There was a short line at the security gate, and Strasser joined it, getting his pass ready. Standing in front of him was his closest colleague in the Beschaffungsamt—procurement—section, Hauptsturmführer Max Esser. He was unmistakable from behind as he only had one ear—the other one had burned off somewhere near Kursk. Strasser tapped him on the shoulder.

“Good morning, Max,” he said breezily. “How are you this morning?”

Esser turned around—his eyes lit up when he saw it was Strasser.

“Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Where were you? I thought you were going to join us at the pictures. We ended up making a night of it and now I feel like shit.”

“You don’t look great, I must admit.”

“Thanks, Carl.” Esser smiled. “I can always count on you to give me the honest truth.”

“But I was lying!”

“So, I don’t look too bad then?”

“No, Max, in fact you look shit—really, really shit.”

Esser playfully punched Strasser in the stomach.

“Just you wait, Carl, one day we’ll get you out and pour a bottle of schnapps down your throat, and then we’ll see how you look.”

“You’re on. So long as you pay.”

The two men showed their passes to the guard at the gate. He nodded them through, and they made their way up the stairs, continuing their banter.

Strasser shared an office with Esser and a ferocious-looking secretary, the gargantuan Frau Buch. She held the rank of a junior NCO—a gefreiter—and even Strasser would admit she looked terrifying in her uniform. She worshipped the Führer, so much so that she had hung twenty pictures of him on the office walls, making the place into a shrine. Unlike her hero, however, she chain-smoked, with the result that she had a cough like a panzer starting up. Frau Buch was in her early fifties, and she treated the two young officers as errant children. In return, they endlessly teased her and indulged in horseplay such as throwing paper airplanes at her desk.

Frau Buch’s ashtray was already half full when Strasser and Esser entered.

“Good morning, Head Matron,” grinned Esser.

“And what happened to you last night?” she inquired, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip.

Esser looked pleadingly at Strasser for support, but Strasser was sitting down and smiling to himself.

“I went to dinner with my mother,” Esser replied.

“Balls you did,” Frau Buch spluttered.

“Now, now, Gefreiter, that’s no way to talk to an officer,” said Strasser, not looking up.

The other two went silent. Was he joking? He looked serious enough. Carl could be like this, Esser thought, suddenly blowing cold, getting all “Party.”

Strasser looked up and smiled.

“I do think we should be careful though,” he said. “I wouldn’t like our colleagues in the next-door offices to think that discipline in our little world had completely broken down.”

“Quite right,” replied Esser with mock severity. “Gefreiter—get on with your work or you’ll end up herding Jews in Ravensbruck.”

“Yes, sir, my esteemed Hauptsturmführer.”