‘MI6 say they’re convinced she’s not being held in a conventional prison. They believe she’s most likely being held in one of these places the Germans call concentration camps. George Weston is keeping an eye on things in Copenhagen, in as much as he can from Stockholm. He says no one has heard any more news about Hanne. His instinct is that if she was dead, somehow that information would have worked its way back to Denmark. It’s probably a case of no news being good news.’

‘Not if she’s in a concentration camp, sir.’

A plane flew low overhead and both men looked nervously out of the window. It was warm in Gilbey’s office and he removed his jacket and loosened his tie.

‘One month, Richard. In my experience, this kind of search will yield results some way down the line: sow the seeds now and eventually someone will put two and two together and we’ll find Henry. The new mission is vital for the war effort, that’s all I can say. We’ll need a month to prepare you. See you in July – and good luck.’

Chapter 26

Copenhagen, September 1943

At five to eight on the morning of Tuesday 28 September, Ferdinand Rudolf von Buhler opened the front door of his residence in Lyngby and exchanged Heil Hitler greetings with his driver.

He settled into the back of the Horch with a mounting degree of trepidation and lit his fifth cigarette of the day. Over the past fortnight there had been increasing tension at the embassy. It was unclear what the cause of this was: as the commercial attaché, he wasn’t exactly a member of the inner circle, for which he was most grateful. He probably sat somewhere between the second and third circles, and as far as he was concerned, if there was a fourth circle he’d happily reside there.

In truth, the tension had been on the rise ever since the Danish government resigned at the end of August. Now the Germans were running Denmark themselves and there could no longer be the pretence that this wasn’t a real occupation.

At first, he attributed the more recent atmosphere to the constant flow of bad news about the course of the war. It had become unrelenting, not least how the Red Army was pushing in from the east, but this tension had a different feel: it was something closer to home. Maybe it was politics – there was always plenty of that at the embassy – between the Nazi Party fanatics, the army, and the professional diplomats like himself. He had become aware of more frequent meetings behind closed doors, urgent conversations in corridors and the rumour mill starting to work overtime.