Sighting another ungated path into the trees he pulled hard over and shot up the lane, which had her sliding across the front leather seat to his side, coming to a halt with her body jammed against his. He could sense her, and the way her breath was still heaving was too obvious to miss, so spinning sideways he threw an arm over her shoulder and pulled her close.

She made no attempt to avoid being kissed, there was no stiffness or resistance and, as his tongue slipped between her teeth, he also knew that whatever else Corrie Littleton had done in her life, this was not the first time such an embrace had happened to her; she had been kissed before, because her tongue was also pushing forward to meet his own.

‘Is this why we came for a spin?’ she asked when they broke contact.

‘Would you be angry if it was?’ She shook her head. ‘Neither would I.’

‘That’s a helluva thing.’

‘I have work to do.’

‘You betcha,’ she said, her hand grabbing the back of his head, knocking off his hat and pulling him in till their lips were locked together again, and this time there was a trace of a moan, and whatever it is that signals from one human to another that they are willing was in Cal’s nostrils now.

‘You an outdoor girl?’ he asked.

She knew what that meant. ‘Heart and soul, Doc.’

‘There are a couple of rugs on the back seat.’

‘Is that planning?’

‘It’s a luxury car.’

‘Maybe they are in the wrong place.’

‘A walk?’

As she nodded he switched off the engine and Corrie took his hand to be pulled out of the driver’s door, which she held tight till Cal got the rugs out, there for rear seat passengers to cover their knees to keep out the cold.

‘You all right with this?’ he asked, his own voice now slightly hoarse. ‘There might be soldiers about.’

By way of a reply she led him away from the car and into the trees, holding his hand tightly – a pressure Corrie kept up until they came to a small clearing covered in fallen leaves. She looked at him and he nodded, then detached himself to spread out the rugs one on top of the other. Cal lay down and pulled her with him and immediately they were locked in an embrace.

He knew by what followed that Corrie Littleton was no firsttimer; she knew the body parts that mattered on him as well as he knew those that excited her and was uninhibited at seeking them out. The usual awkward gremlins getting out of clothing were met with the kind of intimate laughter that comes with slightly embarrassed struggles.

In these trees there was minimal sunlight and it was not really a warm day, but racing blood made up for any chill, that and activity that started slowly and rose in pace as both parties to this lovemaking extracted maximum pleasure from the act. When it was over, her bird-scattering screams had subsided and the breathing had settled a touch, she spoke into his shoulder in a small voice.

‘I hope you’ll still respect me, Doc.’

‘Don’t see why I should, I didn’t before.’

Her laugh filled the air and seemed to echo off the trees. ‘Callum Jardine, you are a piece of work.’

‘Which reminds me why I came,’ he whispered in her ear.

That set her off again, pealing laughter, which had Cal thinking this was a wholly different person to the one he thought he knew and he preferred it that way.

‘Can we just stay here for a few minutes?’

‘What makes you think I have the guts to say no?’

They lay for some fifteen minutes, not talking a lot but sharing whispered intimacies, until eventually Cal rose up and hauled her willingly to her feet. Hand in hand, once they had sorted out their clothing, they walked back to the car, each with a rug, and once they were seated in the front Cal asked her to get the maps and camera out of the glovebox.

‘It suddenly occurs to me we could have wandered into a minefield.’

‘Bang,’ she replied, as he handed her the camera.

‘What are you like as a photographer?’

‘As good as you are as a lover, Doc.’

Now it was his turn to startle the birds with his laughing.

It took a while and some map reading to get back on to the road to the town the Czechs called Aš, with many stops on the way: after tight bends, places where the road narrowed or where it was heavily enclosed by trees which, felled by blast, would block it completely – all possible points at which to spring an ambush.

At each one Cal took photographs, with Corrie insisting that he stand back to be snapped as well, and at no time did she enquire what he was up to; it was as though by making love their entire relationship had altered massively. She was happy and made no secret of it.

Asch was a pretty place nestling in rolling hills and surrounded by good rolling pasture. The houses, where they were not just grey stone, were painted in rose-pink and yellow and the style was similar to Cheb, with the tall steep-roofed buildings joining one another in long terraces.

The attempts to talk to what locals they came across were not a success: approaching anyone, even when Cal spoke to them in German, showed that they were an insular bunch not too keen to answer Corrie’s questions, some so nervous it was as though the mere act of talking to strangers would endanger them.

‘He might not have invaded,’ Cal ventured, ‘but it feels like Hitler’s here already.’

They found Henlein’s house by endless asking, as if they were tourists, Corrie’s notebook put away, and the first obvious fact was that, like the Victoria Hotel, it was guarded, in this case by two armed dolts who refused to believe Cal’s explanation and refused to allow him to use his camera. If they wanted photographs of the house they must get that from the owner.

‘Time to go back and meet the big cheese.’

As she slid into the passenger seat, he finally went to unlock and look in the boot. There was a small wooden box there, one big enough to hold a couple of pairs of shoes, covered in a cloth, with a faint smell he recognised – the almond odour of slightly sweating nitroglycerine in the Nobel 808. The cloth once moved showed a pair of impermeable gloves over a packet of the green flexible explosive, a couple of detonators, a coil of wire, and underneath that a battery-operated plunger.

‘You OK?’

‘Yes,’ he shouted back cheerfully, but he was not, he was concerned at what he was going to be asked to do. As he locked the boot lid he added, ‘You want to drive?’

‘Do you want to live?’

Unintentionally that was a very apposite question.

The delay in reacting to Gibson’s despatch was caused by Sir Hugh Sinclair giving his weekly briefing to the Home Secretary, which took up half of his morning and meant he did not read it till he arrived back, and when he did so it was buried under a collection of other cables from stations around the globe. Miss Beard, his faithful and long-serving secretary, had not heard him curse often, but she heard it now.

‘Get hold of Peter Lanchester at once and tell him to come immediately, then come back to take a message to be sent to Prague.’

Miss Beard was writing when Peter arrived, with Quex dictating that no action was to be taken in respect of either man, though all he knew of Nolan was that he was backup for Barrowman/Jardine, and they were to stay well clear.

‘Get that off as a flash message as soon as it is coded,’ Quex growled, turning to Peter Lanchester when she exited and throwing the cable across the desk. ‘I don’t know what McKevitt is up to but he has somehow dug out Jardine.’

‘The man’s a bloody menace.’

‘Never mind that, get down to Documents and have them issue you a diplomatic passport, we’ve no time for visas and the like, I want you over there babysitting Jardine and making sure McKevitt goes nowhere near him.’

‘He wouldn’t block him, surely, if he found out what Jardine’s after?’

Sinclair was thinking of his wigging from the PM again; as well as scarcely concealed desperation to avoid a war, he was now, it seemed, talking of going to Germany to meet Hitler face to face; it did not bode well.