Watkins knew only too well the identity of D/H 315—Lockhart. So the traitor was alive, was he? Alive and well in Germany, no less! The last he’d heard from Cairo was that the bugger was acting as some sort of German stooge in Crete. There was no way that Watkins was going to believe this tosh. It was so manifestly some Abwehr game that it did not even dignify a response.

He uncapped his fountain pen, his famous Waterman that contained only green ink. On the strip he scribbled:

N.A.R.

He then initialed this with a large “W.” He replaced the strip in its box, shut the box, and put it on top of all the others. No action required, thought Watkins. Lunch was what was required, and straightaway.

JUNE 1941

He hears the news on the radio a few minutes after he wakes up. It is a Sunday morning, and the weather is appropriately fine in Berlin, for it is a happy day, a day that will reaffirm his faith in the Führer, make him realize that he is a genius.

“German forces have invaded Soviet Russia. In the early hours of this morning, the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht launched a massive offensive to rid the Russian people of the Communist tyranny….”

He cheers out loud.

“This calls for a celebration!” he says.

“Does it?” asks Eileen.

“Of course! This is it! The moment we have been waiting for! At last, Communism is being swept away! Don’t you see? This is the beginning of the end!”

With that, he gets out of bed and starts getting dressed.

“Don’t worry about making my breakfast,” he says. “I’m going down to the Foreign Press Club—that’s the place to be this morning.”

He thinks about asking her, but he doesn’t want her around. Things are in a bad way between them, and he’s heard that she’s seeing someone else, some young army officer. He doesn’t really care. She is a burden, he thinks, let the handsome officer have her. What worries him is whether he is going to find a replacement, but for the meantime he is too interested in the news.

At the Press Club, the atmosphere is electric. There are journalists from nearly every country in Europe, except England of course. They know they should be at their bureaus, but they want to be together, sharing scraps, speculating. The air is thick with excited chatter and smoke, and he notices that a few are even drinking champagne.

He looks for a familiar face, and there are plenty, but the person he wants to find is William Joyce, his fellow collaborator and rival at the Reichsrundfunk. They call him “Lord Haw-Haw” at home, which he and Joyce find amusing, because Joyce’s voice is anything but lordly. The papers at home must be referring to Joyce’s predecessor, they think, Normal Baillie-Stewart, very much a “Haw-Haw,” a Sandhurst man through and through.