The ten-year-old girl had barely spoken. Suddenly she turned to Wilde.

‘You are speaking funny! You are not German – you are the enemy.’

‘No, truly, I’m your friend.’

Sunny was agitated. ‘Tom is French, Klara. A guest worker in Germany.’

‘I speak some French, too.’

‘But I am not so good with French,’ Sunny said. ‘So let us all speak the same language for the moment, please? German it is.’

Klara was computing this information. At last she nodded.

‘As you wish,’ she said. ‘But you haven’t told me yet – what has happened at home?’

Wilde had been dreading this. He had been trying to work out what he knew about ten-year-olds; it had always seemed to him that children first became aware of adult concepts at the age of eight, so by ten they must be well aware of certain realities. And the truth about what had happened at Der Steinhof could not be held back for long. But the reality was so horrible and stark that he could not find the words.

‘Sunny?’ he said.

‘Your family is dead, Klara.’ Her voice was soothing but nothing could conceal the brutality of the message. ‘Men came in the night with guns. That is why your father sent you to safety. That is also why he asked Tom and me to help you, to bring you to a safe place. You cannot go home.’

No tears came. The girl’s shoulders did not slump as she received the dread news.

‘What of Bismarck?’

Sunny nodded sadly. ‘Bismarck, too. He is dead.’

For the first time, the girl’s lip seemed to quiver, but still she did not break down; the full enormity of the news had not entered her consciousness yet. Or perhaps she did not yet understand the finality of death.

Sunny put her arm around Klara, enveloping her like a mother.

‘They are dirty beasts,’ the girl said. ‘I want to kill them back.’

Wilde looked at the woman and the nightgown-clad girl, and then down at his own curious chauffeur’s outfit and wondered what anyone they encountered would make of them. They would have a lot of difficult explaining to do. The reality was that their chances did not look at all good.

‘Come, child, let us move on,’ Sunny said. ‘We must find you some food and clothes.’

Klara shook herself free from Sunny’s comforting arm.

‘I am ten years old,’ she said. ‘I am not a baby. What we must do now is find the Führer. He will look after us and deal with the bad men.’

*

Johanna Kalt looked at the telephone as it rang and rang. She did not like the device, did not trust it. She could not understand how voices came through it when there was no one there in the room with her. It was a witches’ device, a thing of darkness. She wished that Otto had never had it brought here.

But today it was especially disagreeable to hear its incessant ringing, because she knew that Otto would be on the other end – and she really did not want to have to tell him what had happened. At last, it was too much and so she picked it up and held it to her ear. She said nothing, just waited.