactly? What would they do next?

They must tell someone what they had seen. She was not sure who. In any event, they had to convince someone. Would they be believed? The more she thought about it, the less sure she was.

When they reached the hostel and dismounted, Ilse said: ‘Thank goodness that’s over. I’ve never been so scared in all my life.’

‘It’s not over,’ said Carla.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It won’t be over until we’ve closed that hospital, and any others like it.’

‘How can you do that?’

‘We need you,’ Carla said to her. ‘You’re the proof.’

‘I was afraid you were going to say that.’

‘Will you come with us, tomorrow, when we go back to Berlin?’

There was a long pause, then Ilse said: ‘Yes, I will.’

(x)

Volodya Peshkov was glad to be home. Moscow was at its summery best, sunny and warm. On Monday 30 June he returned to Red Army Intelligence headquarters beside the Khodynka airfield.

Both Werner Franck and the Tokyo spy had been right: Germany had invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June. Volodya and all the personnel at the Soviet Embassy in Berlin had returned to Moscow, by ship and train. Volodya had been prioritized, and made it back faster than most: some were still travelling.

Volodya now realized how much Berlin had been getting him down. The Nazis were tedious in their self-righteousness and triumphalism. They were like a winning soccer team at the after-match party, getting drunker and more boring and refusing to go home. He was sick of them.

Some people might say that the USSR was similar, with its secret police, its rigid orthodoxy, and its puritan attitudes to such pleasures as abstract painting and fashion. They were wrong. Communism was a work in progress, with mistakes being made on the road to a fair society. The NKVD with its torture chambers was an aberration, a cancer in the body of Communism. One day it would be surgically removed. But probably not in wartime.

Anticipating the outbreak of war, Volodya had long ago equipped his Berlin spies with clandestine radios and code books. Now it was more vital than ever that the handful of brave anti-Nazis should continue to pass information to the Soviets. Before leaving he had destroyed all records of their names and addresses, which now existed only in his head.

He had found both his parents fit and well, although his father looked harassed: it was his responsibility to prepare Moscow for air raids. Volodya had gone to see his sister, Anya, her husband, Ilya Dvorkin, and the twins, now eighteen months old: Dmitriy, called Dimka, and Tatiana, called Tania. Unfortunately their father struck Volodya as being just as rat-like and contemptible as ever.

After a pleasant day at home, and a good night’s sleep in his old room, he was ready to start work again.

He passed through the metal detector at the entrance to the Intelligence building. The familiar corridors and staircases touched a nostalgic chord, even if they were drab and utilitarian. Walking through the building he half expected people to come up and congratulate him: many of them must know he had been the one to confirm Barbarossa. But no one did: perhaps they were being discreet.

He entered a large open area of typists and file clerks and spoke to the middle-aged woman receptionist. ‘Hello, Nika – are you still here?’

‘Good morning, Captain Peshkov,’ she said, not as warmly as he might have hoped. ‘Colonel Lemitov would like to see you right away.’

Like Volodya’s father, Lemitov had not been important enough to suffer in the great purge of the late thirties, and now he had been promoted to fill the place of an unlucky former superior. Volodya did not know much about the purge, but he found it hard to believe that so many senior men had been disloyal enough to merit such punishment. Not that Volodya knew exactly what the punishment was. They could be in exile in Siberia, or in prison somewhere, or dead. All he knew was that they had vanished.

Nika added: ‘He has the big office at the end of the main corridor now.’

Volodya walked through the open room, nodding and smiling at one or two acquaintances, but again he got feeling that he was not the hero he had expected to be. He tapped on Lemitov’s door, hoping the boss might shed some light.

‘Come in.’

Volodya entered, saluted, and closed the door behind him.

‘Welcome back, Captain.’ Lemitov came around his desk. ‘Between you and me, you did a great job in Berlin. Thank you.’

‘I’m honoured, sir,’ said Volodya. ‘But why is this between you and me?’

‘Because you contradicted Stalin.’ He held up a hand to forestall protest. ‘Stalin doesn’t know it was you, of course. But all the same, people around here are nervous, after the purge, of associating with anyone who takes the wrong line.’

‘What should I have done?’ Volodya said incredulously. ‘Faked wrong intelligence?’

Lemitov shook his head emphatically. ‘You did exactly the right thing, don’t get me wrong. And I’ve protected you. But just don’t expect people around here to treat you like a champion.’

‘Okay,’ said Volodya. Things were worse than he had imagined.

‘You have your own office, now, at least – three doors down. You’ll need to spend a day or so catching up.’

Volodya took that for dismissal. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. He saluted and left.

His office was not luxurious – a small room with no carpet – but he had it to himself. He was out of touch with the progress of the German invasion, having been busy trying to get home as fast as possible. Now he put his disappointment aside and began to read the reports of the battlefield commanders for the first week of the war.

As he did so, he became more and more desolate.

The invasion had taken the Red Army by surprise.

It seemed impossible, but the evidence covered his desk.

On 22 June, when the Germans attacked, many forward units of the Red Army had had no live ammunition.

That was not all. Planes had been lined up neatly on airstrips with no camouflage, and the Luftwaffe had destroyed 1,200 Soviet aircraft in the first few hours of the war. Army units had been thrown at the advancing Germans without adequate weapons, with no air cover, and lacking intelligence about enemy positions; and in consequence had been annihilated.

Worst of all, Stalin’s standing order to the Red Army was that retreat was forbidden. Every unit had to fight to the last man, and officers were expected to shoot themselves to avoid capture. Troops were never allowed to regroup at a new, stronger defensive position. This meant that every defeat turned into a massacre.

Consequently, the Red Army was haemorrhaging men and equipment.

The warning from the Tokyo spy, and Werner Franck’s confirmation, had been ignored by Stalin. Even when the attack began, Stalin had at first insisted it was a limited act of provocation, done by German army officers without the knowledge of Hitler, who would put a stop to it as soon as he found out.

By the time it became undeniable that it was not a provocation but the largest invasion in the history of warfare, the Germans had overwhelmed the Soviets’ forward positions. After a week they had pushed three hundred miles inside Soviet territory.

It was a catastrophe – but what made Volodya want to scream out loud was that it could have been avoided.

There was no doubt whose fault it was. The Soviet Union was an autocracy. Only one person made the decisions: Josef Stalin. He had been stubbornly, stupidly, disastrously wrong. And now his country was in mortal danger.

Until now Volodya had believed that Soviet Communism was the true ideology, marred only by the excesses of the secret police, the NKVD. Now he saw that the failure was at the very top. Beria and the NKVD existed only because Stalin permitted them. It was Stalin who was preventing the march to true Communism.

Late that afternoon, as Volodya was staring out of the window over the sunlit airstrip, brooding over what he had learned, he was visited by Kamen. They had been lieutenants together four years ago, fresh out of the Military Intelligence Academy, and had shared a room with two others. In those days Kamen had been the clown, making fun of everyone, daringly mocking pious Soviet orthodoxy. Now he was heavier and seemed more serious. He had grown a small black moustache like that of the Foreign Minister, Molotov, perhaps to make himself look more mature.

Kamen closed the door behind him and sat down. He took from his pocket a toy, a tin soldier with a key in its back. He wound up the key and placed the toy on Volodya’s desk. The soldier swung his arms as if marching, and the clockwork mechanism made a loud ratcheting sound as it wound down.

In a lowered voice Kamen said: ‘Stalin has not been seen for two days.’

Volodya realized that the clockwork soldier was there to swamp any listening device that might be hidden in his office.

He said: ‘What do you mean, he hasn’t been seen?’

‘He has not come to the Kremlin, and he is not answering the phone.’

Volodya was baffled. The leader of a nation could not just disappear. ‘What’s he doing?’

‘No one knows.’ The soldier ran down. Kamen wound it up and set it going again. ‘On Saturday night, when he heard that the Soviet Western Army Group had been encircled by the Germans, he said: “Everything’s lost. I give up. Lenin founded our state and we’ve fucked it up.” Then he went to Kuntsevo.’ Stalin had a country house near the town of Kuntsevo on the outskirts of Moscow. ‘Yesterday he didn’t show up at the Kremlin at his usual time of midday. When they phoned Kuntsevo, no one answered. Today, the same.’

Volodya leaned forward. ‘Is he suffering . . .’ his voice fell to a whisper, ‘a mental breakdown?’

Kamen made a helpless gesture. ‘It wouldn’t be surprising. He insisted, against all the evidence, that Germany would not attack us this year, and now look.’

Volodya nodded. It made sense. Stalin had allowed himself to be officially called Father, Teacher, Great Leader, Transformer of Nature, Great Helmsman, Genius of Mankind, the Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples. But now it had been proved, even to him, that he had been wrong and everyone else right. Men committed suicide in such circumstances.

The crisis was even worse than Volodya had thought. Not only was the Soviet Union under attack and losing. It was also leaderless. This had to be its most perilous moment since the revolution.

But was it also an opportunity? Could it be a chance to get rid of Stalin?

The last time Stalin had appeared vulnerable was in 1924, when Lenin’s Testament had said that Stalin was not fit to hold power. Since Stalin had survived that crisis his power had seemed unassailable, even – Volodya could now see clearly – when his decisions had verged on madness: the purges, the blunders in Spain, the appointment of the sadist Beria as head of the secret police, the pact with Hitler. Was this emergency the occasion, at last, to break his hold?

Volodya hid his excitement from Kamen and everyone else. He hugged his thoughts to himself as he rode the bus home through the soft light of a summer evening. His journey was delayed by a slow-moving convoy of lorries towing anti-aircraft guns – presumably being deployed by his father, who was in charge of Moscow’s air raid defences.

Could Stalin be deposed?

He wondered how many Kremlin insiders were asking themselves the same question.

He entered his parents’ apartment building, the ten-storey Government House, across the Moskva River from the Kremlin. They were out, but his sister was there with the twins, Dimka and Tania. The boy, Dimka, had dark eyes and hair. He held a red pencil and was scribbling messily on an old newspaper. The girl had the same intense blue-eyed stare that Grigori had – and so did Volodya, people said. She immediately showed Volodya her doll.

Also there was Zoya Vorotsyntsev, the astonishingly beautiful physicist Volodya had last seen four years earlier when he was about to leave for Spain. She and Anya had discovered a shared interest in Russian folk music: they went to recitals together, and Zoya played the gudok, a three-stringed fiddle. Neither could afford a phonograph, but Grigori had one, and they were listening to a record of a balalaika orchestra. Grigori was not a great music lover but he thought the record sounded jolly.

Zoya was wearing a short-sleeved summer dress the pale colour of her blue eyes. When Volodya asked her the conventional question about how she was, she replied sharply: ‘I’m very angry.’

There were lots of reasons for Russians to be angry just now. Volodya asked: ‘Why’s that?’

‘My research into nuclear physics has been cancelled. All the scientists I work with have been reassigned. I myself am working on improvements to the design of bomb sights.’

That seemed very reasonable to Volodya. ‘We are at war, after all.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Listen. When uranium metal undergoes a process called fission, enormous quantities of energy are released. I mean enormous. We know this, and Western scientists do too – we have read their papers in scientific journals.’

‘Still, the question of bomb sights seems more immediate.’

Zoya said angrily: ‘This process, fission, could be used to create bombs that would be a hundred times more powerful than anything anyone has now. One nuclear explosion could flatten Moscow. What if the Germans make such a bomb and we don’t have it? It will be as if they had rifles and we only had swords!’

Volodya said sceptically: ‘But is there any reason to believe that scientists in other countries are working on a fission bomb?’

‘We’re sure they are. The concept of fission leads automatically to the idea of a bomb. We thought of it – why shouldn’t they? But there’s another reason. They published all their early results in the journals – and then they stopped, suddenly, one year ago. There have been no new scientific papers on fission since this time last year.’

‘And you believe the politicians and generals in the West realized the military potential of the research and made it secret?’

‘I can’t think of another reason. And yet here in the Soviet Union we have not even begun to prospect for uranium.’

‘Hmm.’ Volodya was pretending to be doubtful, but in truth he found it all too credible. Even Stalin’s greatest admirers – a group that included Volodya’s father, Grigori – did not claim he understood science. And it was all too easy for an autocrat to ignore anything that made him uncomfortable.

‘I’ve told your father,’ Zoya went on. ‘He listens to me, but no one listens to him.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘What can I do? I’m going to make a damn good bomb sight for our airmen, and hope for the best.’

Volodya nodded. He liked that attitude. He liked this girl. She was smart and feisty and a joy to look at. He wondered if she would go to a movie with him.

Talk of physics reminded him of Willi Frunze, who had been his friend at the Berlin Boys’ Academy. According to Werner Franck, Willi was a brilliant physicist now studying in England. He might know something about the fission bomb Zoya was so exercised about. And if he was still a Communist he might be willing to tell what he knew. Volodya made a mental note to send a cable to the Red Army Intelligence desk in the London embassy.

His parents came in. Father was in full dress uniform, Mother in a coat and hat. They had been to one of the many interminable ceremonies the army loved: Stalin insisted such rituals continue, despite the German invasion, because they were so good for morale.

They cooed over the twins for a few minutes, but Father looked distracted. He muttered something about a phone call and went immediately to his study. Mother began to make supper.

Volodya talked to the three women in the kitchen, but he was desperate to speak to his father. He thought he could guess the subject of Father’s urgent phone call: the overthrow of Stalin was being either planned or prevented right now, probably here in this building.

After a few minutes he decided to risk the old man’s wrath and interrupt him. He excused himself and went to the study. But his father was just coming out. ‘I have to go to Kuntsevo,’ he said.

Volodya longed to know what was going on. ‘Why?’ he said.

Grigori ignored the question. ‘I’ve called down for my car, but my chauffeur has gone home. You can drive me.’

Volodya was thrilled. He had never been to Stalin’s dacha. Now he was going there at a moment of profound crisis.

‘Come on,’ his father said impatiently.

They shouted goodbyes from the hallway and went out.

Grigori’s car was a black ZIS-101A, a Soviet copy of an American Packard, with three-speed automatic transmission. Its top speed was about eighty miles per hour. Volodya got behind the wheel and pulled away.

He drove through the Arbat, a neighbourhood of craftsmen and intellectuals, and out on to the westward Mozhaisk Highway. ‘Have you been summoned by Comrade Stalin?’ he asked his father.

‘No. Stalin has been incommunicado for two days.’

‘That’s what I heard.’

‘Did you? It’s supposed to be secret.’

‘You can’t keep something like that secret. What’s happening now?’

‘A group of us are going to Kuntsevo to see him.’

Volodya asked the key question. ‘For what purpose?’

‘Primarily to find out whether he’s alive or dead.’

Could he really be dead already, and no one know about it? Volodya wondered. It seemed unlikely. ‘And if he’s alive?’

‘I don’t know. But whatever happens, I’d rather be there to see it than find out later.’

Listening devices did not work in moving cars, Volodya knew – the microphone just picked up engine noise – so he was confident he could not be overheard. Nevertheless, he felt fearful as he said the unthinkable. ‘Could Stalin be overthrown?’

His father answered irritably: ‘I told you, I don’t know.’

Volodya was electrified. Such a question demanded a confident negative. Anything else was a Yes. His father had admitted the possibility that Stalin could be finished.

Volodya’s hopes rose volcanically. ‘Think what that could be like!’ he said joyously. ‘No more purges! The labour camps will be closed. Young girls will no longer be pulled off the street to be raped by the secret police.’ He half expected his father to interrupt, but Grigori just listened with half-closed eyes. Volodya went on: ‘The stupid phrase “Trotsky-Fascist spy” will disappear from our language. Army units who find themselves outnumbered and outgunned could retreat, instead of sacrificing themselves uselessly. Decisions will be made rationally, by groups of intelligent men working out what’s best for everyone. It’s the Communism you dreamed of thirty years ago!’

‘Young fool,’ his father said contemptuously. ‘The last thing we want at this point is to lose our leader. We’re at war and retreating! Our sole aim must be to defend the revolution – whatever it takes. We need Stalin now more than ever.’

Volodya felt as if he had been slapped. It was many years since his father had called him a fool.

Was the old man right? Did the Soviet Union need Stalin? The leader had made so many disastrous decisions that Volodya did not see how the country could possibly be worse off with someone else in charge.

They reached their destination. Stalin’s home was conventionally called a dacha, but it was not a country cottage. A long, low building with five tall windows each side of a grand entrance, it stood in a pine forest and was painted dull green, as if to hide it. Hundreds of armed troops guarded the gates and the double barbed-wire fence. Grigori pointed to an anti-aircraft battery partly concealed by camouflage netting. ‘I put that there,’ he said.

The guard at the gate recognized Grigori, but nevertheless asked for their identification documents. Even though Grigori was a general and Volodya a captain in Intelligence, they were both patted down for weapons.

Volodya drove up to the door. There were no other cars in front of the house. ‘We’ll wait for the others,’ his father said.

A few moments later three more ZIS limousines drew up. Volodya recalled that ZIS stood for Zavod Imeni Stalina, Factory Called Stalin. Had the executioners arrived in cars named after their victim?

They all got out, eight middle-aged men in suits and hats, holding in their hands the future of their country. Among them Volodya recognized Foreign Minister Molotov and secret-police chief Beria.

‘Let’s go,’ said Grigori.

Volodya was astonished. ‘I’m coming in there with you?’

Grigori reached under his seat and handed Volodya a Tokarev TT-33 pistol. ‘Put this in your pocket,’ he said. ‘If that prick Beria tries to arrest me, you shoot the fucker.’

Volodya took it gingerly: the TT-33 had no safety catch. He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket – it was about seven inches long – and got out of the car. There were eight rounds, he recalled, in the magazine of the gun.

They all went inside. Volodya feared he would be patted down again, and his gun discovered, but there was no second check.

The house was painted dark colours and poorly lit. An officer showed the group into what looked like a small dining room. Stalin sat there in an armchair.

The most powerful man in the Eastern Hemisphere appeared haggard and depressed. Looking up at the group entering the room he said: ‘Why have you come?’

Volodya gasped. Clearly he thought they were here either to arrest him or to execute him.

There was a long pause, and Volodya realized the group had not planned what to do. How could they, not even knowing whether Stalin was alive?

But what would they do now? Shoot him? There might never be another chance.

At last Molotov stepped forward. ‘We’re asking you to come back to work,’ he said.

Volodya had to suppress the urge to protest.

But Stalin shook his head. ‘Can I live up to people’s hopes? Can I lead the country to victory?’

Volodya was flabbergasted. Would he really refuse?

Stalin added: ‘There may be better candidates.’

He was giving them a second chance to fire him!

Another member of the group spoke up, and Volodya recognized Marshal Voroshilov. ‘There’s none more worthy,’ he said.

How did that help? This was hardly the time for naked sycophancy.

Then his father joined in, saying: ‘That’s right!’

Were they not going to let Stalin go? How could they be so stupid?

Molotov was the first to say something sensible. ‘We propose to form a war cabinet called the State Defence Committee, a kind of ultra-politburo with a very small membership and sweeping powers.’

Stalin quickly interposed: ‘Who will be its head?’

‘You, Comrade Stalin!’

Volodya wanted to shout: ‘No!’

There was another long silence.

At last Stalin spoke. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Now, who else shall we have on the committee?’

Beria stepped forward and began to propose the members.

It was all over, Volodya realized, feeling dizzy with frustration and disappointment. They had lost their chance. They could have deposed a tyrant, but they had lacked the nerve. Like the children of a violent father, they feared they could not manage without him.

In fact, it was worse than that, he saw with growing despondency. Perhaps Stalin really had had a breakdown – it had certainly seemed real – but he had also made a brilliant political move. All the men who might replace him were here in this room. At the moment when his catastrophically poor judgement had been exposed for all to see, he had forced his rivals to come out and beg him to be their leader again. He had drawn a line under his appalling mistake and given himself a new start.

Stalin was not just back.

He was stronger than ever.

(xi)

Who would have the courage to make a public protest about what was going on at Akelberg? Carla and Frieda had seen it with their own eyes, and they had Ilse König as a witness, but now they needed an advocate. There were no elected representatives any more: all Reichstag deputies were Nazis. There were no real journalists, either; just scribbling sycophants. The judges were all Nazi appointees subservient to the government. Carla had never before realized how much she had been protected by politicians, newspapermen and lawyers. Without them, she saw now, the government could do anything it liked, even kill people.

Who could they turn to? Frieda’s admirer Heinrich von Kessel had a friend who was a Catholic priest. ‘Peter was the cleverest boy in my class,’ he told them. ‘But he wasn’t the most popular. A bit upright and stiff-necked. I think he’ll listen to us, though.’

Carla thought it was worth a try. Her Protestant pastor had been sympathetic, until the Gestapo terrified him into silence. Perhaps the same would happen again. But she did not know what else to do.

Heinrich took Carla, Frieda and Ilse to Peter’s church in Schöneberg early on a Sunday morning in July. Heinrich was handsome in a black suit; the girls all wore their nurses’ uniforms, symbols of trustworthiness. They entered by a side door and went to a small, dusty room with a few old chairs and a large wardrobe. They found Father Peter alone, praying. He must have heard them come in, but he remained on his knees for a minute before getting up and turning to greet them.

Peter was tall and thin, with regular features and a neat haircut. He was twenty-seven, Carla calculated, if he was Heinrich’s contemporary. He frowned at them, not troubling to conceal his irritation at being disturbed. ‘I am preparing myself for Mass,’ he said severely. ‘I am pleased to see you in church, Heinrich, but you must leave me now. I will see you afterwards.’

‘This is a spiritual emergency, Peter,’ said Heinrich. ‘Sit down, we have something important to tell you.’

‘It could hardly be more important than Mass.’

‘Yes, it could, Peter, believe me. In five minutes’ time you will agree.’

‘Very well.’

‘This is my girlfriend, Frieda Franck.’

Carla was surprised. Was Frieda his girlfriend now?

Frieda said: ‘I had a younger brother who was born with spina bifida. Earlier this year he was transferred to a hospital at Akelberg in Bavaria for special treatment. Shortly afterwards we got a letter saying he had died of appendicitis.’

She turned to Carla, who took up the tale. ‘My maid had a son born brain-damaged. He, too, was transferred to Akelberg. The maid got an identical letter on the same day.’

Peter spread his hands in a so-what gesture. ‘I have heard this kind of thing before. It’s anti-government propaganda. The Church does not interfere in politics.’

What rubbish that was, Carla thought. The Church was up to its neck in politics. But she let it pass. ‘My maid’s son did not have an appendix,’ she went on. ‘He had had it removed two years earlier.’

‘Please,’ said Peter. ‘What does this prove?’

Carla felt discouraged. Peter was obviously biased against them.

Heinrich said: ‘Wait, Peter. You haven’t heard it all. Ilse here worked at the hospital in Akelberg.’

Peter looked at her expectantly.

‘I was raised Catholic, Father,’ Ilse said.

Carla had not known that.

‘I’m not a good Catholic,’ Ilse went on.

‘God is good, not us, my daughter,’ said Peter piously.

Ilse said: ‘But I knew that what I was doing was a sin. Yet I did it, because they told me to, and I was frightened.’ She began to cry.

‘What did you do?’

‘I killed people. Oh, Father, will God forgive me?’

The priest stared at the young nurse. He could not dismiss this as propaganda: he was looking at a soul in torment. He went pale.

The others were silent. Carla held her breath.

Ilse said: ‘The handicapped people are brought to the hospital in grey buses. They don’t have special treatment. We give them an injection, and they die. Then we cremate them.’ She looked up at Peter. ‘Will I ever be forgiven for what I have done?’

He opened his mouth to speak. His words caught in his throat, and he coughed. At last he said quietly: ‘How many?’

‘Usually four. Buses, I mean. There are about twenty-five patients in a bus.’

‘A hundred people?’

‘Yes. Every week.’

Peter’s proud composure had vanished. His face was pale grey, and his mouth hung open. ‘A hundred handicapped people a week?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘What sort of handicap?’

‘All sorts, mental and physical. Some senile old people, some deformed babies, men and women, paralysed or retarded or just helpless.’

He had to keep repeating it. ‘And the staff of the hospital kill them all?’

Ilse sobbed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I knew it was wrong.’

Carla watched Peter. His supercilious air had gone. It was a remarkable transformation. After years of hearing the prosperous Catholics of this sylvan suburb confess their little sins, he had suddenly been confronted with raw evil. And he was shocked to his core.

But what would he do?

Peter stood up. He took Ilse by the hands and raised her from her seat. ‘Come back to the church,’ he said. ‘Confess to your priest. God will forgive you. This much I know.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

He released her hands and looked at Heinrich. ‘It may not be so simple for the rest of us,’ he said.

Then he turned his back on them and knelt to pray again.

Carla looked at Heinrich, who shrugged. They got up and left the little room, Carla with her arm around the weeping Ilse.

Carla said: ‘We’ll stay for the service. Perhaps he’ll speak to us again afterwards.’

The four of them walked into the nave of the church. Ilse stopped crying and became calmer. Frieda held Heinrich’s arm. They took seats among the gathering congregation, prosperous men and plump women and restless children in their best clothes. People such as these would never kill the handicapped, Carla thought. Yet their government did, on their behalf. How had this happened?

She did not know what to expect of Father Peter. Clearly he had believed what they had told him, in the end. He had wanted to dismiss them as politically motivated, but Ilse’s sincerity had convinced him. He had been horrified. But he had not made any promises, except that God would forgive Ilse.

Carla looked around the church. The decoration was more colourful than what she was used to in Protestant churches. There were more statues and paintings, more marble and gilding and banners and candles. Protestants and Catholics had fought wars about such trivia, she recalled. How strange it seemed, in a world where children could be murdered, that anyone should care about candles.

The service began. The priests entered in their robes, Father Peter the tallest among them. Carla could not read anything in his facial expression except stern piety.

She sat indifferent through the hymns and prayers. She had prayed for her father, and two hours later had found him cruelly beaten and dying on the floor of their home. She missed him every day, sometimes every hour. Praying had not saved him, nor would it protect those deemed useless by the government. Action was needed, not words.

Thinking of her father brought her brother, Erik, to mind. He was somewhere in Russia. He had written a letter home, jubilantly celebrating the rapid progress of the invasion, and angrily refusing to believe that Walter had been murdered by the Gestapo. Their father had obviously been released unharmed by the Gestapo and then attacked in the street by criminals or Communists or Jews, he asserted. He was living in a fantasy, beyond the reach of reason.

Was the same true of Father Peter?

Peter mounted the pulpit. Carla had not known he was due to preach a sermon. She wondered what he would say. Would he be inspired by what he had heard this morning? Would he speak of something irrelevant, the virtue of modesty or the sin of envy? Or would he close his eyes and devoutly thank God for the German army’s continuing victories in Russia?

He stood tall in the pulpit and swept the church with a gaze that might have been arrogant, or proud, or defiant.

‘The fifth commandment says: “Thou shalt not kill”.’

Carla met Heinrich’s eye. What was Peter going to say?

His voice rang out between the echoing stones of the nave. ‘There is a place in Akelberg, Bavaria, where our government is breaking the commandment a hundred times a week!’

Carla gasped. He was doing it – he was preaching a sermon against the programme! This could change everything.

‘It makes no difference that the victims are handicapped, or mentally ill, or incapable of feeding themselves, or paralysed.’ Peter was letting his anger show. ‘Helpless babies and senile old people are all God’s children, and their lives are as sacred as yours and mine.’ His voice rose in volume. ‘To kill them is a mortal sin!’ He lifted his right arm and made a fist, and his voice shook with emotion. ‘I say to you that if we do nothing about it, we sin just as much as the doctors and nurses who administer the lethal injections. If we remain silent . . .’ He paused. ‘If we remain silent, we are murderers too!’

(xii)

Inspector Thomas Macke was furious. He had been made to look a fool in the eyes of Superintendent Kringelein and the rest of his superiors. He had assured them he had plugged the leak. The secret of Akelberg – and hospitals of the same kind in other parts of the country – was safe, he had said. He had tracked down the three troublemakers, Werner Franck, Pastor Ochs and Walter von Ulrich, and in different ways he had silenced each of them.

And yet the secret had come out.

The man responsible was an arrogant young priest called Peter.

Father Peter was in front of Macke now, naked, strapped by wrists and ankles to a specially constructed chair. He was bleeding from the ears, nose, and mouth, and had vomit all down his chest. Electrodes were attached to his lips, his nipples and his penis. A strap around his forehead prevented him from breaking his neck while the convulsions shook him.

A doctor sitting beside the priest checked his heart with a stethoscope and looked dubious. ‘He can’t stand much more,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Father Peter’s seditious sermon had been taken up elsewhere. The Bishop of Münster, a much more important clergyman, had preached a similar sermon, denouncing the T4 programme. The bishop had called upon Hitler to save the people from the Gestapo, cleverly implying that the Führer could not possibly know about the programme, thereby offering Hitler a ready-made alibi.

His sermon had been typed out and duplicated and passed from hand to hand all over Germany.

The Gestapo had arrested every person found in possession of a copy, but to no avail. It was the only time in the history of the Third Reich that there had been a public outcry against any government action.

The clampdown was savage, but it did no good: the duplicates of the sermon continued to proliferate, more clergymen prayed for the handicapped, and there was even a protest march in Akelberg. It was out of control.

And Macke was to blame.

He bent over Peter. The priest’s eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow, but he was conscious. Macke shouted in his ear: ‘Who told you about Akelberg?’

There was no reply.

Peter was Macke’s only lead. Investigations in the town of Akelberg had turned up nothing of significance. Reinhold Wagner had been told a story about two girl cyclists who had visited the hospital, but no one knew who they were; and another story about a nurse who had resigned suddenly, writing a letter saying she was getting married in haste, but not revealing who the husband was. Neither clue led anywhere. In any case, Macke felt sure this calamity could not be the work of a gaggle of girls.

Macke nodded to the technician operating the machine. He turned a knob.

Peter screamed in agony as the electrical current coursed through his body, torturing his nerves. He shook as if in a fit, and the hair on his head stood up.

The operator turned the current off.

Macke screamed: ‘Give me his name!’

At last Peter opened his mouth.

Macke leaned closer.

Peter whispered: ‘No man.’

‘A woman, then! Give me the name!’

‘It was an angel.’

‘Damn you to hell!’ Macke seized the knob and turned it. ‘This goes on until you tell me!’ he yelled, as Peter shuddered and screamed.

The door opened. A young detective looked in, turned pale, and beckoned to Macke.

The technician turned the current off, and the screaming stopped. The doctor leaned forward to check Peter’s heart.

The detective said: ‘Excuse me, Inspector Macke, but you’re wanted by Superintendent Kringelein.’

‘Now?’ said Macke irritably.

‘That’s what he said, sir.’

Macke looked at the doctor, who shrugged. ‘He’s young,’ he said. ‘He’ll be alive when you get back.’

Macke left the room and went upstairs with the detective. Kringelein’s office was on the first floor. Macke knocked and went in. ‘The damn priest hasn’t talked yet,’ he said without preamble. ‘I need more time.’

Kringelein was a slight man with spectacles, clever but weak-willed. A late convert to Nazism, he was not a member of the elite SS. He lacked the fervour of enthusiasts such as Macke. ‘Don’t bother any further with that priest,’ he said. ‘We’re no longer interested in any of the clergymen. Throw them in camps and forget them.’

Macke could not believe his ears. ‘But these people have conspired to undermine the Führer!’

‘And they have succeeded,’ said Kringelein. ‘Whereas you have failed.’

Macke suspected that Kringelein was privately pleased about this.

‘A decision has been made at the top,’ the superintendent went on. ‘Aktion T4 has been cancelled.’

Macke was flabbergasted. The Nazis never allowed their decisions to be swayed by the misgivings of the ignorant. ‘We didn’t get where we are by kowtowing to public opinion!’ he said.

‘We have this time.’

‘Why?’

‘The Führer neglected to explain his decision to me personally,’ Kringelein said sarcastically. ‘But I can guess. The programme has attracted remarkably angry protests from a normally passive public. If we persist with it, we risk an open confrontation with churches of all denominations. That would be a bad thing. We must not weaken the unity and determination of the German people – particularly right now, when we are at war with the Soviet Union, our strongest enemy yet. So the programme is cancelled.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Macke, controlling his anger. ‘Will there be anything else?’

‘Dismissed,’ said Kringelein.

Macke went to the door.

‘Macke.’

He turned. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Change your shirt.’

‘My shirt?’

‘There’s blood on it.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

Macke stamped down the stairs, boiling. He returned to the basement chamber. Father Peter was still alive.

Raging, he yelled again: ‘Who told you about Akelberg?’

There was no reply.

He turned the current up to maximum.

Father Peter screamed for a long time; then, at last, he fell into a final silence.

(xiii)

The villa where the Franck family lived was set in a small park. Two hundred yards from the house, on a slight rise, was a little pagoda, open on all sides, with seats. As children Carla and Frieda had pretended it was their country house, and had played for hours pretending to have grand parties where dozens of servants waited on their glamorous guests. Later it became their favourite place to sit and talk where no one could hear them.

‘The first time I sat on this bench, my feet didn’t reach the floor,’ Carla said.

Frieda said: ‘I wish we could go back to those days.’

It was a sultry afternoon, overcast and humid, and they both wore sleeveless dresses. They were in sombre mood. Father Peter was dead: he had committed suicide in custody, having become depressed about his crimes, according to the police. Carla wondered if he had been beaten as her father had. It seemed dreadfully likely.

There were dozens more in police cells all over Germany. Some had protested publicly about the killing of the handicapped, others had done no more than pass round copies of Bishop von Galen’s sermon. She wondered if all of them would be tortured. She wondered how long she would escape such a fate.

Werner came out of the house with a tray. He carried it across the lawn to the pagoda. Cheerily he said: ‘How about some lemonade, girls?’

Carla looked away. ‘No, thank you,’ she said coldly. She did not understand how he could pretend to be her friend after the cowardice he had shown.

Frieda said: ‘Not for me.’

‘I hope we’re not bad friends,’ Werner said, looking at Carla.

How could he say such a thing? Of course they were bad friends.

Frieda said: ‘Father Peter is dead, Werner.’

Carla added: ‘Probably tortured to death by the Gestapo, because he refused to accept the murder of people such as your brother. My father is dead, too, for the same reason. Lots of other people are in jail or in camps. But you kept your cushy desk job, so that’s all right.’

Werner looked hurt. That surprised Carla. She had expected defiance, or at least an effort at insouciance. But he seemed genuinely upset. He said: ‘Don’t you think we each have our different ways of doing what we can?’

This was feeble. ‘You did nothing!’ Carla said.

‘Perhaps,’ he said sadly. ‘No lemonade, then?’

Neither girl answered, and he went back to the house.

Carla was indignant and angry, but she could not help also feeling regret. Before she discovered that Werner was a coward she had been embarking on a romance with him. She had liked him a lot, ten times more than any other boy she had kissed. She was not quite heartbroken, but she was deeply disappointed.

Frieda was luckier. This thought was prompted by the sight of Heinrich coming out of the house. Frieda was glamorous and fun-loving, and Heinrich was brooding and intense, but somehow they made a pair. ‘Are you in love with him?’ Carla said while he was still out of earshot.

‘I don’t know yet,’ Frieda replied. ‘He’s terribly sweet, though. I kind of adore him.’

That might not be love, Carla thought, but it was well on the way.

Heinrich was bursting with news. ‘I had to come and tell you right away,’ he said. ‘My father told me after lunch.’

‘What?’ said Frieda.

‘The government has cancelled the project. It was called Aktion T4. The killing of the handicapped. They’re stopping.’

Carla said: ‘You mean we won?’

Heinrich nodded vigorously. ‘My father is amazed. He says he has never known the Führer give in to public opinion before.’

Frieda said: ‘And we forced him to!’

‘Thank God no one knows that,’ Heinrich said fervently.

Carla said: ‘They’re just going to close the hospitals and end the whole programme?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My father says all those doctors and nurses are being transferred.’

Carla frowned. ‘Where?’

‘To Russia,’ said Heinrich.