“You dumb idiot,” said Hennig. “Call yourself an intelligence officer? I’ve seen scum in my toilet that’s more intelligent than you.”

“It’s all right, Harold,” said Koch calmly. “It’s all right. Let’s be civil here. Is that your final word, Gunther?”

Suddenly I felt tired—too tired to care much what happened to me now; it might have been the schnapps; then again the whole war felt like a lamppost that had been tied around my neck. Only, maybe it would be my neck tied to the lamppost.

“Yes it is, sir. I’m sorry. But I simply can’t ask her to do this.”

Koch sighed and pulled a face. “Then it looks as if you’re not going to be a captain again, after all.”

“I suppose I really don’t care what happens to me.”

Hennig sneered. “It also looks as if you’re walking back to town.”

“Gentlemen? After what I just heard? I could certainly do with some fresh air.”

—

I didn’t tell Irmela what had happened. I thought it best not to worry her. It’s not every day in Nazi Germany you turn down a man as powerful as Erich Koch, and part of me expected that I might be arrested at any time and thrown into the concentration camp at Stutthof. They hadn’t threatened me, exactly, and, more important, they hadn’t threatened her, but I hardly thought they would just give up. Somehow I had to think of a way of preventing them from intimidating Irmela, and soon, too.

“Do you have to go to work tomorrow?” I asked her that night.

“Why?”

“I’m just asking, that’s all. I was thinking maybe we could spend the time here together, alone.”

“I’m on duty. You know that. I can’t not just turn up. This is the naval auxiliary we’re talking about here, not a Salamander shoe shop. Besides, they’re relying on me. In case you had forgotten, there’s a lot happening right now in the Baltic Sea.”

We were in bed at the time, and sharing the cigarette now lying in the cheap imitation amber ashtray that was balanced on my chest.

“I understand.”

“It’s not that I don’t like spending time with you, my darling snail. I do. These moments we have here are very precious to me. Shall I tell you why? Because I never thought I would have them. When you showed up in my life I had more or less reconciled to myself to ending my life here without ever having known the real love of a man.”

“What about Christoph? The fellow who died at Stalingrad.”

“We were lovers. But we weren’t in love. There’s a difference. Besides, he was just a boy.”

“Nothing wrong with that if you’re just a girl.”