But then the ticket master looks up regretfully, first at the clock and then at Elfriede. He’s sorry to inform her that the next train north doesn’t leave until noon the next day.

Five days later.

Now Elfriede stands inside another ticket office, considerably more luxurious, that of the Holland America steamship line on State Street, at the very bottom of Manhattan. Here in the middle of civilization, she doesn’t need beauty. Her title’s enough. The Baroness von Kleist and her son are shown to a private room, waited upon by an eager sycophant. The passenger lists for the most recent sailings to Rotterdam? Just a moment, Frau von Kleist. We’ll see what we can do.

They sit together bravely in a pair of armchairs, she and Johann. It’s the fourth steamship office they’ve inhabited this morning. Yesterday it was hotels, all the famous, well-appointed hotels of New York City and then some of the lesser ones. Surely this could not be so difficult? A blond woman in her thirties, speaking limited English in a heavy German accent, accompanied by three young girls, as fair as their mother, how could you fail to notice them? But New York’s a good place to hide, after all. It’s a question of numbers. A thousand hotels. Railway lines going every which way. Ocean liners crisscrossing the harbor, making their way up and down the mighty Hudson River to the waiting piers. A woman and her daughters, who has time to notice them? What’s that American expression? A dime a dozen. And every minute counted, at every hour the chances dimmed, the likelihood grew that Charlotte and the girls had disappeared forever.

At one o’clock yesterday afternoon, Elfriede dragged the weary Johann into a lunchroom near Madison Square and considered her remaining options. She considered what she might do, if she were Charlotte, and where she would go. This promise she’d made to live anywhere but Germany, for example. Would she keep it? Why, of course she wouldn’t. Charlotte wasn’t going to learn a new language. She wasn’t going to settle somewhere exotic. And—Elfriede realized, in a breathtakingly clear review of the past five years—nothing in Charlotte’s character suggested she regarded vows as sacred. In fact, Charlotte was most likely to do what suited Charlotte. Besides, there was that cheque for twenty thousand marks to consider. Where else could you easily cash such an enormous sum of German money, drawn on a German bank, than Germany?

Charlotte’s returning to Germany. Elfriede’s sure of it.

So here they sit, Elfriede and Johann, in the offices of the Holland America Line. Earlier this morning they visited the Hamburg-American Line, Cunard, the White Star. Naturally they’re unable to provide passenger information on future sailings, but manifests for ships already departed, that’s possible, certainly, Frau von Kleist.