It was a nerve-racking interlude, and not just because I kept wanting to punch out the ghouls who followed us with cameras and microphones shouting questions. The worst were the questions that focued on John’s supposed bereavement. They would have been cruel and contemptible if he had really cared about her. Under the circumstances they verged on emotional assault and battery, and I don’t know how he kept his temper. Mine came close to cracking more than once.

Even more nerve-racking were the interrogation sessions. Everybody from the CIA to Interpol to the SSI to the Salvation Army seemed intent on questioning us. It was tantamount to walking, not a tightrope, but a spiderweb strung over a pond full of piranhas. My head ached trying to keep track of the lies we’d invented.

One encounter stands out in my mind.

Following Schmidt’s advice, I had refused to be questioned except at the Embassy and in his company. John was there that day too. Everyone understood why we stuck together – or at least they thought they understood. Clichés, good old clichés – we had suffered together and survived together, and so on ad nauseam.

I had been expecting this particular meeting and had braced myself for it, so when Burckhardt rose to greet me I didn’t slug him or spit in his face or even throw anything at him.

‘You son of a bitch,’ I said, slapping his outstretched hand aside. ‘How you have the gall to face me after screwing up the way you did – ’

John and Schmidt descended on me murmuring soothing comments, and forced me into a chair. ‘No, I will not be quiet,’ I shouted. ‘I’m just getting started. God damn you, Burckhardt, if that’s your name, which I doubt, you and your security measures and your smug superiority and your total indifference to ordinary human decency almost got me killed. And furthermore . . .’

I hadn’t planned it that way, but my explosion turned out to be the smartest move I could have made. By the time I finished telling him what I thought of him he was too nervous to think straight.

‘We know now,’ he said, when I gave him a chance to talk, ‘that the individual referred to in the message was the man you had encountered in Sweden.’

‘Max,’ I snapped. ‘That was the name I knew him by. And no, I didn’t recognize him. He kept out of my way and he didn’t look at all the way I remembered him. The others – Hans and Rudi – weren’t on the boat.’

Burckhardt fumbled through his notes. ‘Dakin and Gurk – ’

‘Who? Speak up, Burckhardt, I’m bloody sick and tired of stupid questions.’

‘Uh. You knew them as Sweet and Bright.’