Lockhart turned and ran, following Leni and Pugh. Up ahead there was light coming in from the southern end of the tunnel. If they could just make it there, they might be safe. He hoped that Hull, Nichols, Malcolm and Andreae had managed to secure them a passage out, but God knew what lay outside.

A few yards up ahead there were some thirty or forty prisoners being herded forward by a couple of guards. They were screaming, terrified by the noise of the alarm and the gunfire. Lockhart drew level with them, and then passed them. He had only a couple of hundred yards to go and he would be out, out into the air, out into the light.

As she ran, Leni knew that she had to get out, that if anybody was going to do so, it would be her. She wanted to write this down, to make sure that future generations would know what had happened. Lockhart, Strasser, the rest of the unit—they would all be regarded as traitors for posterity unless someone made a record. She would be the one to do it, and nothing was going to stop her, not the guards, not the SD, not even the whole of the Wehrmacht. The truth, she thought; she was running for the truth.

He didn’t know what made him turn around. Whatever it was, it was a delayed reaction. But the force was as great as if he had been knocked around by a punch. He stumbled, staggered, and looked back at the group of prisoners. There was something about them, an aura that separated them from the others he had seen. What was it? What the hell was it?

He walked back toward them, as if he was being led by a vision. He was staring, staring intently at one of the prisoners. She was slightly taller than the rest. Her hair was short, very short, but it was the right color. She was walking in the same way as when he had first seen her, first seen her long legs tripping over those piles of ancient masonry. She had been wearing a large sun hat then, and carrying a small knapsack, and he had laughed at her stumbling attempts to keep up with Dr. Buchan. And he remembered her brown eyes, and her defiant expression, and how he had been mesmerized. He remembered shaking her hand, finding the formality funny, but knowing, even then, that he always wanted to be with this woman, that he would always fight for her.