She walked across to the window. ‘After that, his first concern will be to return to Berlin and the Army High Command headquarters in the Bendlerstrasse. That’s where von Helldorf and many others will have gathered. At this very minute, he’s probably in the air. I’m sure it’s good that we still haven’t heard from him. Two hours is far too soon to hear anything.’

By two o’clock, aware that by her own calculations Nicholas was very probably now back in Berlin, Ilse was biting her beautifully manicured nails and Lotti was pacing the apartment, chain-smoking.

By four o’clock, their anxiety was almost at breaking point. On the radio, the regular news broadcasts were about everything but the Führer. There was no announcement of his assassination. No announcement of an attempted assassination.

‘But Hitler must be dead!’ Isle kept saying frantically. ‘That’s why there is no news. Communication with the outside world has simply been cut off until a new head of state and a new commander in chief of the army are ready to go on air to broadcast to the world what has happened.’

Lotti said nothing. Whatever was happening, Nicholas would know how deep their anxiety was. Even if he could not take the time to telephone them himself, she felt sure he would have detailed someone else to do so.

Suddenly, from where she was standing at the window, Ilse said urgently, ‘Freddie’s father has just turned into the street! He must have news!’

With feet scarcely touching the floor she flew from the room and into the hall, yanking the front door open.

Lotti didn’t follow her. She couldn’t. Terror was rooting her to the spot.

It was terror that was well founded.

Seconds later, Ilse’s anguished scream rent the air, reverberating throughout all the rooms of the apartment.

Knowing only too well what Freddie’s father’s news had been, Lotti buried her face in her hands and, her legs no longer able to support her, sank to her knees.

Nicholas, handsome and good and brave, was dead—or soon would be.

And Adolf Hitler, devil incarnate, was still alive.

Chapter Thirty

Berlin, January 1944

Zelda was doing something she hadn’t done for years. She was entering a church in order to pray—and she was doing so as inconspicuously as possible.

Despite the mind-numbing cold she wasn’t wearing a fur. Her coat was a shabby black-wool coat she had long since taken to wearing when making one of her rare forays onto the city’s bomb-shattered streets. It was a coat that didn’t attract attention. Worn with a faded wool headscarf knotted beneath her chin Babushka-style and pulled forward to hide her distinctively high cheekbones and the darkness of her eyes, it made her look like any other Berlin housewife out foraging for rations.

The church was quiet and empty, though from the smell of recently extinguished candles it hadn’t been empty for long. Zelda lit her own candle and then went and sat in one of the pews nearest to the altar.