“I will. I think I just need a night to myself.”

“All right. Off you go, then.”

In truth, Leni really could have done with a night on her own. She was exhausted by the nature of her work, by the anxiety about whether she would be caught, and by worrying about her parents. And now this. She wondered what had happened to Lockhart to get him locked up. Perhaps he had killed Worstead? Surely not—it would get him into too much trouble.

She liked Lockhart. When the GRU had got back to her, telling her that she and Pugh must work with him, she had not found the prospect unattractive. Pugh had bristled at it, but she reminded him that he had no choice, he was in too deep. There was something charming and gentlemanly about Lockhart, something polished, but not overly so. She liked his love for his wife—a rare display of decency. And he was handsome—he must have had a lot of admirers back in England, she thought. What was Anna like, Leni wondered, what sort of woman was she? Pugh had told her she was also an archaeologist, an academic like Lockhart. At first she had imagined a frumpy, plain girl with glasses, but then judging by Lockhart’s looks, his wife must be good-looking as well. Or was good-looking, Leni thought; there was no way she could be alive, not after four years in a camp, no way.

She reached the Adlon at seven o’clock. The lobby was already teeming with high-ranking Nazis. As she walked through them, the only conversation she could make out was about the landings in Normandy. From what she could gather, the Allies had already taken a few key towns, and had landed hundreds of thousands of men on the beaches. The talk in the lobby that night sounded bullish, Leni thought, but she wondered how many of those who were talking big were already planning their escape routes, arranging their new identities and new futures. If she survived, she had resolved to help track those men down, using her intimate knowledge of so many of them to get her revenge. They would regret fucking her, regret writing her off as just another whore.

“Hello, Ulrich.”

Leni had reached the reception desk. Ulrich was her favorite receptionist. He must have been about eighty, but he was spry and fit—even his moustache was in good shape. He reminded Leni a little of her father, before his spirit was crushed that day by the Gestapo.

“Hello, Fräulein Hoffman! How nice to see you!”

Ulrich turned to get her key.

“No messages for you, I’m afraid.”

He handed her the key for Room 38.

“Thank you, Ulrich.”

She smiled sweetly at him. It was her genuine smile, not the smile she gave clients, which they all thought was her real one, the idiots.