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1939 she met a college student, Ewald, an impressionable, radical Nazi whose political passion burned even hotter than her father’s.  He convinced her, even when her father couldn’t, that she should join the German war effort and that she should also become his wife.  Shortly after they married. 
    Because of the languages she spoke, the Abwehr quickly recruited her and Ewald.  She was trained at A- Schule West, Agent School West, located between The Hague and Scheveningen on an estate called Park Zorgvliet.  After a brief six months of training at the Military Command School, Catherine and her husband were sent east, their purpose to go behind Russian lines and gather information on troop movements and strengths.  
    For eight months they accomplished their mission.  Then one morning her world abruptly changed.  Beautifully talented Ewald was lost forever.  And with his death, Catherine lost her innocence, and any dream of a normal life. 
     
    It was 29 June 1941.  Dawn.  Thick clouds pushed down on the gray streets as the first light slipped through the windows.  The Germans were sweeping forward with merciless precision, unstoppable it seemed, occupying Russian territory in huge sections.  Catherine and Ewald were in Borisov eighty miles southwest of Smolensk, behind enemy lines and operating a radio communication near an abandoned college at the edge of town.  Their mission was to study train movements and forward the information on because within days the German Army was planning a major push eastward.
    Ewald had set up his wireless on a small table in the living room of the apartment overlooking an arched courtyard.  They had been in operation for two days when the Russians came.
    Catherine distinctively remembered their faces, the four members of Soviet Intelligence Service barging through the door, their intrusion covered by the rumbling of a nearby train.  Ewald sat at the small table tapping out wireless messages—troop movements, supply train schedules—until a rifle butt slammed against his head as the other two pushed Catherine roughly to the floor as she ran for a window.
    They were led into the kitchen where they faced a grim-looking Russian officer sitting at the table where the tools of their trade were laid out, a simple sending unit, an assortment of inks, and three sets of forged identity papers.  Convincing pieces of evidence betraying their purpose.  
    The officer questioned them harshly for over an hour, banging his fist on the table, shouting profanities.  Then he would calm down, light a cigarette and drink tea, discussing their grave situation as though he were a country gentleman.
    Catherine was so proud of how her husband stood up to the brutal interrogation that morning.  But the facts were they were German spies and that meant that they would die.  They were offered a final chance to confess, to tell them exactly what this was all about.  The officer hinted that at the least he could make their death painless and that was the best he could offer.  Ewald would have none of it, and he only asked for mercy toward his wife.  The Russians laughed at his request, as two of them dragged him downstairs and out into the courtyard.  Catherine was forced to watch in horror from an upstairs window as they forced her husband to his knees in the mud of the narrow courtyard.  Her heart froze as the revolver was placed at the back of his skull.  Ewald looked up and their eyes met at that chilling moment just before death.  Catherine turned away, hiding her face in her hands an instant before the shot echoed across the courtyard.  Just that quickly her life and hopes were gone. 
    Later that night she would appreciate the swiftness of her husband’s death.
    The Russians tied her up and left her in the bedroom to ponder her fate for several hours.  She could hear their voices grow louder and braver, and knew that they were drinking.
    Aroused from a fitful sleep hours later,