At seven o’clock the next morning, a truck pulled away from the St. Michael Cloister. It was a commonplace event—trucks came and went nearly every hour, ferrying groups of SS men to parts of the ever-diminishing Reich. Lockhart had deliberately neglected to tell Strasser, preferring instead to face the music—if there was any—on his return.

“So how are you finding it?” Lockhart shouted above the noise of the engine.

“It’s very good, sir,” replied Malcolm. “I wish I’d had one as good as this back home!”

Alongside them in the front were Pugh and Hull.

“Where the hell are we going?” Pugh asked for the umpteenth time.

“It’s not far now,” said Lockhart, studying the map.

They had been driving for an hour, and he could sense that Pugh and Hull were deeply frustrated at being left in the dark.

“But…” said Pugh.

“You’ll see, don’t you worry.”

Ten minutes later, Lockhart suddenly turned to Malcolm.

“Here! Stop here!”

Malcolm did as he was told. Lockhart looked out of the passenger window to see an elegantly arched gatehouse, which stood before a half-timbered complex consisting of a church, a cloister and numerous barns and outhouses. On the other side of the road was a huge orchard that stretched into the middle distance.

“What the hell is this place?” asked Hull.

“A sodding monastery!” Pugh exclaimed. “Are we going to pray that the gas destroys itself?”

“Better than that,” Lockhart grinned. “Come on, Malcolm, in we go. And let’s not bump into the gatehouse. We need the monks to think we’re decent sorts.”

Back at Hildesheim, the four men unloaded their cargo in full view of the rest of the unit. It consisted of a heavy steel drum about six feet tall, with a small copper pipe sticking out from near the bottom. On top was a heavy lid, screwed down with at least a dozen bolts. Another pipe came out through the center of the lid.

“What the hell is that?” asked Maclaren.

“I know what it is!” said Marston.

“What?”

“It’s a still, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” said Lockhart. “It is a still. A still that until two hours ago contained fermenting schnapps.”

“And what in the devil’s name are we going to do with it?” asked Catchpole.

“This,” said Lockhart proudly, “is the chamber in which we will destroy the sarin.”

“How?”

Lockhart told them about Barham’s theory.

“A still is the only container I could find,” he said, finishing the lecture, “that should be able to withstand the pressure of a small explosion.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” asked Pugh.

“Then some of the gas will escape. Next question.”

There weren’t any.

The rest of that Saturday was spent making hurried preparations. Lockhart and Stafford set about converting the still into a chamber. The plan was to pack the sarin around a pound of explosive, which would be detonated by a timer fuse. Lockhart was concerned that the pipes would prove to be the weak points, but Stafford, who had characteristically wangled a blowtorch, sealed them up.