It would be difficult to put more aptly.

Having reached deck 12 he studied the sign with the cabin numbers. To get to suite 1211 he had to go to the port side.

Martin yawned. Although – or perhaps because – yesterday the dentist had convinced him to have a temporary implant, the toothache had given him no respite all night; he hadn’t slept a wink apart from a ten-minute doze on the plane to London.

Then, in the taxi from Heathrow to Southampton, the calls on his mobile were the last straw. First Kramer tried to phone him, then the boss personally, to bellow what the hell did he think he was doing missing the operational meeting without an excuse. If he didn’t come to the station immediately he needn’t come back ever again.

‘What’s more, you fucking well promised to pay regular visits to the doctor. The shit you’d better be swallowing every day can cause cerebral failure, though I doubt in your case there’d be any noticeable difference.’

At some point Martin had let the insults go into voicemail. He doubted that they could get by without him. The moment the next kamikaze mission came around, this entry in his personal file would be forgotten again. Or this time had he actually overstepped the mark simply by booking his passage on the Sultan without consulting his superiors or requesting time off? In a 150-square-metre suite on deck 11 for two thousand euros per night, including a business-class flight from New York back to Berlin.

And yet Martin didn’t have any intention of making the crossing. He just wanted to talk to Gerlinde Dobkowitz, take a look at her supposed ‘proof’ and then get off again as quickly as possible. But the cranky old woman had refused to leave the ship for him. As Martin had learned yesterday evening from some online research, in cruise forums the seventy-eight-year-old Gerlinde Dobkowitz was something of a legend. From her pension she’d rented one of the few permanent cabins on the Sultan for the rest of her life. And since the ship had been launched eight years ago, she only ever left it when maintenance work required she do so.

So Martin had to go aboard to her, and as nobody was permitted aboard the Sultan without proof of passage he’d been forced to book himself a cabin. The veranda suite at the stern of the liner had been the only one that could be booked online at such short notice, which was why he was now paying twelve thousand euros for a twenty-minute conversation. The sailing schedule ought to have given him more than two hours for their meeting, but on the drive to Southampton the taxi driver had made a point of showing him every traffic jam in southern England.

Oh, well, the cost wouldn’t bankrupt him.