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It was after midnight before Huth and Douglas Archer got back to Scotland Yard. For the first time Huth was persuaded to go to the office that had been prepared for him on the mezzanine floor. It was a magnificent room, with a view across the Thames to County Hall. Endless trouble had been taken to get the room exactly right, and General Kellerman had inspected it twice that afternoon, showing great concern that the rosewood desk was polished, the cut-glass light-fitting washed and the carpet cleaned and brushed. There was a new Telefunken TV set ready for the BBC’s resumed service that was promised for Christmas. Under it, a panelled cabinet contained Waterford cut glass and a selection of drinks. ‘He’s sure to like it, isn’t he?’ Kellerman had asked in that hoarse whisper that Harry Woods could imitate to perfection.

‘Anyone would, sir,’ said Kellerman’s senior staff officer, whom Kellerman liked to call his ‘chief of staff’.

‘A very nice place,’ said Huth sarcastically. ‘A very nice place to hide me away so I don’t interfere with the workings of the department. Even my phone goes through Kellerman’s switchboard, I notice.’

‘Is it the location you don’t like?’ said Douglas.

‘Just get rid of all this furniture and junk,’ said Huth. ‘It looks more like a Victorian brothel than an office. Does Kellerman think I’m going to sit here getting drunk until the TV begins?’

‘There is a cable TV connection,’ said Douglas. ‘It can be used to carry police information; photos of wanted persons and so on.’

‘I’ll get you a job in the bloody Propaganda Ministry,’ said Huth. ‘How would you like that?’

‘Perhaps I could have time to think about it,’ said Douglas, pretending to take it seriously.

‘Just get this furniture out of here. I want metal filing-cases, with good locks on them, and a metal desk with locks on the drawers, and a proper desk light, not that damned contraption. You’ll be sitting in the adjoining office, so you might as well get whatever you want in there too. Get phones: four direct lines and have your extensions changed to up here. In the corridor I want a table and chair so that my sentry won’t have to stand all the while – and where the hell is the sentry?’

‘Sentry, sir?’

‘Don’t stand there repeating everything I say,’ said Huth. ‘The Peter Thomas murder investigation is part of an operation we have code-named “Apocalypse”. No information of any sort – in fact nothing at all – goes outside this room without my written permission, or that of the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. Is that clear?’

‘Unforgettably so,’ said Douglas, desperately trying to fathom what could be behind it.

Huth smiled. ‘In case the unforgettable quality lessens, there will be an armed SS sentry outside in the corridor for twenty-four hours of every day.’ Huth looked at his wristwatch. ‘He should be on duty now, damn him. Get on the phone to the SS guard commander at Cannon Row. Tell him to send the sentry and half-a-dozen men to clear this furniture out.’

‘I doubt if there will be workmen available at this time of night,’ said Douglas.

Huth tipped his head back and looked from under his heavy-lidded eyes. Soon Douglas learned that this was a danger sign. ‘Are you making another of your jokes? Or is this some new kind of provocation?’

Douglas shrugged. ‘I’ll phone.’

‘I’ll be in the number three conference room with Major Steiger. Tell the SS officer I want all this furniture out of here before I get back. And I want the new furniture installed.’

‘Where do I get metal desks?’ said Douglas.

Huth turned away as if the question was hardly worth answering. ‘Use your initiative, Superintendent. Go along this corridor and, when you see the sort of thing you need, take it.’

‘But there will be a terrible row in the morning,’ said Douglas. ‘They’ll all be here moving it back again.’

‘And they will find an armed SS sentry preventing them taking anything out of this room on the orders of the Reichsführer-SS. And that includes metal furniture.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘In my brief-case you’ll find a cardboard tube containing a small painting by Piero della Francesca. Get it framed and hang it on the wall to hide some of this ghastly wallpaper.’

‘A real painting by Piero della Francesca?’ said Douglas who’d heard amazing stories of the artifacts plundered during the fighting in Poland, France and the Low Countries.

‘In a policeman’s office, Superintendent Archer? That would hardly be appropriate would it?’ He went out without waiting for an answer.

Douglas phoned the SS guard commander, and passed on Huth’s message with the friendly rider that Standartenführer Huth was in a great hurry.

The guard commander’s response was one of consternation. Kellerman’s briefing about the arrival of the new man was obviously taken seriously by the security force.

Douglas stepped across to the window and looked down at the Embankment. The curfew ensured that few civilians were on the street – Members of Parliament, and shift workers in essential industries and services, were among the exceptions – and the street and bridge were empty except for parked lines of official vehicles and an armed patrol who visited the floodlit perimeters of all the government buildings.

A motorcycle and sidecar combination stopped at the checkpoint where Victoria Embankment met Westminster Bridge. There was a brief inspection of papers before it roared away into the dark night of the far side of the river. From across the road there came the loud chime of Big Ben. Douglas Archer yawned and wondered how people like Huth seemed to manage without sleep.

He opened Huth’s briefcase to get the Francesca reproduction for framing, but before he had time to unroll it he saw, inside the pocket of the case, a brown manila envelope sealed with red wax and bearing the unmistakable heraldic imprint of RSHA – the Central Security Department of the Reich, and holy of holies of Heinrich Himmler and all he commanded. The envelope had already been opened along the side and a folded paper was visible.

Douglas could not repress his curiosity. He pulled out a large sheet of paper and unfolded it to find a complex diagram, as big as the blotter on the desk. It was drawn in black indelible ink upon handmade paper that was as heavy as parchment. Even Douglas Archer’s fluent German did not equip him to comprehend fully the handwriting of the German script, but he recognized some of the symbols.

There was a reversed equilateral triangle, inscribed within a double circle. The triangle contained two words, written to form a cross – Elohim and Tzabaoth. Douglas Archer’s successful investigation of a series of Black Magic murders in 1939 enabled him to recognize this as a ‘pentacle’ representing ‘the god of armies, the equilibrium of natural forces, and the harmony of numbers’.

A second pentacle was a human head with three faces, crowned with a tiara and issuing from a vessel filled with water. There were other water signs too. Handwritten alongside it was ‘Joliot-Curie laboratory – Collège de France, Paris’. And close against another water sign was written ‘Norsk Hydro Company, Rjukan, Central Norway’.

Heaped earth, spades and a diamond pierced by a magic sword ‘Deo Duce, comite ferro’ was an emblem of the Great Arcanum representing, according to the chart, ‘the omnipotence of the adept’ and here the runic double lightning of the SS was lettered, and followed by ‘RSHA Berlin’.

The third symbol was the spiral marked ‘Transformatio’ which became a spinning toy top with ‘Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, England’ written there, and the words ‘Formatio’ and ‘Reformatio’ arranged over ‘Transformatio’ to make a triangle. Below it ‘German army reactor in England’ was written against a spinning device. In another hand, ‘Peter Thomas’ appeared here in pencil, as if added hurriedly at the last moment.

Douglas straightened as he heard the sound of German boots on the mosaic stone of the corridor. He folded the diagram too quickly to be sure that it showed no sign of being tampered with. Then he tucked the envelope away into the red-lined pocket of the case and closed it.

There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ said Douglas as he unrolled the Francesca reproduction.

‘One sentry and six men for duty,’ reported the SS officer.

‘Standartenführer Huth wants this furniture removed,’ explained Douglas. ‘Replace it with metal furniture from offices on this corridor.’

The SS officer showed no surprise at the order. Douglas had the feeling that this farmer’s son from Hesse – as Douglas accurately guessed him to be – would have obeyed an order to jump out of the window. The officer took off his jacket to work with his six brawny lads while their armed comrade stood on duty in the corridor.

The job was almost finished by the time Harry Woods arrived at 2 A.M. He’d been at the reception at the Savoy. Douglas noticed, with some apprehension, that Harry was slightly drunk.

‘Talk about a new broom sweeping clean,’ said Harry as he watched furniture being moved. ‘I haven’t seen this kind of activity since that night when the invasion started.’

‘Do you know where we can get this picture framed?’ Douglas asked him.

Harry Woods held the edge of the picture and looked at it. It was ‘The Flagellation’. Douglas knew the painting – a fine colonnaded piazza, flooded with overhead sunlight from a blue sky. In the background Christ is scourged. Three magnificently attired men – the Count of Urbino and his two advisers – turn their backs upon the scene and converse calmly together. In real life, the advisers depicted in the painting were suspected of complicity in the murder of the Count. For centuries art experts have argued about the hidden meaning of the picture. Douglas found it appropriate as a decoration for the office of this hard-eyed emissary from the Byzantine court of the Reichsführer-SS.

‘Funny bugger, isn’t he?’ said Harry, looking at the painting.

‘We’d better learn to live with him,’ said Douglas.

‘He’s down in number three conference room,’ said Harry, ‘talking to that squeaky-voiced little police Major that he took along to the mortuary. Who is he?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Douglas.

‘They’re talking together as if the world was about to come to an end.’ Harry brought out his cigarettes and offered them to Douglas, who shook his head. It was no longer done to accept a friend’s tobacco ration. ‘What’s it all about, chief?’ said Harry. ‘You understand all this double-talk. What’s it all about?’

‘I thought you might be able to tell me, Harry. I saw Sylvia today. She told me that you have a finger in everything that’s going on in town.’

If Harry guessed what Sylvia actually said, he gave no sign of it, but he didn’t seem surprised that Sylvia had turned up at Scotland Yard. Douglas wondered if she’d seen Harry too.

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Harry. ‘That little Major is nothing to do with pathology or medicine or anything like that. I’d like to know why he was at the mortuary. Do you think this bloke Huth let him come along just for a laugh?’

‘You’ll soon find out that our new Standartenführer is not that keen on laughs,’ said Douglas.

‘There are some bloody peculiar people about, you know that. I mean, letting that little wireless mechanic come along there was wrong. And I’d tell Huth that straight, and to his face. I’d tell him it was all bloody wrong. You think I wouldn’t but I’d tell him.’ Harry swayed slightly and steadied himself by gripping the desk.

‘Wireless mechanic?’

‘Hah!’ said Harry with the arch smugness of the slightly drunk. ‘I saw his file. He’s got a police uniform but that’s just for show. I phoned Lufthansa, and got his number from the flight manifest, then I went upstairs and looked up his record.’

‘You got his file?’

‘Just his card. Say you work for the Gestapo and you can get any bloody thing. Do you know that, Douglas?’

‘You don’t work for the Gestapo,’ Douglas pointed out.

Harry waved his hand in front of his face as if trying to remove a speck from a dirty windscreen. ‘Wireless mechanic, it said, a doctor of wireless theory. They’re all bloody doctors these Huns, have you noticed that, Douglas?…Studied at Tübingen. Only came into the police service one year ago, straight from lecturing at Munich.’

‘Wireless mechanics don’t study at Tübingen and lecture at Munich,’ persisted Douglas.

‘All right, all right, all right,’ said Harry. ‘I haven’t got your command of the German language but I can find my way through a record card.’ Harry gave Douglas a sly smile and, like a stage conjurer producing a rabbit from a hat, he pulled a record card from his inside pocket. ‘There you are, old lad, read it for yourself.’

Douglas took it, and read it in silence.

‘Come on, Super, give us a smile. You’re wrong and you know it.’

‘The Major,’ said Douglas, speaking slowly so that he could think about it himself, ‘is a physicist, an expert on radioactive substances. He was a lecturer on nuclear physics.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ said Harry, rubbing his nose.

‘Those burns on the dead man’s arm,’ said Douglas. ‘Sir John didn’t mention those last night. Perhaps the little Major went there to examine them.’

‘From a sun-lamp?’

‘Not from a sun-lamp, Harry. Those burns were bad ones, the sort of skin damage a man would suffer if he was exposed to the rays that come from radium, or something like that.’

There was another knock at the door. The SS guard commander came to say that SS Signals wished to report that four new telephone lines were connected and tested. No sooner had he said so than Huth’s direct line rang. Douglas picked up the phone on his desk and said, ‘Standartenführer Huth’s office, Detective Superintendent Archer speaking.’

‘Archer – oh, splendid. General Kellerman here. Is the Standartenführer with you?’ Douglas looked at his watch. That Kellerman should be telephoning here at this time was amazing. He was not noted for his long working hours.

‘He’s in number three conference room, General,’ said Douglas.

‘Yes, so I understand.’ There was a long pause. ‘Unfortunately he’s left orders that no calls should be put through to him there. That doesn’t apply to me of course but I don’t wish to make the operator’s life too difficult, and there seems to be something wrong with the phone in the conference room.’

Douglas realized that Huth had given the phone operator the ‘direct orders of the Reichsführer’ stuff, and then left the phone off the hook, but he had every reason to help the General save face. ‘The phone is probably out of use because the Signals staff have been changing the phone lines.’

‘What?’ shouted Kellerman in shrill alarm. ‘At this time of night? What are you talking about?’ He changed to German and became more authoritative. ‘Look here. What is this about changing phones in my office? Explain what’s been happening. Explain immediately!’

‘Purely routine changes, General,’ said Douglas. ‘The Standartenführer preferred that Sergeant Woods and myself were accommodated in the clerk’s office next to his. This meant putting in extra lines for us and bringing our outside line up here – it’s usual to keep an outside number unchanged during the process of an inquiry…informants and so on.’

From somewhere near the General’s elbow there came the petulant murmur of complaint. It was youthful and feminine, and Douglas found no resemblance to the voice of the General’s wife, who had flown from Croydon to Breslau to see her mother the previous week.

‘Oh, routine, you say,’ said Kellerman hurriedly. ‘Then that is in order.’ He paused with the phone capped at his end. Then he said, ‘Have you been with the Standartenführer this evening?’

‘I have, sir,’ said Douglas.

‘What exactly is the problem, Superintendent? He never arrived at the Savoy, you know.’

‘The Standartenführer has a great deal of urgent work outstanding, General,’ said Douglas.

At that moment Huth entered the room. He looked at Harry Woods who was resting against the desk with his eyes closed. Then Huth looked at Douglas and raised his eyebrows quizzically.

At the other end of the phone, General Kellerman said, ‘Do you think I should come over there, Superintendent Archer? I can rely upon a loyal and conscientious officer like you to assess the situation.’

Huth had walked over to his desk and now stood with head bent towards the earpiece of the phone.

‘I’m sure that the General…’ Huth tried to grab the phone but Douglas held on to it long enough to say, ‘The Standartenführer has just come in, sir.’

Huth took the phone, cleared his throat and said, ‘Huth here, General Kellerman. What is it you want?’

‘I’m so pleased to locate you at last, my dear Huth. I want to tell you –’

Huth interrupted Kellerman’s greeting. ‘You’re in a nice warm house, General, in a nice warm bed, with a nice warm woman. You stay there and let me continue my work without interruption.’

‘It’s simply that my switchboard couldn’t seem –’ the phone clicked as Huth dropped the earpiece back on to its rest.

Huth looked at Douglas. ‘Who gave you permission to discuss the workings of this office with an outsider?’

‘But it was General Kellerman…’

‘How do you know who it was? It was just a voice on the phone. I’m reliably informed that your drunken friend here…’ he jabbed a thumb at where Harry Woods was blinking at him, ‘…can manage a fairly convincing imitation of General Kellerman’s English.’

No one spoke. Any of Harry Woods’s previously stated intentions to tell Huth straight about the decorum of having the little Major along to the mortuary had been put aside for another time.

Huth tossed his peaked cap on to the hook behind the door and sat down. ‘I’ve told you once, and now I’ll tell you for the last time. You’ll discuss the work of this office with no one at all. In theory you can speak freely with the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler.’ Huth leaned forward with his stick and jabbed Harry Woods playfully. ‘You know who that is, Sergeant? Heinrich Himmler?’

‘Yes,’ growled Harry.

‘But that’s only in theory. In practice you won’t even tell him anything, unless I’m present. Or if I’m dead, and providing you’ve satisfied yourselves personally that my life is extinct. Right?’

‘Right,’ said Douglas quickly, fearing that Harry Woods was working himself up to a physical assault upon Huth who was now waving his stick in the air.

‘Any breach of this instruction,’ said Huth, ‘is not only a capital offence under section 134 of the Military Orders of the Commander-in-Chief Great Britain, for which the penalty is a firing squad, but also a capital offence under section 11 of your own Emergency Powers (German Occupation) Act 1941, for which they hang offenders at Wandsworth Prison.’

‘Would the shooting or the hanging come first?’ said Douglas.

‘We must always leave something for the jury to decide,’ said Huth.