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newspaper was paid by the Germans; the pretty dark-eyed woman sitting at the bar drinking vermouth worked for the French. The sharp-eyed fat man in the white suit with the grey goatee worked for everyone, but he was sleeping with a German asset – a nice young boy from Stuttgart – so he was no longer considered reliable even as a double agent.
    Max King was waiting for him in the American Bar. Max was the Reuters man in Bucharest, the epitome of English pipe-sucking masculinity in grey flannel trousers and a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbow. The journalists spent every day in the bar. Their work came to them; it was a clearing house for rumours and secrets.
    Their acquaintance had started professionally, for Max’s sources were better than his own. Nick never knew where Max got his information but he always seemed to know what was going to happen inside the palace twenty-four hours before anyone at the legation. Over time he had become Nick’s best friend and confidant.
    When he saw him, Max took out the pipe and grinned. ‘Nick! My favourite spy!’
    ‘For God’s sake, Max.’
    Max ordered another round of gin and tonics. ‘Hell are you, old boy? Been telling Clive here about your little adventure the other night.’
    Nick looked over at Clive Allen. He was not at all like Max; he didn’t say much and he had never seen him laugh. I should take you outside right now and get the truth out of you about Ploesti, Nick thought.
    ‘Better if you tell the story,’ Max said.
    ‘Not much to tell. I was in Strada Lipscani. The greenshirts attacked some Jews right there in the street. They beat one poor bastard to death right in front of me. I helped one of them get away, that’s all. Hardly heroic.’
    Max shook his head. ‘Goodbye to old Bucharest, I’m afraid. Things are going to get very unpleasant here after Carol goes.’
    Everyone but the King himself knew he would have to go. It wasn’t just that he was corrupt; he once even spread rumours on the stock market to destabilise the national currency and then made huge profits trading against it. When the truth came out most Romanians just shrugged their shoulders. They were not even that shocked.
    It was the loss of territory and with it, national pride, that had finally turned the people against him. The Russians had just annexed two of the northern provinces and the King had done nothing to try and stop them. Ironically, it was one of his few intelligent decisions, because a war with Russia would only have cost more land and more humiliation.
    But the Bucaresti finally lost faith with Carol the Cad.
    The people were now looking to the nationalists for salvation, and to men like Horia Sima, the leader of the Iron Guard. In desperation, the King had tried to placate the mob by declaring an amnesty for the Guard and had made Sima the Minister of Culture and the Arts. The appointment had not been an outstanding success. From his new post Sima had directed the arrest, torture and execution of hundreds of Jews.
    ‘Turned it into an art form,’ was Max’s grim joke.
    It had done nothing to silence the voices raised against the King. There were demonstrations in the square every day, most of them organised by Sima himself.
    Clive finished his drink, made a polite farewell and left.
    ‘Everything all right, old boy?’ Max said after he had gone.
    ‘Yes. Of course.’
    ‘Did he upset you?’
    ‘No. Why?’
    ‘Just the way you were looking at him, old son. Poor old Clive. Whatever he’s done, don’t be too hard. Drinks more than is good for him,’ Max added, ordering another round. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.
    ‘How’s Daniela?’
    ‘Don’t worry about her. Trust Max. She’s fine.’ For the last week Max had been sheltering Daniela at his apartment on Bratianu. When Nick had appeared at his door that morning with a beautiful waif with tear-stained cheeks, he had asked no questions.
    But he had made assumptions.
    ‘Be discreet,