He put his half-drunk flute of champagne on the tray of a passing waiter, saying tersely, ‘Get me a brandy, please. A large one.’

A figure in the uniform of a colonel, a prestigious Knight’s Cross hanging from his collar, excused himself from the small group of people he had been talking with and strolled across to him.

‘Good evening, Herr Remer. My name is Todt. Colonel Christian Todt. We met briefly last year when I was in the company of your brother-in-law, Count Schulenburg.’

Claus forced a tight, polite smile. He remembered Todt—and the occasion. He had been dining at Horscher’s when Nicholas and Todt had walked in and been seated at a near by table. Ever since Hester’s death he had seen very little of Ilse and Nicholas, or of Lotti. For them, and him, it was easier that way.

He’d liked the look of Christian Todt when he had shaken hands with him. He was tall and lean and, unusual in a soldier, academic-looking. He and Nicholas were obviously close friends and, as Nicholas chose his close friends carefully, it was recommendation enough as to Todt’s character.

‘Nice to meet you again,’ he said, pressing a finger against the corner of his eye to still the jumping nerve.

‘I understand this castle was in your family’s ownership until a few years ago?’ Todt said, eyeing the cavernous room and its stunning chandeliers admiringly.

‘It still is.’

Even as he said the words, Claus wondered if they were true. Even more to the point, if they were untrue, he wondered if he cared. Only his parents had ever taken pleasure in living for long periods at the Schloss. He couldn’t imagine himself ever doing so and certainly no other member of the family would want to live there. Apart from the use it was now being put to, it was a white elephant on a gigantic scale. The mansion on Unter den Linden was also fast becoming an unnecessary encumbrance.

In the days before the Great War a privately occupied home on Unter den Linden had held a great social cachet. The Kaiser’s palace had been on Unter den Linden. It had been the scene of constant parades and ceremonials. In the aftermath of the war—and the aftermath of the Kaiser’s flight to Holland—the aristocracy had decided they preferred to live in Tiergarten palaces. His father hadn’t followed their example. The mansion on Unter den Linden was the Remer family home and fashion, for his father, hadn’t come into it.

The waiter approached with his brandy and, as he lifted the glass from the tray, he wondered why he hadn’t ridden roughshod over his father’s wishes long ago and moved into a modern palatial villa in Grunewald.

‘I understand one of the Krupp factories was badly damaged on the sixth of March,’ Christian Todt said conversationally. ‘Did Remer factories suffer also, that night?’

‘No.’ Claus dragged his thoughts back to the conversation. ‘We were lucky. So far the Remer steelworks have not been hit.’