‘No, you do it. Tell them to turn about and make way to their home port, Schalhagen.’

‘Heil Hitler!’ the captain barked, clicking his heels. ‘As you wish, Herr Jung.’

‘And warn them that if they try anything, we will blow them out of the water.’

Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

The train ran on through the night, the rattle of its wheels soothing and constant. Jim Vanderberg and Romy Dietrich had both survived the first check of their papers and tickets and after a raucous hour or two the carriage had quietened down. Soldiers slept hunched up in corners or in the corridor, every space occupied. Vanderberg didn’t sleep and nor did Romy. Occasionally they looked at each other and when he was sure no eyes were on them, he gave her a smile. Of all their fellow passengers only one really worried him: a man in a grey suit with a Party badge in his lapel, standing alone in the doorway. His eyes occasionally fixed on Romy, who did her best not to return his gaze.

Vanderberg tried to read a German translation of Don Quixote, but he couldn’t concentrate and found himself going over the same paragraph time and again without taking in any of it. The heating wasn’t working, or hadn’t been turned on and the carriage was cold.

With the arrival of dawn, a guard appeared and pulled back the blackouts. Vanderberg looked out on the slow, lazy sweep of the Rhine and wondered when, if ever, he would see it again. The fields of southern Germany had been sprinkled with a thin scattering of snow and the world looked beautiful. A waiter came around and offered coffee, which they both gratefully accepted, even though they knew it would be ersatz. As the soldiers woke, they were less boisterous than before, but they all smoked a great deal and filled the carriage with the acrid smell of cheap cigarettes. At midday, they arrived at Freiburg and everyone disembarked, some to await the onward train to the border, others to go in other directions. Not far to go now. Forty miles or so, and they would be in Basel, Switzerland.

He found himself wondering about Tom Wilde. Perhaps he should never have got his old friend into this mission, but he was certain there was no better man for the job. And these were days when men had no choice but to steel themselves to hard tasks; the alternative was to hand the world over to the barbarians. God willing, Tom and the child were out of Germany by now.

Vanderberg wanted very much to talk to Romy Dietrich, but he didn’t dare, not until they were safely over the border. He was all too aware that the hardest part would be the actual crossing; the border post was where the checks were most thorough, carried out under the lethal eye of the SS.

*