Scholz was on the brink of tears. “I didn’t know!”

Still watching Hans, Rebecca said: “I am Hans’s wife.”

Hans’s face changed again, and as guilt turned to anger his face became a mask of fury. He spoke at last, but not to Rebecca. “Shut your mouth, Scholz,” he said.

Then she knew, and her world crashed around her.

Scholz was too astonished to heed Hans’s warning. He said to Rebecca: “You’re that Frau Hoffmann?”

Hans moved with the speed of rage. He lashed out with a meaty right fist and punched Scholz in the face. The young man staggered back, lips bleeding. “You fucking fool,” Hans said. “You’ve just undone two years of painstaking undercover work.”

Rebecca muttered to herself: “The funny phone calls, the sudden meetings, the ripped-up notes . . .” Hans did not have a lover.

It was worse than that.

She was in a daze, but she knew this was the moment to find out the truth, while everyone was off balance, before they began to tell lies and concoct cover stories. With an effort she stayed focused. She said coolly: “Did you marry me just to spy on me, Hans?”

He stared at her without answering.

Scholz turned and staggered away along the corridor. Hans said: “Go after him.” The elevator came and Rebecca stepped in just as Hans called out: “Arrest the fool and throw him in a cell.” He turned to speak to Rebecca, but the elevator doors closed and she pressed the button for the ground floor.

She could hardly see through her tears as she crossed the atrium. No one spoke to her: doubtless it was commonplace to see people weeping here. She found her way across the rain-swept car park to the bus stop.

Her marriage was a sham. She could hardly take it in. She had slept with Hans, loved him, and married him, and all the time he had been deceiving her. Infidelity might be considered a temporary lapse, but Hans had been false to her from the start. He must have begun dating her in order to spy on her.

No doubt he had never intended actually to marry her. Originally, he had probably intended no more than a flirtation as a way of getting inside the house. The deception had worked too well. It must have come as a shock to him when she proposed marriage. Maybe he had been forced to make a decision: refuse her, and abandon the surveillance, or marry her and continue it. His bosses might even have ordered him to accept her. How could she have been so completely deceived?

A bus pulled up and she jumped on. She walked with lowered gaze to a seat near the back and covered her face with her hands.

She thought about their courtship. When she had raised the issues that had got in the way of her previous relationships—her feminism, her anti-Communism, her closeness to Carla—he had given all the right answers. She had believed that he and she were like-minded, almost miraculously so. It had never occurred to her that he was putting on an act.