‘It’s exactly what Mr Dulles says it is. We want you to perform one last service for the Allies.’

‘Good God, it’s not even April the first. Who put you up to this?’

Eaton merely shrugged, with the hint of a grimace at the corners of his mouth.

‘OK,’ Dulles continued. ‘I can see why you might need a little persuading. But Hitler is alive and we have to get him. You’re the man for the job.’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m a college professor, a husband and a father. I teach history to spotty youths. My spying days are over and I’m enjoying being back in civilian life. My wife is hoping to start a medical degree course. I’m preparing for a new intake of undergraduates. I have a book to write, and a son whom I would very much like to get to know.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, what makes you think the bastard Hitler is even alive?’

‘What makes you think he’s dead?’ the colonel said.

‘The Russians found his burnt remains outside the bunker in the centre of Berlin.’

‘Not quite so. No body was found – only a few bones and ashes, which could have been anyone’s.’

‘I thought he was identified from dental records.’

‘Oh, some bridgework was identified as his by his dentist, but who knows the truth? The dental piece could have been faked easily enough, or the dentist could be lying. These are not difficult tasks for a regime that subjugated most of Europe.’

‘Surely others in the bunker testified that Hitler and his mistress had killed themselves.’

‘Most of them haven’t even been found, and those who have spoken are dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. They’d say whatever the Führer told them to say. And there are other things. In particular, there are doubts from the Soviet side, the people who supposedly found Hitler’s remains. If they were so certain about it, why did Stalin tell President Truman that he didn’t believe Hitler was dead.’

‘Did Stalin really say that?’

‘Yes,’ Dulles said. ‘Yes, he did, at the Potsdam Conference. And the same message came from Marshal Zhukov and Commissar Andrey Vyshinsky when they met the press in June. And there’s plenty of other evidence, which I will lay out in due course.’ He sighed heavily. ‘But first off, am I right in thinking you knew Randy Collingham?’

‘What do you mean knew? Of course I know Randy. He was with us at Grosvenor Street for a few months. He’s a good man.’

Dulles’s eyes flickered towards Colonel Appache.

‘Special Agent Collingham is dead,’ the colonel said. ‘So is Agent Denis Harper, who was working with him.’

‘Dear God, are you serious?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Appache said flatly. ‘They were killed in their car. I saw their bodies. They were both shot in the back of the head and so we have to assume that an assassin had secreted himself in the rear of their vehicle, though no one can be sure how that could have happened. Strangely, the back seat was streaked with blood so it is possible the killer himself had been bleeding – and there was blood on the road a couple of hundred yards behind the car.’