He wanted to be home and in the arms of Lotte and Anja, so he flunked out on purpose. A map-­reading exercise gone wrong, followed by a failed initiative test, and he was back in front of the CO in no time at all.

The CO had a portrait of the Führer hanging on the wall behind him, and they’d both frowned at Ernst as he had stood to attention, trying not to look either of them in the eye.

“I’m disappointed. You’ve let us down. Go away and come back in twelve months.” The words followed him out of the door and back to Munich. He smiled all the way.

But Munich was changing; Germany was changing. His old friend Helmut from university visited with presents and a smart black uniform and boots that creaked when he walked.

“Don’t leave it too late, Ernst. Germany isn’t a place for schoolmasters and students anymore. You need to get on board with us, the SS. The Führer needs men like you to spread National Socialism across Europe. We won’t be conquerors, we will be saviors!” Helmut had spilled schnapps on the kitchen table when he slammed down his glass to make his point.

Lotte had stood up from where she was sitting silently on their old sofa, then fetched a cloth to wipe up the mess before it stained the table.

As he drove the car that morning, far out of London through the snow, Ernst Koehler wished he had heard what Lotte had been saying with that silence.

Instead he had followed Helmut into the SS. This time there was no failed map-­reading exercise. This time there was no failed initiative test.

He’d tried his best for Lotte, Anja, the Führer, and Germany. He became a Waffen SS officer. His boots had creaked across the floor of their Munich apartment, and then they’d creaked across Europe and beyond.

From Dunkirk to Dover.

From west to east, through Munich on leave, then on to Moscow and beyond.

He earned his Knight’s Cross the hard way. He had led men, lost men, killed men, and been a warrior for the Reich and for the Führer he’d sworn to die for.

But now, right at that minute, driving through England, blood was on his hands, staining his soul and causing his conscience to physically ache when he thought about what he had done.

He knew Lotte had been right all those years ago. Slamming the door, loading Cohen’s cart, she’d been right.

And he’d been so terribly wrong.

He was trapped and wrapped in a nightmare he’d helped to create.

He was a reaper, and he hated himself.

His boots creaked over the skulls of a million dead Jews.

His boots had creaked without conscience.

He wasn’t a soldier anymore, nor was he a teacher.

He was death.

And he knew he had done wrong.

He had carried on with his job, rounding up the Jews, butchering the Jews. He didn’t see their bodies, but he heard their cries when he turned off the light at night.

He knew he was worse than Rossett, because he knew where they went.

He had seen the chimneys, smelled the stench, and seen the ash fall around him like snow from the roofs of the buses on the London streets.

He was a butcher, with a clipboard instead of a knife, but a butcher all the same.

He didn’t deserve Lotte and Anja, but he vowed he would get them back and change things. He would go back to Germany, maybe teach again. Build a new life, for all of them, for Germany, for the children he taught, for the future.

He’d do it with them because without them, without the hope that they brought, there was no point.

No point at all.

IT WAS COMING again, fat, slow snow, flakes as big as plums, drifting down faster as the seconds passed. Koehler slipped the car into neutral. The road was too narrow to overtake the bus in front of them, even on a day when the road wasn’t deep in snow.

Rossett opened the door of the car.

“I’ll get cigarettes from the kiosk. Do you want anything else?”

Koehler looked across the road and saw a tiny street kiosk with a vendor and a few commuter customers.

“Some mints?”

Rossett closed the door and crossed the pavement to the kiosk.

Koehler watched him go, then went back to staring at the back of the bus. He looked in his mirror and saw a black cab, only a ­couple of feet from the back of the Austin. The driver was blowing into his hands, trying to keep them warm. Some more snow pattered against the Austin’s windscreen, so Koehler flicked the switch on the dashboard to sweep it away with the wipers.

The bus brake lights glared at him. The driver was riding the pedal as they waited. Koehler leaned across to the passenger side of the car, straining to see if the bus was stuck at a hidden traffic light.

He couldn’t see.

He wondered if Rossett would make it back to the car before he had to move off, and gave a tiny blip of the throttle before checking the fuel gauge again.

Quarter full. He watched it drift to empty and then back up to full.

He decided they would stop and dip the tank to check how much it actually held. They couldn’t afford to get halfway and then run out.

He looked up; the conductor was leaning out of the open platform at the back of the bus, holding the shiny chrome pole with one hand, staring toward the front of the vehicle.

Maybe there had been an accident?

The snow was coming more heavily; he could hear it pattering on the tin roof of the car.

Koehler opened the door, stepped out into the road, and looked at Rossett, still waiting to be served. Then he took a step to his right so he could look beyond the bus to see what was holding them up.

Four German soldiers, in long greatcoats, rifles slung over shoulders, gingerly making their way through the snow toward him.

Checkpoint.

“Shit.”

One of the soldiers, a ruddy-­faced, middle-­aged corporal, waved an arm at Koehler and shouted.

“In there!” Bad English, but clear enough.

Koehler nodded, hoping the sensation in his stomach wasn’t showing on his face.