With great effort and a fast-beating heart, Lotti drummed admiration into her eyes. ‘And where is she now? Gestapo headquarters?’

‘Maybe. I wouldn’t know. I have a present for you.’

He placed a slim gold box on the table.

Lotti clapped her hands in apparent delight, her heart sinking at the prospect of the price she was going to have to pay for accepting it.

Inside the box was a mother-of-pearl necklace.

‘Put it on,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said in a seductively teasing voice. ‘You can put it on for me. Later.’

She saw almost unbearable sexual tension flare through his eyes and knew she had conjured up for him an image of herself naked, save for his gift. ‘I expect if she has a British passport the British Embassy will intervene on her behalf,’ she said musingly. ‘It’s sickening to think she may simply be returned to Britain instead of having to pay for her filthy crime.’

‘You needn’t worry on that score.’ He dropped a hand beneath the table to fondle her leg. ‘She has a British passport because she married a Briton, but she’s been arrested under her maiden name and there is going to be no acknowledgement that she’s anything other than a German Jewess.’

‘And what will happen to her?’ Lotti admiringly fingered the necklace in its box, as if her thoughts were on that and not on her question.

‘Ravensbrück,’ he said, cursing the width of the table between them. It meant his hand couldn’t quite reach the soft enticing flesh at the top of her suspendered stockings. ‘That’s where high-grade women prisoners now go.’

‘Ravensbrück? I’ve never heard of it.’ She parted her legs to make his task a little easier. ‘Where is it?’

‘About thirty-five miles north of Berlin. It was only opened in May. Let’s leave this damn club and go somewhere quiet. Somewhere we can get to know each other better. What about the Adlon?’

The Adlon not only had a superb dining room but, as it was a hotel, also had bedrooms within easy access.

Lotti suppressed a sigh of resignation. ‘The Adlon would be lovely,’ she lied, knowing she needed to keep him sweet until he could confirm whether Hester had, indeed, been sent to Ravensbrück. And if she had?

As they left the club, his arm proprietorially around her naked shoulders, she felt sickening despair. Knowing Hester was in Ravensbrück would be one thing. Securing her release from Ravensbrück would be quite another.

‘You know you’ve thrown your Foreign Office career away by travelling here at such a time without authorization?’ The British Ambassador stared at Hugo as if he were a madman. ‘This affair should have been dealt with through the proper channels in London. I’m up to my neck in what is possibly the deepest crisis of the century and I am simply not able to do anything for you other than go through the motions of formally complaining about the nature of your wife’s arrest and requesting she be visited by a British official. At this moment in time, when the Führer is showing himself to be uncaring of the Prime Minister’s assurance that Britain will go to war if Germany attacks Poland, I can assure you it is a complaint and a request that will go ignored.’