‘Oh, there are plenty of us, mostly in the foreign office, army or air force. But our organisation is woeful. Unless you have known someone a long time, you do not dare to speak out or try to recruit others. How can you reveal your true feelings about the Nazis when the Gestapo and SD have their spies everywhere and all our phones are tapped? Every servant could be reporting to Himmler. Some have been denounced by their oldest friends – even by members of their own families.’

Wilde shook his head. ‘Bloody awful, Sunny.’

‘That’s the understatement of the year. You can be denounced for the most innocuous criticism of you-know-who – and then you’ll end up in Sachsenhausen or Ravensbrück.’ Her eyes indicated Klara, who was too busy with her food and lemonade to listen. ‘So organising a resistance movement is almost impossible.’

‘What about those Luftwaffe officers at Carinhall?’

‘Great friends of Anton’s. And like him, they are patriots. They will kill or die for Germany in this present war, but they are not Nazis. If a coup can ever be staged, they will be on our side.’

‘They knew you were coming to Carinhall. It was all planned, wasn’t it?’

‘I suppose that’s obvious now. I knew we could not afford to wait before going to Kossertheim – but I also knew we could not come straight here. Schmidt wouldn’t have been ready for us. Of course the plan was to drive to Carinhall, not to trudge across country.’

‘And Anton . . . I still don’t understand his part in this. Or yours, for that matter.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not going into that now.’

For a few minutes they were silent, each lost in their own thoughts. He broke the spell by passing her the whisky flask.

‘Have some of this, won’t you? It’ll do you good.’

She smiled and took a swig.

‘Better?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, if you won’t tell me how this all came about, talk to me about something else. Tell me about your time in America – we may know the same places, the same people, even. What made you choose Germany as your home?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Anything to pass the time, eh?’

‘I don’t believe you’re as cynical as you like to make out, Sunny.’ Her gut-wrenching desolation after the death of her lover had shown that clearly enough. ‘Where did you live in the States? Jim Vanderberg mentioned Lexington.’