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London and the West End. Each man, we believe, will have a packet of five-hundred-rouble notes with him. They’ll probably turn them into pounds or dollars – probably pounds, as that’s the local currency. You could change those anywhere in Europe with no questions asked.’
    ‘You have done well, Captain. Do you know when this is going to happen? And is it all meant to happen at once so the various banks haven’t got time to warn each other?’
    ‘I don’t know how soon this is going to happen, General. I believe it is going to be very soon. Our English friends hope to get the answer to that question tonight. It was they who gave me all these details.’
    ‘And what are the London police going to do? Do we know?’
    ‘That is why I am here. Our English friends want to know our wishes. Should they arrest these people and put them in jail? Or should they watch and wait?’
    The General took a long pull on his cigar. Outside, the noise of the children on the swings in the Parc Monceau floated in through the General’s open windows.
    ‘I can see the appeal of locking all those people up. It must be very tempting. But I’m always wary about sending these characters to prison. Even if you disperse them all over the country, there’s still a risk. They go to jail knowing the trade they work in and a load of revolutionary nonsense. But think of the people they’re going to meet, and the skills they could learn. You could be sent down as a carpenter and come back a burglar, or a lock picker, or a fraudster – maybe even all three. Perhaps you absorb even more revolutionary rubbish in the prison library. Is there another way round this problem?’
    ‘I think the English police worry about publicity, General. The politicians would certainly want to lock them up. That would make them popular for a day or two. They would probably like to keep them lockedaway for a very long time. Suppose we just observe the operation? If we have witnesses in the banks, the police can pick up the revolutionaries any time they want and charge them with money laundering. We must have records of those bloody bank numbers in the files here.’
    The General smiled a private smile as he thought of a night hunt through the grey cabinets in the long corridors down in his basement.
    ‘Do we know what they’re going do with the pounds or dollars once they’ve changed them?’
    ‘No, we don’t.’
    ‘Suppose you’re Lenin with that ghastly beard, holed up in his Cracow café with the newspapers and his Bolshevik friends. You wouldn’t want to let your English colleagues keep the money for any length of time, would you? Their wives might spend it. They could get plenty of new friends in the pub standing everybody drinks. Maybe they could buy enough dynamite to build a few bombs.’
    ‘How about this, General? Surely if you’re Lenin, now on your fifth cup of coffee of the afternoon, you’re going to get the money out the same way you sent it in. Pack it away in the Ballets Russes luggage. Next stop Paris or Monte Carlo. Plenty of banks in Monte Carlo near that great casino. You could change your new English pounds into any currency you liked in there.’
    ‘Let’s just act it through to see what the problems might be.’ General Kilyagin was very fond of amateur theatricals. The shy members of his family always dreaded Christmas and the summer holidays. ‘I’ll be the banker. You’re the Bolshevik from Bethnal Green.’
    The Captain was already reaching for his wallet. ‘You hand the money over,’ the General went on, ashis colleague duly gave him two English pound notes, masquerading as large numbers of roubles. ‘Thank you very much, are you staying long? My goodness,’ the General was peering closely at the note, ‘we don’t see these very often, even in London. Let me just check our current exchange-rate tables,’ he rummaged about in his drawer. ‘Here we are. That’ll be eighty-four pounds six shillings and