Strasser thought he was in heaven. The problems with the unit felt a long way away. He wanted to lie here for the next year, washing off the grime of the war. He grinned to himself. How many other SS officers were getting their chests washed by whores as good-looking as Leni? None, he wagered. It just showed, he thought, that money was not the only thing that talked. He let his entire head submerge and held his breath, listening to the amplified sound of Leni’s high heels on the bathroom floor as she walked back in. After a few seconds, he came back up, and took a deep breath. Because he kept his eyes closed, he couldn’t see that Leni was pointing his P38 right at the chest she had just washed.

There had been rumors going around the camp, very vague rumors, that the Allies had landed in France. A railway worker had told somebody who had come in on a transport that there had been a huge invasion, and that the war would be over within a few weeks. Many believed the rumors, but not 10678, who knew that rumors, especially those that contained hope, were not to be believed. In her experience, it was only the bad ones that held any truth.

But these rumors were different. They kept coming around, not dying off after a few days. The Allies had made great breakthroughs; they had taken lots of towns; they were marching on Paris; Berlin would fall by Christmas. They were persistent, and yet still she did not believe them. Why are you such a cynic? she was asked. It must be true they said, no smoke without fire.

She only started to believe them when the Germans started to deny them. At the head count one morning, an officer told them that the stories of an Allied invasion were nonsense. Anybody who was caught spreading such a rumor would be shot. And even if there was an invasion, the officer continued, the English and Americans would get no further than the beaches. That proved it, she thought. But she wasn’t going to share her opinion with anybody. She had survived for too long to risk her neck, not now, not when the end was in sight.

Perhaps he was with them. Perhaps he was fighting his way toward her, coming to save her. Her white knight, charging through the fields of northern Europe to rescue his true love and carry her off. She knew it was absurd, stupidly romantic, but she wallowed in it for a while, allowing herself a rare few moments of fantasy. The rumor had given her hope, and with it a sense of freedom, a freedom inside her head to live in a world that seemed magically normal, a world with a husband and child.