‘Did he get anything from her?’

‘Nothing of any use to the Germans, no. We need to find this man. Other than his description, the only thing we know about him is that his nickname was the Ferret, and that a few months later he was based in Amsterdam, where he did something similar to what happened in Dijon. A network was captured in Enschede, and he turned up and killed the head of the local resistance. Another of our SOE agents died in his custody.’

‘And you think he’s here in Paris?’ Wilson waved his knife above his head to indicate the city and wiped his face with the large serviette.

‘We don’t know. We do know he was in Munich in August, when the Americans let him slip out of their grasp. I’d be most surprised if he’d returned here, but we think Paris may hold the clue to his real identity.’

‘Tom didn’t go into too much detail, but he did say you were both first-class agents and had spent a considerable amount of time behind enemy lines.’

They both nodded.

‘This place sometimes feels like it’s still occupied at times.’ Wilson leaned forward as he lowered his voice. ‘It’s bloody difficult working here, to be frank with you. Not easy to know who’s in charge. At first it was the resistance calling all the shots, though now de Gaulle seems to have a firmer hand on the rudder, but it all feels rather anarchic at times. Hardest thing from our point of view is knowing who the hell to believe. Everyone claims to have been in the resistance, but the truth is there was an enormous amount of collaboration: for a long time the German occupation was relatively trouble-free, and the reason for that is the number of French people who went along with it. I call them the passive collaborators – the more active ones were the traitors. I say, do you mind if I order another bottle?’

When the wine arrived, Prince told the sommelier to fill all three glasses, and Wilson looked somewhat put out.

‘Since the liberation, we’ve experienced what the French are calling the épuration. You’ve heard the word?’

Both Richard and Hanne shook their heads.

‘It translates as “purge”, and there are two versions of it – the state purge of collaborators, or épuration légale, and the unofficial version of it, épuration sauvage. That’s what I mean by anarchy. The country has turned on itself to settle scores, and the result is utter chaos. It’s quite unedifying. A French chap I know told me it’s as if the French people resent collaborators far more than they ever did the occupying German forces. The prisons are full of collaborators awaiting trial, and plenty of them are being dealt with unofficially. The resistance groups are still active, and most nights collaborators are taken from their homes and found dead in a ditch the next day. So if you want to know the Ferret’s true identity, you just need to pray that anyone who was aware of it hasn’t been killed yet.’