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pool as though she were about to dive, the girl faced the camera, wide mouth smiling provocatively, her nose puckered. She had a long neck and a beauty spot to the right of her nose, one of those little imperfections that only seem to magnify loveliness. ELEANOR EMERSON FROM NEW YORK , the caption read, WAS THE 1932 GOLD MEDALLIST IN THE BACKSTROKE. SHE IS ALSO A SINGER AND THE WIFE OF A POPULAR BANDLEADER.
    The hotel’s restaurant was filling up. He heard the rough sounds of Swiss German from one table—bankers and their wives on an evening out from across the lake; at another, two English ladies keeping diaries seemed to know all the waiters by name; at a table near the door, a solitary woman in expensive Italian clothes kept giving him the eye.
    The maître d’ was showing another couple to a table.
    Oh, shit .
    It was Willi Greiser, the Nazi press chief, dressed in Teutonic weekend wear: a green Bavarian jacket trimmed with braid. The blonde with him must be his wife. What the hell is he doing here? Let’s hope he’s not staying the week, Denham thought. Fortunately, Greiser didn’t seem to have spotted him.
    He finished eating, refilled his glass, and walked out onto the terrace. Lights twinkled around the shore, and the air was heady with the scent of honeysuckle . In the distance, the Alps gave off a pale glow in the crystalline air. He leaned on the stone balustrade and listened to the laughter and fragments of conversation from couples walking the promenade below.
    ‘Good evening, Denham.’ A man’s voice.
    Denham screwed his eyes shut. So he’d been spotted after all.
    ‘This is a pleasant coincidence,’ the voice continued. ‘I thought I saw your name on the hotel register. What brings you to Friedrichshafen?’
    ‘The scenery, Greiser,’ Denham said, turning round. ‘How about you? Aren’t the local papers printing all the good news from Berlin?’
    A match flared behind Greiser’s cupped hands, illuminating the low-lidded eyes, the heavy hair that fell in blond slices over his forehead, and the ridiculous college duelling scar down one cheek, the badge of a phoney pedigree. His lapel held an edelweiss.
    ‘Just a few days’ relaxation before the Olympiad,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a busy time for me. Half a million foreign visitors expected in Berlin.’
    ‘That’s a lot of people to fool.’
    Greiser grinned with genial menace. ‘There’s only one thing that would bring you here, Denham, and I don’t recall receiving your request to visit the Hindenburg, much less endorsing it.’
    ‘I’m here to see Hugo Eckener, who is an old friend of my father’s.’
    Denham touched the engraved watch in his pocket, fearful now of the raw emotion it had released in him.
    ‘Really? A social visit?’ Greiser chuckled, breathing out a mix of sarcasm and smoke. ‘You’re here to write a feature, and this time you’ll clear it with my office—before that fucking agent of yours sells it all over the world. The chief read your piece on National Socialism in football and was highly annoyed by it.’
    ‘Goebbels read that?’ Denham punched the air.
    ‘In German. It was syndicated in one of the Austrian dailies. I had to calm him down, tell him you’re not a bad sort. But this is a warning to you, Denham. I’m serious. Any more damage like that and your press accreditation will be revoked. You’ll be expelled . . . or worse.’
    ‘Greiser, what could be worse than that?’
    He fixed Denham with a hard stare. ‘Watch your step,’ he whispered and turned back through the terrace doors into the restaurant.
    Denham jabbed two fingers up and down at Greiser’s departing head, then turned and slumped onto a stone bench. Somewhere off to the left, in the hotel ballroom, a string orchestra was playing the waltz from The Merry Widow.
    He’d clashed before with Greiser over pieces he’d written and had got away with it. But this time it sounded like the Bank of Cheek and Luck was calling in