Konrad was continually surprised that the Führer hadn’t yet caught on to the admiral’s sedition. As early as 1935, his appointed head of the intelligence branch of the German Army had been behind some of the subversive tactics to undermine him. In September 1939, having already witnessed the German Army’s savagery against Polish civilians, the admiral lost all stomach for the Third Reich when SS troops locked two hundred Polish Jews into a synagogue in Będzin, Poland, and set it afire. Fearing for the future of his country, his friend had then attempted and failed to negotiate a separate peace with Allied officials to prevent further slaughter. Under the ever-alert noses of the SS, the Abwehr’s archenemy, Wilhelm had arranged for the rescue of a number of Jews doomed to the concentration camps, sent reports to the Vatican detailing Nazi atrocities with the hope that the pope would intervene, and prevented the killing of nineteen captured French officers in Tunisia. Konrad wouldn’t have been surprised if his commander in chief had been involved in the unsuccessful coup attempts to assassinate the leader he had come to despise. How these acts of rebellion had not been detected, Konrad didn’t know, but his luck was bound to run out, and with it, perhaps that of his protégé in France as well—guilty of treason by friendship.

His mentor’s visit meant trouble, and for the first time in a long while—not since before the war, actually—Konrad had entered a period of relative peace and contentment in his life. He’d drawn an impenetrable line between his home and workplace, where he was devoting less and less time. He was tired of war, having fought in two, and weary of his duties that so often involved the basest actions against his fellow man—and all for the sake of an ideology and a Führer he no longer believed in.

The fisherman next door and the tutor he’d hired had made the difference. Konrad now came home to a happy child who did not take off to his room after a silent supper he barely ate. Now Wilhelm could not wait to tell his Vater of his day, of the things he’d learned, the fish he’d caught, the games he’d played. His little boy had filled out in appetite, muscle, and mind, and Konrad owed it all to the two young men who had entered their lives.

It was primarily for Barnard and Claus that he was giving this luncheon today. That Madame Gastain would be coming was extra sugar on the cake. Konrad had thought it a stretch to think it only appropriate to invite Madame Gastain, since he invited her tenant, but to his amazement and delight she had accepted. Perhaps the woman was hungry, or tired of fish.