‘A few days ago I came to your office to inform you that the Counter Intelligence Corps had recruited a Wolfgang Steiner as an agent. I also informed you that a condition of Steiner’s recruitment was that the British abandon the hunt for his son Friedrich and stop investigating the Kestrel Line. You remember this – it was just a day or so ago?’

Neither Englishman reacted.

‘I requested that you issue an immediate instruction to your agents in Trieste to drop everything. This had been authorised at the highest level: Ambassador Winant discussed the matter with your Foreign Secretary.’

Still no reaction from Tom Gilbey, but Sir Roland said that all this rang a bell and he hoped they were getting some decent intelligence from this Steiner chap after going to so much trouble.

Jenkins slammed the table so hard that the young officer’s notebook fell to the floor. ‘I’m sure there are some people who find your boarding school sarcasm amusing, but I’m not one of them. I’m here to tell you that Steiner has gone missing. Maybe “missing” is the wrong word. To be more precise, we were informed last night by the Soviets that he was now working for them: he’s apparently in their sector of Berlin.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘We want to know what the hell you guys have to do with this, Gilbey. One day we tell you about Steiner, the next he defects to the Russians.’

‘Defected may not be quite accurate.’ It was the man from the Office of Strategic Services. ‘My feeling is that Steiner was lured to Berlin and then abducted by the Soviets. There is no way he’d have gone over to them voluntarily: it was in his interest to work with us. He had nothing to gain from becoming a Soviet agent. My guess is he won’t be in East Berlin for very long. The bastards will take him to Moscow and finish him off there.’

‘Well I’m obviously sorry to hear all this; it’s a damn shame.’ Gilbey was sitting up straight and doing his best to sound genuinely concerned. ‘But I do hope you’re not implying we were somehow involved.’

‘I’m saying,’ said Jenkins, some of the colour now returning to his cheeks, ‘that it’s one hell of a coincidence.’

‘Well it’s nothing to do with us, I can assure you, Joseph. I fear it is just that, a coincidence. Maybe Steiner was careless, who knows?’

‘According to our guys in Berlin, an NKGB commissar called Iosif Gurevich came to the Allied Kommandatura last night to tell them about Steiner. Does that name ring a bell?’

Tom Gilbey shook his head and said he was awfully sorry and only wished he could be more help.

‘You know him, don’t you, Tom?’

‘Know who, Roly?’

They were back in Gilbey’s office in St James’s. The departure from the US Embassy had been a swift and uncomfortable one. The man from the Office of Strategic Services had ended the meeting by saying they’d not heard the last of this matter. He’d be discussing it later that day with the ambassador.