If the weather had cooperated during the week, Chris would have suggested a round of kickball to Wilhelm after their lessons to include Limpet, and he might have learned what the general was up to, but the ground had been too wet to play. Hans had greeted him on his tutoring days with no glance of sharp-eyed suspicion, and Wilhelm had been his usual cheerful, chatty self, always glad to see him. He’d tried to finesse out of the boy his father’s whereabouts, but Wilhelm had answered that he thought him very busy.

The man was certainly busy, but right now any deviation from the norm was reason to worry. Dinner with the general tonight—if that was the purpose of the invitation—would reveal whether his fears were groundless or real.

*  *  *

From his office at Abwehr headquarters, Major General Konrad March put in a call to the counterintelligence unit at SD headquarters and asked to speak to Colonel Derrick Albrecht. The staff member placing an invoice on the general’s desk heard the request while he waited for his superior’s signature and thought nothing of it. He was aware that from time to time, the two warring departments collaborated about sensitive intelligence matters in the interests of national security. “I will require you to assist in accommodating one of our guests,” the general informed his intelligence counterpart. “He is not responding well to our attentions, and we’ve tried our best to cater to his every need. Do you suppose we might send him to you to try your hospitality?”

The procurement clerk flinched. The “guest” was a prisoner brought in last week for interrogation—an Abwehr major accused of handing over to the enemy the names of some of Germany’s top spies in Great Britain. The “accommodations” referred to a smelly interrogation cell on the third floor. The clerk did not even wish to think of the SD’s “hospitality.”

“By all means, Herr General,” Colonel Derrick Albrecht replied to Konrad. “When can we expect him?”

“I can send him to you immediately.”

“We will be waiting.”

The general hung up and, for the benefit of the clerk, signed the invoice with the sigh of one who has tried and failed. “I gave the man every opportunity to confess. His treatment is now out of my hands. Tell my sergeant to get the prisoner ready for transport.”

“Jawohl, Herr General!” The young clerk snatched up the invoice to get back to his department. He had not been in his position with the Abwehr long enough to develop a stomach for the sight of a bloodied and frightened superior officer dragged from his cell to an even more hideous hell.