“You don’t know that. He might have been making arrangements for another officer, someone who was killed. That would explain—”

“Stop.”

“But—”

She whirls to face me. “Stop, damn it. Read me those names again.”

I pick up the paper and skim the paragraphs. “Ursula, Frederica, Gertrud.”

Margaret marches back to the table and snatches up the letter. “Ursula. Ursula Kassmeyer.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It must be a coincidence.”

“Miss Margaret! The cigarette!” cries Annie.

The corner of the page has begun to smoke. Margaret swears and drops the cigarette in the ashtray, pinches out the flame with her fingers. The smell of scorched paper fills the air.

“What’s the matter?” I say. “Who the devil’s Ursula Kassmeyer?”

“It’s got to be a coincidence.” Margaret looks up and meets my gaze, and the gloss is gone from her eyes. They’re a bright, pale blue, animated, sizzling with life. “It’s just that we’ve got an operative by that name in the German section. One of our best. She runs an escape line into Switzerland for downed pilots and Jews.”

Part V

Lulu

November 1943

(The Bahamas)

I have said before that there was more than a little of the American spirit in the Bahamas, the American way of doing things, owing to the fact that Miami lay a trifling distance to the west, whereas London rose from an island on the other side of a notoriously tempestuous ocean. Still. Bahamians clung to certain inscrutable British traditions, and a Nassau courtroom is just about indistinguishable from Old Bailey itself, down to the frizzled gray wigs and the so-called dock in which the prisoner is kept during the proceedings, like an animal in a cage.

It’s a grave thing, after all, to put a man on trial for his life. A grave thing, to accuse a man of murdering another man, and—like marriage—not to be undertaken lightly, or for base purposes. On the last day of Alfred de Marigny’s trial for the murder of Sir Harry Oakes, I sat in the press gallery for some time after the concluding arguments were made, after the judge gave his summation and instructions to the jury, after the members of the jury filed out of the courtroom to deliberate de Marigny’s guilt or innocence.