“Good afternoon, Lockhart—you have had a letter from your wife, I understand?”

“I have.”

“Is she well?”

“So it would appear.”

“You don’t sound very happy about it.”

“That’s because I’m not sure if it’s genuine.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because it’s typed.”

“Well of course it’s typed!”

“Why?”

“The SS are not in the habit of giving prisoners pencils or pens. They make very good weapons.”

Lockhart paused. Annoyingly, the explanation made sense.

“You would be surprised,” Müller continued, “how many of our guards have been killed by the most innocent of items. It was at Theresienstadt, I think, where a guard was murdered by having a small bar of soap forced down his throat. Imprisonment makes men very inventive!”

Müller laughed—it was a dry, husky laugh. Evidently methods of killing were of some humorous fascination to him. Lockhart nodded quietly.

“So—now do you feel that the letter is genuine?”

“It looks like it,” Lockhart replied reluctantly.

“Good. And I assume that you are willing to cooperate?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I’m not going to tell you yet. Guard! Come in and handcuff the prisoner!”

Once again, Lockhart found himself wedged between two Gestapo officers in the back of a car. They were driving out of Berlin—Lockhart guessed southward—and passing through many bomb-damaged streets. The passers-by looked gaunt and malnourished, their misery no doubt increased by the fact that Christmas was only a few days away—it was hardly a time for celebration. Teenage girls stood on street corners rattling collection tins, but nobody appeared to put any money into them.

In the suburbs, the damage became lighter, although as they ran parallel to a railway line, Lockhart saw the occasional bombed-out goods shed. He smiled, glad that the Germans were experiencing the same horrors that they had meted out to Britain three years ago.

After an hour, they were in open, flat countryside. The furrows of ploughed fields were visible through a layer of snow, and the whitened pine trees reminded Lockhart of winter up at Arisaig. He had spent Christmas there last year, a bittersweet affair. Many of the men were missing their families, but the camaraderie helped to make up for it. They had even gorged themselves on fresh salmon, poached from the nearby loch by a couple of Dutch resistance fighters. Their method had been unorthodox: a stick of dynamite thrown a few yards out had stunned nearly every fish within a hundred yards. Lockhart had feigned outrage at this theft, but was more than happy to share in the spoils.

Life at Arisaig now seemed almost as mythical as life at Tara. Hidden in the northwest of Scotland, the house had been requisitioned by SOE at the beginning of 1941. On cold days—which were common—Arisaig was a severe place. Dark brown, with small windows, it could be bleak and charmless, but when the sun came out, the view thirty miles out to sea was spectacular and liberating.