The sergeant’s handsome features had frozen into a noncommittal expression and Joe realised that his first barb had found its target.

“That was a long time ago. Mark it down as a young man’s folly and forget it.”

“Not quite ready to do that yet. We’ve kept the original reports the Branch presented on your activities and affiliations. It includes photographic evidence.” Joe decided to pin down Armitage with a second shaft. An underhand one he despised but which he feared might be his only restraint on this wayward and contradictory man. “One never knows when they might come in useful … You’re an agent in the FBI, I think Kingstone said?”

“Okay, okay! I’ll save you saying it,” Armitage said, his teeth clenched. “Blackmail isn’t—or used not to be—in your repertoire. But it’s no more than I expected. One word dropped to J. Edgar Hoover—my boss—and that’s my career, perhaps my life, finished. He’s been leading a cleanup of anything or anyone tainted by communism for years now. He doesn’t need proof. Suspicion is enough to land you in jail. You have me over a barrel. Happy with that?”

“Have you met him, this boss of yours? This latter-day witch-finding general?” Joe’s interest was clear.

“I have.”

Joe waited.

“Hoover’s effective, driven, ruthless and won’t be crossed.”

“How tiring,” Joe said with a sympathetic smile. “From that description, I’d say you and your boss were two for a penny. But—to save you saying it—there are less pleasant aspects to the man’s methods and character. I hear from one who knows these things that he is also egotistical, disloyal, vindictive and devious but, like many of his kind, seems always able to bob, unscathed, to the surface.”

“A piece of shit. You said it, sir.”

“Which makes me wonder why on earth you would have pursued a career with the FBI.”

“I’m a policeman. They are the force of law and order. But don’t be superior! Where do you think I learned some of the dirtier tricks of the trade? The Yard could give J.E.H. a few tips in skulduggery. ‘The boy who thinks ahead, gets ahead,’ my old headmaster used to say. Like in soccer—it’s speed and cunning you need. I just make sure I’m faster on my feet than the men blocking my way. I trip ’em up and run. Whoever they are.”

“Bill, as one whom, in the past, you’ve left writhing on the ground clutching an ankle, I’m aware of your qualities. Always have been,” Joe said. “So I do ask myself why a clever, self-seeking bastard like you comes back and sticks his head in a noose?”

Armitage turned to him, face flushing with emotion. “It won’t come to that. But if it did—what’s one life? I’m no martyr—you know that—but we’re talking about millions of lives and you don’t even know it! You really haven’t worked it out, have you?”

“We all know Britain’s bankrupt, Bill. You don’t need to tell us. The weight of the war loan repayments to the States will sink the country. Some say it’s a calculated sinking by our cousins. Good of you to come back all this way to check the price of a loaf in the old country. We know just how urgent it is that the world sorts out its finances at this conference. Chaos, depression and starvation will ensue if we don’t. We could be facing a lingering decline. King George is about to make that very point when he speaks at the opening. We’re aware all right.”

Armitage groaned. “To hell with the finances! ‘Lingering decline!’ ” he scoffed and, putting on an elegant Mayfair tone: “ ‘I say, my dear, I really think, in the interests of economy, we must reduce our indoor staff to a dozen, don’t you agree?’ If only that was what you had to fear! No—you’re looking at a sharp, sudden, bloody defeat at the hands of a ruthless enemy. You’re looking at London in flames. A world in flames.”

“Indeed? Do calm down, Bill, and tell me when this Armageddon is about to break around our ears. Did I detect a note or two of the Götterdämmerung in that outburst? Do I have time to go out and get myself a gas mask?”

Armitage glowered. “No, you don’t. It’s started and you’re in the front line of the advance party. You’re not forty yet, Captain. In your prime, I’d say. I’d get myself measured for a uniform if I were you.”

Joe sighed. “Look, if it’s the thought of fighting the Germans all over again … I don’t think you need be quite so hysterical. Always worth watching, of course—the Hun—but the Versailles Treaty conditions really knocked them back. The controls on rearmament, in particular, were swingeing. It takes a devastated country longer than fifteen years to get up on its feet again.”

Armitage gave him a pitying look. “Controls? If there’s money involved, people will always get around them. Especially arms manufacturers. The French have just sold four hundred tanks to Germany. Did you know that?”

“Careless clowns! They shipped them via Holland, as if that’s going to fool anyone for two minutes!”

The pitying look hardened to withering. “Who the hell cares about dispatch dockets? Those tanks are on their way! And what about the sixty bombers they’ve had the bloody nerve to order from your own Vickers company in Birmingham?”

Joe didn’t give Armitage the satisfaction of questioning this piece of information although it was news to him.

“And our … your pathetic government will rubber stamp it and ship them off. The Luftwaffe will get their bombers all right. One way or another. German air aces—the bloody crew we were trying to shoot out of the sky—have been shopping in the States for dive bombers. They rather liked the performance of the Curtiss Hawk II. They were sent a cheque for a couple by their air chief, Goering—remember him? Bloody fat Hermann! He’s done well for himself. And these planes have been sent over to Germany. Where they’ll be taken apart and redesigned. Made more deadly.”

“Nice to know the new government values its war heroes. Even a defeated country has the right to defend itself,” Joe said mildly. He always squeezed information out of Armitage by quietly needling him.

“Defence! That’s the last thing their new Chancellor has in mind!” Armitage reacted predictably and rounded on Joe, his face unacceptably close, his voice low and forceful. “Adolf Hitler. Vicious little thug! All this materiel will be in the hands of a man who declared—even before he took office—that ‘We shall never capitulate. We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag the world with us—a world in flames.’ ”

“Ghastly sentiments! Cue Wagnerian clash of cymbals?”

“Yes,” Armitage snarled. “Bring ’em on! That was a statement of nasty intent if ever I heard one.”

“Hitler spooking you, Bill? Terrible man, as all agree. But, look here, we’ve had him thoroughly checked. The man’s an incompetent. He’s made a mess of everything he’s put his hand to throughout his life—and that’s not much seeing that he’s an incurable layabout! He’s not even German by birth. He’s an Austrian shirker who made the injudicious decision to dodge the draft by running off to Germany. Where he was promptly shoved into the army, kicking and screaming. He played an unwilling and undistinguished part in the war at a safe distance behind the front line in the capacity of military messenger boy, I understand. He’s since gone on to fail at architecture, art, music and all the rest of his butterfly interests. One wonders what we have to fear from a man who can’t get out of bed before noon.”

Armitage gave him a scathing look. “Well, he’s succeeded now, all right, hasn’t he? And how! Straight into the top job. He must be saying something the Germans want to hear.”

“According to our man in Berlin—one of our men in Berlin—who’s met him and been granted an interview, he’s quite mad. ‘Pop-eyed but friendly,’ was his first impression. Until someone mentioned Communism and then he climbed the walls and began to chew the curtains. He frequently goes off into a raging, spitting rant, they say. Most embarrassing. Our chap didn’t know where to put himself. Can’t be long before someone realises and calls for the men in white coats. In one of his sober moments, Hitler confided to our bloke that, in his view, there was room in the world for just three empires: the German, the British and the American.”