I sensed the assault coming before it happened, throwing my arms out in front of me to deflect the impact. A big person, bigger than me, landed next to me on the bed. Yards of rayon washed over and covered me. 'Louise!' the heap said. 'Help me!'

It was Ada, home from her job as a clarinetist in the Statler Hotel house band. And I was in my own bed, startled from a deep sleep. Ada was late. She must have stayed to party with the band after their gig was over. Or with one of her many admirers, as she so often did.

'Darn it, Ada,' I said, reaching over to my bedside table and clicking on my lamp. I glanced at my clock. 'It's two in the morning!'

She clung to me, her arms tight around me. Mascara trailed down her cheeks to her chin, and her bright red lipstick was smeared around her mouth. Her peroxide blond hair had fallen out of her snood and tangled at her shoulder. I put my arms around her. I could feel her trembling.

'I'm so frightened!' Ada said.

'What on earth is the matter?' I said. I pulled my bedcovers aside so Ada could slip into the warm bed with me. I could smell gin on her breath.

'They're bringing them here!' she said. 'What if he's with them?'

I gripped her arms, shaking her slightly.

'Calm down,' I said. 'Who is bringing who here? Who is he?'

Her breathing slowed a bit.

'German prisoners of war,' she said. 'Thousands of them are coming to the States! The government is going to build camps for them all over the country!'

'I know,' I said. Most of Rommel's army in North Africa had been captured four months ago. Hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war waited in temporary camps and collection centers to be shipped to permanent Allied POW camps. Some of the temporary camps were no more than corrals, where hungry, thirsty and exhausted Axis prisoners lived surrounded by barbed wire under the desert sun. The Allies simply were not prepared to house them. They couldn't all be shipped to Britain; the British could barely feed themselves.

'What if Rein is one of them? A man I was with tonight said that fifty-eight German soldiers have already arrived at Fort Meade! Some of them are Luftwaffe!'

Now I understood. Before the war Ada was married to Rein Hermann, a German airline pilot based in New York City. He flew the New York–Berlin route for Lufthansa. At first Ada and Rein's marriage was a happy one, but then Rein became more and more intrigued by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. His interest grew into an obsession until the couple fought about politics constantly.

Then one day when Ava met Rein's usual Lufthansa flight at LaGuardia Field an unfamiliar pilot disembarked from the airplane. Rein had remained behind in Germany. He wrote Ada that he'd joined the Luftwaffe. He pleaded with her to move to Germany, but of course she refused. Since then she'd lived in terror that someone would discover she was the wife of a Nazi officer. She dropped the second 'n' from her last name and moved from New York City to Washington DC. Ada couldn't even divorce Rein for fear of attracting attention to herself. I understood her fear. It was likely she'd be interned in a camp for German-Americans, if her marriage was discovered. Ada had told me her story during a weak moment and I swore to keep her secret. And I would, even if hell froze over.

'What am I going to do?' Ada asked. 'What if Rein is here and tells the FBI about me?'

'Dearie,' I said, throwing back the covers and struggling past Ada to get out of the bed, 'it's not