‘That name is familiar,’ he said. ‘I believe I met them during the war.’

According to Nightingale, they’d formed the second wave of American practitioners who’d joined the war effort following Pearl Harbour. The first wave had consisted of a hundred or so volunteers from the University of Pennsylvania, the so-called Printer’s Men, who’d arrived in 1940 and worked directly with the Folly or in conjunction with Special Operations Executive.

The Virginia Gentlemen, inevitably nicknamed ‘The Virgins’, had kept themselves separate from the British and Commonwealth practitioners.

‘They mostly operated out of Istanbul,’ said Nightingale. ‘I got the impression that they had a rather low opinion of us, and of course there was the little matter of our allying with Tecumseh in 1812.’

Blondie perked up and asked for a clarification.

Apparently back in 1812, when the special relationship was special in a whole different way, British policy had been to support the creation of a Native American confederacy as a buffer between an aggressively expansionist United States and the completely peace-loving and not in any way land-grabbing bit of the British Empire soon to be known as Canada.

When the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, the British, in time-honoured fashion, abandoned their allies. Who were subsequently wiped out by the Americans along with any other tribes that happened to be in the same general vicinity – even those that had actually been allied with the US government during the war. It’s exactly this sort of thing, of course, which gives colonialism a bad name.

Nightingale had gained the impression that the Virgins had never forgiven the Folly for its role in providing Tecumseh’s medicine men with modern Newtonian techniques.

‘They rather avoided having anything to do with us,’ said Nightingale.

‘Were they involved in the attack on Ettersberg?’ asked Finula.

‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘They were . . .’ he paused, looking for the right word, ‘. . . contemptuous. They didn’t believe the research the Germans were doing represented a significant threat to the Allied cause. I thought they were wrong about the threat, but right about the dangers of launching a major operation so deep into enemy territory.’

Dangers that were realised when the cream of British wizardry was cut down in the forests of Grosser Ettersberg.

‘Of course we didn’t know about the Manhattan Project at that time,’ said Nightingale, ‘although I rather suspect they did.’ There was a definite note of bitterness there. Personally, I thought it was probably better that parts of Southern Germany didn’t glow in the dark . . . but then I didn’t leave most of my friends in that forest.

Nightingale shook his head and gave the spooks a tight smile.

‘Of course, none of this is relevant to the present case,’ he said.

‘Did you know the Americans were on their way?’

‘I was given a heads up last week,’ I said.

‘This would be a phone call from Agent Kimberley Reynolds of the FBI,’ said Finula. ‘Yes?’