The other man watched him come with a bemused smile on his face. At the very last moment, Jarvis feinted to his left, then, as the man shifted his weight in response, darted the other way. He heard the man grunt in surprise, and felt the wind on his cheek as he slipped past. He’d done it! He fixed his eyes on the entrance to the alley and pumped his arms for all he was worth.

  Suddenly his feet slipped from under him as a hand grabbed his collar and pulled. The next moment, he’d been shoved up against the wall, his forehead scraping the rough bricks. He tried to scream, but a meaty hand covered his mouth. Sensing what was about to come, his mind filled with the image of Consuela Balcázar, and the thought that now he would never know what it was like to make love to her.

  The last thing he felt was the blade of the knife being forced deep into his guts.

  Lewandowski withdrew the knife and stepped back as Jarvis’s body slumped to the ground and a pool of blood began to spread around him.

  Glancing around to make sure that no one had seen him, Lewandowski wiped the blade of the knife clean with a handkerchief, snapped it shut and put it back in his pocket. He reached into Jarvis’s suit jacket and removed his wallet, then checked the other pockets for ID of any kind. There was none. He took a thin wad of cash and Jarvis’s driving licence from the wallet and put it in his pocket, then wiped the wallet with the same handkerchief and tossed it on the ground beside the body. The story told by this gruesome tableau was obvious. A well-dressed white male had unwittingly strayed into a part of the city where human predators would see him as easy prey.

  It would take a day, at least, for the body to be identified. The police, under pressure to find a perpetrator, would fall back on their usual solution: they would look for a Black man to blame, as surely as the Berlin criminal police would look for a Jew. Lewandowski saw no likelihood of his being linked to the killing. Still, he needed to take precautions.

  The front of his jacket was spattered with blood, as was the right sleeve. Lewandowski took it off. He checked his shirt. There was blood on his right cuff, but otherwise it was clean.

  He rolled up his shirtsleeves, folded his jacket and slung it over his shoulder, then he strolled back up the alley to the street, where he quickly blended into the crowd.

  Lewandowski’s truck was parked eight blocks away. As he walked, he decided he would have to tell his masters back home what had happened. He trusted they would understand the necessity of acting on his own initiative. A problem had been dealt with. The mission was still on track. Jozef Lewandowski drove away with the satisfaction of a man who knows he has done his job well.

  • • •

  T

  he Daughters of the American Revolution seemed divided in their opinions after Saffron had recounted her personal experiences of being trained as an agent and going undercover in the Low Countries. Some – she hoped, the majority – agreed that teaching young women to fight, kill, sabotage and steal, before sending them into enemy territory, was proof that the so-called weaker sex could be as brave and tough as any male. Other, more traditional matrons were aghast that the feminine values of gentleness, delicacy and empathy could be cast aside in favour of the sort of brutish behaviour that had hitherto been the exclusive province of men.

  Saffron wondered what they would have thought if she had given them the full, unexpurgated account of what she’d been through, instead of the censored version. But she did her best to reassure them that, for all her apparently mannish ways, she was enough of a girl to have loved shopping in Saks and listening to Frank Sinatra. ‘And,’ she asked, ‘is it really such a bad thing if women have the ability to defend themselves against men?’

  Having said her piece and answered various SOE-related questions, Saffron chatted amiably with her hostesses over tea and cakes, moving from one table to another like a human pass the parcel. Several of the Daughters had read the Winchell column and, having discovered that she was ‘Jane Smith’, were agog to know all the details.

  Saffron was happy to amuse and entertain them. She was not trying to persuade her audience with military logic. Her job was to charm them enough that they would speak warmly about her to their influential menfolk. And, she thought to herself, as she gave her umpteenth blow-by-blow account of her retaliation against O’Bannon, surely they were more likely to do that if they knew she responded to unwanted advances with a swift knee to the offending groin rather than a swoon into her would-be suitor’s arms. She did, however, stop short of saying that O’Bannon had ended up in hospital. It was one thing being known as a gutsy gal who could defend her virtue; a crazed, vengeful hellcat was quite another.

  As the event drew to an end, Saffron found her mind turning to the evening ahead. She wondered where Stackpole would take her for dinner, what she should wear, and what else he had planned. He’d not mentioned where he was living in Washington, let alone whether the two of them could safely and discreetly spend the night there. And should she even be thinking about Stackpole, if there was a traitor somewhere in the city, plotting who knew what?

  ‘Miss Courtney?’

  Saffron realised a slim, well-dressed woman in her fifties was standing beside her.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Saffron apologised. ‘I was miles away.’

  The woman gave a shrewd but kind smile. ‘Thinking about handsome army air force officers?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Well, I don’t blame you in the slightest. More fun than a bunch of old women like us.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Cynthia Hackenstedt.’

  ‘How nice to meet you, Mrs Hackenstedt,’ Saffron replied, glancing at the rings on her other hand. ‘I hope I wasn’t too boring.’

  ‘On the contrary, my dear. Lady Halifax told me that I would be entertained by you, and I am pleased to say that you lived up to your billing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Saffron. ‘How kind of Lady Halifax to have called you, and to have been so flattering.’

  ‘Well, she’s a fine lady, and a smart one, too. And she thinks I can be of use to you.’

  ‘How intriguing. Do tell me more.’

  ‘It’s very simple. My darling husband Morty is otherwise known as Mortimer J Hackenstedt, the senior Democrat senator for Connecticut and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.’

  ‘That sounds incredibly grand.’

  ‘Oh, well, you know how men love their fancy job titles. Say, why don’t you join us for dinner? You can tell him everything you told us ladies about your splendid organisation.’

  Saffron’s heart fell. She couldn’t possibly turn down a chance to meet an influential American politician in his own home. That was precisely the kind of thing Gubbins had sent her to do. Her date with Stackpole would have to be postponed, along with all thoughts of spies.

  She fixed the most grateful smile she could manage on her face. ‘Thank you so much, I’d be delighted to accept. This will be good practice for me. I’ve got to speak to a couple of members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee tomorrow.’

  ‘Then tell me their names,’ Mrs Hackenstedt said, ‘and I’ll make sure Morty fully briefs you about them.’ She winked. ‘I mean, tells you all the good stuff you’re not supposed to know.’

  ‘That does sound intriguing!’

  ‘Good – then that’s settled. Now, we live in Chevy Chase, which is right on the edge of town, but you won’t have any trouble getting a cab to take you there. Here, let me give you my card.’

  Cynthia’s address was on 27th Street NW. A minute’s more conversation revealed that everyone called her Cindy, and Saffron should arrive at 19.30. ‘Morty insists on dinner at eight . . . and not a second later,’ Cindy said.

  ‘I’ll be there on the dot of seven-thirty, then,’ Saffron assured her. She said her goodbyes to the DAR ladies, but as she stepped out onto the street, looking for the nearest telephone to call Stackpole, her mind suddenly switched to Charlie and Mavis. Maybe there was something she could do this afternoon. It probably wouldn’t provide an answer, or at least not right away, but the more she thought about it, the surer Saffron became: The bench . . . Everything depends on the bench.

  • • •

  W

  hile Saffron was speaking to the Daughters of the American Revolution, Clayton Stackpole was in his office, combing the service records of men who were being considered for active service in the OSS to see if there were any obvious medical issues that might disqualify them. He had just read through the nineteenth of more than two hundred files, knowing that he was expected to file a full report in three days’ time, when there was a knock on the door.

  Bill Donovan’s secretary popped her head around the door. ‘The boss wants to see you, Clay.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No, just that it’s extremely urgent.’

  Stackpole got up and hurried to Donovan’s office, wondering if Saffron needed help. She was a girl with a nose for trouble all right, and it was possible that in the twenty-four hours since he had last seen her, she had succeeded in finding it.

  ‘How’s the jaw today?’ Donovan asked as Stackpole entered his office.

  Stackpole rubbed the side of his face. ‘Bruised, but not broken. I’m okay.’

  ‘So you’re fit enough to operate . . . as a surgeon, I mean?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good, because I need you in a car to National Airport, fast. There’s a DC-3 waiting for you.’

  ‘Who’s the patient?’

  ‘One of our best trainees – guy called Wermuth.’ Donovan pronounced the name like the drink Vermouth. ‘He just smashed the hell out of his right leg on a training exercise in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s been taken to some place called Banner Elk, North Carolina.’

  ‘Do they have a hospital there?’

  ‘The population is less than a thousand, so no. But they’ve got a doctor, and he’s filled our guy up with morphine and put his leg in a splint. They’re sticking him on a stretcher, putting it in the back of a truck and taking him to Johnson City, Tennessee, about forty miles away. That’s the nearest hospital. There’s an airport about fifteen miles from there called McKellar Field. The DC-3’ll get you there in around two hours. You’ll go straight to Johnson City, and put Wermuth back together.’

  ‘Don’t they have surgeons in Johnson City?’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t know them, and I’ll bet they don’t have your experience of emergency surgery.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. But this guy, Wermuth . . . He must be something special to get this kind of treatment.’

  Donovan nodded. ‘Yeah . . .’ He looked at Stackpole, deciding how much to tell him. The Texan wasn’t just an agent sworn to secrecy; he was a doctor sworn to respect his patients’ confidentiality. And he didn’t strike Donovan as a man who would betray either of those oaths.

  ‘There’s an outfit in France called the FTPF,’ Donovan said. ‘Stands for Francs-tireurs et partisans français. They’re the biggest and most effective resistance force fighting the Nazis. When the day comes to invade Europe, we’re really going to need them on our side.’

  ‘If they’re killing Nazis, can’t we take that for granted?’

  ‘You’d think . . . but they’re also communists. So they don’t exactly trust us, or the Limeys. But they trust Wermuth, because he was one of their top guys. Got arrested by the Gestapo, never gave them a thing. Then the FTPF busted him out of jail and smuggled him out of France, over the Pyrenees. One of these days we’re going to put him back in, get him back to the FTPF, get them working for us. Could be crucial to the success of the whole invasion.’

  ‘I’ll put him back together, sir,’ Stackpole said. ‘You can count on that.’

  ‘Good man. So, fix him up, make sure he’s recovering okay, then get back here, fast as you can. I’ll give you twenty-four hours more to finish that report. But not a minute over.’

  ‘Yes, sir. You can count on me.’

  ‘Good man. There’s a driver waiting for you outside.’

  Less than twenty minutes later, Stackpole was in the air, rising into the skies above northern Virginia. And then it struck him: Damn! I didn’t call Saffron!

  He cursed his stupidity for not leaving her a message, apologising for blowing their date and letting her know when he’d be back. Then he told himself not to be ridiculous. She, of all women, would understand that things happened unexpectedly. They were fighting a war, after all. And if there was one thing Stackpole had learned in New York, it was that if there ever was any trouble, then he was much more likely to need Saffron’s help than she was to need his.

  • • •

  L

  ewandowski had asked his bosses a question. When he got home from work, he received their reply. His orders were to remove Saffron Courtney from the equation. She was to be captured and interrogated, to ascertain how much she and her superiors knew about the Foxglove operation. Once she had given up as much as she was ever going to, Lewandowski would kill her. Her body was to be disposed of, without a trace, so that the people she worked for could not be sure that she was, in fact, dead.

  The business of the Courtney woman, however, was a minor matter compared to the second order he was given. The assassination had been approved at the highest level. Complete success was demanded. Failure would not be tolerated.

  Lewandowski was considering the quickest and safest way to get the news to Foxglove when his phone rang. ‘I was just about to call you,’ he said, when he heard who was on the line. ‘We just got the okay from the boss . . . and I mean the big boss.’

  ‘All right,’ Foxglove said, ‘but there’s just one problem. They’ve changed the date and time. It’s happening tomorrow evening, not the day after.’

  ‘Why?’ Lewandowski asked, always alert to any sign of exposure or betrayal.

  ‘I think it’s just that the principals’ schedules changed.’

  ‘Hmm . . .’ Lewandowski considered how this news might affect his plans. ‘This makes no essential difference to us. You have what you need. We can bring our side of the operation forward. Now tell me, how much do you think the Courtney woman knows?’

  There was a pause. ‘I think she’s closer than she realises. Did you play hide-and-seek as a child?’

  ‘Of course, every child does.’

  ‘Well, imagine we’re all playing hide-and-seek. You and I are hiding in a closet. Saffron Courtney is in the same room. She’s looking under the bed. She hasn’t yet opened the closet door. But when she does . . .’

  ‘I understand,’ said Lewandowski. ‘Then we shall both proceed as planned . . . and I will deal with Courtney before she opens that closet door.’

  • • •

  S

  affron called Stackpole’s office and was told that he was away, dealing with a medical matter, expected back the following afternoon. She took a tram to the Georgetown end of the park and then walked, stopping on the way at the bench and finding nothing there.

  She arrived at the Playfairs’ house shortly after six and talked to Mavis for a few minutes about their respective days at the opposite ends of the social spectrum. ‘Next time you see those Daughters of the Revolution,’ Mavis said, ‘tell them they should come down and take a look at our soup kitchen. You mark my words, there’ll be another bloody revolution if the rich in America don’t do something about the suffering of the poor.’

  ‘I’m having dinner with one of them tonight,’ Saffron replied, ‘and her husband, who’s a senator, so I’ll see if I can persuade them. That reminds me, I must get to 27th Street in Chevy Chase by seven-thirty. When do I need to get a cab?’

  ‘Oh, quarter past should be fine,’ Mavis said. ‘I’ll call you one.’

  ‘Thanks so much. Righto, I’d better go and make myself presentable.’

  Saffron showered, then changed into an evening dress she had bought at Saks, which was rather more demure than the one she’d worn for her infamous evening at the Copa.

  The Hackenstedts were a pleasant, impeccably mannered couple, and the young man whom Cynthia had drummed up to be Saffron’s dinner partner was a clean-living fellow from the senator’s office, whose spindly physique and thick-lensed spectacles explained why the armed forces had no need of him. The food was good, the conversation was untaxing, though a little earnest, the senator paid close attention to what Saffron said about SOE, and gave her pen portraits of the men she would meet the next day that were useful, but scandal-free. It was hardly the most exciting night out, but as a working dinner it had served its purpose, and Saffron’s thanks were sincere as she said her goodbyes.

  Her cab pulled up outside the Playfairs’ just as Charlie was bringing Franco back from his late-night walk. ‘It was blissfully brief this evening,’ he said, as they entered the house. ‘Some nights I walk halfway round Washington before this blasted hound decides to do his business. Tonight, though, we were five yards into the trees when he sniffed some fascinating message left by another dog, posted his reply and trotted happily home.’

  Playfair’s description of canine messages left in the woods was casual, light-hearted stuff, the sort of thing any dog owner might say. But it was all too close to the thoughts that had been swirling round Saffron’s mind all day. And as he had done the previous evening, he left her wondering: was that an innocent remark? Or was he taunting me, letting me know that he’s the spy and daring me to take him on?

  The following morning Saffron woke at six, pulled on a pair of trousers and a jumper, grabbed her bag, and was out of the house and into the park while the Playfairs and their dog were still asleep. It was a beautiful morning. The air was cool and fresh, and the sun was peeking through the trees as Saffron made her way along the path.

  Twice she thought she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. The second time, when the path made a U-turn around a copse of trees, she took advantage of the opportunity and circled back through the woods, returning to the path, where anyone tailing her would have lost visual contact. Now she would be behind whoever was watching her, following his trail.