‘Are you not pleased, my friend?’

Prince said he supposed he was, but he was more devastated at Franz Rauter’s death. ‘I don’t know how that could have been allowed to happen.’

‘It wasn’t allowed to happen; from what Comrade Orlov tells me, it was sheer bad luck – he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man who killed him – Prisoner Böhme – knew him from the RSHA and guessed he was a traitor, don’t ask me how. When he realised he was using an assumed name, he concluded his guess was correct. If it’s any consolation, Prisoner Böhme was shot later that day.’

‘It’s no consolation actually. I think we should have pulled Franz out of Hohenschönhausen once he’d told us the Ferret’s identity. It was risky to—’

‘Hindsight, my friend, hindsight. It could also have been risky to pull him out immediately. We weren’t to know Böhme would spot him; it was a chance in a million, sheer bad luck. And at least he’s dead, which means no one will make the link with the Ferret. Do you want some news to cheer you up?’

‘Go on.’

‘I did a check yesterday, and we do have a Wolfgang Steiner on our watch list. He was a Nazi Party official at the Parteikanzlei, just a few minutes’ walk from here. We don’t know a lot about him, but he was known to be an associate of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s personal secretary, who is someone we certainly want to arrest – he’s one of the most senior Nazis whose whereabouts we know nothing about. As far as we know, Wolfgang Steiner left Berlin in late March and has disappeared.’

‘He got out early,’ said Hanne, ‘before your main assault on the city.’

Gurevich nodded. ‘Obviously smart – and the fact that he got away then means he’s probably more important than we realised. I’ll make a note on his file. But what I don’t quite get is the son – Friedrich. He was a young Gestapo officer who murdered people. I’m afraid that was not unusual. So why are you going to these lengths to find him – surely there are more important war criminals?’

‘Because, Iosif, two of the people he murdered were our agents, people who’d been sent over from England, and there’s a view in London that we have a responsibility to bring the person who killed them to justice.’

‘But it sounds as if there may be a reason why he’s so hard to find – why someone was murdered in Munich when they tried to track him down. I can get Friedrich Steiner’s name added to our watch lists – I’m sure you’ll be doing the same with yours.’

‘It’s already been done.’

‘Good. There is something, though.’ Iosif Gurevich hesitated, as if unsure whether to carry on. He drummed his fingers on his desk and then held up a hand – wait – and walked over to the door. He opened it and appeared to look up and down the corridor before closing it again. Then he pulled up a chair and leaned forward.