As soon as I thought it, I knew I had to reach her again. We would do just as she had said: leave here and start again. I had an image of her in her nurse’s smock in a clinic somewhere in England. She loved me - how could I let her go?

After eating a handful of wild berries to give me energy for the journey, I walked back to the outskirts of Sankt Gertrud, then ran the remainder of the way to the sanatorium. The other nurses seemed perturbed at seeing me, and after I had managed to push past some of them into the ward area I saw why. One of the doctors was talking to a group of men in uniform. Russian uniform. As one of the men saluted, he turned away and I saw the stretcher. Blankets had been placed over her body, but her head was still exposed and the features beneath the yellowish grey complexion and closed lids were unmistakable. One of the nurses told me in a hushed voice that she had been found in her quarters a few hours earlier, and that her body was being taken to the Russian Zone, and then back to Georgia. Apparently the soldiers were looking to trace a visitor she had had the previous evening: a man wearing the uniform of a British officer.

Father had received my message loud and clear, and had acted to eliminate the threat: nobody could know about Sacrosanct. I turned before any of the soldiers spotted me and started running for the farmhouse.

As I finally crested the hill two hours later, I saw the outline of the jeep and made a desperate effort to increase my pace. He was still here! I pushed open the front door and almost fell into the living room. ‘Where are you, you bastard?’ I screamed. ‘Where the hell are you?’ But there was no reply, to that or the other abuse that I hurled at him, and I found out why when I reached his bedroom. He was lying at the foot of the bed, still in his uniform. No pills - he hated the easy option. He’d done it the same way he had meted it out, with a bullet to the temple from his Luger. The left side of his face had been completely destroyed, and the wall behind him was splattered with blood. There was no note, so I could only guess as to why one more murder had woken his conscience. Perhaps she had begged for her life, or told him about her love for me.

It didn’t matter any more. He didn’t matter. I took him out to the garden and buried him. The wind was fierce - winter would be here soon. I had only one thought in me. I had to get to Burgdorf and find Anna’s handler.

I had a proposition to make him.

III

III

Sunday, 23 March 1969, Hampshire