“Burned to ashes and bones,” said Hiroshi. “Literally.”

Himmler looked as if he might actually be sick. Hiroshi had to clamp down on his distaste for the man’s weakness.

“But of course, that was in their world,” he said. “This is ours, and things have changed now. We can avoid the fate that awaited us. If we are bold.”

Himmler nodded uncertainly. He licked his thin, bloodless lips.

“Yes. If we are bold . . . Perhaps, if you would come with me, when I tell the führer of all this?”

Hiroshi indulged himself by sipping at his tea for a moment, letting the German wait on his answer.

“Of course,” he said at last. “We are in this together.”

RASTENBURG, 1247 HOURS, 10 JUNE 1942

The führer was taking lunch with Martin Bormann and Dr. Göbbels at his East Prussian headquarters, the Wolfschanze in Rastenburg, when Himmler and Hiroshi arrived. The three men had finished their vegetarian strudel and potato salad and were tucking into Black Forest cake and coffee as Hitler explained his role in the development of the Volkswagen, a technological triumph of Aryan engineering of which he was inordinately proud.

“The Volkswagen,” he said, “is the car of the future. One has only to see the way in which they roar up the Obersalzberg, skipping like mountain goats around my great Mercedes, to be tremendously impressed. After the war, it will become the car par excellence for the whole of Europe . . .”

Bormann and Göbbels nodded enthusiastically, neither man game to draw attention to the bright blob of cream that clung to the führer’s mustache. Hitler plowed on, as he so often did after dining, expounding on topics as varied as the fictitious value of gold, the lure of paperwork, and the ugliness of Berlin.

A black-uniformed SS-Obersturmbannführer knocked at the door. Only a member of Hitler’s personal bodyguard could gain admission to his private dining room, where talk of military campaigns was banned and officers of the Wehrmacht were not generally welcome. If the SS colonel was so bold as to interrupt lunch, there must indeed be something wrong.

“Yes?” he asked peremptorily.

“I am sorry, Mein Führer, but Reichsführer Himmler is here with Lieutenant General Hiroshi.”

“What a curious couple,” mused Hitler. “Perhaps they have something to confess. Admit them and we shall see.”

The bodyguard clicked the heels of his jackboots, saluted, and left. He did not mention the cream in Hitler’s mustache, either.

As soon as Himmler entered he saluted, rubbed a finger under his nose, and whispered, “Mein Führer.”

Hitler licked his mustache, finding the dollop there.

“Oh, thank you, Heinrich. Martin, Josef, you should have said something earlier.”

Both men looked suitably abashed.

“Sit down, sit down, gentlemen. Ambassador Hiroshi, such a pleasant surprise to find you out here. I do hope nothing is wrong. Or is something right? Has Churchill died of brain syphilis, perhaps?”