‘—those times, the true folk were warriors in misty forests, gathered up by the Death Choosers, Odinn’s Valkyries, if we fell in battle.’ His words held a thrumming resonance, an unexpected power. ‘Since then, our magnificence and bravery have ebbed away beneath the deceptions of secret Jewry, the illusions created by bourgeois curs who fail to understand the subhuman nature of their unnatural masters, the Jesus-killers who—’

The voice rose and fell like oceanic waves, like the feelings of the crowd, washing back and forth, rushing, compelling. And through the gap she could see—

Impossible.

—twisting shards of black light, of shining darkness that—

Some hysterical illusion.

—writhed and revolved around the pasty, sweat-soaked man gesticulating below.

She shifted, pushing her eye socket against the hole, careless of splinters, trying to see more. And then she did.

A mirage could not occur inside a school hall. An hallucination could manifest only in the mind’s eye, not in reality. There was no explanation for this vision.

‘—will advance along Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge, in triumph. When the homeland is cleansed of bipedal vermin who differ from humans by their stink, then we grasp our—’

His words conjured up dark forest and mist, hard warriors with cloaks and spears, a bridge of shining light; and the vision was there, in moving colour below her, floating above the heads of a spellbound audience.

While the man onstage walked amid rotating darkness, inherently unnatural, revolting and malevolent. None of this was rational. All of it was real.

What can I do?

She pulled back, and again she noticed the glittering of an eye across the loft; but this time she also made out a kneeling figure, thin and sharp-chinned, holding forefinger to lips.

From below came: ‘—till we have wiped them out, scoured the world of Jews, and through strength, gained freedom once more!’

A great roar ascended from the enthralled mob, for that was what they were.

It was another hour before the frenzy dissipated, the speaker disappearing first amid a phalanx of brown-shirt-clad men, and finally the others leaving, their words buzzing, no doubt continuing to see some remembered resonance of the vision that had been conjured above their heads, without their conscious knowledge, laid down inside their unconscious minds.

Her limbs felt like fluttering moths, her body vibrating beyond her control.

There was a different kind of dark movement, a shadow within shadow that meant the other watcher was crawling towards her. She started to back away, but her foot touched something, a box, and she stopped.

‘Wait,’ came a man’s whisper. ‘Just another minute.’

‘They’ll lock up everywhere when they leave.’

‘Not everywhere.’

So the unlocked window had not been random convenience, but part of a deliberate plan, considerably more organized than her attempt. If the world was filled with good people - those who would be appalled by tonight’s meeting - then perhaps this man was one of them.

He drew closer, a thin man wrapped in a heavy, too-big overcoat.

‘I’m Dmitri Shtemenko,’ he whispered. ‘Who are you?’

‘Gavriela Wolf.’

‘So, come on.’

He led the way along a route she probably knew far better: music room, staircase, the downstairs corridor. Yet he must have prepared, for he navigated through dark areas without hesitation. They exited via the canteen window, Dmitri moving well but without athleticism.

Then he stopped, for there was a group of men around the corner where he was intending to go. Gavriela pinched his sleeve, tugged, and pointed towards the graveyard. She headed for the low wall, followed by Dmitri.

As they slipped through the opening in the wall, they straightened up - and stopped.

Two men were pissing on a grave; another was buttoning up, already finished. He was the one who noticed first Gavriela, then Dmitri, and gave a sonorous burp.

‘You’re skulking like Jews,’ he called out.

‘Who are you calling a—?’ One of the two men paused in urinating. ‘Oh.’

‘Are they really Jews?’ said the other.

‘They look like it to me.’

Finished, the two men shook themselves off, still facing her. A part of Gavriela noted with interest what she was seeing; an unimportant part for now.

‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s my . . . husband. We just wanted some time alone, not in my mother’s house, you know?’

‘Ah.’

‘Right. We should have some of that, shouldn’t we? Pretty, pretty.’

Dmitri moved beside her, shifting inside the overcoat. Perhaps he had urinated or soiled himself. Maybe Gavriela would do the same, as soon as the fear hit home. Right now she was struggling with the concept that this was real, even more than the insane visions earlier.

I’m going to die here.

Somehow it was all wrong, an aberration, a crack in the rules of reality. The three men were advancing, two not bothering to button their flies, all the easier for what they had in mind. The first man, big and bulky, had picked up a spade from somewhere.

Help me!

In her mind it was a scream, filled with the energy of horror, not to the God she did not believe in, but to someone else.

Roger, help me!

And then the night became strange.

‘What? Where in realspace is this?’

The figure was translucent, clad in black with eyes to match, and she knew the face, remembered him from dreams; but she was not the only one to see him now.

‘Help us,’ Gavriela said to him.

‘How?’

But he already had, causing the three attackers to stop, the big man tripping on something - a pile of soil beside an empty grave - and then Dmitri leaped forward, hands flashing downward then cutting curves through the air, making figure-eights; and then the second man was done as well, before Gavriela had processed what was happening.

The last attacker stopped, half turned, and began to run; but silver moonlight flowed through the air and then there was a thunk, a sound straight from the butcher’s shop when a housewife orders a prime cut; and then the man crumbled.

Dmitri walked forward, stood on the corpse’s back, and yanked his blade free from the neck. He wiped the blade, along with its twin in his other hand, on the dead man’s coat; then he tucked his hands inside his overcoat and the weapons were gone.

The jet-eyed apparition looked appalled.

‘You’re one of—’

Then he rippled apart and was gone.

All she could do was take this Dmitri home: whether for his protection or her own, she could not tell. Outside the front door, he took her sleeve as she had taken his earlier.

‘Do me a favour, Fräulein Wolf. Call me Jürgen, all right? Jürgen Schäffer-Braun.’

‘You said your name was Dmitri.’

‘It is in fact, but I’ve no idea why I told you.’ His voice slowed, his Hochdeutsch becoming crisper. ‘The truth and my identification papers have little in common.’

At that point she realized that his voice had evinced a trace accent earlier, under stress.

‘You’re a Bolshevik?’

‘I’m no friend of bastards like the Sturmabteilung, for sure.’

‘The who?’

‘Never mind. Are you going to knock? Or do you have a key?’

‘Tell me.’

‘You met three of their about-to-be recruits in the graveyard. The SA. Once they join up they get those stylish brown shirts.’

‘Oh. Them.’

‘What I don’t know is why they stopped dead.’

‘You didn’t see the—’

‘See what?’

‘I mean, you didn’t see anything either. I thought they caught sight of a ghost. That is, from the way they acted.’