She took a deep breath, wiping her eyes with her good hand.

‘Oh, Herr Vanderberg, I am so ashamed – I told them. I told them everything. I even told them I had come to you in the embassy. I couldn’t take the pain.’

Vanderberg put an arm around her. ‘Come on, let’s get you that rum.’ He went to the sideboard and returned with the bottle and two glasses. He poured them each a shot. ‘Drink up,’ he said.

She took a sip, then downed the rest in one.

‘Is that better?’ he asked in his most reassuring voice.

Inside he was wondering what this meant for Tom Wilde and Sunny Somerfeld? He needed to discover a great deal more from Frau Romy Dietrich. The timing of her revelation to whoever had tortured her was crucial to Wilde’s chances. He desperately hoped Tom and Sunny were already on the boat to Sweden and freedom with the girl; perhaps they had already arrived.

But perhaps they had been too late.

Here in Berlin, though, he had Romy Dietrich to worry about. Perhaps himself, too, if Bormann decided US diplomats were now fair game. But that wasn’t for Frau Dietrich’s ears.

‘You’re safe with me,’ he said.

Was she, though? There was a very good chance that a Gestapo agent – or Bormann’s assassins – would have seen her entering the block.

Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Wilde was tired but he couldn’t sleep. He had to get out of this place now. Tonight. The Frenchman Guillaume could betray him at any moment. Wilde had given him all the money he had, but the wretched gamekeeper knew he had him by the throat and was determined to wring every last pfennig out of him.

‘That’s everything,’ Wilde had said inside the gamekeeper’s cabin as he counted out his Reichsmark banknotes and handed them over.

‘It’s not enough,’ Guillaume said, stuffing the cash into his own pockets.

‘What do you want, then?’

‘Your watch – I like the look of it.’

‘No, you’re not having that.’

It had been a birthday present from Lydia. He’d fight to the death to keep it.

Gillaume scowled. ‘I need enough money to get me out of this place and back to France. As it is I am taking a big risk not turning you in. If you are caught my head will be on the block for not telling them you’re English right away.’

‘I’m not English, I’m American.’

Gillaume shrugged, as if they were the same thing. ‘Your mistress knows who you are, so get the money from her. Maybe she has jewels – get them. Tell her if she doesn’t give me what I want, I’ll do for her, too.’