Harry’s mouth had fallen open. Barbara laughed again; shrilly, with that hysterical edge he’d heard before. Harry had a mental picture of Bernie, laughing as they walked down a Madrid street, green eyes full of excitement and mischief.

Sofia looked puzzled. ‘Who is Bernie? You mean your friend who came to fight here?’

‘Yes.’ Harry looked into Barbara’s eyes. ‘God, this is true, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Sofia was looking at him, her large dark eyes shining with emotion. Hell, Harry thought, I’ve ruined everything. She won’t forgive me for the way I’ve treated Barbara.

‘So that’s it,’ Barbara concluded. ‘I have to stay here till this Saturday.’

‘You could still leave that man,’ Sofia said.

‘No. He’d come after me, he wouldn’t just let me go. There’d be a terrible hue and cry. He mustn’t know.’ Her mouth set hard. ‘If he found out he might get his friends to do something to Bernie out of spite.’

‘You could get someone else to go to Cuenca.’ Sofia gave Harry a searching look. ‘Us, perhaps?’

Barbara looked at her in surprise. ‘Why should you put yourself in danger?’

‘Because it would be helping someone who fought for us. And something against these bastards who rule us now.’ She looked at Harry. ‘I keep my loyalties. They are important.’

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Barbara said. ‘If a stranger turned up to meet Luis, the ex-guard, he’d run off, he’s nervous enough already.’ She told them of her plan, from the first meeting with the journalist in October. They listened in silence. At the end she said quietly, ‘No, I’ll have to go back to Sandy. I’ll pretend I’m ill, say I’ve got the flu and ask for a separate room. He won’t mind, he’ll probably take that girl into our bed.’

‘It’ll be a bloody hard week,’ Harry said. ‘Pretending to Sandy all the time.’

‘Well, you’d know!’ she replied angrily. ‘I can almost feel sorry for him knowing how you’ve treated him.’ She sighed and put her head in her hands. ‘No, that’s wrong,’ she said more quietly. ‘He let himself in for all this.’ She looked up. ‘I think I can do it, if it means getting Bernie out.’ She looked at the newspaper again. ‘It was just the shock of finding out about that man, it’s been going round in my head.’

Sofia was looking at the photographs on the wall, her mother and father and her uncle the priest. ‘You should not go to Cuenca by yourself,’ she said. ‘As a foreign woman on your own you will stand out. It is a remote town.’

‘You know it?’

‘I visited it often as a child. We come from Tarancón, which is the other side of the province, but I had an uncle there. You should not go alone,’ she repeated.

Barbara sighed. ‘I haven’t even got a car to go in unless I can take Sandy’s. That’s the other problem.’

‘I could help there,’ Harry said. ‘I could take out an embassy car and let you have it.’

‘Wouldn’t that be against the rules?’

Harry shrugged. He didn’t care. If Bernie was alive—

Sofia leaned forward. ‘We could take you, me and Harry. Yes, it would work. Harry could be a diplomat taking two friends on a day out. A car with diplomatic plates.’

Sofia looked at him. Harry’s heart pounded. He thought, this was mad, if they were caught it would be the end of Sofia’s chances of getting out of Spain. He and Barbara might be expelled but Sofia— He looked at her. He sensed she wanted him to say yes, to redeem himself. And if Bernie was alive, if they could get him out— He turned to Barbara. ‘Are you sure this Luis knows what he’s doing?’

‘Of course I am,’ she answered impatiently. ‘Do you think I haven’t questioned everything, these last weeks? Luis is no fool, he and his brother have thought this out carefully.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you. But not you, Sofia, you’ve got too much to lose.’

Barbara looked surprised. ‘What if the embassy found out? You could get into trouble, couldn’t you, especially with – what you’ve been doing?’

He took a deep breath. ‘To hell with them. You’re right, Sofia, about loyalty. You’ve helped me lose a lot of my old loyalties, did you know that?’

Anger flashed in her eyes. ‘You should lose them.’

‘I suppose my loyalty to Bernie’s the oldest of all.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve heard rumours about these secret camps.’

Barbara was frowning with concentration. ‘We could bring Bernie back in the car and leave him at a phone box near the embassy. They’d send someone to fetch him, wouldn’t they?’

Harry thought a moment. ‘Yes. Yes, they would.’

‘He could say he’d hitched a lift from Cuenca, no one need ever know you were involved in the rescue.’

‘Yes. Yes, that could work.’ He sighed. He faced losing everything over this, but he had to do it. For Sofia. And for Bernie. Bernie, alive—

‘I will come too,’ Sofia said determinedly. ‘I will guide you.’

‘No,’ Harry said. He laid a hand on her arm. ‘No, you mustn’t come.’

‘Listen, Harry. It will be far less risky for all of us together. I tell you, I know the town. We can go directly where we need to, without looking at maps and attracting attention.’

‘Sofia, think—’

She sat up. Her voice was quiet but there was a light in her eyes now. ‘I have felt so guilty, at the thought of running away from my country. I did not tell you but I have. But now I have a chance to do something. Something against them.’

FROM TIME TO TIME the men were dragooned into spending an evening in the church watching propaganda films. Last year they had watched Franco’s victory parade, a hundred thousand men marching past the Caudillo as the German Condor Legion flew overhead. There had been films about the rebirth of Spain, battalions of Falange Youth helping in the fields, a bishop blessing the reopening of factories in Barcelona. More recently, they had seen film from the Hendaye meeting, Franco walking past a guard of honour with Hitler, his face aglow.

The freezing weather had continued unabated. The deer, desperate for food, continued to be drawn to the camp by the smell of cooking. The guards had more venison than they needed; they shot the deer now just to relieve their boredom.

The prisoners shuffled into the church hall, glad at least of the warmth from the stove. They sat on the hard wooden chairs, shuffling and coughing as a pair of guards manhandled the ancient projector into position. A screen had been set up against the wall and Aranda stood before it, his uniform immaculately pressed, twirling a swagger stick in his hands as he looked impatiently at the projectionist.

Bernie sat huddled in his coat, massaging his shoulder. It was the ninth of December now; five days until the escape. He was careful not to look at Agustín, who was on duty by the door.

At a nod from the projectionist, Aranda stepped forward, smiling. ‘Many of you foreign prisoners will be keen for a glimpse of the outside world. Our own Noticiario Español is therefore proud to present a film about events in Europe.’ He waved his stick at the screen. ‘I give you – Germany Victorious.’ He’s an actor, Bernie thought, all the things he does, from this to torturing people, it’s all about him being centre stage. He was careful not to catch Aranda’s eye, as he had been ever since his refusal to become an informer.

The film began with newsreel of German troops marching into Warsaw, shifted to tanks smashing through the French countryside, then Hitler looking out over Paris. Bernie had never seen any of it before; the scale of what had happened was terrifying. Then a bombed and smoking London appeared on the screen. ‘Only Britain has not surrendered. She ran away from the field of battle in France and now Churchill sulks in London, refusing either to give battle or surrender honourably, believing he is safe because Britain is an island. But revenge comes from the skies, destroying Britain’s cities. If only Churchill had followed the example of Stalin and made a peace that would benefit both him and Germany.’