‘No, there is only one way in or out.’

‘I will have to look around.’

She smiled then and he saw that her front teeth were missing. She noticed his look. ‘Knocked out by the Ivan who defiled me with his gun,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You are a polite young person, Dutchman. I will walk with you – my presence at your side will put my friends at ease.’

He went slowly with the unnamed grey-haired woman. He imagined that in a former life, she might have been a schoolteacher. She stood silently by his side, protective like a mother hen as he approached the women and girls in turn.

Each of them had haunted eyes, made more anguished by the flickering of the candles and lanterns. They were surrounded by pathetic bags and belongings. Some cradled babes in their arms. But despite their destitution, he saw that they had comfort in the company of others caught in the same dreadful circumstances; they had made a home of this place, crafting beds for themselves and their small children out of old rags and cushions, anything they could find among the rubble of bombed-out homes.

They offered him nothing. If they had seen his pursuer, they weren’t revealing it. If any one of them had been his pursuer, she had changed at speed into female clothes, and none of her friends was going to denounce her. Every question was met with a blank stare or a shake of the head. And there was no other exit. It was a helpless task.

He must have been mistaken. His pursuer was long gone.

‘Thank you,’ he said finally to the grey-haired woman. ‘I hope you are given the assistance you need.’ And even as he said it, he wondered what their husbands and fathers and sons had done in the war.

*

‘Where have you been, Lieutenant Heck?’ Wilde was astonished to see the young officer strolling through the front door of the OSS building, hands in the pockets of his trousers, as though he had just nipped outside for a quick breath of fresh air.

‘Sightseeing while we waited on the Russians.’

‘Well, the Russians were quicker than expected. You missed an interesting lunch.’

‘Then you’ll have to tell me all about it. Don’t say you were worried about me, Professor.’

Wilde had just emerged from the office of Richard Helms. It had been agreed that they would meet up in half an hour and stroll to his villa for a reasonably early supper. ‘Worried would be the wrong word, Heck. Curious about your vanishing act when we were supposed to be working together. Damn it, man, I thought you were committed to finding Hitler. Are you in this thing with me or not?’

‘Everyone needs a day off.’

‘That’s no answer.’

‘I can’t explain any further.’