Two large Nazi flags had been draped from the two opposite walls of the hall, and swastikas were prominent on the arms of many brown military uniforms. The only one of the Führer’s innermost circle who was on hand for the occasion, however, was the man whom Hitler would soon make Germany’s highest-ranking military officer, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who had originally organized the Gestapo out of the Prussian Secret Police several years earlier. He was nearly in his old backyard. Though command of the secret police force had since passed into the hands of Heinrich Himmler, Göring maintained close ties with many of its members and was now talking in confidential tones with Emil Korsch, whom he had heard to be one of the Gestapo’s most powerful rising young agents.

“I understand you traveled to Moscow last week?” Göring was saying.

“Herr Himmler requested that I accompany Herr Ribbontrop and the rest of the delegation,” replied Korsch. “As his personal liaison.”

“Ah,” Göring said, nodding knowingly. “In other words, Heinrich wanted someone to keep an eye on things.”

Korsch nodded. “To be sure the Gestapo was represented.”

Göring smiled. “A shrewd man, our friend Herr Himmler,” he said. “And why you, if I may inquire, Herr Korsch?”

“I happen to speak Russian.”

“And how did you find Moscow?”

“Unbearable. Between you and me, I can scarcely tolerate Russia or its people.”

Meanwhile, at the other end of the hall, Gustav was in his element and already had a small group of fawning young women in a circle about him, one of whom was Brigitte von Dortmann, cousin to the neighbor he planned one day to marry. Brigitte’s flirtatious charms, heightened to seasoned perfection from years of practice, were not without their alluring influence upon the emerging ego of Gustav’s manhood, though out of the corner of his eye he maintained a watchful vigilance for Sabina’s arrival. In the last year Gustav had grown into nearly a man and could have had, in truth, any of the number of eligible young Pomeranian aristocratic daughters whose presence his mother had arranged.

The sting of Sabina’s rebuffs, however, had not mixed pleasantly with Gustav’s pride, and he had become more determined than ever to possess her. It could hardly be denied that Sabina was as beautiful as they came, and her feisty, outgoing personality added to the charm. Her cool treatment of him as they had grown older, along with her recent absence in Switzerland, had blinded him to the practicality of how very different they had become.

He had grown up in more ways than mere size and age, and he was through and through a modern German of the Third Reich. He knew what he wanted, and he would have it, whatever it took to obtain it.