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“That was before me,”Ann purred. “Out of there, Agnes. You can sit with my cousin the hero.”

Agnes didn’t look at him as she came around the table and a chair was found for her.

“Excuse me, Major,” Bitter said,“haven’t we met?”

"Possibly,” Major Niven said. "Congratulations on your DFC. Dick’s been telling us about it.”

“You ever go to a bar in New York called the ‘21’ Club, Eddie?” Canidy asked. “Dave was just telling us he used to work there.”

“Yes,” Bitter said. “As a matter of fact, I have. My father goes there all the time. The place that used to be a speakeasy?”

“Right,” Major Niven said. “On West Fifty-second Street.”

“Then that must be it,” Bitter said.

“Ed,” Ann said, “you can be such an ass. This is David Niven, the actor.”

He felt his face flush as he saw in Canidy’s delighted grin that he had been had.

“Dick’s no better,” Agnes said loyally. “He thought he was from SOE and walked over and greeted him like a long-lost brother.”

“I’ll get you for that, Lady Agnes,” Canidy said.

Bitter found himself looking into Agnes’s face.

“What’s that about? What’s he up to now?”

She shrugged but said nothing. And then their knees brushed. And then a moment later their hands found each other under the table. As her fingers curled with his, he felt his heart jump.

“And what brings you to London, Major Niven?” Bitter asked.

Canidy laughed out loud and hard.

“Lend-lease elocution lessons,” the English private said.

At about eight they all crowded into the Packard, and Agnes drove them across town to a black-market restaurant she had heard about from the other limousine drivers. Canidy and Niven talked their way in.

The food was neither good nor plentiful, but it was expensive. Meanwhile, under the table, Agnes slipped her foot out of her shoe and ran her toes over Bitter’s ankle.

As they were having a fourth bottle of wine to go with the Stilton cheese, a microphone was turned on in Broadcast House. At the third of thirty messages, an announcer with impeccable diction solemnly proclaimed:

“Bübchen would like to paddle Gisella’s canoe again. Bübchen would like to paddle Gisella’s canoe again.”

XI

Chapter ONE

Marburg an der Lahn, Germany

15 January 1943

Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Peis stood at rigid attention and extended his right arm from the shoulder at a forty-five-degree angle.

“Heil Hitler!” he barked.

Standartenführer SS-SD Johann Müller casually raised his right arm from the elbow and let it drop.

“Wie geht’s, Wilhelm?” he asked.