It was all Max could have asked and more, for as the plans unfolded it became clear that among the ground forces that would be making up the attack on the city was the Armoured Division Paul was fighting with. Though the chance of them meeting up while the battle for the city took place was nil, it did mean they would both be in the city and that at the very first opportunity they could track down their womenfolk.

Paul, he knew, was desperate to marry Eva the instant such a wedding could be arranged. And he too was desperate for a reunion with the woman he loved—the woman he’d always loved. As an intelligence officer he was aware of the failed attempts on Hitler’s life and he knew that Nicholas had been executed. It meant that at his reunion with Ilse she would be a widow, and that would, he knew, once again drastically change the relationship between them.

Hurting someone dear to him was not something he was looking forward to, but he knew it was going to be a necessity. A necessity he was utterly prepared for.

The tense expectancy he felt at the prospect of so soon being part of the assault on the city buoyed him up all the way back to his field unit. It was there, four hours later, that he had a visitor who shocked him rigid.

‘Sorry about this, Max,’ Joseph Dawson said, taking off gauntleted gloves and slapping them together as his driver waited for him a short distance away, out of earshot, ‘but I want to share my private feelings with you. And they are feelings you won’t like.’

Max waited. A colonel who was Chief of Staff to a general didn’t hare around a battle zone to share his ‘private feelings’—especially not when there had been the chance for the two of them to talk together earlier in the day.

‘I believe the information given out at this morning’s meeting was given for political reasons, that it’s the way General Montgomery would like to see things going. It isn’t the way I believe things will go, though.’

A column of tanks trundled past them. From the distance there came the sound of artillery fire.

‘And how do you think things will go, sir?’ Max asked, a nerve beginning to jump at the corner of his jaw.

‘I think the proposed Allied Airborne operation will be called off because, when push comes to shove, I doubt our ground troops will come within striking distance of Berlin. I strongly suspect they’ll reach the River Elbe and then be diverted north and south, leaving the way open for the Russians to seize it. It’s only a surmise, but I believe it to be an accurate one. Berlin may be the plum we’ve all been racing for, but my reading of the situation is that it will be yanked away from us at the last possible moment in order to keep the Russians happy.’