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were meant to meet him tomorrow, but Schämmel has postponed again until Thursday. The idea is to get the general to agree to fly to London.’
    ‘Does this general have a name?’ Conrad asked.
    ‘Not yet,’ said Payne Best. ‘Look here. I’m not entirely sure of your role in this operation, de Lancey. I was told you would just be watching. You won’t be involved in the negotiations, will you?’
    ‘No, I’ll leave that to you,’ said Conrad. ‘My job is to make sure that Major Schämmel is real.’
    ‘Have you had contact with these generals, then?’
    ‘Some,’ said Conrad. ‘But we don’t want Major Schämmel to know that.’
    ‘Where? In Germany?’
    ‘Rather not say, if that’s all the same to you,’ said Conrad with a smile.
    ‘Fair enough,’ said Payne Best, nodding to himself with what looked like approval. ‘Or, as we say in Holland: Zeker, meneer .’
    They spent the remaining half-hour driving very fast towards The Hague going over the kind of phrases that a taciturn chauffeur might say to his boss. Dutch pronunciation was tricky, but Conrad quickly picked up Payne Best’s accent. How good that was, he didn’t know, but to Conrad’s ear it sounded the genuine article.
    The countryside reminded Conrad a little of the levels near his family’s home in Somerset, which he knew had been shaped by Dutch engineers a few centuries before. Green, flat, waterlogged, criss-crossed with ditches and dykes, only the odd barn or copse broke the monotony. And the windmills. Somerset didn’t have the windmills.
    Once they reached The Hague, Payne Best drove to the C&A department store in the centre of the city and found Conrad a cheap off-the-peg suit and a flat cap. Not an actual chauffeur’s uniform, but rather the kind of thing that a mechanic might dress up in to look smart on a driving job. Payne Best paid.
    ‘Your name is Jan Lemmens,’ he said.
    ‘Do you have papers for me? What if I get stopped by the Dutch police?’
    ‘There’s a fellow from Dutch military intelligence who they insist comes along with us named Klop, although we pass him off as a British officer. He’s a good man. He’ll square them.’
    ‘All right. Where am I staying?’
    ‘I’ll take you there now. It’s a bit of a dump, I’m afraid. Too risky to have you staying at a smart hotel. The Hague is crawling with spies, don’t you know?’
    True to his word, Payne Best dropped Conrad in a small scruffy hotel near the Hollands Spoor railway station. ‘Lie low tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at half past nine on Thursday morning. Wear your new suit – perhaps crumple it tonight if you can; put it under your mattress. The plan is to meet Schämmel at three o’clock near the border.’
    Düsseldorf
    The man whom Captain Payne Best knew as Captain Schämmel eased off his headphones and stared at the notepad on the desk in front of him. Venlo. 3 pm. 9 November.
    He was in the small sitting room of a pension in Düsseldorf that had been turned into a communications room. Pride of place was given to the wireless transmitter which had been given to him by Payne Best and on which he had just confirmed the rendezvous. Accompanied by the general.
    The British were pleased. He was pleased. He was getting somewhere.
    He picked up one of the three telephones, the one with the direct line to Berlin. He was put through within a few seconds.
    ‘Heydrich.’
    ‘Herr Gruppenführer, this is Schellenberg.’
    ‘Ah, Walter. How did it go?’ The high-pitched voice of his superior immediately put Schämmel, whose real name and rank was SS Sturmbannführer Walter Schellenberg, on his guard, as it always did. You could never let your concentration slip for a moment in the presence of the head of the Gestapo.
    ‘I have set up a meeting in two days at Venlo. And I have just the man to play the part of the general.’
    ‘Do you think they suspect anything?’
    ‘No. And once I produce a general they will be happy.’
    ‘Good,