“Just get a copy of tomorrow’s Times. I noticed their journalist was let in. It was hardly a hush-hush do! I’m surprised they didn’t open with a fanfare. Batting for England we had: our Prime Minister Macdonald and half the aristocracy … a few generals and admirals, a couple of bishops. For the away team: Secretary of State Hull … senators, governors, the consul general. And from both sides of the Atlantic: a seriously heavy brigade of bankers.”

Joe’s expression of slight boredom was enlivened by a flash of humour. “Thank God no one put a bomb in the surprise pudding. The wealth makers of the world would have been splattered over London!”

“Strawberries, crème de la crème and blue blood sauce,” Bacchus spoke grimly. “A real Eton Mess we’d have had to clear up!” He shrugged the idea away. “No. Never likely to happen. Military Intelligence were there in force. Ex-guardsmen,” he sniffed. “Blended right in. But the Branch had it covered just in case. Someone had to keep the glasses charged. I buzzed about like a bee in honeysuckle time. Those blokes do a lot of toasting.”

Joe smiled with anticipation at the picture of neat, slim, unctuous James Bacchus leaning close to the world’s most powerful men as they grew increasingly inebriated and indiscreet.

“Can’t wait to hear!”

“Nothing too exciting, I’m glad to say. I could hope it set the mood for the conference. After a lot of heart-swelling stuff about the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the balustrades of Boston and the Liberty Bell they got down to the serious pledges. These appeared to be: ‘Action rather than words’ and ‘the World Conference must not fail because it dare not fail.’ ”

“No objectors to that?”

“No one. Not a single voice raised in dissent. ‘Brothers across the Briny’ was definitely the theme.”

“Fine sentiments! I’d have raised my glass to that! Let’s hope Kingstone was listening. Did he appear moved by all this high-minded fervour?”

“Hard to tell. He behaved himself. Taking more in than he was giving out. He tucked into the food but I’ll swear he only drank a couple of glasses throughout the meal. Saving himself, I expect.”

“For what?”

“He knew he was going on somewhere afterwards.”

Joe picked up the slight unease in Bacchus’s voice. “Not according to our schedule, he wasn’t, James.”

“Oh, it was cleverly done. He stuck to the time and the place; he went in to the Victoria with Pilgrims, spent time in their exclusive company and came out four hours later. I’m sure no one else would have noticed and perhaps I’m being a bit hysterical …”

“But?”

“All a bit odd. After the lunch party broke up, some of the fellows lingered behind. A group of eight plus Kingstone. They settled down together at a table and lit cigars. Gawd! I thought I was going to be stuck there until supper time! But no. One of them told me to have brandy served in the small private dining room next door. They each picked up a little leather case. A similar one was handed to Kingstone, who didn’t appear to have come equipped and didn’t seem to know quite what he was expected to do with it. They wandered off laughing and joking into the next room. They accepted a tray of brandy and nine glasses but dismissed me at the door. ‘We’ll wait on ourselves, steward.’ Sorry, Joe, I couldn’t get near. And the Vic’s private dining room is one we haven’t yet managed to crack.”

Joe’s antennae were twitching. “You have names for these gentlemen?”

“Not all. I recognised one or two. There was a banker whose name will make your eyes pop. Two industrialists who made fortunes in the war, a retired English admiral, two other blokes I’d never seen or heard of before and a villain I did recognise from his pictures in the press.” Bacchus extracted a brown envelope from his pile and put it down in front of Joe.

Joe looked with interest. The man in question had clearly claimed the attention of the Branchman. He read the name on the front in disbelief, then read it out loud. “I say—have they spelled this correctly?”

“Heimdallr Abraham Lincoln Ackermann?”

Bacchus nodded.

“Who the devil’s this when he’s at home? And where on earth is his home? German surname, Scandinavian first name and American in the middle? That places him in the mid-Atlantic somewhere south of Iceland, wouldn’t you say?”

“Right. A man who carries his autobiography in his name. Prussian father, Swedish mother, brought up in the States.”

“How did Abraham Lincoln get in on the act?”

“Mother’s hero, apparently, though she, being an aristocratic sort of Swede, insisted on giving her son an ancient Scandinavian first name. Look inside—you may recognise him.”

Joe opened up the file and studied the photograph pasted inside. A bespectacled, middle-aged man with pale face and neatly trimmed grey moustache looked back at him with a benevolent and slightly questioning expression from under the brim of a straw boater set precisely in the centre of his head. This was not a man to wear his hat at a roguish angle. His suit was neat, his glasses had thin gold rims. He seemed to be asking, “Will that be all, sir?”

“I do recognise him. It’s my local pharmacist. Makes a point of asking discreetly if sir has everything he requires for the weekend. I’ll tell you who it isn’t—Heimdallr, son of Odin, King of the Gods! This chap couldn’t wield a paper-knife, let alone a broadsword. What’s he done to raise your blood pressure?”

“His weapon’s the pen! Are you telling me you haven’t heard of him? They told me you’d been primed …” Bacchus was stunned. “I’ll give you a minute to read through his details and another minute to get your breath back.”

Bacchus was chuffed to hear the low growl as Joe caught up. “Ackermann! Someone mentioned his name to me just the other day. One among many new ministers. How did you identify him?”

Bacchus was clearly pleased with himself judging by the studied casualness of his reply. “It was tricky. The chap was speaking with an American accent and the others were calling him ‘Abe’ so it was a moment or two before the penny dropped.”

Trying to remain calm, Joe asked, “And what, do you suppose, the new President of the German General Bank is doing in London masquerading as a Pilgrim?”

“Dunno. Guest of honour? Possible. But he could be a bona fide member for all we know. They don’t publish a list. It’s as easy to get a list of members from them as from a London club. In other words—forget it. A starchy ‘Our members know who they are,’ is the only response you get.”

“But—a German citizen?”

“They do get about, you know. We don’t own the Atlantic. The pilgrims—the original seed corn, you might say, were from several different European nations including Germany, all fleeing religious or political persecution in various lands. There were Ackermanns in Pennsylvania in the seventeen hundreds. It means ‘farmer’ and lots of farmers emigrated.”

Joe was becoming increasingly concerned that James had all these facts at his fingertips and said so.

“Right. This man just happens to be at the top of my pile of foreigners to watch. I’d say he’s the key man in Herr Hitler’s new government. One of the first appointments he made. He’s got the banking slot all right but he’s also Advisor for Economics and is, we hear, about to be given charge of Hitler’s policy of redevelopment, re-industrialization and—rearmament.”

Joe groaned. “So there was a bombe surprise to follow after all.”

“Yup! He’ll be the bloke who signs the cheques for the tanks and the bombers and the roads and the airstrips. And—more importantly—who conjures up the cash to back them. I began to wonder in my suspicious way if this meeting within a meeting had been called to arrange a few transfers between consenting parties. I expected his little case to contain a paying-in book as well as a cheque book and gold pen but, no—there was another little surprise in those cases.” Bacchus said cheerfully.