The mysteries of Lorelei curled around Gabriel’s soul and tormented him in his loneliness. Once, in his half-sleep in his hospital bed, he thought he could smell her perfume. The scent of her leaning over him as he recovered from an entirely different and earlier set of wounds. But it wasn’t her; the perfume was wafting out from another woman’s neck. He woke and they talked as she stood awkwardly. Chairs were absent in a military hospital.
‘It’s being here,’ he said to her. ‘Where we met.’
At the hospital, Lorelei had nursed him, wooed him. Had it all been an act? Had he been selected as a possible sniper, or did she like him for something that was just him?
‘It takes time,’ the woman by his bed said. ‘But life will begin again.’
Gabriel knew this, but then again, he didn’t. It didn’t seem real; this life without Lorelei. Without anyone. Alone in his hut on a mountain. Life could only go on if he had a life.
A nurse arrived with a chair for the visitor, who was too important to be left standing.
‘Did you go to her funeral?’
She shook her head. ‘Not allowed to. I went to Iron Arse’s, Matron Gunther’s. A pitiful turnout. None of the bigwigs and very few nurses. I understand she wasn’t popular. Did you kill her?’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘You’re one of the SOE team, aren’t you?’
‘What’s left of it.’ Gabriel stared at her. ‘And you’re one of the Three Graces.’
Eva Braun agreed, ‘Myself, Gretl and Ilse.’
‘SOE warned us you were MI6’s agents on Obersalzberg.’
‘It worked well,’ she said, smiling brightly, hair still fluffy but with eyes that were strong and piercing. ‘I’d tell Gretl Mr Hitler’s pillow talk, or anything of interest he’d broadcast in one of his tedious rants. Gretl would travel to Berlin, where she’d pass the intelligence on to Ilse.’
‘And she would take it to Sweden?’
Eva tutted and set about rearranging the bunch of tiny snowdrops she’d brought and were stacked in a mug, the only vessel found that was small enough for them.
‘Winter flowers, the last winter of the war, I hope. Yes, Ilse would travel to Stockholm. We hid her in plain sight; the liberal dissident with a Jewish lover whom Mr Hitler tolerated because of me. She’d slip away, supposedly to see this man, a doctor, but he was long gone. He emigrated to the United States before the war. The man masquerading as him in Stockholm is a British intelligence contact. That’s where it all began. Ilse met Lady Duggan in his waiting room. She was our introduction to the spying world. Lady Duggan christened us.’
‘The Three Graces.’
‘From the Grace Game, a silly sport played by teams comprising three sisters. Much loved in English girls’ boarding schools. Lady Duggan told us about it. Only the English wouldn’t comprehend the symbolism. Hoops thrown about by virgins to be stabbed by others wielding sticks. And they call us pagans.’
‘Do those schools have that many sets of three sisters?’
Eva shrugged. ‘Lady Duggan said so. She had three daughters who were hot for the game, and I think the schools bend the rules a little and allow blood cousins to join a team of two sisters. Girls who have recently left are invited back from finishing school, or the hunting season, to make a third with younger siblings. The English upper classes like big families; look at the Mitford litter. The schools work it out somehow; the important thing is to show the three ages, from child to girl to young woman. The grace.’
She smiled at him. ‘And of course, it was the perfect nom de plume, as only a woman who has attended a British girls’ public school can ever have heard of the Grace Game, and women aren’t employed in the offices of counter-espionage. Poor Mr Hitler, he has no idea what’s going on under his nose.’
He looked at her and saw Lorelei. ‘Do you love him? I mean, did you ever?’
Eva shook her head. ‘But then, truth to tell, I don’t think Hitler really loves me. Little Geli was the love of his life and he kicked her to death, before making sure with a bullet in her heart – so perhaps I’m lucky that I’m only an extended fling.’
There was something Gabriel didn’t understand. ‘Operation Watch on the Rhine, you knew about it. You talked about it to me when you visited Lorelei. Surely you passed that intelligence to London?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Actually, no.’
Gabriel was confused, ‘Why?’
She thought about stacking the snowdrops again but then abandoned them to their huddle. ‘Too dangerous. I had my sisters to consider. If we’d warned the Allies and they were waiting, the resulting bloodbath would have warned the Abwehr there had been a leak. The Three Graces gave intelligence on the mood and thoughts of the Führer. A specific military secret, of the magnitude of the assault in the Ardennes, would have set alarm bells ringing. Instead I just blabbed it around in my fluffy way with unguarded chatter. The hope being that someone in the rival British team, which we knew was operating on Obersalzberg, would pick it up and report it to London.’
‘We did, but they couldn’t have believed us.’
‘Heard it through the wrong ear, I suppose. We weren’t happy when London made us team up with their assassination squad. It wasn’t what we did.’
He brought the talk back to Lorelei. ‘Did you suspect her?’
Eva smiled. ‘I didn’t, for the same reason no one suspects me. We were two feckless females of loose morals and no political convictions. But in reality, I open my legs for a cause.’
Another Dakini, he thought.
‘I’ve shocked you,’ she said. ‘But a woman is a small country. An unimportant nation surrounded by great powers. Men make the rules and the rules suit the men. Sometimes a woman has to break those rules just to survive.’
An ache rolled back through him as regular as a tide. ‘Lorelei broke the rules and she didn’t survive.’
Eva reached across the bed and took his hand. ‘She’s made a mess of you. It happens in affairs of the heart. But you’re not one of those men who are better alone. Believe me. Silent maybe, but not solitary.’
‘You think I need a little wife?’
She laughed and then checked her eye make-up in a tiny mirror, speaking all the while. ‘Not little. There’s nothing little about you, Gabriel. You’re a hero from another age and you need a mate of the same proportion. Another hero, but perhaps less complicated. When this mess is over, don’t try to live alone. You’d make an awful misogynist. Give one of us ladies another chance to win the prize.’
He had no energy left for romance, he knew that. But he also knew that life was a death march: you either found the strength to put one foot in front of the other, again and again, or you gave up and died there and then. Gabriel just didn’t know if he’d reached as far as he was going.
‘I’ve got to go to Berlin,’ she said. ‘He’s sent for me. Because he thinks life is an opera, I’m supposed to say he’s forbidden me to join him in the capital because it’s too dangerous. But, gallant little Fräulein that I am, I go to be by his side anyway.’
‘Why? Sit out the war here. Wait for the Yanks.’
She sighed at the temptation but shook her head. ‘I’ve been doing this job for a dozen years and I’m half afraid it’s become an addiction. Peace frightens me – does it you? What on earth will we do when the guns fall silent?’
Gabriel had no idea.
Eva turned as she was going. ‘He asked after you. Mr Hitler. He told me to visit you before I depart. He wants to know if you’re on the mend. Are you?’