With the extra staff he had been given, plus his own skills and contacts, Gibson had done a good job of keeping London up to speed on everything happening in both the capital city and beyond, yet he had been obliged to drag men off what he saw as valuable work to meet the needs of Noel McKevitt, which might just have been acceptable with an explanation.

If it had displeased him to issue the orders, they had been received just as badly by those tasked to execute them, all professionals who felt they were being sidelined from proper intelligence work to do the kind of thing usually allotted at home to lowly beat coppers, and such a feeling had permeated most of the building.

Down in the basement Cipher Room he handed over McKevitt’s list to the clerk who ran it and gave him orders to route it through Broadway. Coming from just down the road would ensure a faster response than anything from hundreds of miles away.

‘And Tommy,’ Gibson said. ‘I’m in need of a little favour.’

‘Whatever you need, Major,’ the clerk replied, giving, as he always did, Gibby’s old military rank; he was a man who was unfailingly polite to everyone, who knew the names of, and never failed to ask after, wives, children and girlfriends – in short, the major was popular.

Gibson went to a desk to compose, with the codebooks, a despatch of his own to Broadway, pre-dating it to the day the original instruction had come from the Central European Desk to check the British nationals.

In it he did not criticise McKevitt’s demand – that would be counterproductive – but he did feel the need to point out how that would impact on the amount of hard information coming out of the Prague station in the coming days with his men so occupied.

When he handed it over to the clerk, Tommy read it, fingered the date and smiled.

‘I owe you one, Tommy.’

‘You don’t owe me a thing, sir, happy to be of service.’

Tommy was typing before Gibson left the Cipher Room; that would land on Noel McKevitt’s desk and he would only read it on his return to London, the delay being explained away easily as just one of those standard cock-ups that happen daily.

But it would cover Gibson’s back if what was happening was questioned on the top floor, a standard precaution in any establishment where there was competition for the plum postings, added to a culture of passing the buck if things went amiss.

With the weather clearing a bit, and approaching what the ethnic Germans would call the border, it was just possible to see the troop concentrations by the roadside, tented encampments and lorry parks stretching into the misty distance under canopies of trees to protect against air attack.

At the next checkpoint there were tankettes, Tančik vz. 33s, that if they looked impressive to Corrie, Cal knew would be mincemeat to the latest armoured vehicles the Germans could put in the field, but what it told him, without the need to look at road signs or maps, was that they were now in the disputed areas.

The flags came next and increased the further north-west they drove, rising into the high hills, the not-quite-mountainous region of the Bohemian borderlands; to the ethnic Germans this might be the province of Carlsbad, but to the Czechs it was Karlovy Vary.

By the time they got to Cheb the red and black horizontally striped banners were ubiquitous, nowhere more so than on the Victoria Hotel itself, which was festooned with them, and just in case you did not know what it was, there were men outside in the dun-brown-coloured uniform of their Sturmabteilung counterparts across the frontier and, like them, wearing side arms in big leather holsters.

The incongruity of a uniformed porter rushing to their car as soon as they stopped nearly had Cal laughing, it was so out of keeping with everything else he could see, and that was replicated in the hotel reception, which if the lobby was dark and rather Teutonic in its decor, conformed to what was needed: a desk at which to register, couches on which to sit, pastoral scenes on the walls and vases full of flowers to give a peaceful ambiance, and two staircases leading off from the lobby.

‘Miss Corrine Littleton, of Collier’s Weekly.’ She threw out a hand to indicate Cal, standing back because this was her show now. ‘And my interpreter. I believe you are expecting us.’

The man behind the desk wore a pince-nez and had that superior air of hotel receptionists of not-quite-top-flight establishments everywhere, who always behave as if they are doing you a favour by letting you soil their pristine accommodation. This one had the added non-attraction of having in his lapel a Nazi Party swastika badge.

Out came a heavy ledger, and the receptionist ran a finger down what Cal suspected was an imaginary list – this was not the most desirable destination hostelry in the world right at this moment – then shook his head as if someone might have got something wrong by even thinking of letting a room, finally replying in rapid German to acknowledge the booking of two rooms.

‘Did he say yes or no, Doc?’ Corrie asked.

Cal took over, annoyed that already she was not calling him by the name on the passport, and went through, with some surprise, the usual registration process with their passports, which did not take long, and soon they were being escorted up one of the sets of stairs, followed by both porter and their bags, to rooms on the fourth floor.

‘No elevator?’

‘They’re hardy mountain folk round here – and it’s a lift.’

‘What do we do next?’

‘Wait to be contacted. That snotty sod downstairs will now, no doubt, tell whoever we need to meet that we are here.’

‘I could sure use a drink.’

‘Lobby, ten minutes,’ Cal replied, ‘so could I.’

Corrie was still complaining about her ‘lousy Martini’, Cal reading a local newspaper, when the woman Cal decided on first sight to call the ‘Ice Maiden’ appeared and came towards them, dressed in dirndl-type clothing as if the rest of her appearance was not enough to mark her out as German.

Her blonde hair was braided tightly from the front of her head to the back and she was stunning-looking, with clear skin and large bright-blue eyes, if a trifle severe of expression and, tellingly, with no sign on her hands of a matrimonial band. Being a gentleman, Cal stood up, but it was the still sitting Corrie she addressed.

‘Fräulein Littleton?’

‘I prefer Miss.’

That response was ignored. ‘And Herr Barrowman, your interpreter, Ja?’

‘You speak good English, Fräulein …’

‘Metzer,’ she replied. ‘I help run our leader’s press office. English is very necessary to counter the fabrications of the foreign journals.’

‘Or,’ Corrie snapped, ‘to understand the complexities.’

She might as well have said ‘lies’. Cal, seeing the eyes narrow, was quick to intervene, his voice genial, at the same time seeking to throw Corrie a warning glance; she needed, he needed these people to think they were sympathetic.

‘Which Miss Littleton has come a long way to unearth. I must say I too will find it fascinating to explore the way you have united the people of Bohemia and Moravia into such a powerful political body. It’s quite an achievement and one we discussed on the way from Prague.’

It was almost comical – indeed it would have been in peaceful times – the way her face changed at the mention of the Czech capital. It was as if someone had just farted and walked away from a bad smell.

‘You must be tired after your journey, Herr Barrowman, and I have to tell you it is too late in the day to meet with Herr Henlein, there would not be enough time before he goes home to dine with his family.’

‘How admirable that a man with so much to do, a man indeed of destiny, has time to keep his family obligations.’

‘That is something he does every evening, Herr Barrowman, unless there is a crisis. The hotel houses his offices but he rarely sleeps here.’