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before, Mr de Witt?’ Paulsen had poured the akevitt and was settling into his chair with a glass.
    ‘Are you sure you know your part?’ Wolff asked impatiently.
    He frowned. ‘Perfectly. Unlike my grandfather I love theatre and I’m a consummate liar. Your people in London must have spoken to you about me? I have been of service in the past. Now, your very good health.’ He raised his glass in salute, then drained it in a gulp. ‘Please,’ he said, a little hoarsely, and gestured with his glass to the one he’d poured for Wolff. ‘Please.’
    ‘They’ll send someone to you. He won’t be German. One of your own countrymen, probably someone you know. A businessman, perhaps a family friend or a policeman . . .’
    ‘I have everything,’ and Paulsen rested the palm of his right hand on a large leather-bound ledger, ‘correspondence, invoices. My staff know your name and that you work for Westinghouse but I’ve handled everything and that will have made them curious, even a little suspicious.’
    Wolff nodded approvingly.
    ‘Look to your own part, Mr de Witt; rest assured I know what I’m doing. Now another . . .’ and, half rising, he reached across the desk for the bottle. ‘And this time I hope you’ll join me.’
    ‘Are there references to the rifles in the paperwork?’
    ‘Do you read Norwegian? No, well . . .’ Paulsen put down the bottle and picked up the ledger. ‘Let me put your mind at rest.’ He flicked through it lazily in search of a suitable page. ‘Here’s something:
The shipment will be hidden in a large consignment of electrical equipment and stamped by the Westinghouse Company
. . . And here: . . .
the client’s agent will board in Darwin . . . he will make his own arrangements for unloading
. . . You see. Clues. Only clues. But lots of them.’
    ‘Good. To our arrangement then,’ Wolff replied, leaning forward to pick up his glass. ‘To the success of your performance, Mr Paulsen. Skoal.’ He drank the spirit in one and banged the glass down emphatically on the edge of the desk.
    Paulsen smiled: ‘And to yours, Mr de Witt.’
    Medium height, slight build, brown hair, young – perhaps twenty-five – dressed like a clerk. He was waiting in a doorway a little way along the street from Paulsen’s and moved into the cover of the building too quickly. Wolff pretended to consult his Baedeker. Was the tip-off from the hotel or one of Paulsen’s people? he wondered. It didn’t matter. He had begun leaving a trail a child could follow the moment he stepped from the ship. But make the fellow work a little, he thought. He’d expect that. He closed the guidebook and adjusted his hat. It was only a pity Christiania was such a dull city.
    Shuffling too close one minute, racing to catch up the next, bumping into passers-by, spinning round to gaze in shop windows. For a time he made Wolff smile. But what he lacked in craft he made up for in persistence. He was very young. Wolff caught a glimpse of his face in a mirror at the Continental as he was being shown to a table for luncheon. Younger than twenty-five. Twenty. A runner for someone else, that’s all. Did he have any idea what he was getting into? Wolff toyed whimsically with the thought of calling him over, sitting him down with a glass of wine and saying, ‘Whatever they pay you, my boy, it will never be enough.’ But after lunch he took a tram from outside the parliament to the palace and in the course of a stroll through the royal park gave him the slip. To be sure, he caught a second tram in the direction of the smart coastal district of Bygdoy but got off after only a few stops and hopped on to another heading back into the city. It was not until he’d changed twice more that he felt ready to catch one to the St Hanshaugen Park. At the entrance, he consulted his guidebook until he was satisfied that he was still alone, then began to climb through the formal gardens to the reservoir and viewpoint. He’d walked