‘Am I allowed to say, Lette,’ Cal said, leaning over her and looking down into her eyes, ‘you look tired?’

‘Two years nearly I don’t see you and that is what you want to tell me? I have three children, a job I hate, surrounded by foul-mouthed bigots who should be taken out to sea and thrown overboard, and no one to tell.’

‘Inge?’

‘I cannot burden her.’

‘I miss telling her stories.’

‘She misses you more than she misses the stories.’

‘What happened to the money I left for you?’

‘It is still in the account you opened, I haven’t touched it, and do I have to tell you why?’

‘Questions would be asked if you were suddenly flush. But the idea was you could get a better apartment, one where Inge can have some privacy. She’s of an age when she needs it.’

‘I think we might have to use that money one day for something more serious than another bedroom.’

‘I thought you might have found another man.’

‘If I can find one I can trust, and who knows how to treat me right, then maybe I will, but all I meet are beery shits.’

The one thing never discussed, the reason she was trusted to work in the local Nazi party office, was her late husband, a rabid National Socialist who had been killed in street fighting prior to the 1932 elections. To the men she mixed with every day, Brownshirt thugs, he was a hero; to her a bully and wife beater she was glad was dead.

He had met Lette when out running – she was an ex-hundred-metre sprinter, and with no knowledge of her background they had begun to stop and chat while catching breath. She found release in talking to him, a man who hated the Nazis as much as she did, and said so, as well as being active in getting Jews out of Germany. Lette had become his lover; only later did he discover where she worked and how many times she had used her position to save those under threat herself.

It was no wonder she was tired, never mind the children and the job; she was living a double life, cursing Jews as diseased rats one minute, trying to warn them of the danger they were in without getting caught the next. He had suggested she get out before; Lette had refused while there was good to be done. When it came to being brave, Cal thought her ten times the person he was.

‘Anyway, you have not told me why you came back.’

‘It might have been for you.’

She punched him in the balls then, which given he was naked, had him out of the bed and hopping. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘You are a liar.’

Still rubbing hard, he acknowledged the truth. ‘I know, and not a good one with you.’

It had been a strange relationship: he was fond of her without being in love, she, determined never to have another man rule her life. If there was sex between them, and there had just been that, and very enjoyable too, then it was based on deep friendship rather than passion, and if she knew that she was being used, it was a situation that troubled her not at all.

‘Two years without a man in my life,’ she said, her voice deep as she tugged him back into the bed. ‘I hope you have not been too wounded – by that punch.’

She was asleep when he left, and when she awoke she found a thick wad of high-denomination Reichsmarks on the table and a one-line note, which read, ‘For Inge’s new clothes. Invent a rich relative XXX.’

He was down at the docks before the line of railway trucks arrived, having used the papers he had to get through the main gate into the free port area and make sure the SS Barhill was at its berth, then getting back to the main gate to await the arrival. The way they took him was so professional that he did not see it coming at all: the van drew alongside, men in working gear appeared from nowhere, he was hit just hard enough to be stunned and then bundled into the back, thrown onto the metal floor with a knee digging into his back.

The command to stay still was backed up by a slap to the head and he knew his hands were being tied. He was thinking this did not make sense, unless Göring had had a change of mind; but why would he do that, because MCG in Athens would not get paid? Had there been a leak, with so many – far too many – people in on what was planned? There was nothing he could do but lie still and speculate.

The hollow sound when the van stopped told him he was in some kind of garage; there was the squeak of the door opening and he was hauled out, one man on each elbow hurrying him along through a doorway, then a couple of corridors, so he had trouble keeping his feet. He was taken into a bare room with a single chair in the middle, the sinister single light bulb above, then sat and tied down, realising as he moved that the legs were fixed to the floor. Then he saw the battered table against the wall with the rubber truncheons on it.

And then he was alone, but not for long, and the smiling blond fellow who entered gave him a shock, which he was not able to hide; this was bad, very bad, worse than Göring reneging. The last time he had seen Gottlieb Resnick had been on a Black Sea dockside, and the German had wanted to just shoot him then; he would want more now.

‘Mr Jardine,’ Resnick said in his accented, horribly ungrammatical English, ‘you did not me believe when auf Wiedersehen I said, but here are we, once more with each other in company.’

‘Are you still an Oberstürmbannführer or did you get busted to Gefreiter for that cock-up in Constanta?’

‘It had on me no effect, but when you to hell get there is waiting a very damaged Romanian colonel to greet you.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Painfully so, but before he expired finally he express did the wish that you would as he did suffer.’

‘Something you are looking forward to carrying out.’

‘Tut, tut, Jardine. My rank allows that I watch others pain inflict, though in case yours I might an exception make, the payment for a fool making me look.’

‘You really ought to do something about your English, it’s bloody awful.’

Resnick came close and bent low, so his nose was nearly touching Jardine’s.

‘You joke now, but beg to die you will and listen I will not. If these walls could speak maybe Yiddish you would hear the voices of those before you gone, the shits who think that the Reich they can cheat and take elsewhere their stolen money.’

The laugh was more chilling than the words. ‘They all think they their loot will keep hidden – that is the word, is it not? – but they tell, maybe when they have seen raped and sodomised their wife before their eyes by criminals diseased from the Hamburg jail, then to lie on the floor forced and clean Aryan piss drink. Even then some hold out, but when their pizzle is electric fried they talk.’

How long had they known he was in Hamburg? Did they know about Lette? Was there any point in even thinking about that?

‘I have been away from Hamburg too long; anything I can tell you is long cold.’

‘I from you want nothing of information. This is for my pleasure alone. You have out of me a fool made, I will make a wreck of you and maybe see how to die long it takes you.’

‘I don’t think I’m in a position to stop you, but there are people who know I am here in Hamburg.’

‘But not in this room! First, a little bubble I puncture. You will wonder how you in Germany I know.’ He went to the table and brought back a folder. ‘When a certain fellow you approached, he was not sure if you were who you said, so he contacted German embassy.’

Resnick produce two photos, one showing blurred figures and spots of light. ‘Hard to get right in dark, but in morning light, look at this.’

The second picture was as clear as day, not surprising given it had been taken at dawn. It showed him smiling and waving at the taxi in which MCG’s wife, Elena, was departing the Grande Bretagne Hotel.

‘Makes a whore of his wife, does he?’