After the handshakes were over and they were all seated, Max said, ‘I need to be able to inform London of the exact nature of your plans, gentlemen. Place, time. And the number of generals who, when the Führer’s death releases them from personal oaths of loyalty to him, will openly support an antiNazi regime and sue for peace.’

‘And we need an authoritative statement as to the way the new regime will be treated,’ one of the generals said, steely-eyed. ‘We need a guarantee that when Hitler is assassinated and a peace treaty is negotiated, it is negotiated on more generous terms than in 1918, when we got rid of the Kaiser.’

‘Then let us put our cards on the table, gentlemen,’ Max said, well aware that such a promise couldn’t possibly be made and that he would have to tread very carefully if he were to avoid any senior members of the conspiracy getting cold feet and calling off the assassination. ‘First of all, who is the man the British government will be directly dealing with in the immediate aftermath of Hitler’s death?’

‘Table ten want you to join them when you finish singing,’ the manager of the Three Kings said to Lotti as she was about to step onto the club’s small circular podium. ‘They’re celebrating in a big way and want some female company.’

‘Then they should have brought some with them,’ Lotti snapped, her green cat-eyes flashing fire. ‘I’m a singer, not a prostitute!’

‘Table ten after you sing, or you don’t sing at all.’

The pianist was already playing the intro to her first song. With so few clubs now in existence Lotti had been looking forward to being able to sing, instead of waiting tables. Besides, it wasn’t the first time she’d had to make herself agreeable to men she found disagreeable and she wouldn’t have to do anything other than laugh and flirt.

‘OK,’ she said ungraciously, adjusting the T-strap of her knee-length, heavily sequinned black dress. ‘But this isn’t something I’m going to make a habit of.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the manager snapped back. ‘You’re not going to be singing here often enough to be able to make a habit of it.’

Shooting him a look of contempt she stepped up onto the small dais in front of the band and launched into the popular ‘Don’t Ask How, Don’t Ask Where’.

As she had known it would be, the club was full of uniformed officers. There were field-grey Wehrmacht uniforms, sinister black SS uniforms, even a sprinkling of grey-blue Luftwaffe uniforms. With a sinking heart she saw that the rowdy party at table ten were all SS men. Determining to stay at their table for no more than half an hour at the most, she sang the song she sang at every opportunity, Norbert Schultze’s romantically wistful ‘Lili Marleen’.

It brought the house down as it always did, and taking advantage of the good feeling she had aroused she sang Jerome Kern’s ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ and then another American song, Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’.