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the scratching of a match and a sudden blossoming of pale yellow light. He was in a large room containing nothing but an assortment of dilapidated chairs. He sat down on the one nearest him and instantly felt unbelievably tired. Sister Agatha fiddled with the lamp until its flame was steady. In the yellow light, her face looked as if it had been carved out of wax. Then she melted into the darkness.
    Dart had been sitting for less than a minute when he heard the German car start up and drive off. Once again he felt that events were out of his control. His reception committee had gone, and he had not been able to say goodbye or wish them luck. He fought against an aching desire for sleep. The muscles in the back of his neck could hardly hold his head up.
    He woke when he heard a chair scrape on the bare floor. He was being studied by a pair of ice-bright blue eyes set in a crumpled and stubbly face. The man was about sixty. He wore a grey dressing gown over a shirt and dark trousers. Wire-framed spectacles hung from a cord around his neck and rested on his chest.
    “Good morning.”
    Dart straightened up in the chair. “Dr. Veening?”
    “Do you know,” the other man said, “I think I would commit murder for a cigarette.”
    “What? Oh, right . . .” Dart fumbled in a pocket and produced a creased pack. The older man took a cigarette, ran it under his nose for the aroma, then lit it from the oil lamp. He exhaled a sigh of pleasure in a blue cloud.
    “It’s over two weeks since I had a smoke,” he said. “Scrounged it off a bloody German while he was checking my papers. He knew damn well who I was, too.”
    “You are Dr. Veening?”
    “We are colleagues, so naturally we will use first names. You are Ernst; I am Albert.” He extended a hand, and Dart shook it. “Welcome to the madhouse, Ernst Lubbers. Since you must be out of your mind, doing what you are doing, you should fit in very nicely.” He drew on his cigarette. “You look almost as tired as I feel. When I finish this, I’ll show you to your room. It’s on the first floor, well away from the wards. The wailing and so forth won’t reach you there. Sleep as long as you like. I imagine you’ve had an eventful night.”
    Dart shook himself out of his dazed state. “Dr. Veening. Albert, sorry. I can’t sleep yet. I have to make a transmission in”— he checked his watch —“Christ, in just less than an hour. I have to set the equipment up.” He looked about the room anxiously. “Where’s my stuff?”
    “Sister Agatha took your kit bag to your bedroom.”
    “Is that where I set up?”
    Albert Veening looked almost hurt. “Certainly not. We’ve got a special hidey-hole for that. We’ve made a rather neat job of it, though I say so myself. I hope you’ll be impressed. And if you’re not, I hope you’ll pretend you are.”
    He put his cigarette out under his foot, then bent and picked up the stub and dropped it into the pocket of his dressing gown. He stood and lifted the lamp. “Your, er, technical equipment is already up there. Shall we go?”
    They went through a panelled door into an impressive hallway. Its three tall windows were barred on the inside. Dart saw that the sky was paler now, a blue-grey slate sprinkled with chalky stars. Veening led him up a wide zigzag staircase with a dark mahogany banister. On the second landing they turned right, through a reinforced door. A corridor, more stairs, two turns. Dart remembered an earlier night walk with a Luger pressed against his skull.
    Veening said, not looking round, “I know what you’re thinking. Bloody maze, this place. The architect must have been a lunatic. Right. Here we are.”
    They were in a passageway that ended at a black panelled door. Veening produced a large bunch of keys attached to his belt loop by a length of string. With some difficulty he separated one key from the rest and handed it to Dart. “Don’t lose it,” he said. “It’s the only spare. Go on, open