‘If you will forgive me, Lanchester,’ McKevitt said, dropping his eyes to his desk, ‘I have a rate of work to get through.’

‘My old school head was less brusque than that bastard and that, sir, is saying something.’

Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, the aforementioned Quex, allowed himself a very slight twitch of the lips, not a smile but an acknowledgement that what was being said was true. ‘He’s an acquired taste all right, but it takes all sorts to do our kind of work, does it not?’

‘And he’s been asking far too many questions about me, sir.’

‘Happens when one’s nose is put out of joint, and his was very much so when he found out he was being bypassed.’

‘How did he find out?’

‘You turning up in Brno would not have gone unnoticed, Peter.’

That seemed to be too sanguine a response; better to seek to dig the man out. ‘For my money he has pursued it beyond what is natural. I have it in mind, sir, to slip McKevitt some false information, to see if I can get him to break cover and expose himself.’

‘Whatever you think of him, he is on our side.’

‘I think he knows precisely what happened in La Rochelle and who was involved and he is not one just to sit on his hands. He’s talked to both the Paris and Dublin embassies and, for all we know, asked them to dig further. It might be best to put him off any scent he picks up regarding Callum Jardine and those like him.’

‘And how would he do that, Peter?’

You do not say outright to the head of an intelligence agency that his organisation is riddled with factions, that it is a hotbed of rumour and suspicion made worse by your recent actions, even if you know he is aware of the fact and spends much of his working life using that tension to good effect; Peter Lanchester had to be tactful but he also had to say his piece, for if McKevitt was devious, so was the man he was talking to.

‘Just as a precaution, given my sole concern is to protect our man in place, who is, after all, not officially a member of MI6 and is therefore very vulnerable, even to the machinations of his fellow countrymen. Contact with Prague goes through McKevitt, which allows him to issue instructions that we would know nothing about, while withholding information he feels he has no need, or reason, to pass on.’

‘You are implying that if he found out about Jardine being in Prague, he might not bother to let me know?’

Quex paused, having stated the obvious, albeit with a palpable air of disbelief.

‘As long as you keep me properly informed, we will be able to deal with any problems that arise and, I might add, McKevitt’s a clever bugger, who will reckon that anything coming from you is tainted and that will only excite his interest. Best leave him alone, Peter.’

Given the nervous state of František Moravec, the leaving of the cathedral was a damn sight more cautious than the arrival. Vince was well behind Cal as he reprised his sightseeing act on the Charles Bridge. When he stopped in front of the statue of St Elizabeth and managed to look both up and back Vince was very obviously smoking and made a point of shoving out his cigarette to flick off the ash; they had a tail.

That did not say who it was, it could be that Moravec had put somebody to keep an eye on them, but to accept that as the case was a bad idea; it was safer to think the worst, to suspect that by meeting with the head of counter-intelligence he had laid himself open to scrutiny by someone whose aims were not benign.

It also appeared that Moravec might be right: he was not able to operate unobserved in his own capital city. Cal made no attempt to identify who was doing the following – Vince had spotted him and would give him a description later – but it did mean that he would need to act upon it. Had anyone overheard the exchange in the church? Unlikely, they had spoken in near-whispers.

Sauntering on, still playing the tourist, Cal peered at buildings and statues. He had no intention of leading their man back to where he and Vince were staying, but made instead for the Ambassador Hotel, even if such a place carried with it the risk of him being recognised, being, he knew, the chosen watering hole of all the foreign correspondents.. A five-star establishment, it had a precious asset: more than one entrance and exit, which made losing a man on his own easy.

The lobby was abuzz with conversation being carried out in several different languages and, like every luxury hotel he had ever entered, there seemed to be an overabundance of well-dressed women, some, no doubt, of dubious purpose. But it was busier by far than the Savoy in London; diplomats too used the Ambassador, and right now every country in Europe felt they needed to have folk in place outside their embassy staff to tell them what was going on.

Cal moved through to the desk, engaged one of the receptionists to ask an innocent question, then went to one of the bank of lifts and allowed himself to be taken up to the fourth floor. He immediately dropped one floor and took another lift, a different one with a different operator, back down to the lobby and without looking around made for a more discreet exit, which took him through a residents’ lounge.

‘Jesus Christ Almighty, if it isn’t my old pal, Doc Savage.’

The cracked American voice, reminiscent of someone with a bad throat, might have been behind him but he knew it to be female, just as he knew who it was, though such knowledge brought him no more pleasure than the nickname she had once regularly used to insult him – the moniker of some inane American cartoon character he had never heard of or read.

Walking on and ignoring it was not an option; he had to turn round and be smiling broadly as he did so. The last time he had seen Corrie Littleton she had been in some distress, in the latter stages of a recovery from a wound caused by an Italian bomb, pale-faced and all skin and bone, not that she had ever been fulsome; he had once decided she was rangy rather than skinny.

Now she was very obviously recovered and was no longer clad in slacks and a masculine sort of shirt-blouse he remembered as standard dress, but in a smart grey suit, jacket and pencil skirt, with an expensive handbag and shoes to match. Her hair, slightly reddish on the side of auburn, which she had worn loose, was now carefully arranged under a pert hat.

‘Corrie,’ he responded.

‘Cal …’

He moved forward with speed, immediately taking her arm to push her towards a clutter of settees where they could sit down.

‘Hey, buster.’

Cal’s response came out of the side of his mouth as a desperate whisper. ‘Do shut up for once, there’s a good girl.’

‘Hell, your manners ain’t altered.’

‘Let’s sit and talk.’ She tried to resist being put on her backside but he was too strong, and he made sure their backs were to the door he had just come through. ‘And don’t use my bloody name.’

‘Oh.’

‘That’s right.’ There was no need to say he was here on the same kind of business he had been doing when they first met and Cal did not bother to try and explain. Corrie Littleton might be a pain in the posterior but she was not dumb. ‘What in the name of creation are you doing in Prague?’

She responded to his low tone of voice in a similar vein. ‘Working, which I kinda guess is what you are doing too.’

‘What kind of work can you be doing here?’

‘That, from you, is typical, like a woman can’t do any work. I am here reporting for Collier’s Weekly.’

‘You’re a journalist?’

The reply had all the sarcasm he recalled so well. ‘I always knew you were smart.’

‘How did you end up doing this?’

‘Thank Tyler Alverson. I thought if he could do it, so could I, and I must say he was sweet when we got back stateside. He put me on to people who could help, though that had to wait till I had fully recovered.’

Alverson had been with them both in Ethiopia and Cal had come across him in Madrid as well, when the city was under siege. A long-in-the-tooth self-confessed hack of a foreign correspondent, he was a man Cal liked and admired; he was also a fellow who was to be found where there was anything approaching action.