For Catherine — Elizabeth Morgan

Immediately following the French Vichy Government's armistice with Hitler in July 1940, a group of handpicked German soldier musicians is billeted in the west wing of prestigious Chateau de Lazarin in southern unoccupied France, to create a ‘cultural presence.' The de Lazarin family are deeply affronted by this invasion of their chateau, but when Catherine their beautiful daughter, meets Major Freddy von Langdorf there is an immediate mutual attraction, powerful and obvious. There is no logic in love, no rationale. They are enemies. They know their relationship can only be fraught with danger. Catherine, half way through her abandoned medical degree is involved in the Resistance through her cousin Max, who is working with Jean Moulin, a Resistance leader. The pugilistic SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Muller, already known to the young Major, arrives in the south of France with the complete Nazi take-over of the country; a brute with swaggering fanaticism who hates Freddy and his privileged class as vehemently as he does Jews and the Resistance. Extracting confessions from victims through torture is his speciality, and insists that Major von Langdorf is his interpreter during these obscene interrogations. High in the Cevennes, Catherine is working in a makeshift Resistance hospital. Freddy passes vital information to her for the Resistance, creating a perilous situation for both of them. Muller certainly knows something. But how much and what? A sadist, who twists the knife slowly before striking, he is out for blood. Whose will it be?