The two other soldiers had their guns poised. Nobody said a word. Nobody shifted a limb, rustled a skirt, coughed. Swallowed. Frau Winkler’s body lay where it had fallen, the stained napkin in her hand. The silence hung heavy as dirt. Lieselotte tossed her head and braced her shoulders. She shook her arm free of the soldier, gave the same smile Bette had seen earlier. She saw its meaning now, its defiant strength. I will fight my way.

CHAPTER SIX

North Germany: late April 1945

The truck jolted over a pothole, threw John against the side so he hit his hip. He winced. The sergeant, a Londoner with freckles and ginger hair, smirked. He’s all we bloody need written across his face, letters sky-high. Fucking translator. The sergeant was battle-hardened and toughened up, John almost half his age, a spoilt schoolboy, wet behind the ears. John pretended not to notice, stared out of the back of the truck. It was his fifth day on the road. France, Belgium, Germany. Nothing but the stumps of war and the stench of death.

‘Don’t know why they don’t just pack it in,’ the sergeant said. ‘Hitler and that lot. These buggers have given up.’ He nodded towards a farmhouse window, where a threadbare pillowcase was being waved.

‘It’s just a matter of time,’ John said. That’s what they all said, and John said it too, like a mantra, a matter of time. It gave him comfort, put bone in his spine.

‘Will we make it to Berlin before the Russians?’ John said.

‘With all due respect, sir,’ the sergeant said, ‘not a chance in hell.’

Besides, they were on a different mission, so John had been told. To beat the Russians to a different target. Orders from the Admiralty. They called it something fancy like reparations. But it was plunder, when all was said and done. Get there first, before the Russkies. And don’t trust the Yanks or the French. Two-faced, they were. And keep our lads out of it while you’re at it, don’t want them rampaging through, destroying evidence. They’d vandalise as soon as look at it. Or loot it. Common or garden looting, not the poncy stuff his lot were up to.

All those secrets. Target Force. T-Force, a giant ‘T’ plastered on the bonnet of the truck.