His thoughts were interrupted by the elevator reaching the sixth floor. He stepped out into a silent corridor and headed toward a pair of giant doors, the sound of his boots echoing off the whitewashed walls. A dull gray light was washing in through the small windows—Strasser could see that it was still snowing. It had been snowing the last time he had come up here, to collect his promotion from Berger. It was the first time he had met the Obergruppenführer, and he had immediately seen why the head of the SS Hauptamt was so feared. A short, fat man in his late forties with a husky voice, Berger cut a sinister figure. His hair was cropped all the way around, leaving a mop perched on top of a squat and ugly face. He had more or less managed a smile when he presented Strasser with his certificate of promotion.

Strasser reached the doors, paused to smooth down his uniform and opened them. He was presented with a well-lit wood-paneled room containing four uniformed secretaries, and by an equal number of junior officers. Portraits of Hitler and Himmler were placed on the far wall—Strasser noticed that they had been arranged so that the two men were facing away from each other.

One of the secretaries looked up from her typewriter.

“Hauptsturmführer Strasser?”

Strasser looked at her. She must have been only twenty and had cold gray eyes that chilled him. This was a girl who would do anything for her Führer, he thought. If she wasn’t working at the SS Hauptamt, she might well be ensconced in a Lebensborn home, where single women could procreate and bring up children sired by permanent SS “procreation helpers”—Zeugungshelfer. Naturally, it was a task that every SS man wanted to do, but only the most racially pure could apply. Strasser had met such a man in Russia, who had boasted that he had fathered thirty-two children for the Reich. “Who knows, perhaps they will be able to form their own SS corps in a few years’ time,” he had joked, but Strasser hadn’t laughed—he thought the Lebensborn campaign absurd, an opinion he didn’t voice, not even with Max.

“Yes, Fraulein, reporting as requested.”

“Wait one moment, please.”

The girl got up from her desk and went over to another set of giant doors. She opened one, and holding the door handle and the frame, she leaned into the room, her left foot leaving the ground. The movement tightened her skirt over her hips, causing Strasser a moment of lust. He really must see Leni as soon as possible—he didn’t normally find himself going for SS ice maidens.

He heard a mumbled exchange of words and then the girl leaned back and looked over to Strasser.

“You may go in now,” she uttered, without any trace of warmth.

“Thank you, Fraulein.”