During 1943 and 1944, Japan produced seven of these huge, costly vessels.

In the same period, the United States produced ninety.

13

1942 (II)

Nursing Sister Carla von Ulrich wheeled a cart into the supply room and closed the door behind her.

She had to work quickly. What she was about to do would get her sent to a concentration camp if she were caught.

She took a selection of wound dressings from a cupboard, plus a roll of bandage and a jar of antiseptic cream. Then she unlocked the drugs cabinet. She took morphine for pain relief, sulphonamide for infections, and aspirin for fever. She added a new hypodermic syringe, still in its box.

She had already falsified the register, over a period of weeks, to look as if what she was stealing had been used legitimately. She had rigged the register before taking the stuff, rather than afterwards, so that any spot check would reveal a surplus, suggesting mere carelessness, instead of a deficit, which indicated theft.

She had done all this twice before, but she felt no less frightened.

As she wheeled the cart out of the store, she hoped she looked innocent: a nurse bringing medical necessities to a patient’s bedside.

She walked into the ward. To her dismay she saw Dr Ernst there, sitting beside a bed, taking a patient’s pulse.

All the doctors should have been at lunch.

It was now too late to change her mind. Trying to assume an air of confidence that was the opposite of what she felt, she held her head high and walked through the ward, pushing her cart.

Dr Ernst glanced up at her and smiled.

Berthold Ernst was the nurses’ dreamboat. A talented surgeon with a warm bedside manner, he was tall, handsome and single. He had romanced most of the attractive nurses, and had slept with many of them, if hospital gossip could be credited.

She nodded to him and went briskly past.

She pushed the trolley out of the ward then suddenly turned into the nurses’ cloakroom.

Her outdoor coat was on a hook. Beneath it was a basketwork shopping bag containing an old silk scarf, a cabbage and a box of sanitary towels in a brown paper bag. Carla removed the contents, then swiftly transferred the medical supplies from the trolley to the bag. She covered the supplies with the scarf, a blue and gold geometric design that her mother must have bought in the twenties. Then she put the cabbage and the sanitary towels on top, hung the bag on a hook, and arranged her coat to cover it.

I got away with it, she thought. She realized she was trembling a little. She took a deep breath, got herself under control, opened the door – and saw Dr Ernst standing just outside.

Had he been following her? Was he about to accuse her of stealing? His manner was not hostile; in fact, he looked friendly. Perhaps she had got away with it.