“I saw your tattoo,” explained Max. “I, er, well – I followed you in Budapest.”

“My fault,” said Sister Marguerite. “Max has been my trainee detective. I’m a former commandant myself, you see.”

Ester and Klaus gawped.

“Sorry,” said Max.

“Oh, no need to be sorry,” said Klaus, “I just – well. I hope you don’t judge me too harshly. I’m trying to leave it behind, you see. I have to keep under the radar though, which makes it tricky to find work … using an alias, and so on… I’m not really Klaus Grob, you see, and I can’t show any ID papers or what have you. So I mostly still do secretive security jobs. Just, on my own terms.” He paused. “Without any of the … you know…”

“Senseless violence on behalf of evil people,” supplied Ester helpfully.

“Right,” said Klaus, shrinking a bit.

“It’s all right,” said Max. “I don’t mind about who you were before. I like Klaus Grob.”

Klaus smiled.

“All right, enough of this,” yelled Ester. “Shouldn’t we be making plans?”

“Plans,” said Le Goff coldly, “to do what?”

They all spun round. Le Goff glared at them. Max had no idea how long he’d been there.

“This,” explained the-man-known-these-days-as-Klaus-Grob. And he picked up Le Goff, marched him outside, put him in the cupboard and locked the door.

12. Salem Sadik

The city of Istanbul is divided by a flash of blue that looks like a river. Actually, it is a strait – the Bosphorus Strait – a waterway connecting two seas. To the north, the Black Sea. To the south, the Marmara Sea.

On the west bank of the Bosphorus Strait, Istanbul is in Europe. On the east, it is in Asia. Max had marvelled at that blue line on the map, and now here it was, wide and watery and real. As Max, Marguerite, Ester and Klaus hurried over a magnificent suspension bridge, they crossed from one continent to the other: just like that.

Sister Marguerite assured them all that she had a plan, so they followed her across the city. The mist that Max had seen at dawn had not lifted, and hung sleepily about the streets. They hurried through tiny backstreets crammed with colourful houses, down wide smooth roads criss-crossed overhead by trolley wires, through heaving crowds on shiny shopping streets, past lines of people fishing at the water’s edge, up and down hills and in and out of noise and bustle. Istanbul was enormous, and it always seemed to be sloping upwards or downwards, and soon Max’s feet were aching and Ester’s complaints were sounding almost reasonable.