The torture hadn’t begun. But soon it would.
Cilla lay on the cot in her cell. If only she could fall asleep. She’d slept a few hours on the train to London but scarcely more than fifteen minutes at a time since. Perhaps that was how the British MI5 Security Service meant to torture her.
She squeezed her bleary eyes shut. Why had she chosen to land on that beach at that moment? If the fierce Scotsman with his fierce red hair hadn’t stumbled upon her, she’d be sleeping on a soft bed at Tante Margriet’s.
But he had stumbled upon her. He’d marched her up the cliff, forced her into a car, and silently driven her to the police station in Thurso.
Cilla scrubbed at the inner corners of her eyes. At the station, she’d finally seen her captor, standing tall and sturdy in his kilt. Some women might consider him handsome—those who liked the rigid naval officer sort. Cilla didn’t. Not at all.
Especially when that naval officer wanted her to hang.
Her hand sprang to her throat, as it often had in the last few days. How long until a rope encircled her neck? How long would it take to die?
With a groan, Cilla rolled to her other side. No one would tell her anything. They just asked the same questions, over and over, looking for holes in her story. But she’d told the truth—after her first bumbling, misguided attempt to use her Abwehr cover story with Lieutenant Mackenzie.
But she’d told the constable in Thurso the whole truth, with the lieutenant glowering down at her. The constable had summoned the Regional Security Liaison Officer from Aberdeen, a man named Peter Perfect—a name which would have delighted Cilla, had he not arrived in the middle of the night, quite cross.
After she’d told Mr. Perfect the truth, he and Lieutenant Mackenzie had retrieved her equipment from the beach. Then Mr. Perfect and the constable had taken her by train to London.
More truth-telling at Scotland Yard, then they’d bundled her into an army truck and taken her to what they called Camp 020, where MI5 interrogated captured spies. From what little she’d seen, the camp was a manor house, surrounded by multiple high walls.
Cilla wasn’t the only one at Camp 020.
Yet she was so alone.
She pressed her hands flat to her face. She hated solitude. Hated how it made her think. Made her regret.
Regret leaving Gerrit and his friends without a source inside the Dutch Nazi Party.
Regret leaving Hilde with only awful Arno to watch over her.
Regret her reckless decision to pretend to be a Nazi spy.
And regret almost bothered her more than her pending execution.
Pictures swam before her gritty eyes. Hilde and Gerrit and her sweet cousin Aleida rowing with her, dolphins and sealsswimming beside her, barking, playing. No—bumping her raft, spilling her into the—
“Prisoner.” A man shook her shoulder. “Come with me.”
Cilla groaned, pushed herself up to sitting, and put on her shoes. How long had she managed to sleep this time? The English had confiscated her wristwatch, and no clocks adorned her cell walls.
She stood, smoothed her hair, and straightened the skirt of the long-sleeved navy-blue shirtwaist dress she’d worn ever since she’d left the U-boat.
The burly guard prodded her shoulder. “This way.”
“Yes, sir.” Cilla walked down a corridor in the block of about two dozen cells.
Voices rose from inside some of the cells. How many agents had the Abwehr sent to Britain? How many had been captured?
The guard ushered her through a door, past more guards, and down a hall decorated with carpets and portraits as if a typical English manor, not a prison for spies.
Her shoulders tensed. Would the torture begin now? Hauptmann Kraus had warned her. But what more could the British learn through torture when she’d already told them everything? Over and over.
Her step wobbled, but she forced her chin high. Fatigue, not fear.
The guard showed her into a wood-paneled room with graceful drapes framing tall windows overlooking gardens. At a long table before the windows sat eight grim-faced men, including the man with the monocle, the man they called “Tin-Eye,” the director of Camp 020 who had questioned her so many times.
“Good day, Miss van der Zee.” One of the gentlemen smiled at her. A good-looking, fair-haired man in his thirties. “Please have a seat.”
