As the train pulled out of the station she wished he were living in Berlin, and not Munich. ‘I can’t, Lotti,’ he had told her regretfully when she had brought up the subject with him. ‘Claus would be too aware of me and that could become dangerous. He may have become deeply disillusioned with National Socialism, but he’s still very far from sharing Nicholas’s sentiments. What his reaction would be if he were to discover the conspiracy is too problematic. Where Claus is concerned, it’s best I keep out of sight.’

Thinking about Claus and the high-ranking Nazi company he kept was not pleasant and she wished she had brought a magazine with her so that she could focus her thoughts elsewhere. As she hadn’t, she simply thought of happier times. Times when she, Ilse and Claus had gone to Wannsee to spend the day on the water, swimming and sailing with Max, Hugo and Nancy.

Today, she didn’t sail. Until late afternoon she swam and sunbathed and swam some more and then, certain that all hope of Max joining her was gone, returned to Berlin, her disappointment intense.

There was a message waiting for her on her dressing table: The singer at the Three Kings is sick. Can you stand in for her? It was signed by Maria, one of her flatmates.

The only nightclubs still in business were those approved of by the regime and the Three Kings was no exception. It would, she knew, be packed to capacity with army and police officers. She sighed heavily. It couldn’t be helped. Work was work and, as there was no message from Max, she might just as well be at the Three Kings as anywhere else.

The house where the key members of the conspiracy were meeting was in the leafy, lake-studded suburb of Grunewald. A white-painted chalet with a decorative wooden balcony running right round the first floor and, at ground level, a veranda, it belonged to Peter Wasserman, a theatre-director friend of Nicholas’s who, before the war had started, had left Berlin to try his luck in Hollywood. Ever since, the house had remained untenanted and, as far as Nicholas was concerned, it made the perfect trysting place. Whatever happened, there could be no comeback on Peter. He was long gone and far beyond the arm of any Nazi retribution.

Max was the last person to arrive and, by the time he did so, all the men he had come to meet were nervously on their second drinks. Though he had not previously met them, he knew them all. One of them was an ex-minister who had, four years ago, received the Nazi Party’s highest decoration, the Golden Badge of Honour, for his services in shaping Germany’s economy for war purposes. A devout Roman Catholic, he had broken with Hitler after the Night of Broken Glass had left him in no doubt as to the nature of the regime he had been serving.

Two of the others were army generals. Men who were vital to their plans. Another was a highly placed government minister and a member of the former aristocracy. There was a senior civil servant, a highly decorated Great War hero. The sixth member of the group was a young army officer Max instinctively knew was the person detailed to carry out the assassination. The seventh was Nicholas.