There was no one on the path. But the instinctive feeling that there were eyes on her remained. Saffron found it strangely encouraging. If someone was following her, then she must be on to something. But was she in any immediate, physical danger? No, she decided. If they wanted me dead, they’d have done it by now.

  Saffron reached the bench, then crouched down beside it. She looked at the front left leg. There was nothing suspicious to be seen. She ran her eyes along the crosspiece that supported the front of the seat. Again, nothing. Then she looked at the front right leg.

  And there it was, at the top of the leg: a yellow chalk mark so faint that no one who was not deliberately looking would ever spot it, still less give it a second thought.

  Saffron sighed. She had so hoped not to find this; so badly wanted the Playfairs to be the delightful people they seemed to be. But this was right out of the manual – standard procedure for SOE, and now it seemed for the Abwehr, too. In any male–female couple, the man is the senior agent and the woman is the courier. Why? Because no one suspects a woman, particularly a woman with a pram. And the baby is a bonus, because if you want to hide a message, who wants to go poking around a dirty nappy?

  Saffron felt along the back of the seat-leg and found what she was looking for: a small, flat canister, no bigger than a quarter and no thicker than three stacked together, stuck to the bench with a bit of chewing gum. She pulled it off and opened it. Inside was a rolled-up message. The print was tiny, but just legible to Saffron’s sharp eyes: twenty-five characters, in five groups of five.

  Saffron took out her notebook and copied the characters. It was obviously some sort of code, but hopefully Araminta Keswick or another one of Stephenson’s tame cryptologists would be able to crack it. True, they’d not yet been able to decipher the lengthy messages left in the microdots, but short messages between an agent and their handler, intended to be read and swiftly acted upon, would use a much simpler code. ‘We’d better bloody well hope so, anyway,’ Saffron muttered.

  She put the paper back in the little canister and carefully stuck it back exactly where she had found it. Then she stood up and looked at the bench. In a few hours Mavis and Loretta would walk past, pushing Arthur in his pram. Mavis would tell Loretta to walk on while she had her little think. She’d pick up the message, ready for Charlie when he got home from work.

  Saffron shook her head. That poor baby . . . What will become of him? The Playfairs’ callous disregard for Arthur angered her almost as much as their betrayal.

  Feeling utterly miserable, she made her way down the path, out of the park, then up the street to Foxhall Road. It was the busiest thoroughfare in this part of north-west Washington. There was bound to be a phone booth somewhere, and Saffron was confident there’d be someone on duty at Stephenson’s office at any time of the day or night.

  Both assumptions proved to be correct. When she called New York, collect, the call was accepted and a calm, efficient woman took down the message as Saffron dictated it to her, still in the five-character groups, along with the request to decode it as quickly as possible.

  ‘Could you please tell Mr Stephenson that I believe this is a very important lead, and it is almost certainly time-sensitive,’ Saffron said. ‘I will call back when I have finished my morning appointment, soon after midday.’

  ‘Mr Stephenson is always at his desk by seven,’ came the reply. ‘I’ll make sure he’s alerted the moment he arrives.’

  Saffron returned to the Playfairs’ house, getting a friendly ‘Good morning!’ from the newspaper delivery boy as he cycled past, going the other way. With every step she took, the knowledge of their betrayal weighed more heavily on her mind. Entering the kitchen, where breakfast was now in full swing, she did her best to smile brightly as she explained that she hadn’t slept very well, so she’d gone out for a walk in the hope that fresh air would liven her up a bit. As she did her best to eat a piece of toast and drink a mug of tea, Saffron watched Mavis feeding Arthur, and Charlie playfully swatting Franco with his rolled-up copy of that morning’s Washington Post, fresh from the delivery boy’s satchel. She prayed that maybe, even now, they might prove to be who they claimed.

  Back in her room, Saffron washed and then changed into an elegantly tailored pair of black trousers, a white silk blouse and a short, fitted, grey-blue jacket in lightweight tweed, with flat black shoes. The look was a trifle mannish, perhaps, but it was sufficiently smart to pass muster at her Senate meetings, while enabling her to run – and, if necessary, fight – a lot more easily than a skirt and heels would allow. She looked again in the mirror, then put a brooch on her jacket and added a short pearl necklace, worn inside the collar of her blouse.

  Having established her femininity for the benefit of the men she was about to meet, Saffron went into the guest bathroom, locked the door, sat down on the floor and stripped down her Beretta pistol.

  She heard a voice from downstairs – Charlie exclaiming, ‘Bloody hell!’

  As she reassembled the gun, she heard heavy male footsteps and the front door opening and slamming shut. Seconds later, the Playfairs’ car started up and drove away at speed. Had something spooked Charlie? Or had he just remembered that he had an early meeting that morning?

  Saffron concentrated on checking that her weapon was ready for action: a bullet in the chamber, a full magazine in the grip and a second clip in her shoulder bag. Satisfied that everything was in order, she went downstairs to say goodbye.

  Loretta had just arrived. She gave Saffron a warm smile. ‘Morning, Miss Saffron. How you doin’?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Loretta. How about you?’ Saffron tried to sound cheerful, as a wave of pent-up anger, betrayal and hurt surged through her. Here was a sweet, bright, incredibly hard-working girl, and soon her job and the security it brought to a desperately poor family would be ripped away. How could the Playfairs do that to her?

  Saffron had intended to ask Mavis why Charlie had dashed off, but now she just wanted to get out of the house as fast as he had done, and it was all she could do to keep her voice friendly as she said ‘See you later!’ to Mavis and gave her a peck on the cheek.

  ‘Wait a second,’ Mavis called out as Saffron headed towards the front door. ‘There’s something in the paper that you really—’

  ‘Sorry, no time!’ Saffron replied, opening the door and stepping out.

  As she smoothed herself down, took a calming breath and set off for the Senate Office, Saffron wondered whether she should have listened to the men who told her not to worry her head with spies and plots and concentrate on enjoying her stay. Just this once, could you have turned away from trouble? But she had chosen to ignore them. She’d set a stone rolling, and now it was a matter of where it would stop, and who it would crush along the way.

  • • •

  W

  hile Saffron walked up to Foxhall to catch the bus into the city, the man who had been following her since she had first set foot outside the Playfairs’ front door two hours earlier emerged from the woods. He strolled along the road running along the edge of the park until he came to a black Chrysler CO sedan. He got in, opened the glove compartment, took out the microphone handset that was wired to a battery-operated short wave radio in the boot and checked in with Lewandowski.

  ‘You called it right, boss,’ he said. ‘She fell for it hook, line and sinker.’ He paused and then added, ‘She’s good, though. She’s observant. Had to work real hard not to get spotted.’

  The conversation was in English. In the unlikely event that anyone was listening, it was better to sound like a bunch of hoods than foreign agents. The man described in detail what Saffron had done by the bench, and how she had immediately gone to find a pay phone. ‘I don’t know where she called, but I figure it was long-distance ’cause she called collect, didn’t put no coins into the box.’

  ‘I know exactly who she was calling,’ Lewandowski replied. ‘I know what she was asking him, too.’

  ‘You got this under control, then, huh?’

  Lewandowski didn’t feel the need to reply.

  • • •

  H

  idden in the trees, less than twenty metres away, the cultural attaché at the Portuguese embassy, Caetano Macedo, watched the scene with mounting irritation. It had taken him two days of patient investigation, and gentle teasing of information out of his opposite number at the British embassy, before he had tracked down Saffron Courtney to the house where she was staying. And then, when he had dragged himself out of bed at the crack of dawn, he had got there to find that some other bastards had beaten him to it.

  Typical Germans! He admired them as a nation and believed passionately in the principles of National Socialism, but their excessive thoroughness could be an irritation sometimes. It might have made sense to someone in Prinz-Albrecht-Straße to have two sets of spies working the same case, but he had now wasted a great deal of time for nothing, and that was unacceptable.

  What made it worse was that he was himself an agent in PIDE, the Portuguese state security agency. That was why the SD used him. They knew he could do more than just observe. They should have had more respect for his status as a fellow officer.

  Macedo made his way back to the Portuguese embassy, drafted a furious message to Berlin, encoded it and transmitted it. Only then did he have second thoughts. Maybe he had gone too far this time. No, that was ridiculous. The SD were thousands of miles away. What harm could they do him here?

  • • •

  M

  illicent James had never seen her mistress so angry. ‘Honestly, it’s too much!’ Lady Halifax had exploded, within minutes of Millicent arriving for work that morning. ‘Yesterday morning I was told, out of the blue, that we would be having three of the most important men in the world to a private luncheon in two days’ time. Now, as if that were not trying enough, my darling husband has seen fit to inform me that because of “scheduling complexities” . . .’ Lady Halifax managed to imbue those two words with a lifetime of suppressed frustration, ‘. . . the event is now a dinner, to be held this evening. I told Edward, “I am the lady of the house. Social occasions are my responsibility. But I cannot execute that responsibility if I am kept in the dark.”’

  Lady Halifax paused, and when she spoke again, the anger in her voice had been overlaid by something else: the anxiety of a woman who dreads the possibility that she might fail in her duty, and thereby let other people down. ‘No one seems to understand that a dinner party is an entirely different occasion from a luncheon. I now have just over nine hours to agree a new menu with the chef, for which he then must buy ingredients . . . and make sure we have wine in the cellar to match the food . . . and have the entire interior of the residence cleaned and tidied . . . and arrange the table decorations and seating plan. And now it transpires that every detail must be approved by the bloody Americans!’

  Half an hour later, Millicent was standing beside the long dining table at the British ambassador’s residence, around which thirty people could sit in comfort, clutching the notebook in which she had been writing down every detail of the dinner party plans as they were being formulated. Lady Halifax, meanwhile, was feeling no happier, even if her language had become more restrained.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I really am finding this rather trying,’ she said, looking as though she might at any moment spontaneously combust with the quivering heat of her rage.

  Millicent suppressed a smile at the puzzled frown on the face of Mrs Dufoy, the White House official charged with ensuring that the president’s personal needs were met. Clearly, she was having a hard time making sense of the contrast between the polite understatement of Lady Halifax’s words and her volcanic body language.

  The rugged, crew-cut US Secret Service officer leading the team responsible for the president’s safety had conspicuously not volunteered his name to anyone. He was currently busy making sure that there was no line of sight for a gunman outside the building to anyone sitting at the table. The social niceties of the meal were none of his concern.

  Jock Colville, however, spent his life reading the moods of his master, Mr Churchill, and the various politicians, military leaders and wealthy hangers-on who surrounded him, and he, like Millicent, grasped the gravity of the situation.

  ‘I am awfully sorry, My Lady,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure we can find a solution, if we put our heads together.’

  ‘I would hope so, Mr Colville. It should not be too difficult to arrange four men around a table.’

  ‘Indeed . . . but these are four exceptional men.’

  ‘The president will be the only head of state attending the meal,’ said Mrs Dufoy, firmly. ‘Therefore, he should sit at the head of the table.’

  ‘That is usually the place occupied by the host,’ Lady Halifax pointed out. ‘Which would mean my husband, the ambassador.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Colville, ‘since we are in a British embassy, this counts as British soil, and Winston Churchill is the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. One would think – and he will certainly think – that he should take precedence.’

  ‘Thank God the duke gave up his throne,’ Lady Halifax sighed. ‘At least he has no claim to the top seat.’

  Charlie Playfair had been walking through the residence with a purposeful stride and a file under one arm, looking like a busy man. But he’d stopped by the colonnade on the side of the dining room, leaning on one of the pillars with an amused half-smile on his face as he listened to the argument over the seating plan.

  ‘Oh, hello, Playfair,’ Colville said, spotting him. ‘You’re a clever chap. Do you have any bright ideas?’

  ‘Maybe they could take it in turns . . . you know, everyone moves round one place after each course. Soup . . . starter . . . main course . . . pudding. That’s four, so they’d each get their turn. Though one would have to make sure that the drinks moved with them, of course. Champers for Sir Winston, Martinis for President Roosevelt . . . isn’t that the standard order at the bar?’

  There was a brief silence as the group around the table tried to work out whether Playfair had been making a serious suggestion, or simply mocking them. Before they could decide, Playfair said, ‘Might I ask you a favour, Dorothy?’

  ‘By all means,’ Lady Halifax replied, as Millicent did her best to mask her resentment. Damn Playfair! The casual familiarity of calling Her Ladyship by her first name, that automatic presumption that he was her equal, and her unthinking assent, were infuriating.

  ‘Just want to borrow Colville for a second. No more than one quick question, really.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As Colville strolled over to the pillar where Playfair was waiting, Lady Halifax and Mrs Dufoy had a brief discussion about Playfair’s suggestion. Now it was Mrs Dufoy’s turn to be upset. ‘Was that gentleman not aware the president is confined to a wheelchair, and cannot just swap seats at a moment’s notice?’

  Millicent, meanwhile, was busy making adjustments to an arrangement of roses in a glass vase that had been placed on one of the console tables positioned at intervals along the dining room’s walls. This took her closer to Colville and Playfair and enabled her to overhear their conversation, even though both men were keeping their voices down.

  ‘Have you seen any of the local papers this morning?’ Playfair asked.

  ‘God, no,’ Colville replied. ‘No time for that sort of thing. Not with the conference to worry about.’

  ‘Well then, you won’t have seen the headlines about an unidentified man who was stabbed to death in an alley yesterday.’

  Colville frowned. ‘Which is important because . . .?’

  ‘He was one of our chaps. No one knows that yet – not officially – but there was a hell of a flap here when we all saw the artist’s impression of the man and recognised him at once. Next thing we knew, a police captain arrived at the embassy, saying that the murdered man had been wearing clothes made in Britain, so naturally they were coming to us for assistance in identifying him. I was given the job of making the captain feel at home, buttering him up and extracting the maximum amount of information from him, while giving as little as possible in return.’

  ‘Though you promised to give him the fullest possible co-operation—’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘So what did he tell you? Are there any security implications the PM needs to be told about?’

  ‘The police don’t think so. They think this was just another robbery in a nasty part of town. Crimes like that can easily turn violent. It seems the killer used a flick knife, which the captain told me was suggestive of a, quote, “small-time hoodlum”. A professional “hit man”, as they call paid assassins here, would have used a gun. Also, the killer emptied the victim’s wallet and took his driving licence – that’s the reason they couldn’t identify him – which suggests that money was the motive. Apparently licences have a certain value in the criminal world, since they can provide a false identity . . . like passports, I suppose.’

  ‘My God, how awful – murdered for a few dollars and a scrap of card.’

  ‘I know, but I’m afraid that sort of thing happens a lot here. If you start walking north from the Capitol or take a wrong turn out of Union Station, you can go from classical grandeur to festering, violent slumland in the space of a block or two. The poor chap just stepped on the wrong side of that line.’

  ‘So there’s no reason for the PM to change this evening’s schedule?’

  Playfair gave a thoughtful shake of the head. ‘No . . . As far as the embassy is concerned, we’re following the advice of the police. This is a personal tragedy, but it has no political bearing.’

  ‘So he doesn’t really need to know at all . . .’

  Playfair shook his head. ‘There are much more important things for one of the two great leaders of the free world to worry about.’

  ‘Thank heavens for that. We’re very keen, to put it mildly, to have at least one meeting with the president on our sovereign territory. You know, just to remind him we see this as a meeting of equals. Anyway, must get back to planning dinner. Thanks for filling me in.’