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"You have to find out more from him."
"I have to? What are you talking about?"
"He has access to the entire battle plan for Case Blue. We know something about it, but Moscow needs the details."
Frieda was making a bewildering set of assumptions, but Carla went along with it. "I can ask him . . ."
"No. You have to make him bring you the battle plan."
"I'm not sure that's possible. He's not completely stupid. Don't you think--"
Frieda was not even listening. "Then you have to photograph it," she interrupted. She produced from the pocket of her uniform a stainless-steel box about the size of a pack of cigarettes but longer and narrower. "This is a miniature camera specially designed for photographing documents." Carla noticed the name Minox on the side. "You'll get eleven pictures on one film. Here are three films." She brought out three cassettes, the shape of dumbbells but small enough to fit into the little camera. "This is how you load the film." Frieda demonstrated. "To take a picture, you look through this window. If you're not sure, read this manual."
Carla had never known Frieda to be so domineering. "I really need to think about this."
"There's no time. This is your raincoat, isn't it?"
"Yes, but--"
Frieda stuffed the camera, films, and booklet into the pockets of the coat. She seemed relieved they were out of her hands. "I've got to go." She went to the door.
"But, Frieda!"
At last Frieda stopped and looked directly at Carla. "What?"
"Well . . . You're not behaving like a friend."
"This is more important."
"You've backed me into a corner."
"You created this situation when you told me about Joachim Koch. Don't pretend you didn't expect me to do something with the information."
It was true. Carla had triggered this emergency herself. But she had not envisaged things turning out this way. "What if he says no?"
"Then you'll probably be living under the Nazis the rest of your life." Frieda went out.
"Hell," said Carla.
She stood alone in the cloakroom, thinking. She could not even get rid of the little camera without risk. It was in her raincoat, and she could hardly throw it into a hospital rubbish bin. She would have to leave the building with it in her pocket, and try to find a place where she could dispose of it secretly.
But did she want to?
It seemed unlikely that Koch, naive though he was, could be talked into smuggling a copy of a battle plan out of the War Ministry and bringing it to show his inamorata. However, if anyone could persuade him, Maud could.
But Carla was scared. There would be no mercy for her if she were caught. She would be arrested and tortured. She thought of Rudi Rothmann, moaning in the agony of broken bones. She recalled her father after they released him, so brutally beaten that he had died. Her crime would be worse than theirs, her punishment correspondingly bestial. She would be executed, of course--but not for a long time.
She told herself she was willing to risk that.
What she could not accept was the danger that she would help kill her brother.
He was there, on the eastern front; Joachim had confirmed it. He would be involved in Case Blue. If Carla enabled the Russians to win that battle, Erik could die as a result. She could not bear that.
She went back to her work. She was distracted and made mistakes, but fortunately the doctors did not notice and the patients could not tell. When at last her shift ended, she hurried away. The camera was burning a hole in her pocket but she did not see a safe place to dump it.
She wondered where Frieda had got it. Frieda had plenty of money, and could easily have bought it, though she would have had to come up with a story about why she needed such a thing. More likely she could have got it from the Russians before they closed their embassy a year ago.
The camera was still in Carla's coat pocket when she arrived home.
