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"It is nothing."
"I'm so glad we're about to counterattack on the eastern front. But you mustn't tell me when the attack will begin. Though I'm desperate to know."
Maud was fishing for information. Carla could not imagine why. She had no use for it.
Koch lowered his voice, as if there might be a spy outside the open kitchen window. "It will be very soon," he said. He looked around at the three women. Carla saw that he was basking in their attention. Perhaps it was unusual for him to have women hanging on his words. Prolonging the moment, he said: "Case Blue will begin very soon."
Maud flashed her eyes at him. "Case Blue--how tremendously thrilling!" she said in the tone a woman might use if a man offered to take her to the Ritz in Paris for a week.
He whispered: "The twenty-eighth of June."
Maud put her hand on her heart. "So soon! That's marvelous news."
"I should not have said anything."
Maud put her hand over his. "I'm so glad you did, though. You've made me feel so much better."
He stared at her hand. Carla realized he was not used to being touched by women. He looked up from her hand to her eyes. She smiled warmly--so warmly that Carla could hardly believe it was 100 percent fake.
Maud withdrew her hand. Koch stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. "I must go," he said.
Thank God, Carla thought.
He bowed to her. "A pleasure to meet you, Fraulein."
"Good-bye, Lieutenant," she replied neutrally.
Maud saw him to the door, saying: "Same time tomorrow, then."
When she came back into the kitchen she said: "What a find--a foolish boy who works for the General Staff!"
Carla said: "I don't understand why you're so excited."
Ada said: "He's very handsome."
Maud said: "He gave us secret information!"
"What good is it to us?" Carla asked. "We're not spies."
"We know the date of the next offensive--surely we can find a way to pass it to the Russians?"
"I don't know how."
"We're supposed to be surrounded by spies."
"That's just propaganda. Everything that goes wrong is blamed on subversion by Jewish-Bolshevik secret agents, instead of Nazi bungling."
"All the same, there must be some real spies."
"How would we get in touch with them?"
Mother looked thoughtful. "I'd speak to Frieda."
"What makes you say that?"
"Intuition."
Carla recalled the moment at the bus stop, when she had wondered aloud who put up the anti-Nazi posters, and Frieda had gone quiet. Carla's intuition agreed with her mother's.
