The Furies

REBIRTH ISLAND

Sharp's head is reeling. Some of it, he thinks, is Murmansk vodka, most of it is exhaustion.

Now they know. The Nazi connection is for real. Three weapons were built. One down — the anthrax device, fired in Arizona — and two to go, each carrying sarin, according to Max. Somewhere.

Two days to go and we haven't a clue and we're stuck in the Siberian Arctic. Can it get worse? Yes, we can be snowed in. He glances anxiously out the window. It's half past two in the morning. The dull gray light hasn't changed much in hours and the snow is still falling heavily, as heavy as anything he's experienced in Chamonix. He has visions of Khatanga disappearing under snow, to reappear in the spring. Can an aircraft possibly take off in this?

"What happened then?" Ambra asks. "Don't stop now!"

Max Krafft bends and stretches a leg, holding his knee. "If I sit too long, my knees go. Anyway, I'm sure you've heard enough of this old man's ramblings, and you must be worn out after your adventures."

There is a gust of icy air, and snowflakes whirl briefly into the room. A small, plump woman enters carrying a long, shiny fish by the gills. It's frozen solid and its tail almost brushes the ground. She hands it to Krafft, all the while staring curiously at the foreigners. Then she gives them a toothless smile — Sharp thinks, Who says Russians don't smile? — and takes off her coat and scarf to reveal a dress embroidered in colorful squares. Krafft holds the fish up admiringly. "A beauty, Anna. It'll make us a first-class kulebiaka." He turns to Ambra and Lewis. "And you will join us."

Ambra says, "We'd have loved to, but we want to get away as soon as possible."

Krafft pulls a doubtful face. "Of course. But depending on the snowstorm, you may be here for a very long time. You may yet sample my fish pie." He turns to Anna and speaks rapidly. Sharp can't follow the words, and Anna replies in some thick accent that he can barely recognize as Russian. Then she leaves in a flurry of toothless smiles and snow.

"I have asked Anna to find out if the airfield is still open."

"Is there no other way out? What about the harbor?"

Krafft shakes his head. "Pack ice closes it up at this time of year. The aircraft stop flying very soon. That's why we stock up with provisions over the summer."

"What about the military helicopters?"

"Everything stops in a blizzard. You'll know in an hour or so, when Anna gets back."

"Which gives us time to know what happened to you next," says Ambra. "Don't leave us in suspense!"

"Yes, please," says Sharp. He wants the whole story.

In the heat, the fish is beginning to give off a slight oily smell. Max disappears into the kitchen with it. When he reappears he seems older, as if the memories have aged him. He sits down and nods, as if to himself. "To have come so far! It was a flying tribunal, all right. They had a fearful reputation from the occupied territories in the east. But they had a general on their hands, and not even a police regiment could string us up, they wouldn't dare. So they took us to Prinz Albert Strasse and handed us over to the Gestapo. We were split up. I remember the interrogation cell. Some joker had put a notice over the door: breathe deeply and remain calm. Would you believe that even today I have nightmares about it? Would you believe that? They held me for four weeks in a cell. We listened to Zhukov's artillery getting closer every day, praying for it to come."

Max fills his pipe and starts puffing again. He looks at the rising smoke, but Sharp senses he's not really seeing it, he's easing his time machine back into the past. "They were nervous, you see. General Bauer was a senior Wehrmacht officer. I had a spot of luck. One of the guards knew my name. He'd had a cousin, Franck, in my regiment, the Second SS Panzer Corps under Papa Hausser. Anyway it seems I'd saved this Franck's life in the Kharkov fiasco. I don't even remember the incident, but he'd mentioned it in a letter. So the guard kept me informed, which was all he could do for me in that situation. He told me that army officers were sending outraged messages into the Gestapo office every day. It was a very difficult time after July 20 — you know …"

"The assassination attempt on Hitler," Sharp says.

"The Wehrmacht legal section said that under Paragraph Eleven of the military legal code, General Bauer was entitled to a court-martial. The members of this court had to be chosen by the Führer himself. That was getting them really scared. Here is this extremely high-ranking officer, and a couple of scientists who'd just made a weapon that could turn the tide of the war, and the Gestapo had arrested them. They didn't dare go to Hitler with that."

Sharp says, "But what could the army have done?"

"A great deal, if it only had the guts. There were rumors that Wehrmacht and Gestapo were practically at war. I think the Gestapo thought the Potsdam garrison might jump into trucks and take direct action against Prinz Albert Strasse. There was a precedent for this, the Röhm business, you remember. But by that time the army had enough trouble fighting Russia and America on two fronts, thanks to the Führer's genius."

"How did you survive, a Gestapo prisoner?" Ambra asks.

"I don't know. I could hear screams and sobbing all around the floor, day and night. It was hell on earth, something out of Dante's Inferno. I was in constant agony wondering whether any of these screams came from Daniela. I didn't give a damn about me. What had I done? I'd had a liaison with a Jewess when I didn't even know she was Jewish. Daniela was being kept in part of the building where my guard had no access. But when the Russians closed in, the senior officers melted away, leaving us to the lower ranks. And what did these thugs care about military legal codes? One morning I was herded into a room with about a dozen others. We heard shooting. Then the clowns told us we'd been spared to prove that the Gestapo don't shoot their prisoners, would you believe that? The others were murdered."

Ambra hesitates to ask. "And Daniela? What became of her?"

"I don't know. I never saw her again." There is a long silence. Krafft is staring at his column of pipe smoke. Then: "They shot everyone but us, the twelve of us in this cell. We heard the guns getting closer to us, cell by cell. And then they stopped, and everything went quiet in the building. The Gestapo rats had scurried for shelter. Outside, Zhukov's guns got louder, and buildings were collapsing, and then, on May 2, the guns stopped firing. We waited for a day, with no food and water and not even a bucket for a toilet. We could smell smoke from the fires outside. And the next morning a key turned and there was a Russian soldier, a Mongol, I think. Never was a man hugged so eagerly."

"It meant you'd survived. You made it through the war." Sharp says.

Krafft nods silently.

Sharp has seen this on TV documentaries. Old men talking about a war that's been over for sixty years, trying to hold back tears as if it happened yesterday. And young people without the faintest idea. "And once you were released?"

"Released?" Krafft manages a smile. "They took us in a truck to Tempelhof Airport, which seemed to be a collecting point for prisoners. The devastation in the streets was terrible. Bodies everywhere. The Russians soon found out who I was and what I'd been up to. I expected to be shot — what an ending after all I'd come through! Instead they locked me up in a big warm flak tower with a few others. There was food. Fresh prisoners kept arriving. We were all mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. After a week they drove us to a provincial railway station that the bombers had missed. It was the start of a long trek, across Siberia. By that time we knew they weren't going to polish us off — we were going to be useful to them in some way.

"First they sent us to some godforsaken place called Obolensk, halfway between Moscow and the Caspian Sea. It wasn't so bad. The man in charge was a Dr. Lev Lifschitz. Lev was a scientist like ourselves. The military pumped me for information about sarin gas. Years later I learned they'd found a lot of documents that the German High Command had hidden down some mine in Silesia. It covered the whole Nazi bioweapons program and it was a much bigger business than I'd realized. But the documents said nothing about the means of delivery, which was my specialty. They said nothing about the Furies. We were a secret within a secret, you see."

"So you carried on where you left off?" Sharp asks.

"At first it was just pencil-and-paper stuff. They hadn't the facilities for anything else. After a couple of years they took me farther east, to a place in Kazakhstan. God, to think that I'd hated Obolensk! This place made Obolensk look like Paris. I spent a lot of time putting theory into practice, testing evil things on a site called Rebirth Island, in the Aral Sea. You don't want to go to Rebirth Island."

"We won't," Sharp assures him. Actually it's been cleaned up. But the average journalist might not know that.

"Don't."

"How long have you been here in Khatanga?"

"Fifteen years. I tried to find out what happened to Daniela after the collapse of communism, but — nothing."

Ambra says, "I hear a funny mixture of German and Russian spoken here."

"This is where they dumped Germans they no longer needed. Quite a few people here have German parents or grandparents. After Kazakhstan they took me to Novosibirsk. I worked at Vektor."

"I've heard of it," Sharp says.

Krafft raises his eyebrows in surprise. "The State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology. Bioweapons to the ultimate degree. You wouldn't believe the things they developed there. That's where I met my Katya."

"You're married?" Ambra asks in surprise.

"Was. She was a Russian girl, a chemist. We never had children. It was a conscious decision. Novosibirsk was no place to bring up children. Too many of them died. Katya died of leukemia fifteen years ago and they sent me here. And that's my life."

"It's quite a story, Max," Sharp says quietly.

Krafft has come to the end of his pipe. He taps it into an ashtray and blows through the stem, making gurgling noises. "What's it like in Germany these days?"

The question astonishes Sharp. "Don't you know? You have television."

"When the movie comes to an end, they go back to the beginning and play it over again. We love the American videos."

Ambra says, "I think you'd like the new Berlin."

"Do they still have the Tiergarten?"

"They have. The city's been totally rebuilt and it's a hive of construction even yet."

"But the Unter den Linden? The bombers destroyed it."

"It's been rebuilt. And there's a completely new district, Potsdamer Platz. They diverted the Spree to create a new central station for the trains …"

"What? They diverted the Spree? I don't believe you!"

"… there's a restaurant two hundred meters above the ground …"

"Two hundred meters above the ground? Am I to believe this?"

"… which revolves twice an hour. Hitler's bunker is buried under a car park. Speer's architecture is gone. The wartime rubble has been cleared off to the edge of the city, all overgrown. Berlin is probably the liveliest city in Europe."

"I would love to see it before I die."

There is another gust of freezing air, and Anna waddles in again. She gabbles something to Max, shaking her head. Krafft turns to Sharp and Ambra. "I'm afraid the snowstorm has closed us in. There are no planes flying in or out."

Sharp thinks, Oh God. "Is there really no way out? We do have urgent business."

"I thought you might have."

Ambra says, "You've no idea. We must get back." The "we're journalists" pretense is all but gone.

"You're stuck here at least for the duration of the storm." Krafft turns to the woman. Sharp can just follow his Russian. "Anna, this young couple are joining us for dinner. After that they will need a place to sleep."

More gabbling. Krafft translates: "Anna's son is an electrical engineer and she's very proud of him. He's in Moscow over the winter which means there's a spare room in her house. It's a squeeze, I'm afraid."

Anna is nodding happily. The young couple in love.

Sharp and Ambra exchange glances. She says, "We'll just have to make the most of it."

FLIGHT FROM KHATANGA

"This hasn't happened to me in ages," Sharp says.

"What?" Ambra, sitting on the edge of a narrow twin bed, starts to untie her bootlaces. The bed creaks. "Eating Siberian fish pie?"

"Being stuck in a snowbound cottage with a comely wench."

"Don't get any ideas, big boy." She sighs and slides her boots under the bed. "So now we know. There are two more weapons."

"If the U-boats delivered them." Sharp, on the bed opposite, is hardly a meter from her. He feels his brow, waxy from heat and alcohol.

"We daren't assume otherwise. And they're carrying a ton of sarin apiece, for dispersal at height."

"Meaning that, as people-destroying devices, they're on a par with atom bombs."

"On a par with atom bombs. Oh dear. Something puzzles me," Ambra says, slipping off heavy socks. "Max was on Petrov's he might know list. That means they don't have the firing codes, not yet. So how did they manage to fire the Arizona device? Maybe the bad guys have all they need to fire the other two?"

"I don't have answers, Ambra, I'm past thinking, I'm too tired."

Ambra stretches and yawns, and wriggles her ankles. "So what's next?"

"Sleep. If you're tired, you make bad decisions. I got that much out of the army." Sharp and his rucksack disappear into a small bathroom, and he emerges wearing thick, over-long pajamas with green and pink stripes. Ambra is under blankets, her head on a thick pillow, socks and black dress at the foot of the bed. She stares and puts her hand to her mouth.

"East German border guard surplus," Sharp says.

She snorts.

"They cost me fifty rubles," he complains.

She erupts.

"Is that …?"

"Yes."

"I'm inquiring about a permit that your department issued to three English tourists six months ago. They have arrived in Khatanga."

"What? Did you say six months ago?"

"Yes." Pavlovski thinks, Uh-huh. "Yes. Six months ago."

"There must be some mistake, Commissioner. The business of issuing permits was transferred away from us nine months ago."

"I'm sorry, but I have examined these permits and they're six months old and they are carrying your signature."

"That's not possible."

Gosha Pavlovski says, "I see. In that case I think we may be dealing with illegal entry for some reason, perhaps espionage."

"My God. How can I help?"

"I'd like you to open up your office, go through your files, and check whether permits were issued on March 13 to the following people …"

"Commissioner Pavlovski, I can tell you now that they were not. However, I will open my office now and have my people check whether these names are anywhere on our files. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. It may take some hours."

"I'm a patient man."

Pavlovski stretches, yawns, and leans back in his chair. Being police chief out here isn't easy, it's a big territory to cover. But every now and then something comes up that makes it all worth it, compensates for the usual dreary round of drunken fights, petty thefts, and cigarette smuggling. This one smells of something serious, maybe industrial espionage involving the Norilsk copper mines, maybe something involving the security of the Motherland — like the unmapped radar station near Chelyuskin Point? He sighs again, a compound of exhaustion and satisfaction. He looks out at the thick snow drifting down outside. They aren't going anywhere. He has time for a snooze. He's looking forward to the interrogation, before the bigwigs from Murmansk turn up to steal the kudos.

Knock knock.

There's no way to tell the time from the daylight streaming under the black curtains. Sharp feels as if he's been asleep for maybe half an hour. He disengages himself from heavy blankets and sits up. His head is throbbing. Ambra's bed is empty. He can hear her in the corridor, speaking in Russian. Anna looks in, covered to the neck in a grimy dressing gown, gabbling something, and then Ambra pokes her head around the door.

"Salvation! There's a break in the weather. A couple of military transports are coming in from Murmansk and one's heading back to Moscow. We have to leave this minute."

Visibility is about a mile. The end of the runway is just visible; beyond that, ground and sky merge into a white fog. Across from them, beyond a clutter of low buildings, black, gnarled tundra is scattered over the snow and probably stretches for fifteen hundred kilometers. They stand and shiver in a breeze straight from the North Pole. Sharp keeps his earflaps down and wonders if they've missed the plane. Come on, turn up!

After twenty minutes, a giant four-wheel drive approaches from the direction of Khatanga. "Pavlovski?" Ambra wonders, and Sharp feels his stomach knotting. It roars to a halt meters from them, snow chains rattling. Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Tom Cruise descend unsteadily; they're just recognizable under layers of fur. "You guys like a ride to Novaya Sibir? We can squeeze you in." The voice is Cruise's, coming from somewhere between an enormous fur hat and a turned-up fur collar.

"I'm sorry but we have no time," says Sharp. "You have the range, in that?"

"Where y'all heading, then?" Marilyn asks. Red eyes stare at them. Cruise is pulling rifles and rucksacks out of the four-wheel.

"Murmansk," Ambra lies.

"Murmansk, yeah. You got the material you wanted?"

"Uh-huh."

Judy clears her throat. "There's some real photogenic stuff where we're headed. It'll be terrific for your piece. Camp's set up and we'll be back tomorrow."

Presently a little orange propeller plane with skis emerges unsteadily from the mist. Cruise picks up rifles, tosses one to Marilyn, who catches it deftly. "Join us, it'll be a gas."

"No thanks," says Sharp.

"Come on, you'll love it." From the corner of his eye, Sharp senses something about Ambra's body language. She is edging away, casually, flapping her arms. The little plane slithers alarmingly along the snow but comes to a stop with precision, meters from the huddled group. The pilot is wearing dark glasses and a Cossack hat.

"We need to get back."

"I don't think you get it, pal. We insist." Cruise raises his rifle, pointing it at Sharp's chest. Marilyn is pointing hers at Ambra's head. "Get on board."

"What's this about?"

"Tell you what it's about. We want you on that plane."

"Will we be alive or dead when you throw us into the Sibirsk Sea?"

"Your choice. You can get it here if you like."

"You can't do a thing to us here. Bodies are evidence."

Ambra, pale-faced, says, "But as soon as we're on the plane …"

The propeller is revving up. And another vehicle, this one a people carrier, is emerging out of the haze from the direction of Khatanga. Please, God, let it be Pavlovski. It pulls to a halt next to a building yards from them. Cruise and Marilyn lower their rifles uncertainly. Judy says, "Merde." Half a dozen soldiers jump out, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, earflaps down. They look incuriously at the little group. Ambra walks over to them and talks in a business-like manner, pointing to the Americans. The soldiers, riled by whatever she said, march over to the Americans. There's a lot of pushing and the Americans are hustled toward the airport terminal. Cruise looks back at Ambra and Sharp murderously, but then they vanish into the terminal.

Sharp becomes aware that his legs are trembling violently. Ambra is still pale. She says, "National intelligence, I can smell them."

"Those were Downey's killers."

"Are you serious?"

"I've just recognized the bloke. I saw him outside the safe house, on Paul's Walk. He was wearing earphones like an iPod except that he was almost certainly listening in to everything we said. And he matches the description Craig gave of one of the people he was trying to get away from."

"We all thought Craig was imagining things."

"These are our people." Sharp tries to will the trembling away, but it intensifies over the next few minutes and slowly spreads through his body. Come on, plane, Pavloski is coming! Get us away from here, quickly! "What did you say to the soldiers?"

"I told them the Americans didn't have proper permits to fly to the pole. I'm probably right. They should have had soldiers with them. They're supposed to notify border guards to make sure all the formalities are being observed."

"Fantastic. That should keep them held up for hours. But what about us?"

"We're going home." Ambra is flapping her arms again.

"Unless we've missed Anna's plane."

"Or Pavlovski turns up."

An agonizing forty minutes pass before glimmering headlights appear just above the horizon, followed by a heavy twin-propellered aircraft. Sharp recognizes it: an AN-26 military transport, white with red flashes, as if someone has tried to give it a trim like a sports car. It lands heavily and lumbers along the runway, throwing up clouds of snow.

And yet another people carrier, trailing smoke. God help us!

But still no police chief. Just Max Krafft, heavily wrapped against the cold and with a Cossack hat, being helped out of the people carrier by a young driver. Sharp wonders how much more cliff-hanging he can take. The transport plane is now disgorging army officers, and a truck loaded with sacks is driving up to it.

"I had to say good-bye." Already a tanker has pulled up, and someone is dragging a fuel pipe over the snow.

Ambra says, "This is unauthorized travel. I'll probably have to bribe somebody." She hurries in the direction of the pilot, who is standing next to the tanker, lighting up, while vapor from the aviation fuel shimmers the air around.

Krafft says, "There's something else." There is something in his expression: anxiety, but more than that. Sharp waits. Krafft glances at Ambra. She is talking animatedly to the pilot, who is shaking his head doubtfully. Krafft takes Sharp by the forearm and leads him a few yards away. Men are tossing sacks from the truck through the open door.

"What is it, Max?"

"Daniela." He's still gripping Sharp's forearm, and the grip has tightened.

"She defiled the Aryan race, Max, and she was Jewish. They must have killed her."

"That's it, I'm not sure. Not a hundred percent. I need to know. I need to know for certain."

The last sack is on board, and the pilot has disappeared back into the aircraft. "If I find out, I'll get the information to you, one way or another. That's a promise."

"Lewis!" The engines are revving up and Sharp lip-reads, rather hears, his name. Ambra is waving at the door. "Lewis!"

"Lewis? Your real name is Lewis?"

"It's a long story."

"I didn't think you were journalists."

"Look, I'm not free to …"

"Will you be looking for Daniela? If she's still alive? Whatever you're up to."

"Max, I can't answer that."

"If you find her, tell her something. Tell her …"

Ambra is arm-waving frantically, hair and scarf blowing. She jumps out, ducks under the slipstream, and shouts, "They're leaving now, with or without us. I'm going, Lewis." She sprints back to the aircraft.

Sharp tries to disengage but Max's nails are digging hard into his forearm. "No, no. Tell Daniela this: Never walk backward drinking schnapps."

Sharp stares. Krafft's eyes return the stare intensely. "Tell her that. Tell nobody but Daniela."

"Never walk backward drinking schnapps?"

"It was a private thing. In the whole wide world, only she and I know what it means. If you tell her that, she'll know you got the message from me. She'll know that I'm still alive."

"Max. Pavlovski may be looking for us. We don't want uniforms to be waiting for us in Moscow."

"Moscow? What's this about Moscow? Didn't I hear you were waiting for the Murmansk flight? An old fool like me gets so confused. And Pavlovski's in no hurry."

Somebody is stretching for the door, looking over at Sharp.

"One last thing. Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"At Natzweiler. Did you fetch the vials from the back of the car?"

Snow is settling on Krafft's mustache. He hesitates; Sharp can't understand the expression on the old man's face. When he speaks, Lewis can hardly hear him above the whine of the engines. "Don't make judgments. It was a world you'll never know."

"Screw that. Did you?"

"It was a long time ago. I can't remember."

The fuel tanker has backed off. Ambra reappears at the aircraft door, beckoning frantically. Her scarf blows away. Sharp disengages Max's arm and sprints for the plane.

Sharp is trembling, and his brow is clammy. Strange how the shaking starts after the danger has passed. He glances behind. The flagon of vodka is nearly empty. A couple of men in blue overalls, unshaven, are sitting at the rear of the aircraft, no doubt with another Stoli or a Cruiser to be shared between them. At least they seem harmless. Across from him, Ambra is stretched out on a double seat, fast asleep, her coat over her like a blanket. He gazes down at the frozen taiga drifting below him. He thinks he can just make out a herd of reindeer, black spots against white.

The aircraft trundles on, over landscape that hardly changes by the hour. The distances are planetary, measured not in kilometers but in degrees of latitude and longitude. Sharp feels strangely unsettled but can't put his finger on why. It's the near miss at Khatanga, taking them to within seconds of death. No, not that. It's some time, as he slowly unwinds and the dryness in his throat eases, before he understands: He's inside a time machine. As the military transport trundles him back from the edge of the world, it's also carrying him forward in time, to plasma screens and space probes, DNA and mobile phones, Madonna and microwave ovens. Hess and Oberlin, the Führer and the Gestapo, the Death's Head and the Teutonic myths — the whole lunatic asylum of long ago — is becoming something unreal, a grainy old movie, fading into the mists of time. He glances across at Ambra and feels a twinge of admiration. The lady is not for shaking. He looks at his watch, subtracts time zones, and meditates.

THE RABBIT CONFESSES

The Grand Inquisitor pulls the tab on a can of juice and pours fizzy liquid into a tumbler. The room is bare apart from a standard civil service hat stand, a filing cabinet with combination lock, the desk and chairs. The desk, too, is bare, apart from some sheets of A4 paper in front of Jocelyn and Gordon. The view over the Thames is breathtaking but nobody is looking, not today.

Jocelyn's face is white and severe. "That American story is pure fantasy."

"No, Jocelyn, they wanted to kill us."

"Do you even begin to understand the implications of what you're saying, Lewis?"

"Of course." Stupid question. Sharp hasn't had a lot of sleep and can't hide his irritation.

Gordon says, "You seem to be claiming that someone is trying to wreck the investigation. Frankly I find that beyond belief."

Sharp returns the hostile stare. "How many people knew we were heading there?"

"To the Taymyr Peninsula? Jocelyn and myself. A few other senior people in this building. National intelligence colleagues such as Caddon. One or two people in the Cabinet Office and the PM's secretariat."

"Someone on that list is on the side of the bad guys."

Jocelyn puts a world of meaning into a sigh. "Let me put this in simple language."

"Please do."

"You were tired, distraught, and frightened, and your imagination did the rest. You imagined that the police commissioner spotted the forged paperwork. You imagined that a simple invitation by the Americans was an attempted abduction. The fact is, the pair of you were in a blue funk from the moment you landed in Khatanga."

From the safety of a London office, it sounds horribly plausible.

The intelligence chief starts to flick through the papers in front of him in sharp, irritated movements. He has the face of a hanging judge. "You've learned nothing. Your Siberian journey was a waste of time."

Sharp sits upright, bewildered, his exhaustion suddenly forgotten.

Jocelyn says, unpleasantly, "There have been developments in your absence."

Gordon sniffs. "This Max Krafft — he believes in flying saucers, you say?"

"He had a thick file on them, mostly old newspaper cuttings and magazine articles."

"Here's another scenario. Yes, Krafft was taken into the Soviet Union at the end of the war. The Soviets had their Paperclip, too, as had the British and the French. Maybe he was part of IG Farben and involved in the production of sarin or whatever. The Russians plundered whole factories and ended up with the biggest biochemical weapons program in history." He fidgets with the paper some more. "They abducted thousands of people from East Germany, pulling them from their beds at gunpoint even after the war."

"So what?"

"So Krafft spends the next forty or fifty years in a Siberian gulag, working on the production of biochemical weapons. Over those years he builds up a fantasy world. He believes it. He has it worked out, in his head, in every detail. He's totally convinced when he tells you about it because, so far as he's concerned, it's the truth. But those who know him are aware that he's a crazy man and that his truth doesn't exist outside his own head. They practically told you as much at this party you mention in the report. He might with equal conviction have told you he'd been for a ride in a flying saucer. We can place no weight on his story."

"And Petrov's list?" Ambra is tight-lipped.

"Petrov was in Obolensk in the early sixties, at the same time as Max. They must have met in the gulag, probably knew each other well. Petrov probably got the same fantasy tale and wanted to check it out — bioweapons are his business. But it doesn't check out. Nothing in the documentation brought out of the Silesian mine at the war's end indicates that the Krafft weapon even existed. The fermentation vats in Spandau, yes. Twelve thousand tons of tabun gas, yes, dumped in the sea at the end of the war. But city-destroying weapons?" C shakes his head. "Not a trace, neither documentation nor evidence on the ground. What you have brought back from Khatanga are an unreliable old man's fantasies. Professor Duncan warned us about you and we should have listened."

Suddenly Sharp is fed up with the whole thing. "Let me try to help you with this. Alec Duncan is a second-rate phony. I'm the expert. You asked for my professional input and I'm giving you this: An unidentified terrorist group has somehow obtained old Nazi weapons. Expect two massive bioweapons attacks — somewhere — in a few days."

C replies brusquely. "But we can find no record in the U-boat loading lists of the cargoes Krafft describes. There's nothing in the depositions of survivors. That alone casts doubt on the whole story."

"A secret within a secret. Goering's words."

"According to Krafft. But there's a bigger problem with his story, Sharp. Krafft tells of sarin in two of the Furies. I've consulted again with Porton Down on this." C waves a CHOT printout, on the "secure" pink paper. "Sarin decays after a few weeks. It's a highly unstable chemical. The sarin in the Furies, assuming these existed in the first place, would long since have become useless. If the terrorists have the sophistication and knowledge to locate these supposed weapons, they will also know that they contain a deactivated, harmless substance. The Krafft story cannot be true."

Sharp plays his ace. "But the Arizona bomb. That's a Nazi weapon, not an old man's fantasy."

"Krafft saw it on CNN."

"What?"

"They do have television, even in Khatanga? The news broke while you were en route there. The debris in Fossil Creek is being reassembled in Wright-Patterson AFB. We now have clear evidence that it was constructed by local militiamen. The pictures have been around the world on TV."

"And the letter? The three little maids?"

"A clever piece of work," C says. "Designed to dissipate our resources, to mislead. Why would a genuine terror group give us such a clear warning of time and place? Incidentally, we know who wrote it."

They know who wrote it.

Jocelyn says, "The swastika engraving was part of that false trail, Lewis. Krafft saw the news report, and it triggered his fairy tale. In his mind, he has transplanted some of his gulag work to his flying saucer fanaticism. The man's a complete crank, and no wonder, living out there for most of his life. His story doesn't fit. It doesn't fit the submarines, it doesn't fit the sarin. I regret ever having pulled you into this."

Gordon sips lemonade. "Nothing useful has emerged from your Siberian trip."

Sharp says, "You say the device was built by local militiamen?"

"It was, with biochemicals presumably supplied by Petrov."

"And the dead microbiologists?"

"Meaningless coincidences. You gave us a conspiracy theory built on sand."

"And your evidence for the militia?"

Gordon says, "A confession. From this Br'er Rabbit, Virgin Rabbit, whatever."

"Which you take seriously?"

"DNA places him at the launch site of the UFO. He and the fried dentist belonged to the same militia."

Jocelyn slides over a piece of paper. "You might want to take a look at this." Ambra and Sharp look at it together:

"It's not perfect," she admits. "But according to Virgil Rabbit, the local militia call themselves the Phoenix Storks. One of the things the FBI found in their so-called log cabin was a reel of a 1917 movie called The Black Storks, which they tell us was a propaganda film amounting to an early precursor of the Nazi movement."

"And the other letters?"

"The FBI don't yet know, but it will no doubt emerge from interrogation of this Virgil Rabbit. He is being detained under the Patriot Act and is being questioned as we speak. Incidentally, he used to be a steelworker in Idaho, employed by Hendrix Steel."

"Hendrix Steel." Sharp briefly shuts his eyes. "I see you're beginning to get the drift. Rabbit acquired the venturi tubes from his old workplace. They created the device and stored it down the mine shaft. Being good little modern-day Nazis, they engraved the swastika on the casing. And Rabbit wrote the letter that had us all in a panic. He confessed to that, too."

"But …"

"But nothing, Ms. Volpe. His DNA matches that on the letter. The pair of you lost your nerve and spent precious time chasing a crank who had nothing to give but nonsense. I don't operate a blame culture," says Gordon, his voice icy, "but if I did …"

"And the other Furies?" Sharp asks, but he knows the answer.

"What other Furies?" Sharp suddenly has a startling image of the intelligence chief as an enraged wrestler leaping at him from the ropes. "Even if they exist, there is no evidence that they constitute a threat to London."

"But they might."

"Anything is possible, Sharp. But where's the evidence? You should be aware that a considerable amount of time has been wasted backing up your stupid line of investigation. Senior people at the highest levels of government and the secret services have been involved in pursuing a wild goose chase. I suggest, Ms. Volpe, that you take a few days' leave and use the time to consider your future in this organization. As for you, Mr. Sharp, I suggest you go back to making pizzas or whatever you do for a living. We have no further use for you here. I am meeting the prime minister this afternoon and will be advising him to stand down Cobra. This is now an internal matter for the FBI. You're both out of the loop with immediate effect. Finished. Canceled."

Jocelyn gives Sharp a tight smile. "I never really wanted you on this team, Lewis. The Nazi connection was always a long shot."

"Not what you were saying when you found out what was happening to the old German scientists."

"And I wouldn't waste time raking around Mittelwald or the convent. These places don't exist."

MITTELWALD

"Situation analysis?" Sharp asks.

"End of a promising career." Ambra looks as if she's in shock. They emerge from the MI6 building into a light drizzle. "Uncle Dino offered me a job once, managing a café on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh …" The drizzle is fine, wet, and penetrating. They walk along the path at the side of the building, past the traffic barrier, conscious of watchful electronic eyes. A red London bus rumbles past. Along the street a cluster of tourists is clicking cameras, watched by the armed policewoman at the steel gate of the goods vehicle entrance. And across the road, in an archway under a railway line, the Pico Bar & Grill is stacked to capacity.

"Fancy it? Craig told me they do a terrific tapas."

Ambra shakes her head. "It's stuffed with spooks. I've had it with spooks."

Sharp says, "Okay, I know a good wine bar near the Strand. It's stuffed with yuppies."

Ambra says, "Lead me there, quick."

The Chardonnay is chilled to perfection and the bar is crowded and warm. Sharp keeps getting whiffs of garlic, and the blackboard says that today's special is spaghetti alle vongole. They are at a corner table. It's a good spot not to be overheard, and Sharp wonders playfully if the table is wired. "The U-boat loading lists. I want to look at them for myself."

Ambra runs a sharp-nailed finger down the condensation on her glass. "What are you getting at, Lewis?"

"Someone's trying to get in the way. Craig Downey vanishes without a trace. Petrov's safe leads us to Max Krafft in Siberia, whereupon a phony confession has everyone rushing to Arizona."

"A phony confession?"

"Designed to throw us."

"And the U-boat lists? What about them?"

"Ambra, how would I know?"

"Hello, calling Lewis, are you there? Return to Planet Earth, please."

"You think Max's story was a fantasy? Is that what you think?"

She shakes her head, takes a sip at the Chardonnay. "Something to bear in mind, Lewis. If Craig really was murdered by people on the inside, and we're the only two left chasing this line …"

"No worries, we're discredited. Why create ripples by bumping us off?"

"Do you know what day this is, Lewis? Thursday, Lewis, Thursday afternoon. London gets it on Saturday and we're sitting here drinking coffee."

"You're off the case, Lewis. Services no longer required."

"I know, but, Jocelyn …"

"You shouldn't be in the flat. You were supposed to collect your stuff and vacate it."

"This is the acid test. If Krafft's story is rubbish, this will shoot it down."

"Call you back."

Sharp has the letters arrayed on the trestle table:

They wait. Jocelyn probably has the information on her desk, but it takes her seven minutes to ring back. Bitch.

"Okay, Lewis, here we go. I shouldn't be doing this."

"Do you have C, H, E, I, or N among the new letters?"

There's the briefest pause. Then a surprised: "Actually, yes. They've recovered C, H, and N. How did you get that?"

Ambra slides the pre-written cards into place as Sharp repeats the letters:

"The letters more or less complete Hochwerk and Tisiphone."

"Tisiphone?"

"The Three Furies of Greek mythology. Three little maids by the name of Meg, Alec, and Tiffanee. The biggest secret the Nazis had, we're only now finding out about it …"

"If you believe this Krafft story …"

"… and yet whoever wrote the letter knew about Megaera, Alecto, and Tisiphone."

This time the pause goes on so long that Sharp begins to wonder if Jocelyn is still on the line. But then she is saying, "I still go for the Phoenix Storks."

"Come on, not even C would buy that now. Krafft didn't see these letters on CNN?"

"They're not in the public domain. Something else. The Virgil Rabbit suspect …"

"The steel man …"

"Ah, the FBI are having problems with his testimony."

Lewis senses Jocelyn's embarrassment, doesn't feel inclined to let her off the hook. "What does that mean in plain English, Jocelyn? His story doesn't check out?"

Paper is rustling at Jocelyn's end. "The technical people have used X-ray fluorescence on the flying saucer debris. It's armaments steel all right, an alloy with carbon content less than 0.07 percent, silicon less than 0.7 percent, phosphorus less than 0.03 percent, et cetera. The thing is, Hendrix turns out dozens of steels, but not one of them has the exact composition of the Arizona tubes. And they don't do venturi tubes like the Arizona UFO. The guy's a nut."

"We're back on the case, then?"

"The first autopsies on the reservation Indians are in. Death wasn't due to anthrax, it was due to inhalation of some caustic chemical."

"Naturally. Daniela's booby trap worked. Back on the case or not?"

"But what about the sarin with its three-week life? And the U-boat lists with no mention of Krafft's machines? And the convent that doesn't exist? You're giving me an unreliable old man's dreamworld, Lewis, just as Duncan said you would."

"No, I'm giving you a choice. Either find two city-destroying machines within forty-eight hours, or someplace to bury a million people. Oh, by the way, the Plague of Thebes ha ha ha, the punishment sent by the gods in the Sophocles story?"

"What about it?"

"It was delivered by three Furies."

Jocelyn hangs up.

"The Poor Clares are the Second Order of the Friars Minor, whatever that means. They were founded in 1212 by Saint Francis of Assisi and they specialize in contemplation and penance." Ambra is lying stomach-down on the thick rug, typing on the laptop with two fingers. "The convent was built on the site of a church founded in AD 760 by Duke Odilo; it was burned by the Huns in 974 and rebuilt by Duke Frederick around 1186. Bits of it go back to then. Burned down in 1595 and rebuilt in Baroque style in 1612, whereupon it was promptly burned down yet again, this time by Swedish soldiers in the Thirty Years' War. Rebuilt, and confiscated by Emperor Joseph in 1750. Purchased by some archduke as a hunting lodge who extended it. His descendants finally returned it to the church as a gift in 1920."

Sharp says, "That explains the wine cellar that mystified Max. It was a leftover from the hunting lodge days."

"Nice one, Lewis. Occupied by the Poor Clares since then. Uneventful history until June 1942."

"And in July 1942 the scientists moved in. So what happened to the nuns? Where did they go?"

"I've got that, too." Ambra taps a little more. "I'll translate. On June 29, 1942, the convent was raided by a brigade of SS-Oberabschnitt Danube following an informer's report that the nuns were harboring Jewish children. About thirty children were removed, along with a dozen nuns and a similar number of novitiates. Their fate is unknown."

"I wonder if Max ever suspected."

"The Allies flattened the convent in the closing days of the war because they thought Goering was visiting. Obviously some garbled intelligence. So Jocelyn was right in a sense. The convent doesn't exist, not anymore. But it did in Krafft's time. And look, here are the floor plans."

Sharp examines the screen. "Max got it right. His description matches. It proves he was in the convent."

Ambra is looking worried. "But in what capacity? Could he have been part of the SS-Oberabschnitt Danube?"

"What?"

"Hauling children and nuns into trucks, the Catholic SS man? Could the events of that day have haunted him for the rest of his life? Maybe over the years in the gulag he gradually replaced the whole sordid event by a heroic fantasy, like his Sister Lucy fixation? Maybe at the end, the fantasy turned into reality in his head?"

"What about Mittelwald?"

"There's no such place — I've Googled it. Lewis — my God, Lewis, could Gordon and Jocelyn be right after all?"

"If they are, I'll disembowel myself."

Ambra switches off the laptop and stands up. "Is there no central heating in this horrible place? I'm freezing."

"I have a spare pair of East Germans if you're interested."

"Down, boy. Just find the heating control."

Sharp piles the remains of the Chinese carry-out on a single plate and heads for the kitchen. Upriver, they are having yet another party. Or maybe it's the same one of a few days ago, still continuing. Boom boom boom, those low-frequencies penetrating the glass. He fills a kettle and puts tea bags into a couple of mugs. The clock on the microwave oven tells him it's just after two in the morning.

Ambra calls through. "Who occupied Bavaria after the war?"

"The Americans. The Bavarian redoubt, they called it. It was a big worry in the closing days of the war. There were fears that the Nazis could hold out indefinitely, and rumors that secret weapons were being developed in huge underground facilities. I guess people were getting pretty nervous as the war approached its end. Specifically, I think it was the Sixth Army."

"Could there be anything in their archives?"

"We need two months instead of two days." Sharp feels despair, tries to shrug it off, but it keeps drifting back. Can Jocelyn and C be right after all? Is the whole thing a crazy old man's fantasy? And even if not, where are the Furies? Where are they? The whole bloody thing is hopeless.

"We could ask Neal Caddon. Get his people to do the spadework."

"We're off the case, Ambra."

"But does Neal know it yet? We'll send an e-mail signed with Jocelyn's name, copied to us here."

"There's a devious mind behind that innocent face, Ambra."

"You don't know the half of it." She stretches. "You send the e-mail. Skip the tea, I'm for bed."

"The flat's secure. Not even the Hanslope Park locksmiths could get in."

"But for all I know you're Jack the Ripper."

Sharp, on the couch, wakens with a start. The fax machine is chattering. Ambra stumbles through from the bedroom. A strip of orange light is penetrating the curtains, and he can just make out that she is wearing his spare East German border guard pajamas after all. "It's four o'clock," she accuses him.

"Making it nine in the evening in California." He finds a table lamp switch and they blink in the sudden light.

Sharp says, "I guess London's back on the menu."

"Poor Gordon — he's just told the PM to stand Cobra down and now he'll have to go back and tell him to stand it up again." Something about Ambra's look reminds Sharp of a cat that has just found a mouse.

KRYSTAL KRAMER

"Lewis. You'd better take this." Jocelyn, having the grace to look a bit sheepish, is waving a telephone receiver in the air.

The team is spread around a big oval table covered with papers, photographs, Pepsis, and carafes of water. A couple of US Army officers, groggy from a transatlantic flight, have joined them, and a studious, bespectacled FCO man of about thirty is sitting in on the proceedings.

Sharp picks up the telephone. "Hello?"

It's a policeman's voice, speaking in English with a light German accent. "My name is Superintendent Claas Fischer. I'm speaking from the federal chancellor's office in Berlin, the anti-terrorist desk. I have a young lady on the line who claims to know something about the Arizona explosion. Do you speak German?"

"Passably." He feels a sudden prickle of excitement. Someone who knows something …

"Would you like to take the call?"

Cautiously: "Of course."

"The next voice you hear will be hers. Her name is Kramer, Krystal Kramer."

"Is that her married name?"

A few muffled words in German, then a female voice, twentyish. "I'm not married. I don't believe in it. Who am I speaking to?"

"My name is Smith," Sharp lies. "I'm part of the team investigating the device. You have some information about that?"

"I don't know. I might have. Or it might be nothing. Look, maybe this call is a mistake. It's my grandmother, you see, she's very frail, and I don't want her …"

"Please, Ms. Kramer, why don't you just tell me about it? It might be important."

"Of course I know it might be important, but as I say, she's very frail and I can't have her getting upset or into trouble of any sort, and my name is Krystal, Ms. Kramer is so anally retentive."

"Where are you? In Germany?"

"Yes, in Berlin." Not quite a lie. A yellow light flashing on the screen map says she is speaking from a public box in Potsdam, next to the Charlottenhof U-bahn.

"Why don't you tell me about it, Krystal? I promise your grandmother won't be upset whether or not there's anything in it." It's a promise Sharp can't possibly keep.

"She's upset already." There's a pause. Sharp half expects to hear the click of a connection being broken. Then, "She saw it on TV. She keeps active mentally, you know. She watches CNN and …"

"What did she see on TV, Krystal?"

"The news item on the Arizona thing. Granny got amazingly excited and upset. I was really worried about her."

"Did she say why she was excited?"

"This is so silly. This is my gran we're talking about."

Sharp waits while Ms. Kramer gets up her nerve. Then, "Granny made that device. So she says. During the war. She's very old, you know. I think maybe her memory plays tricks sometimes but she's still …"

"What's her full name, Krystal?"

"Granny's? It's Daniela Morrell. Grandpa Morrell died before I was born. He was a teacher in …"

Silently screaming. "I mean her maiden name."

"Oh, that. It's Bauer. Her maiden name is Daniela Bauer."

OLD DANIELA

The BMW drops them across from a dark building eight stories tall, and then merges into the traffic flowing like lava along the Allee. Fischer frowns. "Were you expecting company?"

Ambra: "Absolutely not."

It takes Sharp some seconds. But yes, there is a middle-aged man in a green windbreaker, collar turned up against the cold and hands in pockets, stamping his feet. And there is a car, a red Audi, its occupants undetectable behind tinted glass.

Fischer says, "Six up." Sharp counts up. On the sixth floor are two windows with lace curtains, and lights within. A dark shape moves behind one of the curtains, and then disappears; or he may have imagined it.

There is a gap in the traffic and it's an eighty-meter sprint across the boulevard. They make it, gasping for breath and standing at a heavy wooden door, and the man in the green windbreaker is watching them uneasily. Close up, he has the wrinkled face and watery eyes of a heavy smoker.

MORRELL, D. is hand-printed on a card next to a doorbell. Sharp presses the bell and looks back at the windbreaker man; he's having a hurried consultation with someone in the Audi. Then the man is gabbling into a mobile phone, his eyes fixed on Herr Fischer, who is watching the Audi attentively.

Sharp presses the bell again. And again. They wait a long time. Ambra says, "I know she's at home." This time Sharp keeps his thumb on it.

Male voice. "Ja?" None too friendly.

Sharp speaks to the intercom in German: "We want to speak to Daniela Morrell."

"What's your business with her?"

"It's private. Who am I speaking to, please?"

"She's not here. Go away." The intercom goes dead.

Herr Fischer and the man in the windbreaker are eyeing each other up, two gunfighters in a Western. Sharp curses his imagination. Guns? Of course not. This isn't the Taymyr Peninsula.

Ambra now pushes an eighth-floor button. A severe, matronly voice answers, and Ambra says a parcel needs signing for, and the door lock buzzes briefly. Fischer takes up the rear, slamming the main door behind him. The bang echoes around the stairwell. There is a worn flight of steps, dimly lit, but they take a creaky elevator to the seventh floor and descend as soon as they have left it: someone has opened the main door, down below. Voices on the other side of a heavy dark door marked MORRELL. Ambra turns the handle.

A short dark corridor leading to a spacious chintzy living room. Decor matching the period of the buildings: heavy, dull green wallpaper with big swirling patterns; high ceiling with a chandelier; a cluster of comfortable armchairs; four men and an old woman. The woman sitting, tense and upright, at a polished oak table, her hands clasped in front of her. Brown, intelligent eyes in a distressed face; white hair pulled back in a bun; a slim, elegant body draped in a black sweater and long skirt.

"Who the hell are you?" The man nearest them swivels in his chair, his face filled with surprise and hostility. He has close-shaven, black hair, a pasty complexion, and small dark eyes.

German with a Cockney accent. Ambra says in English, "What rank are you?"

"What? What do you mean?" There is a gratifying uncertainty in the man's voice.

"Unless you can beat Grade Six, I outrank you. You people look like Grades Seven and Eight. I'm taking charge here, and I'd be grateful if you would now leave."

The man hesitates. "What's your authority here?"

Ambra walks smartly toward a telephone on the sideboard. The old lady nods her assent. She seems confused. While Ambra is dialing, she says, "Will the ambassador do?"

It takes two layers, but then she is through. "Sir Richard? This is Ambra Volpe … I need to confirm my identity to some people here … We're in Daniela Bauer's flat … No, sir … With respect, Ambassador, Gordon wouldn't … Did he, indeed? … Well, all they've succeeded in doing is upsetting her … I'd be very grateful if you would, sir. Thank you." She waves the receiver. The man takes it, mutters into it, nodding as he speaks. He replaces the receiver gently, shoots Ambra a look, a strange mixture of venom and awe. "We're out of here."

Sharp goes through to the kitchen, explores some cupboards, and brings a plastic kettle to a boil. In the living room, Ambra is sitting next to the woman and speaking to her in a soft, conciliatory tone. He sets down a tray. The conversation is in German. He says, "I see you keep Darjeeling. I think it's the best of the teas."

The old lady says, "I have friends who prefer Ceylon."

Fischer hands an identity card to the woman. She looks at it blankly. He says, "As you see, I am Claas Fischer, madam, of the Bundesnachrichtendienst. Firstly, I must apologize for this intrusion. The people who were here came without proper authority."

"What?" Her face was lined with confusion and suspicion. "You are all strangers to me. I should call the police."

"I am the police. If you look at the card, you will see that my authority comes from the Federal Chancellor's Office. These people are English and are from the British embassy. My job is to identify them to you, and inform you that it is in the public interest that their questions be answered. Have you understood me, madam?"

She looks at the identity card again and and returns it. "Would you like to sit down? I understand very little but I have not forgotten my manners."

Fischer says, "Thank you but I cannot stay." He bows smartly — Sharp half expects him to click his heels — and a moment later the front door closes with a reassuringly heavy clunk.

"Why don't we sit over there? It's more comfortable." Her voice is trembling but stubborn, and has a melodious quality. It is clear and well articulated, without any accent Sharp can recognize. He feels a strange tingling thrill that the woman he knew only from Max Krafft's story has come to life, like a storybook character jumping off the page. She is here, a real, living person within arm's length! They settle into deep old armchairs and Sharp pours tea, following the old lady's instructions for adding milk.

He lets Ambra do the talking. She talks about the Arizona bomb, she talks about sarin, she talks about the fear that others have the surviving weapons. She stays silent on the London threat. She makes no mention of their Siberian adventure. She's silent on Max Krafft. The woman sits quietly. Her hands are trembling slightly and her cup shakes whenever she sips her tea; whether it's nerves, old age, or the beginning of Parkinson's, Sharp can't say. Now and then she glances in his direction, her eyes bright with curiosity.

And finally, with the tea finished and the biscuits depleted, Ambra says, "We need to find out everything we can about these flying devices."

Sharp says, "I'm a historian, specializing in Hitler's wonder weapons. I thought they were just fables."

The woman hesitates. "You must forgive me. I remember very little. But I remember enough. The machine I saw on the news was built by us during the war. It brought back many memories, some good, some terrible."

"Can you tell me how destructive one of these things would be, if it was launched over a city?"

"It would depend on many things. The direction and speed of the wind, its positioning, the temperature, the humidity." She strokes the edge of her saucer with an arthritic finger, thinking. "If everything was just right — and of course we would wait until everything was just right — then we calculated that the sarin gas would make a swath maybe ten kilometers long and five wide."

Enough to scoop out central London. Maybe a million people in the rush hour. Sharp keeps his voice level. "But sarin gas is unstable, Mrs. Morell. It degrades after three or four weeks. These weapons will now be harmless."

Daniela stays silent.

Ambra says, "That really puzzles us. The people trying to find these weapons — or who already have them — surely know this. The Arizona bomb was anthrax, not sarin. If the other two were sarin, they must now be harmless."

"How did you know that? That one was anthrax and two were sarin?"

Time to play the ace. Sharp says, "Max Krafft told us."

At first he thinks she is going to faint. The cup and saucer in her lap tremble violently. But she recovers her composure, puts the tea on the table in front of her, and says, "I think you should leave now."

Ambra says, "But why?"

"Max was killed by the Nazis sixty years ago. And whatever game you young people are playing, I want no part of it. That was cruel." And she begins to cry.

Ambra passes over a clean handkerchief. Sharp says, "Max is alive and well, living in Russia. He told us all about you."

She blows her nose. "Why are you doing this?"

"We were speaking to him two days ago."

"Lies, lies." She stands up unsteadily. "He was shot by the Gestapo a few hours before the Russians overran their prison. They found his body among all the others."

Sharp stands up, facing her. "The Russians lied. They took Max to Siberia secretly and made him work for a huge bioweapons program."

"You are a cruel young man."

"He told me he thinks of you every day."

"I want you to leave this instant."

"He asked me to give you a message should we find you. A message that in the whole wide world only you and he would understand. I can't make sense of it."

Those bright blue eyes, with tiny red veins in the white, looking into his soul. Angry eyes; but with a hint of something else? Hope? Dread? Sharp says, "Never walk backward drinking schnapps."

It takes some seconds to sink in, and Sharp has time to catch her as she falls.

GOERING'S COCKTAIL

It's going to be tricky. The old lady may clam up at any time, for any reason or none. She trembles and weeps for about fifteen minutes while Ambra tries to pacify her and Sharp paces up and down, feeling every second of the time slipping past. She wants to know about Max but for some reason Ambra firmly steers her away. "… He's in good health … He thinks of you all the time … We'll talk about that later …" He waits until Daniela has calmed down — another cup of Darjeeling tea seems to help — before he starts. "Mrs. Morrell, there are things we don't understand about the Arizona weapon. Why has it turned up now? Why Arizona? Did anyone in the team know where they would be hidden?"

"Kurt knew. That is, Dr. Hess, the director. He was visited by some high-ranking officers. One of them was a meteorologist from the Lufftwaffe, and there were naval officers. There was a lot to discuss, about the feasibility of smuggling the flying disks onto enemy territory, where they should be hidden, and so on. I believe they recommended targets to Goering for the flying disks. But we were kept out of all this."

"But there's no record?"

"I believe there is. Hess kept a diary of the project. We all knew this and used to joke about what might be in it. He kept it in a safe. I expect he kept a record of the secret meetings." Daniela dabs at the corner of her eyes with a handkerchief, sips her tea.

Ambra says, "Some of us suspect that people may have obtained these weapons, but that doesn't make sense, not if they've been harmless for decades. Given that sarin decays so quickly."

Another sip. "Harmless? Didn't Max tell you? Of course we knew the sarin gas would decay quickly. We also knew that the weapons were so dangerous that they could not be transported, except at a snail's pace. We were scientists and engineers, we understood the monster we had created. But what about railwaymen? Can you imagine one of these bombs swinging on a crane? And as for loading them on a U-boat!" Daniela shakes her head. "We decided we could not use the stuff Spandau sent us."

"What then?" A horrible sick feeling is beginning to grip Sharp's stomach.

"We created two compartments inside the bomb, separated by a thick glass wall. Everything was lined by glass."

"No wonder transporting the Furies made you nervous," Ambra says.

"In one compartment we put DF …" She bows her head in thought. "How can I remember after all these years? I'm not a chemist, you know. Now, what was in the other chamber? This I remember. We called it Goering's cocktail, because it was something mixed with a type of poisonous alcohol. OPA, that was it. Whatever OPA is. A few minutes before the saucer is due to vent the sarin, the glass partition is shattered and the chemicals combine. They create fresh liquid sarin."

"Oh man," Sharp says. "Oh man."

"Am I allowed pride, to have taken part in the creation of such a monster? If these weapons still exist, they are as dangerous as the day they were made."

"The fusing mechanism. How did that work?"

"A simple time lock, set by entering six numbers on a combination lock of the kind you will find on a safe. When the disk has reached its full altitude, a spring-loaded bolt breaks the glass sheeting between the chemicals. The heat generated in the reaction, and the spin of the disk, ensures complete mixing. And then, with the sarin created, the nozzles open and the poison sprays out."

"I don't suppose you remember the numbers, after all this time."

"Actually, young man, I do."

"How is that possible?"

"I must allow myself the sin of pride once again. They are numbers of great significance. But you see, we were clever. If the weapons were ever to fall into the wrong hands — who knows how? — they might have been used against us. We therefore had what the Americans call a fail-safe mechanism. If the wrong numbers were fed in, the disks would be made harmless."

"And the numbers? The firing codes?"

"We wanted to sabotage it, you know, Max and I. But after the summons to Goering, we couldn't sneeze without attracting attention from the security people. Every corridor had an SS man and every nut and bolt was inspected. They'd found out I had a Jewish mother, you see, but they still needed me. And in the U-boat pen, when I was putting the firing code in, I had a gun at my back. They knew that was when I would feed in false numbers if I could."

"The firing codes?"

The shutters come down. "Why should I tell you?"

"I don't know. The information may be useless to us. But we need to know everything possible about these weapons. There may be others."

"There were three. Forgive me, but the information is too dangerous to give."

"Who else knows these numbers?"

"Only Hess, who is long dead, thank God, and the agents who were to fire the bombs. I expect they're long dead, too. You see, the numbers belong to me alone, and they will go with me to my grave."

Ambra says, "Max thought you were dead. How do you feel about seeing him?"

"How do I …? To see Max again? Can that possibly happen?" She is having problems taking it in. Sharp begins to worry that she might faint again.

Ambra says, "We can arrange it. We know where he is. But we're the only people who know. If you want to see Max …"

Sharp thinks, You heel, Ambra! "Mrs. Morrell, if you like, we can call the chancellor's office now to confirm that it's in the public interest …"

Daniela stands up and walks shakily across to the window, waving aside Sharp's offer of help. She is slightly stooped. She looks through the lace curtains at the traffic below. After about a minute, Sharp becomes aware that he has been holding his breath. Then she turns and beckons to him, like a child with a secret to share. She whispers in his ear. Sharp whispers back, and she nods.

"Room's clean." They are in the secure room, having passed through an inner door within a door, all accessed by codes. The room has a dead quality; it's like being in a chamber deep within a pyramid. Sharp feels a twinge of claustrophobia. Ambra waits until the Embassy man has closed the door behind him.

"Gordon Irons here. I have Professor Duncan with me as you requested. I'm putting him on."

She hands the telephone to Sharp. "Duncan? Sharp here. We found Daniela Bauer and she's told us a little about the chemicals in the weapon. It's very incomplete, I'm afraid. She did say something about mixing two chemicals in the minutes before it was to be fired."

After about fifteen seconds Sharp begins to wonder if the line has gone dead. Then, almost in a whisper, "Oh my God."

"She couldn't remember what the chemicals were. But she said something about DF."

An indecipherable mutter, maybe an obscenity.

"Sorry?"

"Difluoride. Methylphosphonyl difluoride."

"The chemical in the other compartment was something called OPA. She said it was mixed with alcohol. They called it Goering's cocktail."

"Isopropyl alcohol and isopropyl amine. Combine them with the DF and you have GB2, known to you as sarin." A pause, and then Duncan is speaking shakily. "It's a binary weapon. Incredible. These people developed a binary weapon."

Goering's cocktail … a binary weapon … Hubble bubble toil and trouble. Roaring drunk and seeing double. Two impossible things before breakfast. Downey had been right, there wasn't a wasted word.

And Sharp doesn't feel like taking prisoners, not after what he's been through: "You got it wrong again, then?"

"Damn you, Sharp, the West didn't develop binary weapons until the sixties."

"The Nazi weapons are still lethal? Will you confirm that?"

Duncan's voice is tortured. "I almost wish they were atom bombs."

"The Hess diary. That has to be it." Sharp and Ambra stand on the pavement with water running down their faces, ignoring the rain, ignoring rush-hour Berlin scurrying past, car tires throwing little arcs of spray up from shiny streets.

"What are you thinking, Lewis? That the bad guys have got hold of it?"

"It makes sense."

Ambra wipes water from her nose. "If Hess recorded the firing codes in his diary, they have everything and we have nothing."

"They don't have the codes, Ambra. Remember Petrov's query? On mojet znat, he might know? Remember what they did to Edith Zimmerman? People were trying to get something out of her, something she couldn't give."

"Maybe the Arizona device blew up because they were trying to circumvent the firing mechanism without the codes. By now they know the UFOs are booby-trapped."

"They're looking for the codes, Ambra. And Daniela has them. They could get to her at any time."

"She'll need protective custody."

Sharp shakes his head. "If the old lady's dead, the firing codes are gone forever."

"Lewis, what exactly are you saying?"

"I'm saying that half the population of London's at stake. Center of government, center of finance, center of everything. I'm saying that old ladies die every day. And I'm saying that if it occurred to me, it's occurred to someone in British intelligence. She's a trivial target for a wet job."

Ambra is unconsciously biting her lower lip. "We're talking about Her Majesty's Government here, not the Bulgarian secret police or renegade KGB."

"I wish you'd said that with more conviction, Ambra."

"That's why you wanted the firing codes, isn't it? So they'd have to get rid of you, too? So things would get harder for them? You were trying to protect the old lady from our own people." She wipes more water away from her nose. "You idiot. If you believe what you're saying, you've turned yourself into a target for both the Petrov gang and the SAS."

"Only if they know I've been given the codes."

"They probably know already. They almost certainly bugged Daniela's apartment."

"I was relying on it. But you'd have told them anyway." Sharp gives her a bleak smile.

"My loyalties lie with Six. Of course I'd have told them."

"I was relying on that, too. Daniela's a target, Ambra. Get her out of there now."

"What about you?"

"I'll book us all rooms in the Brandenburger Hof, Krafft's old hotel. I'll get hold of the loading lists, I know people. And we'll need to find out what happened to Hess after the war. We must get his diaries."

"But Lewis, you have no field experience …"

"Look, we're nearly out of time. Daniela needs protection now."

"Are you listening to me, you idiot? You're not trained for this."

"Excuse me, Ambra, but the London threat? The lives at stake? We can't hang about."

"Do you need reminding that Darth Vader, the Hollywood musician, and Miss North Korea are right here in Berlin?"

"They sound like villains in a Batman movie."

"Very funny, Lewis. They could be within a mile of us. Can you even imagine if they get hold of you?"

"But what do you think they're up to, playing tiddly-winks? Get Daniela to safety, Ambra, quickly."

BRANDENBURGER HOF

In the Brandenburger Hof, Sharp books rooms with a connecting door for Ambra and himself, and another room straight across the corridor for Daniela. A team of bearers brings in a laptop, reams of paper, a printer, and a fax machine, courtesy of the management, while he changes into dry clothes. Then he plugs in the laptop, looks at his watch, and gets busy.

First, he puts an urgent inquiry through to the Bundesarchiv in Freiburg. Then he makes use of an old contact in the Public Records Office in Kew. Kew fax him volumes of Ultra decodes and he plows through these, looking at messages between Berlin and the submarine pens in Denmark and Norway. Nine U-boats, it turns out, left Norway in February 1945, destined for the New York area. By that stage of the war, Sharp thinks, these were practically suicide missions, and true enough, the Americans, alerted by Bletchley, were waiting for them: a reception committee that hammered the enemy submarines, as the admiral's report put it.

Hammered the submarines. What horrors lie behind that glib phrase? Sharp wonders. But there's no time to dwell on it. The waiting massacre was called Operation Teardrop. Of course! Sleza, the teardrop of Petrov's list.

But the doomed submarines had been sent from Norway, not Denmark. Were they a diversion? Could the Third Reich have deliberately sacrificed their own children, sending young men out in U-boats from Norway just to draw fire from ones sailing from Denmark, landing their cargo on dark coasts in Mexico or Ireland? Was the leadership that ruthless?

Of course. One must be hard.

True enough, there are no Furies in the loading lists, as C had said. But one entry catches Sharp's eye. In the loading list of U-864, a set of packages labeled CASPAR. He doesn't know why it's attracting his attention.

Sharp looks again at his watch. Ambra should have been here by now. Maybe the old lady's being difficult. That's it. Daniela's being difficult.

He goes quickly through the records of the navy meetings with Hitler. Here and there the clipped phrasing, he thinks, barely disguises some of the Führer's notorious rants. There is no mention of U-234, which surrendered at the end of the war and was found to be carrying a ton of uranium oxide to Japan. What were they doing with a ton of uranium oxide? And why was there no mention of it in the CinC records? Was it, like the Holocaust, part of a project so secret they didn't commit it to paper? In that case, what else didn't they want put on record? As he plows through the meeting reports, the silence begins to shout at him: They're hiding something.

Still no signs of life from the next room. He taps on the connecting door, then opens it. The room is empty. He feels a twinge of dread.

Lewis, have you thought about the mating scorpions?

Here we go. Before Sharp can type a reply, the message continues:

Think about Petrov in the gulag. And Krafft in the gulag. Can you believe that's a coincidence?

There doesn't seem much point in security; the ghostly messenger seems to know everything and anyway they're all but out of time. Sharp thinks the hell with it and takes a chance. He types: They were both in the Obolensk gulag in the fifties. Petrov could have learned about the weapons from Krafft there.

But why now? What's his trigger?

I don't know. Something to do with North Korea, if we believe …

Exactly. Something is coming to a head, and Petrov is being driven to stop it.

Is that a guess?

It's a deduction. Find out what's happening with North Korea, and it may lead you to the bioweapons.

How can the bioweapons possibly help both Petrov and his scorpion mate? What's in it for them?

Petrov is trying to foil the American administration in some venture. His scorpion mate is doing the same to her government. It's the only explanation.

Her government. The ghost knows about Miss North Korea. But Sharp hardly has time to assimilate the fact: The ghost is still typing. Petrov and his scorpion mate are trying to spoil something, some secret rapprochement between their countries, and they'll use the bioweapons to do this. You must find out what's going on between the USA and North Korea!!!!!

You're way out on a limb, chum. How can you work out so much from so little?

Trust me. It's your only chance in the time left to you.

What about London? What's in it for a man like Petrov to threaten London?

That has me baffled, Lewis. We're still missing something.

As the screen fades, Sharp thinks it odd that whenever the ghost contacts him, Ambra is away. A coincidence, no doubt. Again, he opens the adjoining door.

Nothing's wrong. They'll turn up soon.

THE HESS ESCAPE

Kurt Hess spat out a mouthful of dust and looked fearfully skyward, ready to run for his life. But the RAF fighters had vanished. The Mercedes carrying Krafft and Daniela was disappearing swiftly around a corner a few hundred meters ahead. He leaped up, furious, his heart thudding, and promptly fell down again. His left ankle was swelling like a balloon.

One of the Gestapo men from the following car rushed out at Hess from the farm building, gasping, and bawled accusingly, specks of spittle coming from his mouth. "They've escaped!"

"I can see that, you idiot!" Hess shouted back. "Find me a car. I have to report to the Reichsmarschall."

"A car? Where do I find a car here?"

Hess brushed the man aside angrily and limped toward the farm building. Nothing but hay and carts, and a tractor that looked as if it hadn't seen petrol for years.

Something — a bicycle. He grabbed it, wobbled away. "How far to Berlin?"

"Maybe thirty kilometers to the Reichstag."

"Find a telephone. Phone your headquarters and tell them about Krafft. Give them their car's registration number, you are capable of that, are you?" Hess called back, steering clear of the dark sticky pool and flesh that were Oberlin's remains. He started to pedal furiously, trying to ignore the searing pain in his ankle.

Someone, an old farmer, passed him in the opposite direction, running toward the mayhem. Once away from the noise of the dying steam engine, he could hear birdsong and the distant thump-thump of artillery. Ours or theirs? The noise grew louder as he approached the city. Presently the road joined a main highway leading out of Berlin. Here there was a steady stream of wagons, horses, crowds of refugees heading away from the capital. Many of them looked like eastern workers, fleeing their own people. Ahead of him, ominously, a great pall of black smoke overhung the city. He weaved his way determinedly through the human stream, using the bicycle bell, and by early afternoon he was passing through suburban houses that seemed to be untouched; but many of them had windows boarded up; and the smoke was higher in the sky here; and the sun was shining balefully through a reddish haze.

He hadn't seen central Berlin for four months, and the extent of the new destruction shocked him. There was hardly a building untouched by the bombing. A convoy — half-tracks towing artillery and trucks loaded with infantry — was skirting a bomb crater in the Berliner Allee. Here dense, acrid smoke was pouring out of a huge rubble heap, mixed with brick dust that caught his throat and dried his mouth. A light aircraft was sitting on a clear strip of road outside the Brandenburg Gate.

The Air Ministry building was still standing, or at least a good bit of it. Worn out, he dropped the bicycle at the roadside, not caring whether it would be there when he re-emerged, and navigated the sandbags at the entrance.

"I am Standartenführer Dr. Kurt Hess. I have to report to the Reichsmarschall personally." Exhausted or not, he couldn't help a tinge of self-importance in his voice.

But the pasty-faced little squirt facing him seemed unimpressed. "He's not here."

"But he's expecting me."

"I can't help that."

"Well, where is he then? When is he expected back? I have something of the utmost importance to tell him."

"I'm sorry, Standartenführer, but I just don't know. He drove north to Karinhall a couple of days ago."

"He's at Karinhall, then?"

"I doubt it." The little squirt leaned forward, as if to impart some confidential information. "The story is, he's had Karinhall blown up."

The news hit Hess like a slap in the face. He stepped back and took a second to assimilate the information. The Prussian Palace, the overblown opulence matching the owner's personality, the tomb of his first wife, the statues, the gardens … if he'd had them destroyed, it was a strong statement about the future of Germany.

But maybe it's not too late! Maybe, even now, something can be done with the Furies! London in exchange for Berlin, holding a threat over Washington or New York? Even with the Russian guns within hearing? "I must get information of a highly sensitive nature to Hermann Goering immediately. I can't overemphasize its importance."

The little squirt stared at Hess, his expression of cynicism suggesting that nothing was important anymore, not with the Russians about to encircle the city. He lifted a telephone and spoke quietly into it for a minute. And then he put down the receiver and said, "Obergruppenführer Korten is in the building. He would like to speak to you. An escort will be along."

Hess waited in a big, empty, chandeliered room, savoring his moment to come. In a minute Korten marched in. One of Goering's entourage and one of the few men in the know; he had been in on the secret meetings to decide the targets. The SS man had an elongated head and smoothed-down black hair that made him look, to Hess, like a painted Easter egg, down to the absurd little black mustache. Hess threw an arm out, announced, "Heil Hitler! The Sisters of the Night have been delivered."

"You should have delivered them two months ago." Korten's face and voice were those of a hanging judge. "They would have made a difference then. Even last month."

Hess, already weak with the unaccustomed cycle ride, felt as if he might faint. "Obergruppenführer Korten, the project was of a very advanced nature. The fact that we were able to deliver at all is a triumph of German science."

"Even two weeks. If you had come to us two weeks ago with your flying devices, we could at this moment be destroying the Hague or Washington, and threatening Moscow and Leningrad. We could have bargained — Moscow for Berlin — and forced a cease-fire, and then we could have driven a wedge between the allies."

"Even now …"

Korten, in a sudden rage, swiped Hess's report off the polished desktop. "It's too late now, you total fool! Haven't you noticed anything about this building? Apart from the fact that twenty-seven offices have been wrecked? It's half empty. The rats are deserting Berlin in huge numbers. Even Goering has scarpered, the second in command of the Reich, for Christ's sake! The battle for Berlin is about to start and nothing will stop it. Nothing! By the time your Furies are in place, the war will be over. If you had delivered on your promise, if your machines had come on time, you could have saved Germany this catastrophe."

Hess, suddenly knowing what was coming, found himself starting to shake. Korten, patches of red on his cheeks, observed this reaction coldly. "Which brings us to the matter of your failure, your dereliction of duty."

"With respect, Obergruppenführer Korten, not failure. I delivered the Furies."

Korten ignored the comment. "You were warned that the penalty for failure would be death, for yourself and for the senior scientists involved in this project. I expect, as is customary, the sentence shall be extended to your families."

"My orders are to report to Reichsmarschall Goering …"

"… who at this moment is in Obersalzburg."

Desperation made Hess bold. "Then I should report to him there. Report personally to the Reichsmarschall — those are my orders."

"He will undoubtedly have you shot out of hand."

"Are you planning to overrule his orders to me, Obergruppenführer Korten? To usurp Hermann Goering?"

Korten hesitated, and Hess drove his point home. "Is Berlin open to the south?"

"At the moment, yes. But the American Sixth Army has taken Munich."

"Can the Air Ministry supply me with a car?"

"You have had a blow to the head, perhaps?"

"A car or not?"

"Even if you got a car, where would you get the gasoline?"

"A light plane, then. I saw one at the Brandenburg Gate."

"That is Speer's, and you seem to be entering the realms of fantasy."

"I have no time for this. I must get to Goering immediately. The outcome of the war can depend on it."

"Let me see what I can do. Stay here." Korten strode out of the room.

Hess stood in the empty room, a light sweat on his brow and palms, listening for footsteps. After some seconds a ghastly thought jumped into his head: Korten wants me arrested. He's going to have me shot.

Korten was unarmed, and Hess had his sidearm, the Walther. An unarmed man doesn't arrest a man with a gun, not on a capital offense.

The leadership principle, honor, duty, sacrifice, obedience, Krafft, Daniela, the Furies, the appointment with Goering, the lost war, all flew out of his head, pushed out by a single overwhelming thought: Get out of this alive.

Give it thirty seconds.

Five, six, seven …

Korten has to keep me here while he summons an SS detachment. He has to pretend to go along with me.

Ten, eleven, twelve …

I can't leave the office and run down three flights of stairs, not if Korten is in the corridor. But the Obergruppenführer will — maybe — disappear into someone else's office, rustling up the SS.

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty …

Hess's nerve gave. He slipped his journal inside his shirt, crossed quickly to the door, opened it slightly, and looked up and down the corridor. A few adjutant types walking around, two officers smoking cigarettes and chatting. He swung open the door and walked smartly past them — not too smartly! — and trotted down the broad marble stairs.

If Korten is at the front desk, I'll blow his head off and shoot my way out.

Down to the second floor, still no sign of the egg-faced Obergruppenführer.

And there was no Korten at the front desk. Workmen covered in plaster dust were carrying planks out of the entrance.

The little squirt looked up as Hess passed. "You have to sign out." Hess ignored him.

And he was out! The bicycle was still there. Hess could have wept with relief.

Lose yourself in the streets, quickly!

Into the acrid smoke and the road, and the yellow arrows pointing to air raid shelters. Around a corner. A wrecked bus was swinging on a crane. Bodies were laid out along the pavement, covered with sheets. Korten will have discovered the office empty by now, he'll be running down the stairs crying blue murder.

Hess stood on the pedals, ignoring the pain from his swollen ankle. He cycled swiftly past a group of children in over-large uniforms, carrying panzerfaust grenades. They could barely carry them — no doubt some pig had fed them duty, sacrifice, and orders to throw themselves at Russian tanks before scarpering out of the city himself. Their over-large clothes gave them a circus clown look. He maneuvered through a group of prisoners with striped tunics, clearing rubble. They were gray-faced, emaciated, more dead than alive.

Emaciated prisoners. Natzweiler!

There would be documentation, witnesses. American and Russian judges.

And the calibration curves! … I now present to the court … Dr. Hess, do you recognize these graphs?

And the hangman, waiting.

Cycling desperately toward the south of the city, Hess knew that somehow he would have to get out of Germany.

DEUTSCHES JUGEND

"Daniela's gone. She's not in her apartment."

Sharp briefly closes his eyes. "If they've got Daniela, they've got the firing codes. They have everything." They must have been minutes behind us.

Ambra flops down on the bed, her hair and clothes dripping. "There was no sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle in the apartment …"

"How did you get in?"

"Never mind that. Maybe she just went out shopping or something. I've been looking for her all over, in the nearest supermarkets, the streets around, and so on."

"We should call the cops."

She shakes her head. "No. We're British intelligence operating on German soil."

"With German approval."

"But she's a German citizen at risk. We don't need the complication of uniforms. Let's not get paranoid about this, Lewis. She'll turn up."

"Those people at the apartment when we arrived …"

"MI6."

"What were they up to?"

Ambra disappears under a towel.

"He got out of Germany?"

Ambra is five calls down the line and finishing the last of her coffee cake. They are in a reassuringly packed bistro, full of smoke and noise. "There were lots of ways out. The International Red Cross ran refugee camps. People with no papers were given temporary identity cards. All you needed was a good story and a false name. You then used the card to establish a new permanent identity. Also there were escape routes organized by fascist priests in Rome and Yugoslavia. And there was a sort of clearing center for fleeing Nazis in Switzerland." She licks cream from her fingers.

"So what was Hess's route?"

"Switzerland. The center operated from a hotel in Zurich, and they directed him to an illegal immigration office in downtown Berne. You should taste this. The whole thing was financed by money taken from Holocaust victims."

"The ultimate irony," Sharp says. He makes a writing motion but the waiter seems to have a bad case of tunnel vision.

"They gave Hess a forged passport and he flew to Madrid, then got on a ship for Buenos Aires. After that he moved to Argentina, which was a safe haven for Nazi war criminals, courtesy of the Perón government."

"So what did he do in Argentina?"

"That bit's murky. But whatever, he attracted the attention of the CIA. They were employing former Nazis big-time in intelligence and covert operations, and they brought him back to Germany in 1957 under his own name. He joined an outfit called the Bund Deutsches Jugend." An elderly foursome at the next table are going through a ritual of protestations, grabbing the bill from one another.

"Can't say I've heard of them."

"I'm not surprised. It's taken the CIA sixty years to release the archives, and that was under congressional pressure. It was a CIA-financed spy group based in West Germany and stuffed with nasties. It was also thoroughly penetrated — it turned out later that a lot of them were double agents. It seems that Hess joined Farben as a manager. This involved a lot of Eastern European travel, especially to Czechoslovakia, which was big in pharmaceuticals. But his real remit was espionage, industrial and military. He worked under the code name Clarion. He also advised the CIA on ‘special assignments,' whatever that means."

"The mind boggles." Sharp tries again with the waiter.

"Anyway, it seems he died in his bed a decade ago."

"What are you saying? That the trail has dried up?"

"No, Lewis, it just got hot. He has one living adult descendant, a granddaughter."

"You mean …?"

"Maybe she's the link with the past. Maybe she has her grandfather's diary."

Sharp feels a surge of excitement. "If you weren't so ugly I'd kiss you. Where is she?"

"She's right here in Berlin. In fact she lives just four blocks away from Daniela, and I'll bet each of them doesn't know the other even exists. They probably shop in the same Lidl. Two small children, lives alone on social security, no known extremist connections."

Sharp looks at his watch for the third time in an hour. He thinks the waiter can go to hell and puts a bundle of euros in an ashtray and stands up. "What does the name CASPAR mean to you?"

"Caspar? One of the three wise men bearing gifts?"

"Three wise men bearing gifts. It just keeps getting better. Give me this granddaughter's address."

Ambra scribbles in a diary and tears out a page, then stands up. "I'll try Daniela's apartment again. If she's not there, I'll contact our embassy and advise them to bring in the local plods." She puts her face close to Lewis and whispers. "Lewis, I know we're nearly out of time, but please be very, very careful. We don't know what's out there, you have no field experience, and as a target you are just so juicy."

GRANDPA'S PEOPLE

Sharp navigates his way to the back of the old Karl Marx Allee and soon finds himself surrounded by brutalist architecture, all potholed streets and high-rise concrete flats. Big hunks of cladding have crashed into the streets and never been replaced. He tries out the address on a couple of street urchins without success and begins to wander randomly, lost in a maze of concrete. It's growing dark.

HESS, H. is taped on a paint-splattered door on the seventh floor. He taps, then tries the handle; the door is unlocked. "Frau Schwarz?" He knocks again and steps inside. Something is cooking; maybe cabbage and sausages.

He steps into the dark corridor. A door to the right is open, leading to a tiny bedroom and a baby asleep in a cot. Again, this time more quietly: "Frau Schwarz?"

"Through here."

Along to the kitchen at the far end. Sharp can't quite associate the squalor in the cramped little kitchen with the glamor of the Ramirez Garden Center party, but the woman, her hair now black and held in a ponytail by an elastic band, has the long face and shape of the German actress of Ambra's movie, glimpsed in silhouette. She is stirring a pot. "At last you found me, Mr. Sharp," she says. "Do sit down."

Sharp pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down, dumbfounded. "You are Hilda Schwarz?"

"I'd like you to speak in English, it's good practice for me. I prefer Hilda Hess. Call me Hilda."

"I'm Lewis but you already know that. That was you at the movie premiere party?"

"Yes, that was me."

"What's this about, Hilda?"

She turns down a knob on the cooker. "Come through here."

A living room scattered with toys. She pulls back a big velvet curtain, exposing a large alcove. A couple of steps up to a table draped with a Nazi flag, and on the table two silver candlesticks. Adolf Hitler faces Sharp, arms folded, visionary gaze, Charlie Chaplin mustache; safely framed on the wall. Next to Hitler are an SS dagger, a sword in its scabbard, and a Sam Browne belt with a PPK in the holster. There are other photographs. Men with rifles, parading with white belts and sashes over their long black coats. Himmler, surrounded by acolytes, giving the Nazi salute; underneath the picture is a faded scribble that Sharp can barely make out: HEINRICH AT THE TOMB OF KING HEINRICH I. QUEDLINGBURG 1943. Another photograph shows a wooded scene and a children's choir, surrounded by flags and placards with the SS symbol. One of the children's faces is circled in pencil. The caption says, HEIDI AT THE PEOPLE'S GROUP RITUAL FESTIVAL, BAD HARZBURG 1939. Hilda Hess points to the photograph. "That's my Gran. She married Grandpa Hess after the war."

"After he came back from Argentina?"

She nods. "They thought Hitler was still alive, you know."

"They?"

"Grandpa Hess told me all about it, many times. The air was full of rumors near the end, so Grandpa used to say. Especially there were rumors that Hitler had survived the war. Grandpa's people thought he'd fooled the Russians into thinking he was dead. They thought all this talk of suicide and cremation was made-up stories, and things were arranged in the bunker to let the Führer get clear. Especially when Grandpa's people learned later that Speer had landed at the Brandenburg gate in a Stork, and Jodl told Speer that the next day was the Führer's last chance to fly to Berchtesgaden. Some of them thought maybe he flew to Obersalzsburg and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, where a U-boat picked him up and took him to Argentina, with plenty of gold. Others thought it was more likely the Führer got out by way of the submarine pens at Bergen."

"Your grandpa went to Argentina, too, after the war," Sharp says.

"Schnapps?"

"No thanks. So your people — Hess's people — thought Hitler was still alive."

"They thought he would reemerge at the right time. East and West were almost at war, just as he'd predicted. They thought he was waiting to trigger that war by unleashing the Furies at a critical moment. A sort of border incident. Then he, or a successor, would revive the National Socialist movement when East and West had destroyed each other."

"So, Grandpa Hess knew where the weapons were hidden."

"Of course he knew. Some brave people had reconnoitered in enemy territory while the war was still on. There was a mine shaft in Arizona, another one near a place called Galway in Ireland, and a third one, I can't remember where."

"The Furies were to be the trigger for a war."

"Yes. Exactly. At a critical moment."

"But it never happened," Sharp says. Keep talking, lady.

"It never happened. They gradually came to realize — they had to admit — that the Führer really was dead. And there was no leader in waiting to take his place."

"On the other hand, if you have a gin and tonic …"

Hilda moves to the sideboard and opens a door. Bottles clink. "I hardly understood any of this when Grandpa was alive. It was just a lot of stories he told me when I was a little girl. But then there was his journal, and over the years I pieced things together from that. I have London gin here, and there's Bombay. Ice?"

"Bombay, no ice, and don't bother with lime or stuff like that. In the Gulf we drank it neat out of enamel mugs. So no Führer, but you still had the Furies. What's triggered their resuscitation, Hilda?"

"A critical moment." She hands over a glass and settles back in an armchair with a sigh, holding a big tumbler of vodka martini. She kicks her shoes off and raises her glass in a mock toast. "And a Messiah."

"In the form of Vladimir Petrov?"

She sits up attentively. "So, you were the burglar? At his London house?"

"I was."

"We call him Uncle Vlad. What do you know?"

"Why should I tell you what I know?"

"Because you want to find out things from me."

"The truth is I don't know much. I suspect that Petrov is the kingpin in this business, but I'm not even sure what the business is. I think he's gathered up some nasty groups, each with their own agenda, for some operation. How much are you willing to tell me?"

"Actually, you're exactly right. We have that critical moment." She sips her drink.

"Please keep talking."

She keeps talking. "Vladimir told me his London flat had been burgled and that someone must now know about Max Krafft and Daniela Bauer. But he'd been unable to find any trace of them. Vladimir met Krafft in a gulag in Obolensk and Krafft told him all about the weapons they'd developed during the war — that's why the Russians had him there. Vladimir came too late to me about a year ago. He had guessed that my grandfather might have left me some record of his project. He had — an old journal that he gave me for safekeeping. It included the locations of the three Furies. I was glad to give him that."

"Why?"

"Thanks to Vladimir we will show the world what Germany almost achieved."

Yes, nutty as a fruitcake. "You're too young to be carrying a flag for events that took place a lifetime ago." Every nerve in Sharp's body is tingling. He actively forces himself to stay casual. "Are you trying to trigger a war, Hilda?"

She giggles. "No, no, I don't care about things like that. I'm doing this for Grandpa. It's a sort of completion. It's what he would have wanted."

"Where's the journal, Hilda?"

Another giggle. "We're mating scorpions, you and me. We each have something the other needs. You need to know where Grandpa's weapons are hidden. We need to know the firing codes. But we got there first, you see, and his flying saucers are ready to fly. My English is okay?" She smiles. "On the other hand, God has brought you here, with the codes in your head. We have Daniela, and now we have you."

It takes a moment to sink in.

TOWN HOUSE D-DAY MINUS 2, OVERNIGHT

The man is small, muscular, about thirty, with Far Eastern features, maybe Japanese. He turns away and stamps a metal-tipped heel hard down on the top of Sharp's right foot. Sharp roars as the thin bones break. Vicious, rapid chopping blows follow to his stomach and throat and kidneys, and a knee is rammed into his testicles. A woman, also Far Eastern, grabs his hair. Hilda splashes her vodka martini in Sharp's face.

They bundle him into an open elevator with Sharp kneeling on the floor, a fireworks display of blinding lights assaulting his eyes. Outside, a big blue BMW pulls to a stop and Sharp, smelling of alcohol and hardly able to shuffle, is bundled into it. It's now dark. The cigarette and lemonade queue is still at the van. Nobody bothers about another drunk.

The car hums smoothly away, gradually picking up speed. There is a strange, animal-like whining which he can't place. Then the urge to vomit rises quickly from his stomach up through his gullet, and he spews onto the floor, retching. Somebody curses angrily in some Asiatic language. The animal whine starts again, and now he recognizes it as coming from his own mouth.

The numbers. They'll want the numbers, the firing codes that will let them detonate the remaining Furies. They'll get them in the end. And then they'll discard him. The numbers … What numbers? … The numbers … The numbers …

The stench of vomit fills the car. Somebody is muttering in disgust. The fact gives Sharp some small satisfaction.

After ten minutes — or is it an hour? — the car slows and gravel crunches under tires. Voices. Then a car door opens. Vomit smears his cheek as he is pulled out by the hair. He cries in pain as he puts weight onto his right foot, and they half drag him up a flight of stone steps. Sharp has a brief glimpse of a massive, Hanoverian-style house, and screening bushes and trees, and a high surrounding wall. There is traffic somewhere; late-night city stuff.

Three of them. Two Asians, one male, one female. And someone manhandling Sharp from behind. He thinks about a mule kick and a sprint into the trees, but he can hardly hop. He retches again, but this time only a thin, mucous slime dribbles out of his mouth.

The woman is fiddling with keys and then they are in, and he is being frog-marched along a carpeted corridor lined with black-and-white photographs of Bogey, Dietrich, Gable: studio poses, all cigarette smoke and harsh lighting. She leads the way to what looks like a cellar door and clicks on a light. Cold, musty air catches Sharp's throat, and he coughs. Down stone steps to a bare, concrete area from which three heavy doors lead off. Sharp hops down, in agonies, gripped from behind. Keys are hanging on a latch. She opens the center door, turns, and gives a malicious smile. Someone pats his pockets, takes his mobile phone, and sticks it in the pocket of his own jerkin.

She's in her late twenties, Japanese or Korean, and definitely in charge. Green eye makeup, delicate cheekbones accentuated with rouge, both grossly overdone, like a child's first attempt to use makeup. Short black hair, short black coat buttoned up to the neck. Smoking. Educated English, Oxbridge. Intelligent eyes. Bad news: Sharp would have preferred a no-neck thug.

The room is low-ceilinged, about six meters by six, and stuffed with bric-a-brac. It's bric-a-brac with a difference: The walls are lined with flags of the Third Reich, interspersed with framed photographs of Hitler; there are glass cabinets of World War II pistols; and there is a jumble of heavy tables, chairs, and cabinets that wouldn't look out of place on a war movie set. And there are arrays of lamps perched on black stalks.

The Koreans exchange comments. The woman pulls out a kitchen chair, and Sharp is dumped into it. For the first time he sees that the third party, the one with his mobile phone, is European. The man is about fifty, small, and pasty-faced. He's assessing Sharp with dark, anxious eyes. Not a fighter: Sharp feels that a punch on the nose would reduce him to jelly. The Korean woman, too, possibly. But the little Korean man …

The men stand on either side of Sharp, and the woman sits across from him on another kitchen chair, smiling.

Breathe deeply, remain calm.

"We believe you have some numbers." Her voice is pleasant and conversational.

"Am I in for a rough night?" Sharp croaks, knowing the answer.

She smiles some more. "You have no idea. Really none."

"I could feed you any rubbish. How would you know the difference?"

"Listen to the smart man." So the European is American. The accent is hard to place; probably somewhere on the East Coast, like Boston or Philadelphia.

The woman speaks to her compatriot. He replies with a brief, angry snarl: to Sharp, his voice is more like a dog's bark than human speech. She crosses her legs. "You can call me Miki. Do you like sex?"

"Only with nice human females. You score zero on all counts."

"When was the last time?"

"I can't remember."

"You should try to. Because unless you cooperate, all you will have from now on are happy memories."

"Memories from now on? I have a future?" The effort to speak hurts his throat.

"I'd love to get to know you better, Lewis. Your dossier is fascinating, but it doesn't tell me about the inner man, you know what I mean? Sadly, there isn't time. We need those numbers tonight."

Sharp is wet with sweat. The pain, in his foot. Everywhere. He whispers, "Alecto is one two three four five. Tisiphone is five four three two one."

She sighs, stands up, and pulls the kitchen chair well back. "Oh dear."

TORTURE

The first three punches land heavily in Sharp's solar plexus and the one to his chest knocks the chair backward. His head hits the concrete floor with a crack! and he lies panicking, unable to breathe. The Korean man starts to use his feet, hammering at Sharp's stomach and groin. It goes on for some minutes … or an hour … or two. Somebody lifts him back onto the chair. The transition from the real world to one dominated by pain has been swift.

From time to time he hears Miki, sometimes shouting in his ear, sometimes whispering from a great distance: "The numbers, Lewis … the numbers … give me the numbers and it will stop." Pain is everywhere, filling every corner of his mind.

Sometimes he cries out, sometimes he gasps out numbers. "Nine … six … three …" And the Korean uses chopping motions with hands callused like horn, and Miki says, "Wrong, Lewis. Try again." Now and then the American joins in with a few haymakers, but Sharp feels that the man doesn't have his heart in it. Still, one of the unskilled punches splits his upper lip and loosens a tooth. The ceiling begins to float up and down and around. He goes into hyperventilation, faints briefly.

The little Korean is saying something, rubbing the edge of his hand. Then Miki's face is inches away. "Full Moon wants to use his skills in earnest. I said no. We need to keep your heart beating. But we're calling in a doctor. Lewis, darling, we already know the numbers."

Sharp is dribbling blood. His lower lip is almost too swollen for speech, and his voice is a whisper. "You're doing this for fun."

"Oh Lewis, I am so sorry." She sits down, facing him, and strokes his hair. "You didn't think this was the serious stuff, surely? Oh goodness no, you poor man. This is the warm-up. The real procedure starts" — she glances at her watch — "soon. Someone is on his way here with some specialist equipment. Forgive me, but I think I want to break for coffee. Ronnie, there's some parcel tape in the kitchen drawer. And put a kettle on, would you?"

An American called Ronnie. They're being careless with names, and why not? I'm not about to leave the cellar alive.

Ronnie is back down in two minutes, with a parcel tape and another man. Sharp is ignored in the exchange of handshakes. "The road was quiet." An Englishman, sixtyish. Someone like me. Sharp feels somehow comforted. "Good God, what have you been doing to him?"

Miki tee-hees, and for a startled moment Sharp has an image of three little maids from The Mikado. "Trying to spare him the real stuff. But he's just not reasonable."

"You've explained that you already have the numbers?" An actor, Sharp thinks. The mustache, the exaggerated army officer style, the phony Home Counties accent, the diction. The man tries out a sympathetic tone. "Look, I'm sorry about this. We have the old woman and she has given us the firing codes. But you know the score, we have to be sure they're genuine. If you give us the codes, and they match the old bat's numbers, we know we've got the real McCoy and we have no further use for either of you. We can let you go. You and the old lady. We get what we want and you get what you want, namely to stay alive."

Sharp says, "That just leaves your victims."

Oozing sympathy. "Look, I was an army man, too. I daresay you've been on an R2I course. Me too. I admire your guts, sticking it out like this. You know, things have changed since the old KUBARK manual — you know …"

"I've come across it." You like the sound of your voice, chum.

"Thought you might have. It's been updated. The British army made some very good improvements in the seventies, and of course we had Mossad and Guantanamo."

"I know." On Sharp's resistance-to-interrogation course, they'd taken him to the limit of his endurance, in one overnight session, without once touching him.

The man is droning on, making a hash of being ex-army and reinforcing Sharp's suspicion that he's probably never gone beyond bit parts in made-for-video movies. Still, it would be enough to identify him. "But basically it's the same stuff. You know we can get anything we want from you in three days. Well, in your case it might take a week. We don't have a week. On the other hand, old chap, we're not restrained by legalities. I have a couple of little gadgets with me that will make everything up to this point feel like a mild toothache. We both know you'll give me the numbers. You agree, don't you? You will eventually give me the numbers?"

"I'm sure of it."

"There. Of course you will, old chap. So why don't you save yourself the grunt and give us them now? I'm giving you a chance to avoid pain."

"Very grateful. Don't know how to thank you." Sharp nudges the loose tooth with his tongue, and thinks that there's nothing more cringeworthy than a lousy, aging actor.

"Not this caveman pain, but real scientific pain. You have my solemn promise that if you give me these numbers, and they match those from the old lady, we will let you both go. Now" — he glances at the others — "I've had a long trip and I feel like a nice cup of tea. I'll give you a little while to think about it. Don't want to rush you, but we do need to get on."

"That's enough talk," Miki says.

The Korean pins Sharp's arms to the chair, and Ronnie gets busy with the parcel tape. "Careful!" Sharp grunts as the tape wraps around a swollen shin.

"Sorry," says the American. In the circumstances the exchange is surreal. He uses the full tape.

"You should see yourself. You look like the Michelin Man." The Englishman pats Sharp on the shoulder. He pauses at the door, lights a cigarette, turns. "You know, I think I'll give you a little taster, old boy. Help you think things through." He rummages in his bag, screwing up his eyes against cigarette smoke, and pulls out a hand-sized plastic device with two metal prongs about five centimeters apart. "Open his mouth, someone."

Ronnie seizes Sharp's hair and forces his head back. The Korean puts two powerful fingers to Sharp's cheeks and squeezes, forcing Sharp's mouth open.

"A stunner, something like a taser. A few police forces have tried it out and decided that it's just too nasty to be used." The Englishman holds the prongs inches from Sharp's eyes. Sharp makes animal sounds. "It's programmed for the chest, or limbs. Not for the mouth. As for the tongue — well! Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Feel this." Sharp quivers, but his head is held immobile between the Korean's hands and his chest. The Englishman drops his cigarette to the floor. He fills Sharp's vision like a dentist, lets the prongs drift in and out of his view. Then he slowly lowers them into Sharp's mouth.

All the pain, all the suffering, everything bad that has ever happened to anyone in the whole of time. It all focuses, in a single instantaneous spasm. His throat contracts and for a moment he thinks they've overdone it, they've killed him. And in the seconds before he loses consciousness, while his whole body is still writhing as much as his bonds will allow, Sharp knows that he will give them the numbers.

THE PETROV KILL

"Bring him upstairs."

Ronnie and the Korean haul Sharp to his feet. He is half dragged, half pushed up the cellar stairs. Back to soft carpeting and civilization. More stairs, a broad flight of them. A bust of someone on the first landing. Miki leads the way along a broad corridor and stops at a door. "Someone would like a word with you. If you mention any numbers, you'll both be shot." The Korean produces a black snub-nosed revolver from a back pocket and waves it in Sharp's face. Sharp doesn't care.

She's propped up with cushions on a sofa. Sharp recognizes the man standing next to her from Ambra's movie: Demos, the Hollywood musician. The man's whole face is sweaty. Daniela's head is drooping, her face is gray, and there is a sizable, multicolored bruise on her cheek. Sharp wonders that she's conscious. With an effort she raises her head and gives a faint smile. Sharp can hardly hear her words, whispered in German. "I should not have given you the numbers."

"I shouldn't have asked for them." He found he was whispering, too.

"I've given them the numbers, Lewis. I love numbers, I want to share them. They are all my beautiful little friends. Thank you, Hindus, for inventing them." She suddenly chokes, and has a fit of coughing. Then: "I love schnapps, too, but they won't let me have any."

"You heard her," Miki says. "She's given us the numbers. There's no point in holding back any longer, Lewis."

"They say they'll let us go if our numbers match, Lewis. Do you believe them? I would like to live just a little longer. There is still so much I would like to do and see."

"That's enough," Demos snaps.

But Daniela is wandering; perhaps she's been driven mad. "You know, I've seen so much that's ugly. I would like to see some beautiful things. In all my life I've never seen Halley's Comet or …"

"Shut up, bitch." Demos slaps Daniela. She cries out in pain. Sharp tries to break free of the grips on his forearms, but Ronnie and the fake army man hold him without even trying.

Miki turns to Sharp, gives him a sly smile. "What's this, Lewis? Do I detect a weak spot?" She indicates with her head. "Get him out of here."

The Big Man turns up, descends the cellar stairs with the musician in tow — presumably Daniela doesn't need guarding. Demos's face is still sweaty, and he has an unpleasant, tense grin fixed on it. Darth Vader stares at Sharp without blinking, speaks to the others. "What's keeping you? Why don't you have the firing code?"

The American says, "We have, from the old witch. But John Wayne's holding out."

Miki: "We have to be sure she hasn't fed us rubbish."

"I've no time for this. Sophia's almost there and the meeting starts in less than twelve hours. Get the code out of him, now."

"But we can't risk his heart giving out. We need the medic."

An irritated, sibilant hiss: "Well, where is Al-Mufty?"

Demos says, "He was at some conference. He should have been back by now. Or so his wife says."

Someone stubs a cigarette out on the back of Sharp's neck. He yelps, jerks his head back.

Petrov, his good eye staring without expression. "Do I know you?"

Yes, the Third NATO Conference on Microbiological Weapons and Countermeasures, Uppsala, three years ago. Sharp shakes his head.

"No matter. I need the code now, Mr. Sharp."

Sharp manages a whisper. "And if I give you it? I suppose you'll let me and the old lady go?"

"Is that what they promised you? Your life in exchange for the code?"

"Right." Code, singular. The fact registers.

"And are you foolish enough to believe them?"

"Of course not. But it seems you are."

A hint of hesitation. "What do you mean?"

"They're looking for two codes. You seem to want just one."

"Two numbers. Are they indeed?" Something in Petrov's tone. And that eye without eyelashes, unblinking. The grin is disappearing from Demos's face.

Miki says, "Why not? We have two Furies. We may as well know how to prime both of them." Her tone says, Stupid man.

Petrov swivels around to Miki. "No, you have one Fury. That was the arrangement."

"But you said it yourself. You wanted Megaera on standby. We can have it on site within hours."

"The seas were too rough and we couldn't risk the extra weight. We had to leave Meg behind." The seas. The extra weight. They don't care what they're saying in front of me. Petrov is hissing like a snake. "In any case, why should I have to explain myself to you?"

"Leave Meg behind? Where exactly?"

"Do you think I'm a fool, giving information like that to people like you? Just get Alecto out of him." Sharp thinks that Petrov would be shouting if he could.

"Oh, we'll do that." The army man sounds completely confident.

Miki asks, softly, "Where have you parked Megaera, Vladimir?"

Petrov's good eye blinks. Still that voice, stripped of emotion, a computer. Sharp has to surmise the turmoil within the man. "This isn't part of the deal."

"I know, Vladimir, I know." Miki's tone is sympathetic. "But you see, you shouldn't make deals with people like us."

Petrov and Demos don't even make it to the door.

SS DAGGER

The occasional scream, or at least that's what it might be. How can a man express pain when he doesn't have a voice to scream? The scream comes out as a buzz, a metallic monotone, long and drawn out. Is the pain worse for not having the means to express it?

Sharp is hearing the noise through a ventilator shaft close to the chair. There are snatches of conversation in German, French, English, and some Asian tongue. Words, some of them angry, on the limit of hearing. Something about the target. Nothing penetrates the cellar door. Nothing, that is, until he hears the single shot. After that the buzzing stops. Then there is a raised voice, speaking rapidly in Greek, the tone a mixture of anger and fear. And a second shot.

About ten minutes pass, and then Sharp hears them coming down the stairs.

Dreams. People talking. The clink of teacups. An English afternoon. Tee-hee.

"He'll choke on his tongue … do his testicles."

"The firing codes, Sharp … all we need are a couple of numbers … no time … nothing personal, chum … I'm an army man, too … even been on a hostage endurance course."

A flash of silver, a fish in a stream. Snowcapped mountains. A volcano. Mount Fuji? Hekla? Asiatic tongues.

What numbers? I don't know any numbers. Square root of minus one. Searing pain, this time in the groin, down through the thighs, up through the stomach. Worse than the tongue. Much much … square root of minus two, then.

Drink it, it's only wine. Choking, vomit, blood mixed in. My shoes, you bastard.

The American, brow sweating, suffering with me. Decent chap. For the greater good.

We're all set up. Just need John Wayne here to give us the codes. Worried about his heart, are you?

A girl, his first love. She's fourteen. Facedown, hands in stream, trying for the fish. Those legs. The bra visible through the sweater.

Talk talk talk. She loves to talk. And beautiful teeth, beautiful laugh.

More talking, people in the distance … where's the effing doctor? Looks played out, can't risk losing him. Wait for the quack.

The clink of teacups.

Three little maids.

Tee hee.

Parcel tape stretches.

Suffocating.

Sharp jerks awake in a panic, his tongue blocking his throat. He takes big, wheezing gulps, his ribs in agony with each breath. Eventually, with a last shuddering breath, the oxygen is restored and his windpipe cleared of vomit. His head has been lolling forward, constricting his throat. His tongue is swollen, seems to fill his mouth. The cellar is black but he feels blood and mucus soaking his trousers.

No part of his body is without pain. On a pain scale of one to ten, his left kidney is about nine, his smashed foot is ten, the area around his groin nine or ten. His ribs ache whenever he takes a breath — two or three on the scale. His arms are behind him, tied to to the chair. His legs, too, are secured with layers of parcel tape. He is alone.

Another round like the last and I'm a jellyfish.

Even as he awakens, choking, he is registering a discovery: Under prolonged pressure, parcel tape stretches. His spell of unconsciousness bent forward has given a tiny leeway to his arms. Less than a centimeter, but enough to twist them. He works at it, driven by the need to avoid more pain, to keep from shouting the firing codes, and to survive.

It's a house of noise. Background things, indistinct, but all he has to judge the enemy. An exchange of voices; footsteps coming down the cellar. Sharp cringes like a frightened child — no more, please, no more. But the footsteps go into an adjacent cellar room, and there is the clink of a bottle. On the limit of hearing, someone says, "Better check on the Duke." He droops his head and slouches forward, with his eyes closed.

The key turns in the cellar door and a light switches on. There is a long silence and then someone is saying, "He's not going anywhere," and the door closes again. The light clicks off and the key turns.

The hairs on his arms peel off, but in some minutes he has wriggled his right arm out, and the rest follows quickly. He gives the throbbing a minute to ease as circulation returns to his arms and feet. The cellar stinks with vomit and sour wine.

He stands up, nearly falls down, and gasps with a whole new set of pains. A glimmer of light is coming under the doorjamb, just enough to make out shapes. He limps quietly toward the door, switches on. It's an old-fashioned lock, a bolt sliding into a metal bracket screwed into the wooden doorjamb. All Sharp needs is a screwdriver. He rummages quietly, quickly, among the bric-a-brac, in terror of discovery. Sometimes the gods have to be with you.

Of course! The display of Nazi paraphernalia. The glass lid opens and he pulls out a thin dagger. An SS dagger, like Max Krafft's. From a man of the highest order? Or did he just pass an exam? Whatever, today the gods are with him.

He overbalances and clatters against a chair, which scrapes noisily over the stone floor. All the flashing pains come back and he sits on it, gasping. A disaster. If noise filters down, it filters up.

Raised voices upstairs. "… John Wayne … Ronnie's checking." Sharp, close to panic, looks around for a weapon, realizes he has one in his hand. Stupid! He hobbles to the door and switches the light off.

He sees the figure in silhouette. Ronnie switches the light on and sinks to his knees with an Oof! as Sharp thrusts the dagger into the man's stomach. Warm blood spurts over Sharp's hand. Thrust and then cut in any direction, the manual said. Sharp can't do it, leaves Ronnie writhing on the floor, making far too much noise. Sharp bends over him, retrieves his mobile phone — he doesn't know why — whispers, "Nothing personal, chum."

There is a fuse box over the door. Sharp drags the chair, stands on it, and switches the electricity off. Upstairs, there's the sound of people complaining, running around, clicking switches on and off. Surely they can't fail to hear Ronnie?

Up the steep steps, scarcely able to climb them. Pitch black. Into the corridor. Somebody bumps into him, says "Bitte," stumbles, and then runs in the direction of the cellar stairs.

Go for Daniela, upstairs? Carry an old woman out of the house while …? Impossible! Faint light, shining under a door. Sharp hobbles quickly toward it, palms and brow wet with sweat, feels for a door handle. Behind him, someone is using a cigarette lighter as a candle. He pulls the door open, quietly shuts it behind him, and he is out. Door opens behind him.

Long, winding pathway, lined by shrubs and trees. He hobbles quickly along it, doubled up and gasping with pain. Dawn breaking over a well-heeled suburb; streetlights still on; dustbins being rattled toward a lorry; and a dustman, jumping with fright when a gasping, blood-soaked hunchback lurches out of a gate waving a long bloody dagger.