Synopsis:

In 1925, in Germany, a boy of twelve, Jost Krupp, killed his mother’s lover with his father’s sabre. 

In Paris, art student, Baron Ferdinand Olivier Saumures – Ferdi to his friends – is reluctantly recruited into the British Secret Service. His friend and fellow art student, Franz-Joseph Deller is tricked into fathering a child by a wealthy British girl, Alice Barrett. Alice falls to her death, over a cliff, a week after Charlotte is born, and Joseph is blamed. He escapes France, and goes back to his parents, who are high-ranking Nazis. There he spies on the Nazis for Ferdi.

Charlotte was brought up by her rich and uncaring aunt and uncle. At the age of ten, Charlotte inherits her Grandmother’s lovely Paris mansion, in Avenue Foch, along with a collection priceless painting, called the Barrett Collection. Her favourite being a work by Gustaf Klimt called Girl on a Golden Pillow.

Charlotte grows into a beautiful young woman. In 1940, at the age of fifteen, she becomes embroiled in the German invasion of Paris. Her Parisian mansion is occupied by the SS, whilst her stepparents were away on holiday. To avoid being incarcerated or relocated, Charlotte changes her name to Freya Jorgensen, the Swedish daughter to her nanny and chauffeur. She meets and befriends a Turkish prostitute and falls in love with SS Lieutenant Jost Krupp, a handsome SS officer.

Underlying all, is Charlotte’s traitorous uncle, Sir Jason Barrett, a senior British diplomat, in Paris, who is head of a secret espionage organisation called WASP – War Against Socialist Parties – an international group of powerful people and anti-communists. The Organisation wish to rid the world, especially Europe, of communists and left-leaning politics, at any cost, including conspiring with the Nazis.