‘The Russian commissar he mentioned.’

‘Gurevich?’

‘Exactly – I noticed you didn’t even write the name down. Who is he?’

‘He’s the NKGB officer who helped Prince in Berlin back in May, when he was looking for Hanne. Prince has kept in touch with him and he was the source for the information that gave us the Steiners.’

‘So…’

‘So it’s entirely possible that Prince somehow got a message to Gurevich and he organised Steiner’s abduction.’

‘So quickly?’

‘It would be a big error, Roly, to underestimate Prince’s resourcefulness. Do remember that he operated in Nazi-occupied Europe. He and Hanne are first-class agents.’

‘Good Lord.’

‘My view is that they were so appalled at being ordered to let the Nazis go that they took this course of action.’

‘But that’s appalling, Tom: disobeying orders like that… working with the Russians!’

‘That’s as may be, but knowing Prince and Hanne, I doubt there’ll be any evidence of that. I’m not sure if Bartholomew’s still in Trieste: I’ll have to see if the Field Security Section chaps there can resume the operation and arrest the Germans. Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Bloody hell, Roly – and to think I took the view life would be less complicated after the war, eh!’

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Bentley, Gilbey’s boss, who nodded his head by way of greeting and glided into the room as if there was someone he didn’t want to wake up.

‘You’ve heard the news, I imagine.’

Gilbey said they had; in fact they’d only just returned from the American embassy, where an irate Joseph Jenkins had told them about the disappearance of Wolfgang Steiner into the Soviet sector.

‘I think we may be talking at cross-purposes here, Tom. I didn’t mean that news – which is news to me, in fact. I meant about Prince.’

‘He and his wife are on their way back here.’

Bentley shook his head. ‘That’s the thing, you see. They arrived in Klagenfurt on Tuesday afternoon and were due on a flight to Munich yesterday.’

‘Please don’t tell me they’ve been causing trouble?’

‘I’m afraid they have. As far as we can gather, they disappeared from their hotel in Klagenfurt early yesterday morning and there’s been no sign of them since.’

‘Yesterday morning – and we’re only being told now?’

‘I think the FSS chaps who were meant to be keeping an eye on them rather hoped they’d turn up before they had to break the bad news to London.’

It had been a particularly busy morning at the Bourne and Sons art gallery in Cork Street. Since the end of the war, business had been picking up, and that very morning they’d had a most promising meeting with an RAF officer who’d brought in a seventeenth-century Flemish baroque painting he’d inherited from an aunt. The impression gained by both Bourne and Ridgeway was that he wanted to sell it quickly and had little appreciation of its real value, aesthetic or financial. Ridgeway – who knew more about Flemish painting than Bourne – thought it was certainly from the Antwerp school, and with some judicious wording they could attribute it to a student of van Dyck.