'I am sure we will cope,' Ernst said vaguely, hoping to reassure her.

She smiled and pushed hair out of her eyes. She too had lost weight; the bones of her temples were prominent, her hair thinning. 'You're always so kind, Herr Obergefreiter. It's a strange thing – I never thought I'd feel this way in that time after the invasion – I miss those old days, ever so. When it was just you. I know Heinz is your friend, but with him here, and the other soldiers in the towns, you know…'

He understood. The movement of troops in anticipation of the counter-invasion had upset the web of obligations and compromises that had grown up among the local people and the troops stationed among them. He himself had been irritated to have Heinz foisted on his billet, after the business over Claudine. But Claudine was long dead, and Heinz was damaged by his own war; it didn't seem to matter any more. 'Heinz isn't so bad,' he said gently. 'There are worse.' Some of the men had been brutalised by their time in the east.

'Oh, I'm sure,' she said. 'In fact he's company for Fred, in a way.' But her voice was flat, a sign that she was hiding something from him, as she often did. She shooed him away so she could finish her cooking.

Ernst sat with the men and grudgingly accepted a small shot of vodka.

The television showed a newsreel, a Nazi grandee in a long leather coat touring an armaments factory. He could have been anywhere in Albion, as it seemed the whole protectorate was given over to such industries.

'Herr Goebbels,' Fred told Ernst. He pronounced the name the comical way Churchill did, 'Gobbles'. 'Poking his nose around Canterbury.'

'We are honoured,' Heinz said mockingly. He raised his glass. 'To the Reichsminister!'

'At least he's here,' Fred said. 'It's a bloody long time since Hitler showed up.'

'It is not Goebbels we need,' Heinz growled. 'Not him and his speeches and his slogans. It is tanks and guns and shells and bullets we need to face the Americans.'

'You've got reinforcements,' Fred said. 'You're a bloody reinforcement, man.'

Heinz laughed. 'Yes, and I still have one hand left that I can shoot with! God save the Fuhrer.'

But Ernst knew that Heinz's tanks and guns were unlikely to come any time soon. Despite the rumoured Allied build-up on the other side of the First Objective the Reich's resources were increasingly being diverted to the astonishing battles being fought out in the east.

Now Goebbels calmly watched a row of blindfolded auxiliaries being executed by firing squad. The music swelled to a brittle climax as the bodies shivered and fell.

'I will tell you one thing,' Heinz said. 'I would not want to be a British partisan in the hands of the SS. From the Fuhrer down, they are saying it's all your fault, you British, the troubles we are having.'

Fred laughed. 'What, even Stalingrad? Uncle Joe and his T-34 tanks might have had a bit to do with that.'

'Yes, but if you buggers had not been so stubborn, if you had made peace as any sensible person would have done, we would not have so many men tied down on this absurd little island.'

Buggers. Ernst suppressed a smile. Heinz had picked up a good deal of English from Fred. Fred said, 'And so those bloody SS thugs take it out on English children, while they hide from the Russians like the cowards they are.'

'You won't hear me defending the SS, that's for sure.'

Ernst stood, downed his vodka and picked up his jacket. 'I probably ought to pack before dinner. The truck's coming for me at midnight.'

'Where are you going now?' Heinz asked.

'I have a posting on the coast in Kent. Richborough. Five days.'

Heinz eyed Ernst. 'Is this your brother pulling strings again?' Even before his return from Stalingrad Heinz had always been a hugely suspicious soldier, endlessly perceiving favours done and postings manipulated. He got up unsteadily and lurched over to Irma at the range. 'Where's that blessed stew, woman?'

'Coming,' Irma said without emotion.

Seeing Ernst was leaving, Myrtle gurgled and raised her little arms to him. With his jacket slung over his shoulder, he squatted down. He picked up her Mickey Mouse gas-mask from where it sat on the floor and waggled it. When she grabbed for it he picked her up, his hands under her armpits. She laughed when he bounced her gently, and plucked at the buttons on his shirt. He could feel her ribs, her elbows and knees were lumps of bone, and he could make out the shape of her little skull as she smiled at him. He knew little about the development of children, but it seemed to him she was behind with her walking and talking. It was strange to think that this child had always been hungry, every minute of every day of her short life.

Heinz's shadow fell over him. And when he looked up, he saw Heinz's left hand, his good hand, rake upwards over Irma's hip and settle on her breast. She elbowed him away, with a nervous glance at Fred. Heinz just laughed and staggered back to the table.

Irma saw that Ernst had seen all this. She glanced again at Fred, and hissed, 'You won't tell him, will you? It's not what you think. I mean – it's just for the rations. Heinz brings me extra, you know, I need it for the child.'

He stood, keeping his face blank. 'I could have helped you. There was no need.'

She shook her head. 'I would never beg favours of you. I have my pride, Herr Obergefreiter.' She began to ladle out the stew.

14 May

Ben Kamen heard voices. Trojan, the monstrous woman Fiveash, another he did not recognise. He struggled to wake, to focus on their words.

'Vril,' Trojan was saying. 'Vril is the power which underlies the universe, Ernst. So it is written. And it is vril that has woven history. In the greatest age of Atlantis, the first building that ever stood upon the face of the earth housed a vril time lens. It was a calendar, but it did not record time; it created time. I believe my petty Loom is a poor imitation of that mighty lens – and yet it is surely vril essence that I have captured here!'

'You actually believe all this, don't you?' A young man's voice. 'And you, Unterscharfuhrer Fiveash?'

'Of course,' came Fiveash's silky, hateful tone, her German mildly accented with the tight vowels of the English. 'I would not work here at your brother's side without that faith, Obergefreiter. I would not have brought him the Loom technology from America otherwise.'

But she did not believe, Ben thought, lying there, eyes closed. She spouted this dreary hotchpotch rubbish merely to control the fool Trojan, for she, English-born, needed a German puppet to exert full influence within the SS. In Ben's opinion all Nazis were either fools or in the thrall of fools. But could none of them see what a menace this woman was?

Their voices murmured, meaningless, falling away. He listened, his eyes closed. He longed to be anywhere but this place. He longed even to be back in the solitary-confinement cell in which he had been kept for month after month, while Fiveash and Trojan rebuilt their devilish machinery, until they were ready to bring him back to this hell of drugs and artificial sleep. He longed even to escape into sleep, and yet he dreaded it for the damage his dreams might do.

Trojan was talking again, boasting to his brother. 'The new calculating equipment is remarkable, isn't it? Much of it is British, frankly; this is one technological area where they seem to be ahead of us. They are building powerful electronic machines, clearly intended for some such purpose as code-breaking, or command and control. We have raided a country house called Bletchley Park, for example, where they call their machine the Colossus". And the British Post Office has a research establishment at a place called Dollis Hill north-west of London. Such gadgets as this are manufactured there.'