“He could drive there.”

“Good luck to him! In this weather and with minimal head-lamps—forget it!”

A private brought over a bowl of soup and some unappetizing-looking bread. Strasser took a spoonful of the liquid and immediately spat it out.

“God almighty!” he exclaimed. “What the hell is this?”

Lange laughed.

“I told you it was shit!”

“Yes, but I didn’t think you were being literal.”

“I’ll have it then.”

“Not a chance,” said Strasser. “I’m starving.”

The men sat in near silence for a while, exchanging the odd unappreciative comment on Genshagen cuisine.

“Do you want to see Lockhart again tonight, Hauptsturmführer?” Lange asked.

Strasser chewed it over with some of the stale bread.

“I don’t see any point.”

“You’re right. A shame he didn’t agree to join up—I rather liked him.”

“So did I,” said Strasser. “So did I.”

Another silence.

“Lange?” said Strasser, looking up from his bowl, straight into Lange’s eyes.

“Yes?”

“Let’s do it at half past seven tomorrow morning. Hopefully Ziegfeld will still be asleep.”

Lange smiled.

“How many men do you want?”

Strasser shrugged, unconcerned.

“Oh, I don’t mind. Four should do it. Three live rounds, one blank.”

Lange nodded, and then lifted his bowl to drain it with a slurp that Strasser found uncouth and mildly irritating.

Another cell, his coldest yet. Through the small barred window he could see that it was twilight. There was no bed, just a rough wooden floor, from which a splinter dug into his hand as he pushed himself up. His head was throbbing unbearably—the back of it felt puffy and bruised, but his hair was not matted, which meant that it hadn’t been cut. He felt sick and took several deep breaths, which did little to help.

So this, finally, was his last night. And it would be Anna’s too, not that she knew it. He let his head slump forward. Was this for the best? Was this really the best thing for Amy, to make her an orphan? No, but there was no choice. He winced as he recalled Strasser’s description of Anna’s execution. His Anna, lying in a frozen pool of blood. That face that he had kissed so many times, that had spoken comforting words, that he had gazed into deeply when they had married; that face that had looked both tired and proud after Amy’s birth, and which would shortly be reduced to a mass of blood and sinew, butchered for no other reason than his not playing a game with some people who spoke a different language.

A game. Yes, that was what it was. Just a sodding playground game on a ridiculously large scale, an evil scale. Couldn’t he just treat it as that, play along with them? He could avoid their deaths by putting on a uniform and acting a part, playing the game. He thought of MacNeice again, his Autumn Journal, written just before the war. He had read them in Cairo; Dickie had had a copy.