The meeting had the feel of a family gathering with tensions bubbling just beneath the surface, the participants obliged to meet, the occasion made all the more awkward by the links that had brought them together in the first place.

As usual, Lord Swalcliffe sat on his own opposite Sir Roland Pearson and Tom Gilbey, his face barely concealing a look of resentment. Air Vice Marshal Hamilton and Wing Commander Carter were at one end of the table, in front of a wall covered in charts and photographs, and Long from the Ministry was opposite them, as ever his presence somewhat enigmatic: unexplained, largely silent but nevertheless apparently important.

‘I think you will have to concede, Edward, that the map we received from Agent Laertes does rather substantiate Kurt’s intelligence: Peenemünde is where the V-1 and the V-2 are being developed.’

Lord Swalcliffe huffed and puffed and shifted around in his chair, clearly unhappy at the suggestion that he might concede anything.

‘None of this so-called intelligence proves these bloody things can fly, though, does it? My concern remains that this could all be part of a very sophisticated deception operation by the enemy. Even if it’s not, there’s no guarantee their technology works. It could simply be something to indulge Hitler. The war in Europe is beginning to turn against him – by all accounts the Nazis have been defeated at Stalingrad just this week, and lost the whole of their 6th Army in the process – and he needs to convince the German people everything will be fine because they’re developing secret weapons to defeat us. If we go ahead and bomb Peenemünde and turn the site into rubble, as I dare say you’re going to propose, we’ll be shooting ourselves in the foot. I say let them carry on with this nonsense. If we bomb some common sense into them, it will rebound on us: mark my words, the Luftwaffe will end up as the main beneficiaries.’

‘What do you chaps make of it, Frank?’

Air Vice Marshal Hamilton stood up, positioning himself between two large charts.

‘There can be no doubt that the map we received from Agent Laertes is consistent with what we were able to ascertain from our aerial reconnaissance photographs. It’s terribly good by the way, quite the professional touch to it. As we said before, our photographs were poor quality. With the help of the map, they now make considerably more sense. The intelligence from your agent not only corroborates what we knew about Peenemünde, but actually adds significantly to it.