But he must be careful not to move too fast. He would curb his impatience until he’d collected enough information too indisputable for the Frenchman to refuse him. Today was Dirk’s first off-duty Saturday in a month. The captain and the lieutenant were leaving shortly to attend a company soccer game, then spend the rest of the evening partying with the players. Of course, he’d not been invited to go along. To hell with them. He had better things to do. The Frenchman’s coat hung on a peg in the hallway. He had brought it with him when he came down to breakfast. Dirk had immediately hurried upstairs and slipped back down with a bag containing a civilian coat, hat, and muffler as a disguise to wear over his uniform when he followed him, explaining the sack as containing old clothes he would be donating to the corner Catholic church for their rummage sale. Maybe the Frenchman would lead him back to Nicholas Cravois.

*  *  *

While waiting for his luncheon guests to arrive, Major General Konrad March opened the diplomatic pouch the courier had just delivered. The sealed bag held a dispatch from his direct superior and mentor, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, commander in chief of the Abwehr, headquartered in Berlin. Konrad read with a sinking heart that the admiral was planning to pay him a visit the following Saturday, November 7. That was the date Konrad had tickets to the much-anticipated premiere of Les Visiteurs du Soir. Only a select few had been invited, and today he planned to ask Madame Gastain to be his guest. Since she had agreed to come to his luncheon, he hoped she would accept his invitation to the evening affair and perhaps dinner afterward. Perhaps Konrad could induce the admiral to retire early.

Konrad shook his head as he read the encrypted message. Wilhelm should be more careful with the content he dispatched in his diplomatic pouches. In spite of diplomatic custom, no messages were safe coming out of Germany these days. The admiral’s dispatch purportedly alerted Konrad to his forthcoming visit, but evident between the encrypted lines was his superior’s disgust at the needless carnage resulting from Hitler’s running of the war. The dispatch reported that on October 29, on Hitler’s orders, sixteen thousand Jews were murdered at Pinsk in the Soviet Union. In October alone, ninety-four German U-boats had been sunk due to the growing superiority of Allied sea and air power.