The line of questioning she would be undergoing at Gestapo headquarters was obvious and somehow he had to put an end to it. No matter what the risk to himself, he had to get her out of there.

Perspiration was cold on his forehead. No matter what they did to Lotti, she wouldn’t talk. He knew that as surely as he knew he was still breathing. She would die rather than incriminate him or Nicholas. At the thought of Lotti dead, he felt like a man on the brink of an unspeakable abyss.

A world without Lotti and her dauntless buoyancy and irrepressible sense of humour was impossible to imagine. Ever since he had been ten and she had been five they had been inseparable on every possible occasion. She was his best friend. His chum. She was the one person in the world who knew him even better than he knew himself. She was his other half. His soulmate.

Realization hit him like a hammer.

Lotti was his life. Why had he never seen it before? Why had he never recognized what was now so blindingly, glaringly obvious? He loved her. He’d always loved her. And he didn’t have to ask if she loved him. The answer was in her actions of that evening. She’d put her life on the line for him and was probably, at this very moment, undergoing the most barbaric kind of torture.

He sucked in his breath and began to run.

Every favour he’d ever done for Fritz was now going to be called in for repayment—and every penny he could lay his hands on was going to go into persuading Fritz to make a vital phone call from Gestapo headquarters in Munich.

‘Max? Max, my friend, what the devil of a time is this to wake a man up?’

Max could hear a muffled female protest as Fritz pushed himself up against the pillows and switched on a bedside light.

‘I need a favour.’ He knew that if the line was bugged Fritz would know of it and would immediately cut him short. To his unspeakable relief, he didn’t do so.

‘A favour? What sort of a favour can I do for a man with your connections?’ There was good-natured humour in Fritz’s voice. He’d been a farm labourer in the days before becoming an ardent National Socialist had changed his way of life for ever. Having a personal friend as educated and sophisticated as Max was a source of great pleasure to him.

‘I’m in Berlin with a girlfriend and she’s just been arrested on suspicion of making a phone call to warn off a group of anti-Hitlerites who were about to be arrested. It’s a nonsensical situation. I was with her at the time she’s supposed to have made this phone call and she’s as loyal to the Führer as Himmler! She’s been taken to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, though, and you know what that means. As someone in a reserved occupation I don’t carry much clout with the Gestapo. If you could phone Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse from Gestapo headquarters in Munich, saying that under interrogation for something else entirely someone just brought in to you has admitted making the phone call warning the anti-Hitlerites to fly, it would get her off the hook.’