‘Then her hands are still bound, but not her feet. She can’t have got far like that. Johanna, you had better find her.’

‘I can’t. I’ve looked.’

‘Then keep looking – and take my rifle. And I tell you this – if you don’t find her and do for her, I will butcher you and feed you to the pigs.’

*

Otto Kalt slammed the phone down, then picked it up again. He had another call to make, one that was necessary but was likely to be even more difficult than the one to his wife. Bormann’s secretary put him straight through.

‘Otto, where are you?’

‘Brandenburg – north-west of Eberswalde.’

‘OK, now be circumspect, Otto.’

‘I understand.’

Bormann did not know whether his phone was tapped. Everyone else in government circles was listened to, so one could never be sure.

‘You found what you were looking for?’

‘Almost.’

Bormann’s voice sharpened. ‘Almost? What do you mean? I do not like the sound of that.’

‘A slight hitch. We’ll find it soon. There are others involved.’

‘Others?’ One word, but a whole world of menace.

‘While we were there a car turned up, an expensive Horch. We did not get sight of the occupants but I felt there were two people in it. Perhaps a man and a woman, for there was a smell of perfume.’

‘Kalt . . .’

‘Yes, Herr Reichsleiter.’

‘I trusted you with this. What is happening there? Who are these others?’

‘I have the car number plate. Perhaps your contacts might help, Herr Reichsleiter.’

‘Give me the number. Where is the car?’

‘The car is no more. Burnt out.’

‘What? Why?’

‘We couldn’t stay with it – and we couldn’t leave it for them.’

‘Damn your incompetence, Kalt. I ask you to do one simple thing and you let me down! All I have done for you these past years. Give me the number.’

Kalt took out sheets of printed paper torn from a copy of Mein Kampf and, using a code they had used before, he gave his master the number plate details. Page eighteen, line one, seventh letter; page three, last line, eighth letter . . . and so on. No one would be able to break the code unless they knew the book he was using.

‘Call me again in half an hour, Kalt. And don’t tell me you have almost found what we are looking for. I want to know that it has been found and despatched. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Herr Reichsleiter.’

This time Kalt put the phone down more gently. The call had not been as bad as he feared, but there would be a great deal worse to come if the task was not completed with great haste. And he hadn’t even dared mention that the midwife was missing. To think that the night had started so promisingly. How had it ended like this?

*