The colonel walked toward a snow-covered crest still holding some of its green against the approaching winter. The forest, deep and dark, the trees’ outer branches sparkling with snow, stood guard behind it while a swath of open country threaded with a winding creek lay before it. The frosty country air smelled fresh and sharp, carrying scents of pines and clean water, and Victoria drew in a halting breath to steady her nerves as they walked along.

“That breath had a shudder to it,” Derrick commented, and observed before she could respond, “This is a rather wonderful place, isn’t it? I must bring you here in warmer days. The valley is blindingly green in the spring.”

Victoria glanced at him. He spoke of a future, but he was a master at psychological manipulation—The best interrogator we have without resorting to…other methods, an SS colleague once remarked to her. She offered no comment. She was safer keeping silent. If he knew she suspected he was onto her, any response would sound forced. If she’d misread him, no harm done. He knew that he could expect nothing from her.

The colonel did not touch her except to take her upper arm occasionally to assist her over a rough spot on the pebbly path. The afternoon was still cold, but it felt almost balmy after the miserably frigid and wet weather of previous weeks. Any other time, with anyone else, Victoria would have enjoyed the pastoral getaway from the grimness of Paris.

At the crest of the hill they stopped to admire the sweeping view. “This place reminds me of my ancestral home in Germany, the reason I enjoy coming here,” Derrick said in English. “Have you ever been to Germany, Victoria?”

“No,” she said.

“My home is in Franconia in Bavaria, thought of as the land of sausage, beer, and lederhosen, but it is so much more than that.” He spoke with nostalgia, his gaze wistful on the sweeping vista before them. “The region is the most beautiful in Germany, possibly in all of Europe. It is an area of alps and lakes and striking castles and towering rock structures that date back to the Jurassic age. Our lovely little villages and gardens are so picturesque, postcards can’t do them justice.”

“You sound homesick,” Victoria commented.

“I hope to return to it after the war, perhaps never to leave it again…one way or the other.”

Victoria could not resist asking, “You don’t plan to stay in the SS, help your Führer crack the whip to ensure the thousand-year reign of the Third Reich?”

“There will be no SS. There will be no Führer. There will be no Third Reich.” He turned to her with a thin smile. “Shall we go back? The fire should be going by now.”