On the other hand, Ursula dreamed of Mutti last night. She woke with Mutti’s name on her lips. Who else but Mutti would know of her connection to Benedict Thorpe? Isn’t that a sign of some kind? A stamp of faith? Maybe all these years that came before, all Ursula’s long apprenticeship in subterfuge, her continued survival in the face of impossible odds, has led to this single operation. After all, nobody else in Germany stands a better chance of freeing a prisoner from Colditz. If the thing can be done at all, only Ursula can do it.

In fact, as she stares at the paper in her hand, lit by a single flickering bulb that causes the letters to squirm on the page, she’s sure of it.

Ursula takes a scrap from the pile in the drawer, sharpens her pencil with a knife, composes a reply, and translates it carefully into code.

Lulu

March 1944

(Switzerland)

If you look at a map of Germany—and God knows, I’ve done little else for the past nine weeks—you’ll notice that the town of Colditz, tucked into the forests and farmlands of Saxony, lies at a considerable distance from the border with Switzerland. About four hundred miles, to be exact, across farm and forest and mountain, and then you get to the shores of Lake Constance, the Bodensee. You raise your hand and peer across the water, and on a nice clear day you can see Switzerland.

Or, if you’re standing on the opposite rim of the lake—as I am, as I’ve done for ten days now, bundled in a thick wool coat that bulges over my middle—you see Germany.