As she rounded the corner, Adina saw that the street was empty. She paused, momentarily shocked at the lack of Brownshirts. And then she remembered, tonight any Nazi with even a modecum of common sense would be at the Hotel Schiffmeister where Hitler was making an important appearance. Suddenly she was torn about how to proceed. Should she go home, settle for the evening in front of the fire and continue with the dress she was making for Mrs Metzer or should she follow her premonition and make her way to the Hotel?<br/><br/>The book that Adina carried in her satchel was far more than a book. She wasn’t sure what name to give it but occasionally she thought of it as a grimoire. She had inherited it from the eccentric old Rabbi who had cared for her after her parents early and untimely passing and had been surprised to find it full of jottings in his cramped Hebrew script. Snippets of Jewish folklore sat alongside recipes for healing remedies and Demon summoning spells. It was her most prized possession, even more so because she had a feeling that if it fell into the wrong hands all hell would break loose, possibly in a literal sense. One of the most useful rituals she had come across in the Rabbi’s book was for seeing the future in a bowl of water. It was the first one she had mastered and the one she found most fascinating. Two nights earlier, while scanning the water she had seen a hazy image of a ballroom, filled with people in fabulous attire. The women wore stunning expensive ballgowns, while the majority of the men wore typical Nazi attire, the swastika emblazoned on their arms.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">I have to go there</span>, she thought,<span style="font-style: italic"> no matter how dangerous it might be. The water showed me the location and I’d be a fool to dismiss it.</span>Ironically, the Hotel Schiffmeister was less than a five minute walk from the Jewish ghetto. She wondered if the juxtaposition had entered Hitler’s mind when choosing the location for his speech or whether it was a mere coincidence. She smiled to herself at the thought of being in the same room as that behemoth Hitler and patted the heavy weight of the pistol in her coat pocket. At least she had the means to defend herself if it came down to it. She straightened her back in a determined posture and headed in the direction of the Hotel.<br/><br/>She met nobody on the deserted city streets. It was well past the Jewish curfew and there were no German drivers on the road at this time of evening, especially with the heavy snow storm that had made the roads so treacherous. Her heart began to pound a vibrant tattoo in her chest as she neared the hotel. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get inside.<br/><br/>Two high ranking Nazi officials stood at the main entrance to the hotel, one talking animatedly, the other smoking a cigarette. She guessed that with their leader busy inside the building, they felt free to be a little more relaxed. She contemplated finding a back entrance but thought that might be more risky. Entering through the kitchen would possibly leave her more exposed, leave her at the mercy of any Hotel staff who would recognise her as a stranger with no right to be in the building. She decided to bite the bullet and enter through the main entrance. She summoned up an air of false bravado, straightened her back and walked straight towards the officials.<br/><br/>She knew she didn’t look too conspicuous. As a seamstress, she had access to a better selection of clothes than the majority of the women in the ghetto. Tonight, she was wearing a navy blue dress gathered at the waist by a narrow belt. She felt confident that, though made by herself, it rivalled any similar item sold in the Aryan stores. While her legs were bare (stockings were a luxury she couldn’t afford) her sensible black Mary Jane’s were polished, devoid of the scuffs and marks one would expect from a woman in the Jewish ghetto. Her hair was pulled neatly back from her face and she wore a simple pair of pearl earrings that once belonged to her mother. And of course, without the yellow star sewn onto her coat, there was nothing obvious declaring her Jewish status. She fixed her most charming smile on to her face and looked coquettishly at the Nazi with the cigarette perched on his lower lip.<br/><br/>‘What a journey I’ve had to get here,’ she said in her best German. ‘My driver hit a patch of black ice little more than a mile away. The car is no longer in working order and I’m afraid the driver may have a mild concussion. And so I walked the rest of the way here. I simply didn’t want to miss Mein Fuhrer’s speech tonight.’<br/><br/>‘We need more citizens like you, miss,’ the Nazi official said. ‘I’m afraid that many women just aren’t as dedicated to the cause as you are. Now get inside and warm yourself up with a glass of gin. You must be half frozen.’<br/><br/>‘Thank you,’ she said as she slipped through the doorway. That was easier than she’d hoped. Now she just had to figure out what to do next. Ahead of her was the ballroom. Something didn’t smell right in here. There was a lingering scent of sulphur mingled with what smelt like rotting fish.<span style="font-style: italic"> If this is what a gathering of Nazi’s smells like</span>, she thought,<span style="font-style: italic">then I’m bloody glad I’m not one of them.</span><br/><br/>She made her way into the ballroom, mingling into the crowd. She accepted a glass of white wine from a waiter carrying a silver tray and, taking a sip walked towards a tall blonde man that she vaguely recognised. Was this the man from her vision?