Konrad stared at the face of the evidence that would either clear or implicate Barnard Wagner or Claus Bauer of suspicion of espionage. If found guilty, for whom, for what organization he was working, Konrad would soon learn. He wouldn’t guess the French Resistance. The tutor and fisherman were German. The French underground would not involve nationals of the enemy country, not even declared anti-Nazis. The French wouldn’t have trusted them. No, the young men would have been planted at the behest of a foreign service like the OSS or SOE, or internally by the SS or SD investigating his own loyalty to the regime.

For most of the night, unable to sleep, Konrad had grappled with the question of whether either of the men could possibly be a spy. Was he snatching at empty air? The cheese was still in the trap when he’d checked. Nothing had looked disturbed, but well-trained intelligence agents would know to leave things exactly as they were. Logic argued for the young men’s innocence. Konrad reminded himself that neither young man could have anticipated that he’d be invited into the home of the chief of German military intelligence in France as social companions to himself and his son.

But then, sometimes intelligence opportunities simply appeared at the feet of a spy engaged in another operation. Barnard Wagner’s mission could be to report on German military activity along France’s waterways, or Claus Bauer’s to pass on information gathered from his Nazi students’ loose discussion of their fathers’ dinner table conversations with their mothers—shallow picking grounds for intelligence in Konrad’s opinion, but thus were treasures found among rubble. Konrad believed he could rule out casual curiosity. Neither young man seemed of the nosy disposition to snoop through their host’s personal papers, especially those of a high-ranking Abwehr officer. The old adage “Curiosity killed the cat” was never truer than now in German-occupied Paris.

Konrad pulled in a breath and opened the envelope from which he withdrew two reports. One applied to the fingerprint images found on a wineglass marked A, the other to a matching glass designated B. Alongside each image were the prints lifted from the sheets of German agents operating in the United Kingdom. Konrad let go his breath. The prints on the list of names matched those on wine goblet B.

Barnard Wagner.

Konrad dropped back into his chair. His good friend the fisherman, his little boy’s kickball Kumpel, was a spy. He should have paid more attention to that dart of doubt about Herr Wagner’s authenticity when he’d overheard his conversation with Captain Allard on his boat back in September: That wouldn’t have been by design, would it?…The less you know, Captain.