The general did not return, and ten minutes later, Brad rejoined Chris uneasy but keyed up. The Minox camera in his pocket held a photocopy of the list of names and addresses of the Abwehr’s undercover agents operating in the United Kingdom. Hans and Wilhelm arrived, and Brad had to wait until he and Chris walked out together to tell him of the list.

“Where did you find it?”

“On his desk tucked into a photo album under a stack of books. My guess is that he stuck it there out of sight until he could lock it up for safekeeping. I put the list back exactly in the position I found it, so if the general does suspect us and took note of the books’ order, he won’t notice even a corner out of alignment. I felt the list worth taking a shot of, Lapwing. The names could be the real deal.”

“I agree,” Chris said, “but it sure smacks of a setup to me. The general leaves us alone supposedly to visit a woman supposedly not expecting him, giving us all the time and opportunity in the world to help ourselves to a highly secret list of foreign agents within an easy search of his desk. It’s almost amateurish when you think about it.” He drew his scarf higher on his neck against the cold night air but felt another kind of chill creeping in.

“I’ll attach a note of our suspicions when I pass off the list to a cutout and let the major decide if it’s too much of a risk to act on the information,” Brad said. “I figure it will take a couple of days to check out its legitimacy. If he does decide to take a chance on the names and they prove phony, we’ll know for sure that we were set up.”

“And if they’re authentic…and the agents are rolled up…”

“Then the general will know the information came from somewhere,” Brad said, “but I believe he’d suspect his own men first, the reason those names were on his desk and not locked up at his headquarters. Nobody trusts anybody in his outfit. In any case, we should have time to get out. I figure we have two days before we know if we have to cut and run. Labrador will leave us a code signal. Remember it’s a squiggly line drawn somewhere in our symbols.”

“And if the major decides not to act on the information, we’re safe,” Chris said. “I’m going to call in sick, since we’ll have to check the mural hourly. How about you? Can you arrange for time off?”