Chapter 8: A Convent Upbringing: Paris, December 1941

It was an hour or so later when Clegg found himself back at the convent. Sandy was there to greet him. "Oh Freddie, you can't just come back with one woman, can you?" she scolded.

Clegg shrugged his shoulders. At least that was one Gallic custom he had no problem with assimilating. "It didn't seem wise to leave them there. They're not causing too much trouble are they?"

"No, not at all. Sister Sarah has been pleased to have the opportunity to help your two Bavarian ladies."

"Help?"

"Oh yes. The order here is particularly keen on humility as a virtue and I fear that is not a quality much shown by the occupying forces. This is a very strict order, great believers in mortification of the flesh as a way of achieving a better state. Let's say that Sister Sarah is determined to see that Heidi and Helga do just that."

Clegg had a good idea what she meant. It would be churlish to suggest, he felt, that Sister Sarah was taking any pleasure from the discomfort of two members of the military oppressors of her home city. "And how is Tereza?"

"Distraught," Sandy looked concerned. "She is securely held, of course. Manacled and in a cell. But I tell you Freddie if we were to sit her in the street she would still be there this evening."

"I need to talk to her," Clegg said. "I don't have a route to the fourth girl or the fifth beyond a couple of names."

"Of course. I'm not sure you will discover anything but I will take you to see her. She is still naked." Sandy saw Clegg's questioning eyebrow. "We have given her clothes but she ignores them. Anyway it's hardly like you to object! It's this way." Sandy gestured off to a side corridor and Clegg followed her.

She led the way past a series of small sparsely furnished rooms, the nun's cells Clegg assumed.

Clegg passed the door of another room where the sounds of blows and Sister Sarah's exhortations of "Repent!" were punctuated by garbled grunts.

At the end of the corridor, Sandy unlocked a door and the two went inside. Tereza Aucune was sitting on the edge of the simple wooden framed bed, still naked. A single steel chain ran from her ankle to a ring in the wall. Next to her, on the bed, a pile of clothes lay untouched. On the table beside the bed, a simple meal had been ignored. Her face was streaked with tears, her expression bleak and empty.

"Tereza," Sandy said gently. "There is someone to see you."

The girl looked up. "Do you have news of Heinrich?" she gasped. "Tell me it's not true. How could it be true? He said we would be together. In Lisbon. We would all be together." She seemed completely oblivious of her abduction and the fact that she was held prisoner. Her only thought was of Strasser.

Clegg found himself unaccustomedly touched by the girl's desperate denial of Strasser's death but his compassion was leavened by his anxiousness to ensure that he went on with his mission.

"All of you together?" he said sitting beside Tereza on the bed. "You and Louise and Annette."

Tereza smiled through her tears as if recalling some happy memory. She sat up on the bed, drew her knees up to her chest and hugged herself, staring blankly over Clegg's shoulder. "And Anna and Irena. All of us. It is so difficult here in Paris. So much harder than Prague. I have not seen Louise and Annette for weeks. And now this awful news. Tell me it's not true."

Clegg never found it difficult lying to women but for once he didn't have to. "I don't know," he said. "These things happen but these are confusing times." Still, Clegg thought it was good to have Irena's name confirmed.

"Can I have my cello. It lets me think of him. And us."

"I'll see what I can do," Clegg said looking at Sandy who gave him a "how the hell am I supposed to get that now?" look. "Were you and Irena and Anna to travel together to Lisbon?"

"Lisbon?"

"To be reunited with Heinrich."

"Oh please, yes, please."

"But were you and Irena and Anna to travel together?"