The man paused, as a gymnast might do before launching into their most daring somersault.

  ‘The reward is the world itself.’

  His leader waited a beat, then finally smiled. ‘Very well. Tell our people in Washington to proceed with the operation, and make it clear that failure is not acceptable. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Oh, yes, my leader. Our agents will know exactly what that means.’

  • • •

  I

  n the end, Saffron’s meeting with the colonel from General Marshall’s staff was a distinct success. At first he’d balked at her suggestion that the efforts of resistance fighters behind German lines could be worth an extra army division to the invading Allies. But she did get him to accept the basic principle that SOE’s role as an enabler, co-ordinator and supplier of paramilitary forces in Occupied Europe provided tremendous value for the money and manpower invested in it.

  ‘Can you get that written into the formal invasion plans?’ she asked.

  The colonel laughed. ‘Well, I can’t guarantee that, I’m afraid, but I will promise you that I’ll write a very positive report of our meeting and make sure that General Marshall personally sees it. Does that sound like a deal?’

  ‘It certainly does,’ Saffron replied, wondering how long it would take the colonel to say what he wanted in return. Not long, was the answer.

  ‘And since I’m doing you a favour, maybe you could do one for me. How about dinner?’

  ‘Well, now . . .’ Saffron smiled teasingly. She had been trained to use any and every means at her disposal to fulfil her missions. And she was happy to string the colonel along if it gave SOE a formal role in the invasion. ‘That sounds like a charming invitation, but if I just say “yes”, then what’s to stop you taking advantage of me, and never keeping your side of the deal?’

  ‘I’m a very honourable man.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, Colonel, but I’m a cautious woman. You show me General Marshall’s signature on your report, and then ask me to dinner again.’

  The colonel grinned. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

  Saffron gave the colonel the full benefit of her sapphire eyes. ‘Do I look to you like the kind of woman who’d be easy?’

  • • •

  T

  he death warrant of a single enemy spy could be signed off by any senior officer. More important decisions, however, required authorisation at a far, far higher level. Jozef Lewandowski was not faithful to his wife Magda. There was no reason to be, since theirs was the ultimate arranged marriage: two agents assigned to each other by their superior officers. Agency doctrine made it mandatory for such couples to have intercourse with each other. Regular copulation was good for both mental and physical health. It also helped agents maintain the fiction that they were in a conventional relationship. Furthermore, by producing children they reinforced an image of normality, making it easier for them to assimilate with their American co-workers, neighbours and friends.

  None of that, however, altered the fact that both male and female agents were also often required to use sex as a means of recruiting intelligence assets, either by blackmail or seduction. Some people would hand over information out of fear that their dirty secrets might be revealed. Others did it in the deluded belief that the agent targeting them was genuinely besotted with them. All that mattered was the result.

  Lewandowski had a regular assignation with a female asset at the Imperial Hotel, a grand name for a down-at-heel establishment about half a mile north of the US Capitol, not far from Union Station. And now the woman he bedded there was walking through the dingy lobby, trying to ignore the peeling wallpaper, the sticky, unwashed linoleum and the permanent fug of smoke and sweat hanging in the air.

  She signed herself in as Mrs Mary Jones, just below Lewandowski’s signature in the name of Bill Schmidt. It was a German surname, but this was America, where those were even more common than Italian or Irish. The desk clerk had never bothered to ask for any proof of identity, since this was the kind of establishment where the guests would be expected to use aliases. She stepped into a rickety elevator, which pulled itself upwards, like an old man rising from an armchair, to the third floor, where her assignations took place. By the time the elevator door opened again, she was herself already beginning to breathe a little more heavily, just thinking about what was to come.

  Lewandowski had not expected to derive any personal pleasure from having sex with this asset. In fact, he had been a little concerned that he would not be able to manage it at all. She was one of those women who dressed to hide their figures rather than accentuate them, and whose outward persona of high-minded respectability conveyed no hint of sensuality or lust. But when Mrs Jones had first undressed in front of him, he realised he need not have worried. She instantly seemed to strip herself of all her inhibitions, becoming as wanton in private as she was respectable in public.

  Her shapeless – even frumpy – clothes had given no hint of the fullness of her breasts, or the slenderness of her waist. Mrs Jones also liked to be, as she put it, ‘manhandled’. She enjoyed rough treatment and liked to dish it out in return. Lewandowski would take off his undershirt on an evening after one of his assignations to reveal a back criss-crossed by livid scratches. Magda had once admitted to him that such vivid evidence of passion upset her. ‘You must find me very dull, when I do not do that,’ she’d said. ‘Or maybe it is your fault that I do not want to do it.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he’d replied. ‘You know it means nothing to me. It’s just work.’ But both had known that the scratches said otherwise. And the misery that Mrs Jones had brought to their lives made them feel more like a real married couple than anything else.

  So now, Lewandowski was lying on the bed in Room 346 of the Imperial Hotel, rubbing his shoulder, while Mrs Jones lay on her side, her head propped on one hand, looking up at him.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, without a trace of sympathy.

  Lewandowski looked at the bite marks. ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘Look on the bright side. I left your back alone. I thought I’d do things a little differently this time . . .’ She smiled. ‘Since it is a special occasion.’

  Lewandowski grunted non-committally.

  ‘So, did you bring it?’ she asked, as another woman might inquire of a lover about a promised gift, like a box of chocolates or a diamond ring.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  Lewandowski drew on his cigarette. He thought for a second, and then shrugged before stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside cabinet, then walked across the room, passing through a thin beam of afternoon sunlight coming through a crack in the curtains. Outside a tram rattled by, briefly drowning the noise of people on the bustling street. A car tooted its horn.

  Lewandowski had arrived carrying a tin lunch pail, the kind many working men took to work. He opened it and extracted a brown paper parcel.

  ‘Is that enough?’ asked Mrs Jones, looking at it quizzically.

  ‘Yeah, plenty.’ He put the parcel on the bed. ‘Now, pay attention. . .’ All thoughts of sex were gone as he gave Mrs Jones a detailed series of instructions.

  When the demonstration was over, Mrs Jones wrapped the parcel back up and put it in her handbag. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said.

  They barely spoke as they got dressed, and remained silent in the elevator down to the lobby.

  Out on the street, Mrs Jones was about to resume the role of a woman who had just had an assignation with her lover, and lean into the kiss that would have to last her until the next time they met, when she caught sight of a man walking towards them. He was the last person she expected to see in such a rough, impoverished district, where brown and black faces far outnumbered the white. ‘Oh, hell!’ she muttered.

  ‘What is it?’ Lewandowski asked.

  ‘Trouble.’

  • • •

  T

  he Secret Intelligence Service had long employed talent-spotters: academics at top universities who kept their eyes open for students with gifts that the service could use. Brian Jarvis had been exceptionally bright, with a particular gift as a linguist. He spoke passable German and was fluent in French and Italian. His real passion, however, was Spanish, particularly in its various Latin American forms. It was the surprising ability of this blond Anglo-Saxon to converse like a native with a Mexican, Argentinian or Peruvian – adapting to each nation’s particular pronunciation and slang without difficulty – that had brought him to America.

  He was thus able to converse in Spanish with one of the Secret Intelligence Service’s most prized assets in Washington DC: Consuela Balcázar, the wife of the cultural attaché at the Mexican embassy. Her husband, Rodrigo, was as tall, dark and attractive as a more masculine, moustachioed Rudolph Valentino. Consuela had the sort of leggy, curvaceous body that bomber crews painted on the noses of their planes, with tumbling raven hair, pouting lips and come-hither eyes to match. And every item of clothing she wore, every lick of makeup on her face, every twitch of her body as she walked across a room, was designed to emphasise her charms.

  In a town that usually valued power more than beauty, the Balcázars stood out as a glamorous couple, and were greatly prized by hostesses seeking to spice up their social events. But theirs was a marriage of convenience. Rodrigo ignored the fact that Consuela had countless affairs with the men of the Washington diplomatic corps, while she ignored the fact that he liked diplomats, too. Each understood that the other made them respectable, and they got on well as friends, so theirs, in fact, was one of the capital’s happier marriages.

  Consuela, however, had another, more secretive string to her bow: she was a dedicated anti-fascist. SIS had discovered this by chance in early 1940, when a British diplomat had joined the long list of Consuela’s conquests and had been surprised to discover that her political passions were as highly developed as her sexual ones. He had tipped off one of his intelligence contacts that she might be worth cultivating as an asset in the fight against fascism.

  Knowing that men will say almost anything to impress a woman, no matter how secret the information, Consuela had jumped at the chance to combine her two greatest interests. In the two years before Pearl Harbor, when Germany still had an embassy in Washington, her affair with one of the Reich’s military attachés had yielded a remarkable amount of high-grade intelligence material. Even now, her dalliances with diplomats from Spain and various South American countries whose governments were sympathetic to the Nazis continued to produce golden nuggets of information.

  Consuela liked to meet Jarvis at a restaurant called La Granja Roja, tucked away in the maze of rough, working-class backstreets behind Union Station. Not only did it serve the best Mexican food in town, it was also located in a neighbourhood where no self-respecting diplomat would be seen dead.

  Jarvis sympathised with their qualms. As he walked along the street, he felt small, white and feeble, but the thrill of a couple of hours in the company of a woman as wildly attractive as Consuela trumped his fears.

  She took a feline pleasure in toying with this mouse of a man. ‘You know I can never make love to you as long as we are working together,’ she once told him. ‘Everything would become too complicated. But when this war is over . . . When Hitler and his gang of bandits have been destroyed . . . Then, if you are good, I will show you how I make men tell me their secrets.’

  As she spoke, Consuela had looked at Jarvis in a way no woman had ever done, with eyes so wanton he found himself overwhelmed with an intoxicating cocktail of terror and desire. And though he knew she was teasing – and even taunting – him, Jarvis had never felt as infuriated or humiliated by Consuela as he had been by Saffron Courtney.

  After he had gone to such great lengths to provide her with the proof that there were no traitors within the British embassy, she had dismissed it all, to his face, with icy condescension and disdain. Damn it, she had even had the sheer gall to drop the prime minister’s name as she was doing it. And the way she had suggested that he and Goodhouse would obey Churchill’s orders, too, ‘if he ever gave you any’, clearly suggested that she thought the very idea was absurd.

  Consuela, by contrast, even if she wasn’t attracted to him, at least respected him, understanding the important job he did at the embassy.

  On this particular day, Jarvis had left his lunch with Consuela Balcázar feeling in an exceptionally good mood. She had produced some interesting titbits about Nazi plans for post-war hideaways in Argentina and Uruguay, should the Reich not last the predicted thousand years. His belly was full of the spicy Mexican food that was a delicious contrast to the dull, stodgy fare usually served up in England, and he felt pleasantly drowsy from beer and tequila. Even the street life around him seemed less intimidating than usual.

  Jarvis was so relaxed that, at first, he did not notice the white couple emerging from a seedy hotel about thirty yards ahead of him, and was almost on top of them by the time his foggy brain had realised that he knew one of them, and he found himself saying: ‘Good Lord, what on earth are you doing here?’

  There was no reply. Or if there was, Jarvis didn’t register it above the sudden, sobering shock of realisation: William Stephenson and Saffron Courtney had been right all along . . . but also terribly wrong. There was a spy, and there was a dreadful threat, but neither was what they thought.

  Jarvis had to get back to the embassy, fast. He needed time to get his thoughts in order before he sent a signal back to London. ‘Oh, well, lovely seeing you,’ he said, hurrying away while trying not to break out into an actual run. Above all, he mustn’t give himself away. But as he squirmed his way between the people crowding the narrow sidewalk, Jarvis had a terrible feeling it was too late. He had seen recognition in the man’s eyes, too. Not who he was, but what he represented. A threat that needed to be neutralised at all costs.

  • • •

  ‘H

  is name is Jarvis,’ Mrs Jones said. ‘He knows me.’

  Lewandowski nodded. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  She turned and strode briskly away in the opposite direction, without looking back. Lewandowski drew a bead on Jarvis and set off in pursuit.

  Lewandowski was perfectly capable of tailing someone without giving his presence away. But this was different. He wanted his prey to know he was coming after him. In fact, he wanted him to be scared to fucking death. It was plain just looking at Jarvis’s feeble figure, and how flustered he had been, that he would not be the kind of man to remain calm under pressure. He would panic, and make a mistake, and then Lewandowski would strike.

  As he elbowed his way down the street, Lewandowski was whispering under his breath, ‘Come on . . . Come on . . . Look around.’ And then Jarvis did turn his head and their eyes met for a second, and that was when the Englishman did start running – or tried to run. There were too many people on the sidewalk, and he lacked the physical force to barge them aside. Lewandowski, on the other hand, with his bull-like physique and snarling expression, was much more intimidating, and people hurried to get out of his way, like the Red Sea parting for Moses.

  Brian Jarvis had been bullied at school, so he was accustomed to feeling afraid. But this was like no fear he had ever experienced. For the first time, he was actually running for his life.

  If only he could get off this blasted street! As he wormed his way past the bars, barber’s shops and bodegas, Jarvis’s eyes darted frantically from one side to the other, looking for a means of escape.

  Then suddenly he saw the entrance to an alley ahead. Jarvis was already out of breath, his heart hammering with exertion and mortal terror, but somehow he summoned a burst of fresh energy and barged his way forward. He reached the alley and peered in.

  It was a dead end.

  No, wait . . . There was a narrow gap between the side of the alley and the wall at its end. Surely he could squeeze through. He glanced back the way he had come. He couldn’t see his pursuer. So he can’t see me! he thought, hope suddenly springing up.

  He raced down the alley.

  Lewandowski had held back, merging into the crowd until he could see where his target was heading. He saw him turn into the alley, and smiled.

  Before he had arranged his assignations at the Imperial Hotel, he had made a thorough reconnoitre of the area, scoping out potential escape routes if he was compromised. And that alley was definitely not one of them.

  Jarvis reached the far end and stopped. What he’d thought was a back way out of the alley was a mirage: just a recess in the wall, leading nowhere.

  He looked round frantically. There was a door on either side of the alley – what must be the back entrances of stores on the main street. He yanked the handles, but neither of them budged. There were fire escapes above the doors, too. But Jarvis couldn’t jump high enough to grab the ladders.

  He was trapped.

  Jarvis looked back the way he had come. The man who had been following him was standing at the other end of the alley, looking straight at him.

  Jarvis hammered on one of the doors. ‘Help! Help! For God’s sake, someone help!’

  Nothing happened. The man was buttoning up his jacket. He reached into his trouser pocket, and there was a click and the glint of steel. A flick knife.

  The man started walking towards Jarvis. ‘Please . . . Please . . . Don’t hurt me,’ he begged. ‘I won’t tell anyone, I swear, not a soul.’

  The man did not reply. He kept walking at the same steady pace.

  Jarvis knew he was a dead man. Unless . . .

  When he was a boy, he had been made to play rugby. He hated it. So far as he was concerned, it was not so much a sport as an opportunity for bullies to beat him in broad daylight and be applauded by the games teacher for doing so. But as a result, Jarvis had learned to weave and dodge, to avoid the bigger boys.

  He took a deep breath, then ran as fast as he could straight at the big bully with the knife in his hand who was going to take his life.