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and probably not too busy?
    Tilsey put on a lopsided smile. “Perhaps you haven’t looked out of the window recently.”
    Ranklin walked over, twitched aside the curtains and stared blankly. He rubbed the glass, then realised it was London that had gone blank. Fog.
    There should have been trees, lights, a skyline; there was nothing. Down below should be street lamps: there might be a slight glow, that was all. The building felt it had become an island, and those in the street must feel they had fallen overboard in mid-ocean.
    â€œI see what you mean.” He walked back to the fire with an instinctive shiver.
    â€œWe were out of touch for nearly two hours,” Tilsey resumed. “He got back to his hotel just half an hour ago. Of course, he
may
just have been wandering around, lost, himself. But. . .”
    Ranklin shared his doubts. Gunther must know London well enough, he wouldn’t be in Whitehall by accident. And that put him within yards of every important Government department, even the Prime Minister.
    They sank into armchairs and thoughtful gloom. Reaching for any hope, Ranklin said: “Of course, he wouldn’t be too likely to be visiting an informant in a Government office, outof hours and dressed that memorably. He’d choose a crowded tea-shop or railway buffet . . . sorry.”
    Tilsey was nodding politely; he must have thought all that already. “The only other places we know he visited were St Martin’s post office – he picked up a
poste restante
letter there – and a cigar shop in Trafalgar Square. He was in there about twenty minutes, but perhaps just to give himself a business alibi. Then we lost him near the Admiralty.”
    â€œPerhaps Whitehall was a blind and the cigar shop was what mattered. . .” Ranklin’s imagination raced ahead: important men went to cigar shops, and they didn’t buy in a hurry, they stopped to chat. A cigar shop as an intelligence exchange? – no, a whole raft of them, all such shops in central London, secret messages rolled up inside Havanas. . . It was far better than the popular myth that every German waiter belonged to a great spy ring.
    He coughed apologetically. “Daydreaming . . . But how can we help?”
    â€œAs I say, we hoped he might have visited you chaps, but. . . However, since you know him, would you care to bump into him ‘accidentally’? – if we can suggest a venue?”
    â€œI’m happy to – but he won’t think it’s an accident,” Ranklin said firmly. “It’d tell him he’s being watched. And he doesn’t let slip information, he sells it.”
    â€œMajor Kell will have to decide whether it’s worth that. But if he approves, it may have to be early tomorrow: van der Brock’s only booked in for one night. May I telephone you in, say, half an hour?”
    â€œOf course.” And Tilsey left to search in the fog for the New War Office, luckily only the width of the street away. Ranklin wondered if he should try and locate the Commander and ask for his approval, but decided it was too delicate a matter for the telephone and eavesdropping operators. And dammit, if he was acting deputy, he could authorise himself.
    Tilsey rang up after twenty-five minutes. “Would you feel like breakfast at the Metropole tomorrow at eight?”
    * * *
    After his stay at the Savoy, Ranklin’s hotel standards were high, and the Metropole didn’t match up – except for size. At breakfast time, the vast pillared dining-room had a funereal air. Not the jolly scandal-swap when the deceased has been planted, but the brittle, respectful hush of the gathering beforehand.
    Ranklin persuaded a waiter to lead the way to where Gunther – still wearing a distinctive and foreign-looking light grey suit – was buttering toast and reading the
Financial Times
. He looked up, spread his arms in welcome and spattered crumbs from under his