Dropping to the ground with her, he began desperately giving her artificial respiration. ‘Breathe!’ he shouted, labouring to bring air back into her body. ‘For the love of heaven, Hester! Breathe!’

It was as if she heard him.

She made a great rasping sucking sound and then a choking noise.

He gave a sob of relief and her eyes fluttered open.

For a moment, she hadn’t the slightest idea who he was. He was almost unrecognizable, his face grimy with filth and brick dust, his straw-pale hair as thick with dirt and dust as his face. What had once been an immaculately white shirt was now a torn, bloodied and filthy rag. Beneath its remnants she could see that his hard-muscled body was bathed in sweat, covered in bleeding gashes and cuts. His hands too were raw and bleeding, covered in mortar debris. And his eyes—eyes that were always so cool and impersonal—were ablaze with raw, naked emotion.

‘Dear God, Hester! I thought you were dead!’

As he lifted her upwards, so that she was half sitting, half leaning against him, she began shuddering, tears streaming down her face. ‘I thought I was dead too!’ Her voice was hoarse, still thick with fear. ‘The air was so thick with dust and grit that I couldn’t breathe and then the hatch wouldn’t open…’

She pressed herself against him, clinging to him as if she would never let him go, the memory of her terror totally overwhelming.

His mouth was hard against her hair. If he had ever previously had any doubts as to the nature of his feelings for her, he had none now. He loved her. And he couldn’t tell her so. She was married to Hugo and, even more importantly, she still loved Hugo.

A judder went through him as he lifted his mouth from her hair, exercising more self-control than he had ever exercised in his life before.

In the darkness, the fires on Unter den Linden still blazed. Every few minutes or so the night breeze brought with it a peppering of ash.

‘Can you walk?’ he asked hoarsely, when he could trust himself to speak.

She nodded and he helped her to her feet, keeping one arm supportingly around her.

‘Then let’s go,’ he said, and as she leaned heavily against him he turned his back on the monstrous wreck of what had once been his family home and led her past singed and blackened trees towards the Mercedes.

West of the Rhine, Max drove a jeep at high speed towards the building that was serving as the headquarters of the 1st Airborne Corps. He was in battledress, a green beret crammed on his thickly curling hair. The meeting he was about to attend as a senior intelligence officer was going to be one of the most vital of the war; one at which plans for the Battle of Berlin and its subsequent occupation were finally going to be revealed—and he was desperate for confirmation that he would be among those spearheading the drive on the city, for not until he was inside it would he know if those he loved were still alive.