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the same day, he was scheduled to visit a factory near King's Lynn and make a brief speech to the workers.
     
     
Then came the interesting part. Instead of returning to London he intended to spend the week-end at the home of Sir Henry Willoughby, Studley Grange, which was just five miles outside the village of Studley Constable. It was a purely private visit, the details supposedly secret. Certainly no one in the village was aware of the plan, but Sir Henry, retired naval commander, had apparently been unable to resist confiding in Joanna Grey, who was, it seemed, a personal friend.
     
     
Radl sat staring at the report for a few moments, thinking about it, then he took out the ordnance survey map Hofer had provided and unfolded it. The door opened and Hofer appeared with the coffee. He placed the tray on the table, filled a cup and stood waiting, face impassive.
     
     
Radl looked up. 'All right, damn you. Show me where the place is. I expect you know.'
     
     
'Certainly, Herr Oberst.' Hofer placed a finger on the Wash and ran it south along the coast. 'Studley Constable, and here are Blakeney and Cley on the coast, the whole forming a triangle. I have looked at Mrs. Grey's report on the area from before the war. An isolated place - very rural. A lonely coastline of vast beaches and salt marshes.'
     
     
Radl sat there staring at the map for a while and then came to a decision. 'Get me Hans Meyer, I'd like to have a word with him, only don't even hint what it's about.'
     
     
'Certainly, Herr Oberst.'
     
     
Hofer moved to the door. 'And Karl,' Radl added, 'every report she's ever sent. Everything we have on the entire area.'
     
     
The door closed and suddenly it seemed very quiet in the room. He reached for one of his cigarettes. As usual they were Russian, half-tobacco, half-cardboard tube. An affectation with some people who had served in the East. Radl smoked them because he liked them. They were far too strong and made him cough. That was a matter of indifference to him: the doctors had already warned of a considerably shortened lifespan due to his massive injuries.
     
     
He went and stood at the window feeling curiously deflated. It was all such a farce really. The Fuhrer, Himmler, Canaris - like shadows behind the white sheet in a Chinese play. Nothing substantial. Nothing real and this silly business - this Churchill thing. While good men were dying on the Eastern Front in their thousands he was playing damned stupid games like this which couldn't possibly come to anything.
     
     
He was full of self-disgust, angry with himself for no known reason and then a knock at the door pulled him up short. The man who entered was of medium height and wore a Donegal tweed suit. His grey hair was untidy and the horn-rimmed spectacles made him seem curiously vague.
     
     
'Ah, there you are, Meyer. Good of you to come.'
     
     
Hans Meyer was at that time fifty years of age. During the First World War he had been a U-boat commander, one of the youngest in the German Navy. From 1922 onwards he had been wholly employed in intelligence work and was considerably sharper than he looked.
     
     
'Herr Oberst,' he said formally.
     
     
'Sit down, man, sit down,' Radl indicated a chair. I've been reading the lastest report from one of your agents - Starling. Quite fascinating.'
     
     
'Ah, yes.' Meyer took off his spectacles and polished them with a grubby handkerchief. 'Joanna Grey. A remarkable woman!'
     
     
'Tell me about her.'
     
     
Meyer paused, a slight frown on his face. 'What would you like to know, Herr Oberst?'
     
     
'Everything!' Radl said.
     
     
Meyer hesitated for a moment, obviously on the point of asking why and then thought better of it. He replaced his spectacles and started to talk.
     
     
.
     
     
Joanna Grey had been born Joanna Van Oosten in March, 1875, at a small town called Vierskop in the Orange Free State. Her father was a farmer and pastor of the Dutch Reform Church and, at the age of