“Oh, I expect they dug in, too, biding their time. By now it’s too late to signal the plane, so the chap takes out his gun and runs toward the commotion.” Davenport paused and closed his eyes, while his thumb jiggled the cigarette up and down. “Long story short. Not only has Beauchamp sprung the girl out of prison, he’s rounded up her parents, too, because the Nazis would’ve taken them next, shot them in the village square pour encourager les autres. Beauchamp takes down the four or five Gestapo waiting at the landing site, all by himself, while the junior hustles that girl and her parents onto the Lysander and waves them off to Blighty.”

“My God,” whispered Iris.

“Quite. Of course that means neither Beauchamp nor his junior can get on the plane themselves, there isn’t room, and two hours later they run smack into a patrol, the same Gestapo patrol sent to find out why their men hadn’t returned from the landing site, and the pair of them wake up on a train to Mauthausen.”

“That’s a prison, isn’t it? A German prison.”

“Austrian, technically. But the damned thing is, Beauchamp springs them out of the prison camp a few months later, along with a few other men, and tracks down some resistance escape line into Switzerland.” Davenport patted his jacket pocket, as if he’d forgotten something. “Though I’m afraid I haven’t heard the details about that one.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Friend of mine, as I said. An old school chum. I say, I wouldn’t mind a little more champagne, would you?”

Iris wouldn’t have minded the entire bottle. She told herself it was the seasickness that made her legs wobble. She turned back to Aunt Vivian and Burgess, who had somehow moved from silkworms to the atom bomb. Burgess claimed to think it was immoral.

“You only think it’s immoral because we’ve got it, and you don’t like Americans,” Aunt Vivian said.

“Not true. I don’t dislike all Americans. I quite like you, Mrs. Schuyler, even though you entertain some bloody stupid ideas.”

“Besides, you weren’t a fighting man, were you? You spent the war sitting pretty at your nice safe Foreign Office desk. Ask Major Davenport here whether he’d like to be fighting hand to hand on some Japanese island right now.”

“I jolly well wouldn’t,” said Davenport cheerfully.

“There you have it. War’s an immoral business to begin with, Mr. Burgess, you can’t get around that. It comes down to how many of yours do we kill so you don’t kill ours.”

“But!” Burgess waved his cigarette. “But the women and children, Mrs. Schuyler! The awful consequences of radiation! How could a civilized nation do such a thing?”