‘ London is going to replace you?’

‘ London is getting very excited about this caper,’ said the CO in a voice which suggested that he did not share their excitement. ‘The guy in my car is section head for the whole west region. Being a goddamned desk man, he’s read all the manuals and so he is sitting over there in order not to see your face. He came in person to brief me about a highly unlikely information source that London Operations have found He wants you to fly to London tomorrow and go to East Anglia to talk to some geriatric German who says he helped load this junk on board a train when they were putting it into the Kaiseroda mine.’

‘Is that what you’ve come out here in the middle of the night to tell me?’

The CO reached into his pocket for an airline ticket and gave it him. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘This little bastard didn’t come out here to consult me, he made it an order. Why the hell he didn’t just put it on the telex, I still don’t understand.’

‘ Southern California can be very pleasant at this time of year,’ said Stuart.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said. ‘A jaunt for the top brass-and it keeps us field men on our toes.’ He slapped his leg and reached for the door catch. Then he stopped. ‘The cops found Mr Lustig,’ he said. He paused.

‘And?’

‘Someone had hacked his head off. Another few minutes and they would have had his hands off, and they wouldn’t have got fingerprint identification from his alien’s registration.’

‘When?’

‘We’re not sure. The cops have been keeping it very quiet. Death on May 24 according to my source. Body found about a week later.’

‘What do you mean, keeping it very quiet?’

‘We’re trying to find out, but it’s not so easy. There’s been a lot of coming and going, with FBI and Justice Department lawyers in and out of police headquarters… CIA people too, we think. It could be connected with the Lustig killing.’

‘An official news blackout, you mean?’

‘It’s a good time for you to go to London,’ said the CO. ‘It could get hot here. Another few days will tell us what’s going to happen.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Stuart.

‘So do I,’ he confided, ‘but that’s the way this jerk from London likes to see it. Anyway, have a good time. The contact’s name is with your airline ticket and I’ve put some English money in there too: not much I’m afraid, but it will buy you the chance to use the headphones on the plane. I know you like music. Nothing covert about this one; use your own passport and credit cards and so on. I’ll keep an eye open this end. Report to London in the usual way.’

He gave Stuart the brown envelope. ‘And stop worrying about that boy from Washington. It wasn’t your fault.’ Stuart didn’t answer. He knew only too well that it was his fault and that all the reports and reviews would say so.

The man got out. Stuart watched him walk across the park to his own car. It was a hot night and the ease officer took his time. There was a moment or two before the headlights were switched on and another delay before they drove away. Stuart supposed that the section head from London was taking off his false beard.

East Anglia is the lost continent of Great Britain. Windy and rainy, it is not a part of the industrialized north nor of the more prosperous south. This is fenland, some of it below sea level, drained by elaborate dykes and ditches built by Dutchmen whose names can still be found in every local telephone directory. No great motorway networks serve this part of England, and grass grows through the train tracks. Here are endless fields of potatoes and peas, ducks and turkeys-all the bounty of the freezer-with rainswept holiday trailers huddled together as if sheltering from the elements. Its horizons are little changed since medieval times, the blunt towers of its flint churches buttressing the turbulent clouds. And yet a short walk off the roadway in almost any direction will bring you to derelict control towers, ruined operations blocks and cracked hardstands. For long, long ago, this was ‘ Little America ’. From here the great bomber fleets went out to attack Hitler’s Germany, and young men from Tacoma to Tallahassee called these East Anglian villages home.

Boyd Stuart saw the spire long before he found the road sign for Little Ashfield. He turned off the Thetford road and went through the villages of Elmstone and Great Wickmondgate. He felt happier in his own car; better an ancient dented Aston, he reasoned, than a factory-fresh Datsun. The village he sought was no more than a dozen small box-framed houses with a flint rubble church. The sky above it was slate grey and there was a trace of rain in the air.

‘I’m looking for Franz Wever’s house,’ Boyd called to an old woman in a floral-patterned pinafore. She was hanging over her garden gate watching her small mongrel puppy gnaw a bone.

‘He’ll be in the church,’ she said. ‘What do you want him for?’

‘In the church?’

She laughed. It was a shrill laugh. ‘The church. Polishing, not praying,’ she said. ‘Every week, regular as clockwork, old Mr Wever is in the church, polishing the pews and sweeping the floor. He’s a dark horse, that one!’

‘Thanks,’ said Stuart, and drove to the end of the village street and parked by the lych gate. It was a fine old church, its great roof a maze of king posts, hammer beams and rafters. Wever was there: a small bespectacled man with a bony pointed nose and thinning fair hair which had still not gone completely white. His eyes were bright blue and his skin untanned but leathery-it was the face of a man who had spent his life outdoors.

‘Mr Wever?’

‘Is it the eggs for the Rendezvous des Gourmets?’

‘Is it what?’

Wever resumed sweeping the floor. ‘I thought you were from the new restaurant on the main road. I had trouble starting my van this morning.’

‘I’m from London, Mr Wever. I was told that you could help me with an inquiry we have about a wartime movement of German archives.’

Wever raised his eyes quickly, his movement frozen. ‘So they sent you,’ he said wearily. ‘Is there no end to their questions?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ said Stuart.

‘1945 again. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve told you all I know, over and over again.’ Wever picked up the dustpan and his jacket. ‘Will it take long?’

‘I can’t tell at this stage.’

Wever sighed. Stuart followed him through a vestry door and along a corridor to a broom closet. He watched him collect together his polishing rags and dusters and pack them away. ‘I came here as a prisoner of war in 1945,’ said Wever. ‘I have been here ever since. Always a prisoner, in a manner of speaking.’

‘You regret it now, do you?’ Stuart asked. ‘Prefer the old country?’

Wever looked at him contemptuously. ‘I’ve never been back there, Mr…?’ The German accent was easier to hear now that he was angry.

‘Stuart. Boyd Stuart.’

‘Mr Stuart.’ Wever washed his hands at a small washbasin, dried them carefully and put on an old green tweed jacket and a soft cap.

‘I imagine you have a car, Mr Stuart? My wife is using our vehicle. Friday is a busy day for her. The restaurants, hotels and boarding houses all want our chickens and eggs before the weekend business.’

Wever followed Stuart out to the elderly sports car. He made no comment until the engine started. ‘It has a roar like a tank. Is that what you like?’

‘Yes,’ said Stuart. ‘Which way do we go?’

‘We have twenty-three acres on the back road to Elmstone. Follow this road and turn right after the Red Fox.’

‘Chickens?’

‘ Rhode Islands. We get fine brown eggs from them. People prefer them to white ones but there is no difference really.’ Wever seemed talkative, as if he could keep 1945 at bay by discussing the present day. ‘Nearly lost the whole lot when we began.’ Wever sat silent for a moment. ‘They peck each other to death, you know. We have to chip the beaks off.’