And Elisabeth Lind was talking quietly to herself in German. In her sleep.

“She’s counting,” Jane told us. “Up to thirty. She’s done it three times.”

“It is German, isn’t it?” Louisa asked softly, with her worried frown.

“It’s Swiss German,” Jane said. “She’s just counting.”

We held still, listening to the wind and rain and fire, and to that slurry voice murmuring in German.

“What is she doing?” Louisa hissed.

“I think she’s practicing,” the old woman said. “So she doesn’t blow her cover story. Her standard German is excellent and she has a lovely regional Helvetian accent. French may well be her first language. But she didn’t learn it in Switzerland, and she certainly isn’t Swiss.”

“Don’t let Nan hear you,” Louisa begged.

Eins, zwei, drei… achtezwanzig, nünezwanzig, dreissig. Eins, zwei, drei…

I went to give flipping Mata Hari a gentle tap on the shoulder to wake her up and shut her up. I wondered what Cromwell had said to those Jerries, and what Felix Baer had said to her. I was glad I didn’t have her job.

Louisa came into the bathroom to brush her teeth while I brushed my hair. We ran the taps like spring torrents to cover our whispered secrets.

“That German pilot—Odysseus, Felix Baer—” She was so quiet I had to lean in to hear her. “He won’t talk to Miss Lind. He thinks I’m his contact.”

I dropped the hairbrush.

Over the noise of the water the clatter wasn’t anything. Louisa stayed bent over the basin.

“You don’t even speak German!” I exclaimed.

“Remember he talked about Calypso when he was here the first time? That’s her code name. He thought it was me—that I’d been sent to meet him. And when I gave him that tea, in the pub after Chip punched him up, I thanked him by blinking at him in Morse code! So stupid of me! I just—I just wanted to talk to him, somehow. And when he warned me about the trap, I messed about to give us time! Now I don’t know how to fix things. I tried to talk to him today and I couldn’t, not with the guards listening! I don’t know what to do.”

I picked up the brush and weighed it in my hand.

I took a deep breath.

Finally I whispered, “You should give the cipher machine to Sergeant Lind.”

“What about Jamie?” Louisa objected.

“Even if we had the new settings for it, we daren’t use it now, not if they’re trying to catch him. Give the machine to Sergeant Lind,” I said again. “She’s the one your Jerry meant it for; she’ll know what to do with it.”

“How can we trust her?” Louisa gasped.