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was as if they were playing a game which had been rehearsed many times before. Dietz grabbed the young soldier’s arm and pointed to a little badge just below the elbow on the field-grey uniform.
    “See Ivan? It’s red, white and blue.” Dietz was revelling in the Russian’s confusion. He could not have sounded more mocking. “We’re a Freikorps unit. Very rare they are too. You’re a lucky boy.” He laughed loudly again before reverting to the language which was the native tongue of his officer and those five other young idiots.
    “Yes, we’re a British Free Corps unit in the SS,” he said slowly, mocking the aristocratic English accent of the superior officer.
    He levelled his rifle once more at the Russian’s forehead.
    Paliev closed his eyes before Dietz’s second dum-dum bullet entered his cranium. He died without having a clue what the German had said.

CHAPTER THREE

    Although it was raining lightly, Kruze chose to walk from Waterloo Station to the Air Ministry. The journey from Farnborough to the London terminus had taken well over an hour because of an unscheduled stop in a tunnel near Addlestone. Air raid, someone had said, and Kruze had not moved to disagree, even though he knew it was just another false alarm.
    The rain fell more heavily as he walked down the Strand. He contemplated calling a cab as he dodged the pedestrians who weaved down the street of theatres and music halls, but dismissed the idea as the familiar sight of Nelson’s column came into view. From Trafalgar Square the Ministry was only a few minutes’ walk.
    Londoners seemed to have forgotten the war. The last German air raid on the capital was a distant memory. Although the buzz-bomb threat had been serious enough for the government to consider an evacuation of the city, everyone always referred to it as if it was nothing more than a mild nuisance. In the four years that he had lived among the English he still had not quite got used to their vagaries.
    Kruze paused by a crowd that had gathered outside the Rialto Cinema. The proprietor was shouting excitedly at a policeman and pointing at two lower ranking soldiers, who joked and winked at the girls in the crowd when the policeman’s back was turned.
    “But I saw them do it!” The proprietor looked ridiculous in bow tie and ill-fitting impresario’s jacket. There was loud laughter as one of the soldiers turned drunkenly and shrugged at his growing audience.
    Kruze saw the object of the owner’s displeasure. A poster, boasting the proud, manly figure of Errol Flynn in combat attire, had been defaced in a large scrawling hand with the word “pansy”. The film was Objective Burma and it had caused quite a stir when it had first been released in London, Kruze recalled. It implied that Errol Flynn had captured Burma from the Japanese single-handed. An old woman caught Kruze grinning and frowned her displeasure. Kruze transferred his smile to her, touched his cap lightly and moved on.
    He skirted the edge of Trafalgar Square and looked up at the figure of Admiral Nelson. That the Germans had not flattened the centre of London had been a miracle. The great buildings of Whitehall, the nerve centre of the British war effort, bore few scars, unlike Waterloo. There, Kruze had seen workmen pulling down the shell of a huge warehouse, hit by a V2 attack some months before.
    As he approached the Ministry, Kruze patted the document in the inside pocket of his greatcoat. Once he’d delivered it he’d have more than enough time to take in a show or a film in one of the myriad theatre halls that crowded the West End. Perhaps he would see the Errol Flynn if the cinema had not been burned down by the mob he had just left.
    The lobby of the Air Ministry was cold and gloomy and a large puddle lay under the coat-stand beside the main reception desk. Kruze took off his cap, exposing blond hair that was slightly longer than the regulation length. The middle-aged woman behind the desk smiled warmly