He turned from the window. "Few have heard of the camp, because it was one of those successfully destroyed by the Nazis under the last-minute ‘Cloud Fire’ order designed to obliterate evidence of atrocities. You won't find any record of it. But some knew of it." He turned his eyes on mine and I knew he wasn't looking at me but at men who had been here before me. "So we built this monument to our dead. We thought it was better than just a stone with a plaque. Some of the children laugh and play where their grandparents died. Of course they don't know it. This is in confidence, and I think you are a man to respect such a confidence. I have told you this because I can't believe this thing about Professor Foegl. He was so gentle. The children are going to miss him, you know."

He suddenly flung out his hands – "But what made him come here, to us? Did he know what this place was? Do you believe he knew?"

"He may have."

"Then why?"

"Remorse. Guilt. Cowards have the biggest consciences." I remembered how Foegl had stared out at those trees just now when he knew it was all up with him. "We don't know how much he might have been punishing himself, making himself face his past, everywhere he looked. It might have been that."

He stood for nearly a minute, motionless. Then he said:

"I'm glad he's gone. This is holy ground." He suddenly offered his hand. "You'll have to forgive me. The choir had only just started, you know. I must go and do my best with them, but goodness knows I'm practically tone-deaf."

I walked through the wide glass doorway alone, between the rows of galoshes and gum-boots. The tracks of the black Mercedes were on the snow. I looked across to the dark gnarled trees. For a minute the silence brooded, and I made myself wait, my breath half-held, standing beside the car.

Then it came again, the singing.

A thaw had set in and the evening streets were slushy. Snow was melting on the ruined shell of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche and the wrecked bones of its spire stuck into the sky, naked again and oddly beautiful.

Die Leute had me on the front page, a good full-face picture standing beside Rauschnig outside his beauty-salon. Three other papers had the same picture and two of them carried the later shot of the police-captain and myself leaving the offices of Schrader-Fahben.

Other front-page news was that Franz Rohm, Secretary of the Road Safety Committee, had hanged himself, as I had known he would.

It would have been difficult to get photographers down to the Star of David School because we didn't want the children worried, but I had sent in the word to F.A.P. and Die Leute carried a picture of Professor Foegl and a full paragraph, linking him with Rauschnig and Schrader and commenting on the ‘lightning wave of arrests’ that marked the day. I would therefore be linked, myself, with the Foegl snatch, and Phoenix wouldn't miss it.

They gave me half an hour with Foegl in his cell but I was out of luck. His fear – which I'd hoped would be the mainspring of ready confession – had gone, after twenty years. The worst had come to him and he knew his life would end in a cell like this, so he had nothing more to fear. I doubted if even the fullest confession would count for an acquittal, but I tried the idea on him. He wouldn't budge. He seemed to have already faded away in a kind of death.

They had a lock-up for the Hertz VW at the Hotel Prinz Johah and I backed it in. Slush dripped from the wings and a puddle of water had formed on the concrete before I left it and went in to a late meal. Some of the staff stared at me a bit because they'd seen the papers, and the wine-waiter had a greyness about his face. He was past middle age, and as his slightly-shaking hand poured my wine I wondered where he'd been between '39 and '45, and what he'd done.

But the wine's flavour was unspoiled. After six months on a dungheap you don't notice the smell.

Most of the tables had been cleared by the time I was served with the coffee. The American drew a chair near and dropped his evening paper on to the table. I glanced down at my own face and up into his. He said with a pleasant smile:

"Seems we're sailing a little close to the wind, sir."

I didn't want to talk or even know him but there is sometimes a danger in not responding and the strict orders are to do so, at once.

"Catch it as it comes, and the closer the better."

So this would be Brand. A flat shrewd face with level grey eyes and a crew-cut. The smile was pleasant but I resented him and resented his cheeking me. If an agent decides to splash his pan all over the front page there is obviously a reason, and it's his own business. He goes to work his own way, on one condition: that he doesn't endanger secrecy. It had to be accepted that if I decided to draw enemy fire the only one to get hurt was me. Now that my face was being advertised I couldn't go within a mile of the Unter den Eichen and Rohner-allee intersection even if I were certain there was no tag. In starting out to expose myself to the adverse party deliberately I had implicitly cut myself off from Local Control except for Post and Bourse, the sole safe line of communication. I'd become, since this morning, a ‘hot operator,’ whom no one wanted to go near. It was a classic move, and KLJ had used it twice in his career, breaking the normal conditions of strict hush and meeting the enemy on open ground as the most expedient way of doing a particular job. It is dangerous for the agent and he knows it and settles for it. It is more dangerous for him if people don't keep clear of him, and it becomes dangerous for them. A hot operator must have no cover, no contacts, and must never go near Control. Even a radio is dangerous.

"How long are you staying?" I asked him uncivilly.

"Oh, I practically live here."

We both knew that in a place like this we had to con verse carefully, so that even if a tape-recording were made it wouldn't give anything away. There were columns and curtains in this room, and waiters were still on the move. The table could even be miked.

He offered me a small cigar but I shook my head. "I don't know this brand."

"I just thought I'd introduce it to you." He put the cigar-wallet away.

"I'm hot," I said, looking at the windows. He picked up his paper.

"You kid me not," he grinned quickly, glancing at the front-page picture. He tucked the paper under his arm. "Well, I'll leave you in peace. Always at your disposal, of course."

I watched him away, took ten minutes to finish my coffee, and went up to my room, changing into dry shoes and mentally listing all the good reasons against what I was going to do. Then I switched on to light music, a few minutes before time.

I used the hotel paper. Repeat: there is to be no cover. Hengel made contact. I don't like this. Brand has made contact and is staying here. I don't like this either. Repeat: am operating solo.

The music stopped.

I decided, through the first half of the report, not to finish the note yet.

Portuguese Canning: 388. Minus 1.

Py-Sulpha: 459.Plus 7.

Quota Freight: 793¾. Plus 10¾.

Rhone Electric: 625 -

I switched off. It read: ALL PRECAUTIONS. YOURSELF RED SECTOR.

I finished the note. If no confidence in my policy you have only to say so, and pull me out. Q.

People were making me too angry and that was bad because emotions clutter up clear thinking on a job. I'd let the Hengel boy off lightly, saying only that he'd made contact and not saying that he'd picked me up on his own initiative and then let me flush him within minutes. I didn't want Control to rap him, only to keep him out of my way. But it had made me angry. So had Brand, contacting me when he knew damned well I was a hot operator. Even if Control hadn't warned him, he should have known as soon as he saw my picture on the front page linked with a ‘lightning wave of arrests’. Now Control itself had made me angry. ‘All precautions’ – in other words I wasn't to risk endangering secrecy by these wildcat methods I was embarked on. ‘Yourself red sector’' – I was exposing myself to enemy fire.