She followed him to the staircase, then sagged against the bricks. She couldn't recall the last time she'd eaten, the last time she'd actually touched a man. "I'm begging you now, all right? I'm down on my knees and begging."

She heard him breathing through his teeth, felt him run a finger across her lips. "Your abstract painter broke the law, Margaretha."

"To hell with your law."

"He also lied to you. He lied to you for years."

"Not about the things that matter."

He reached out to touch her again, but she turned her face away. Tears left him sexually aroused.

“I wonder,” he said, "I wonder if you would show the same concern had I been the one arrested?"

She ran her sleeve across her mouth. "People like you never get arrested. Maybe shot, maybe stabbed, but never arrested."

He smiled. "Yes, I suppose you have a point."

Then rigid again, perhaps reminding himself that the war was less than a day away: "Very well, my darling, I shall see that your painter is released, assuming that's what you truly want."

She could have killed him. "Thank you."

"Although I would like to know what it is that you see in that man. I really would like to know."

"Perhaps I see myself."

Even through the predawn hours there were footsteps on the asphalt, still distant voices from the Steinplatz. She slept badly after mixing aspirin with bourbon, then woke up at daybreak to stuff her clothing into a trunk. There was a frenetic, disjointed quality to the next several hours with rumors of indiscriminate arrests, mob violence, and the execution of suspicious foreigners.

Gray finally appeared in the late afternoon like some half-familiar ghost. (Dunbar would maintain that British Intelligence had managed Gray's release from Doberitz through a complex arrangement with Prince Lichnowsky in London, and Whitehall would back up that claim, as would the Admiralty.) He had been released at about noon. It was uncomfortably warm and at first he was told nothing. Two young guards escorted him to a windowless van. There were clothes on the rear seat: trousers, jacket, cheap shoes, and a shirt.

They drove for about two hours, suggesting a trip to the countryside. But when the van finally stopped, Gray found himself on a shaded side street off the Wilhelmstrasse. One of the guards told him to get out of the van and shut the door. Twenty minutes later he found himself in the British embassy, where no one quite knew what to do with him.

There were then perhaps six hours between Gray's release and his reunion with Zelle. In that time he bathed, ate a reasonably good meal, and briefly chatted with a frantic military attaché. As evening approached, the embassy grew increasingly filled with distraught British citizens stranded without papers, spreading rumors about four British subjects who had been supposedly murdered in the Tiergarten, and about many others left beaten in the streets.