The landlady, Frau Schlegel, looked with disdain upon her guest.

‘Others will decide that, not you. Perhaps you are Roman Catholic, which is as bad in my book. Who knows? It is the religion in Ostmark, is it not? We shall see in due course, Frau Dietrich – if that is your real name.’

Of course it was her real name. She had fled her flat in a leafy but unremarkable street in Kreuzberg within an hour of the call from Father Huber. Nor had she been back to the Friedrichshain municipal hospital where she worked as a midwife. With such haste, she had had no way of securing false papers.

She knew what the damned Schlegel woman would do next: denounce her to the district council leader, the winter relief collector or a local SA member, any one of whom would then pass on the information to the Gestapo. These were dangerous days for anyone suspected of having unsound politics or, worse, of being a Jew. Since September, they had been forced to wear the yellow star, and everyone was aware of the dawn raids around the city as increasing numbers were deported eastwards. No one intervened, of course; they were just grateful if they had been left alone.

What was less certain was who exactly was after her. Was the Gestapo even involved, or was this a private operation by men reporting to Bormann? She had no proof, of course. No evidence even that she was being trailed. She just knew. Intuition based on ten long years of waiting for this to happen.

She needed to move again, and move fast. But where could she go? She feared she could be traced anywhere in Germany. If only she could stay hidden with friends or family, but she could not put that burden on them; it would be a death sentence.

One more night, then. She would stay in this filthy hovel just one more night, and then she would move on and never set eyes on the contemptible Schlegel woman again. Her only plan was to catch a train into the heartland of Germany and see where it stopped. Take a chance on some small town, spend a few days there and then move on again. Thank God she had some money.

Later that night, when Kalt and Brunner took her, she cursed herself for not leaving earlier. What she did not know was that they had found her several days ago, that they had been watching her and waiting, all the time hoping to lull her into a belief that she was safe, so that they could follow her if she went to the girl. The option of escape was never open to her.

*

Kalt had decided he could wait no longer. His last phone call with Bormann had been bad. It was as if the Reichsleiter’s spittle and venom could travel along the wires into his ear, so that he had to hold the phone away from his head. And so the days of waiting for Romy Dietrich to lead him to the girl were over. They would extract the information from her by less subtle means.