The Admiral stood up and straightened himself in the manner of someone with a painful back. ‘Sailed into Trieste once, strange place – one wasn’t too sure what country one was in. I’ve come across other places like that: Salonika, Barcelona, Odessa and Istanbul – too many bloody Jews if you ask me, though I doubt there are now!’

Bourne and Ridgeway laughed dutifully.

‘I have good news and bad news to impart. Prince and that Danish woman seem to have caught wind of what’s going on and have turned up in Trieste. Hang on, hang on… Overriding that is the fact that my very good friend Wolfgang has somehow managed to persuade the Americans to put pressure on MI6 to call off the hunt for Friedrich and forget about the Kestrel Line.’

‘Really – how on earth did he manage that?’

‘Don’t ask me, but I’m not surprised. When I first met Wolfgang in Berlin in 1938, I realised he was one of the most intelligent men I’d ever come across – and that’s saying something: the whole city was full of impressive and clever men. I’m just pleased I’ve been able to maintain contact with him and that we’ve been of some help to him and the cause. He’s still optimistic that he’ll find Martin Bormann alive, you know – imagine that, eh?’

‘And do you think we can count on Palmer to behave?’

‘You’ll know that I’ve had my doubts about him, even though I had a hand in his recruitment. I know he was a first-class agent for the Reich during the war, but once he disappeared, I thought that either they’d catch him or he’d be found dead, and I have to say it would have been safer for us had it been the latter. I was most surprised, as you were, when he turned up at your gallery in August. My instinct was to finish him off, you know – I realise that would have been ungrateful after everything he’d done, but I felt he knew too much, and there can be no room for sentimentality. I asked Myrtle to see to it, but she took the view that it would be too risky. She thought there was a possibility he might have put something in place to protect himself, something that would have come out if he was killed – you know what I mean: a solicitor being instructed to forward an incriminating letter from him to the authorities after they’d not heard from him for an agreed period of time.’

‘So sending him on the Kestrel Line makes sense.’

The Admiral nodded and checked his watch. ‘Yes, gets him away from here. The ship’s going to South Africa, you know. Most of the German escape lines end up in South America, but I know a chap in Durban who’ll look after them. He’ll send the Germans to Windhoek, which is pretty much a German city, and he’ll sort Palmer out too.’

‘And Myrtle?’