Not likely, Victoria thought. The SD boys were too well trained to let drop a crumb of intelligence. On the other hand, there were none within the ranks of the Nazi police organizations better at detection than the monsters in the Sicherheitsdienst.

“Now, I beg you not to be late. The colonel will arrive within the hour,” Jacques said. “Oh, and one other thing. Colonel Albrecht prefers his officer’s rank to his monarchic title of duke.”

Oh brother, thought Victoria.

Actually, she was late by half an hour and the man already getting into his fencing gear in the men’s dressing room when she arrived. Monsieur Vogel greeted her nervously. “The metro I usually take was jammed, and I had to wait for another one,” Victoria forestalled his rebuke when she saw his look. She’d be damned if she’d apologize to the colonel, or duke, for missing the hour of an appointment he’d arbitrarily imposed on her and disrupted her critical plans for the day.

Stepping into the changing area, by the men’s dressing room, Victoria saw the colonel’s SS uniform on a hanger topped with its chillingly recognizable peaked hat set with the death’s-head insignia, the skull and crossbones. The Iron Cross, the highest German military decoration for bravery, hung from a ribbon suspended from the same peg. At the start of the war, but for a few elite groups within the organization, the SS had dropped their infamous red armbands and all-black uniform for a more suitable field gray. In combat, the original choice had made the wearer an easy target for the enemy to spot. The SD must be one of the elite groups still authorized to wear the former color. The uniform hanging from the peg was pure black.

The colonel stepped out from the dressing room in full fencing gear as she appeared, wire mask tucked under his arm. He bowed. “Mademoiselle Colbert, I believe,” he said in perfect boarding-school French. “I am Derrick Albrecht. Thank you so much for meeting me on such short notice. I am quite sure my request must have inconvenienced you greatly.”

They were all so infernally polite and correct, the members of the SD, even in their interrogation rooms, so it was said. A spike of irritation at his courteousness—he didn’t give a damn that he had put her out—sharpened Victoria’s already thin-edged temper. “You are quite correct in your assumption, Colonel,” she said. The uniform and the fact that he fenced had given her some idea of his physical size, so his trim form and considerable height were not unexpected nor, considering his background, his pedigreed air. But his Ivy League crew cut, friendly eyes, and Gary Cooper “aw shucks” smile were at odds with her mental image of the man she’d expected to meet. One would never know that behind that boyishly handsome façade lay the face of evil.