Secrets of the Last Nazi

by Iain King

Genres: Action & Adventure; International Crime & Mystery; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

The greatest discovery of the 20th century. Kept secret. Until now. Berlin, 2015 - a well-connected SS commander is found dead, having protected the last secret of the Nazi empire for 70 years. A discovery by Nazi scientists so potent it could change the balance of world power - forever. Led by misfit military historian Myles Munro, an international team begin to piece together the complex puzzle left by SS Captain Werner Stolz. As their hunt across Europe gathers pace, the brutal killing of one of the group signals that they are not the only ones chasing the answer. Plunged into a world of international espionage, Myles has only his intellect and instincts to keep him alive. As the team edge closer to an explosive truth, it becomes clear to him that there is a traitor amongst them. Who can Myles trust? And can he unravel the clues of the past in time to save the future?

Release date: July 9, 2015

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 350

Sample

9th July, 1945

US Army Garrison Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Near Munich (US Zone of Occupation), Germany

SS Captain Werner Stolz watched as Corporal Bradley brought over the coffee. He eyed his interrogator, then thanked him for the drink and took a large swig.

Bradley sat down opposite, checked his watch, and began a countdown in his head. He waited almost a minute – allowing the Nazi to get comfortable – before he restarted the questioning. ‘So, Werner,’ he asked gently. ‘How does it work?’

Stolz just looked blank. He took more of the coffee, aware of the unusual taste but drinking it nonetheless.

‘Please, Werner,’ Bradley insisted. ‘Just tell me.’

‘What else can I say?’ shrugged the Nazi. His eyes glowered straight at the American, then glanced towards the young Russian scribbling in the corner, finally turning back to his interrogator. ‘I’m very sorry, Corporal,’ he offered. ‘Really. I can’t explain it, either.’

Corporal Bradley took off his glasses to sweep the hair back over his sweaty scalp, then flicked uselessly through the notes once more. He turned to his Soviet Liaison Officer. ‘Kirov – any ideas?’

Kirov put down his pencil, twisted around and faced the Nazi. ‘The Americans are treating you very well, Stolz,’ grinned the Russian. ‘They could treat you much less well.’

‘I know,’ agreed Stolz, trying to remove any trace of arrogance from his Austrian accent. ‘I also know neither of you will harm me.’

Bradley put his hand to his face, then glanced at his watch, calculating he had less than three minutes left. He needed a new tack.

‘OK then, Stolz,’ the American ventured. ‘You’ve got all the answers. What’s going to happen next?’

Stolz looked sympathetically at his interrogator, hugging his coffee with both hands as he spoke. ‘You’ll not get your investigation until we’re both dead, which is seventy years from now. It’ll be an international …’

‘Wait,’ interrupted Bradley, ‘I’m going to live another seventy years?’

‘I said we’d both be dead in seventy years,’ clarified Stolz, starting to sway on his chair.

Bradley tried to decode what he’d just heard, wishing he had more time. ‘You mean, one of us is going to live another seventy years?’

‘Yes,’ murmured Stolz, beginning to slump on the table. ‘My English is faulty. I mean, one of us dies today ...’

Stolz seemed to switch off. Bradley tried to support him, hoping there was time for just one more question, but the Nazi was starting to collapse. Stolz’s chair clattered beneath him, and he spilled his drugged coffee over himself as he fell.

Bradley bent down to check his prisoner’s pulse. Stolz had been too sensitive to the scopolamine. Bradley made sure the half-conscious SS man could breathe and checked his watch again: somehow his timings had been wrong.

He was just about to fetch some water for Stolz when the door opened. A single man entered, distinguished-looking and with a silver moustache. Bradley had never seen the officer before, or his regimental crest, but noticed he was wearing an immaculately pressed uniform – a sure sign he’d only just flown in to liberated Europe. Then he saw the single metal star on his shoulders: the insignia of an American Brigadier-General. Bradley jumped to attention.

‘At ease, Corporal.’

Corporal Bradley relaxed only enough for his eyes to check on Stolz, who was spluttering under the table.

The Brigadier-General pointedly ignored the Nazi prisoner. ‘So you’re Bradley; the letter-writer,’ sneered the Brigadier, as he walked around the upturned chair. ‘You’re new to the army, aren’t you ...’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Tell me, Bradley …’ the Brigadier glanced down at Stolz, who was writhing on the floor, before he turned back to the Corporal, ‘What did you do before the war?’

‘Er, high school teacher, Sir,’ replied Bradley, frowning to try to look serious. ‘Math, Sir.’

The Brigadier paused for several seconds before he answered. ‘Good, Bradley.’ The Brigadier’s voice relaxed, as he finally made eye-contact with Bradley. ‘We’ll be needing mathematicians now the war’s over … the war against the Nazis …’ Then he lifted Bradley’s papers, talking as if his mind was elsewhere, ‘And these are the only notes you have on Stolz?’

‘There are also two filing cabinets full. Next door, Sir,’ replied the Corporal.

‘But that’s all – all in this building?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

The Brigadier accepted Bradley’s response and replaced the papers.

Bradley was about to tell the general why the Stolz interrogation was so peculiar when he became distracted by the Brigadier adjusting his uniform – the general seemed to be unbuttoning his jacket. Gently, the Brigadier moved him aside.

The Brigadier raised his eyebrows towards the Russian in the corner. ‘And you must be Lieutenant Kirov?’

The Soviet Liaison Officer started to nod. Then, like Bradley, he reacted to a double-clunk noise, and a suppressed mechanical cough. For a short moment Kirov’s body contorted, then he collapsed to the floor.

Instinct told Bradley to rush towards his friend, but quickly he saw that the Russian was beyond help. Kirov had fallen face-down and was now completely still, except for the blood slowly pooling around his chest. Bradley stared in shock. Then he noticed the Brigadier held a side-arm with a long silencer attachment.

‘We don’t want to investigate mumbo-jumbo – do we, Bradley?’ The Brigadier made eye contact with Bradley as he returned the pistol into his concealed holster, then wafted away the smell of gun oil and cordite.

‘No, Sir.’

‘And we don’t want to burden our Allies with it either. Understood?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ answered Bradley obediently. He knelt to support Stolz’s feverish body as the Nazi prisoner began to recover on the floor.

The Brigadier strutted back towards the door, carefully stepping around Kirov. He took the Russian’s pencil-written notes, wiped off splatters of blood, and folded them into his pocket.

‘Oh, and Bradley?’

‘Sir?’

‘A little less scopolamine in the coffee next time,’ he cautioned, smoothing down his uniform. ‘We want these Nazis to spew up their secrets, not their guts.’

The Brigadier left, closing the door behind him. Bradley never saw him again.

Altersheim Sonnenuntergang (Sunset Nursing Home)

Potsdam, Near Berlin, Germany

2.12 a.m. Central European Time (1.12 a.m. GMT)

Werner Stolz’s eye squinted at the lens of the telescope. His failing vision blurred the image into two small crescents. But they were definitely planets, and they were exactly where they were meant to be: together, just above the western horizon.

It was confirmation. His eye retreated, but he knew there was no escaping what he had seen.

Sitting alone in the dark, he removed the bookmark from his ephemeris and let it close..

Slowly, he reached towards the table lamp. As the light came on, Stolz caught himself in the mirror. Shadows made the lines on his face seem even deeper. With only one side of his head illuminated, his image had split in two. One half revealed skin marked by a lifetime of wrinkles. The other half was still hidden.

For a hundred-and-three years he had known that face. He had watched it grow, mature and wither. Now his head had lost its hair and his skin had lost its colour.

Only his eyes remained fully alive. They glowered back at him, one last time. They had kept both his secrets well.

He looked up at the pictures framed on his wall. A photo from when Germany was winning the war: the young Stolz, with his new SS uniform and a cocky grin. Then another, taken several years later, soon after he had been released from the custody of the US army – Stolz looked much thinner.

Then the image of him retiring young, opening champagne in a Sixties shirt. He often wondered whether he should have given up so soon. He could have earned so much more. But every time he wondered, he always concluded the same thing: he had retired at exactly the right time. Retiring was the only way he could keep both his secrets. If he had tried to win too much, he would have lost it all.

Stolz cleared his throat. It became a cough. Gently, he thumped his chest to stop the spasm. Then he waited for his body to settle, and allowed himself several minutes to become calm.

He listened to check no one was outside.

No one – not yet.

Careful to control his breathing, Stolz twisted off the bottom of the table lamp. The pill case was still there. He plucked it out, and wiped the enamel cover with his thumb.

He remembered receiving it – within sight of the Reichstag, just as the centre of the capital had come under artillery fire for the first time. Others shuddered as the shells blasted around them, but he knew he’d be safe.

Now, just holding the small container gave him pleasure. He inspected it. No one would manufacture a lid like that anymore. The design was antique, and the crooked cross on it – a tiny Swastika – had been outlawed in the new Germany. The little tin belonged to an age gone by.

Just like SS Captain Werner Stolz himself.

Then he noticed some rust around the rim. He scratched it in disappointment. Just like the Reich, the tin would not last a thousand years. The war had forced his great nation to make steel which decayed.

Germany will be great again, and the time will come soon.

He knew exactly when it would become great again – the day, month and year – and how it would once again lead all of Europe.

He wished he would be alive to see that day. But he knew he wouldn’t.

Stolz gripped as tightly as he could and tried to prise off the lid. Applying all his strength, and his much greater determination, he succeeded.

He peered inside, perturbed to find the liquid in the sealed glass tube was no longer translucent. Now it was dark and opaque, a murky brown colour.

Would it still work?

He picked it up and wondered, rolling it on his palm.

Then he remembered his ephemeris, the computer, the telescope …

Yes, it would work.

Quivering, he lifted the glass vial towards his mouth. Carefully, he placed it between his teeth, and closed his lips around it.

Stolz turned out the light and waited for the footsteps he knew would come.

Imperial War Museum,

London, United Kingdom

7.25am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

Myles didn’t turn his head to see the mock-up of the trenches - complete with duck-boards, theatrical mud and artificial smells. The vintage machine guns, both German and British, which had caused so much slaughter in the Great War, didn’t register with him at all. He even ignored the Spitfire hanging above him, the old German Jagdpanther tank, and the V1 and V2 ‘Wonderweapons’ used by Hitler in his desperate last months.

That was all history. An outdated vision of war. Misleading, even. War wasn’t like that, not any more, as he told his students in some of Oxford University’s best attended lectures.

Myles knew. He’d been there.

Even the Cold War had been distorted. The superpower confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union wasn’t what most people said it was. Myles walked right past the big photo-posters showing scenes from 1989, when the Berlin Wall disintegrated in the bright glare of TV lights. Frozen in time, some faces were celebrating, while East German police stood around, not believing the impossible had come true.

The only scene he couldn’t ignore was the most sinister: a faded photograph, blown-up into a large display, which showed a bureaucrat in front of a queue of Jewish refugees. The man was sitting at a table, registering details from the families as they offloaded from the cattle trucks. The bureaucrat and his paperwork were in control. The refugees clutched their suitcases and precious possessions, leaning forward to speak to the man at the desk, trying to help him with information. The poor men and women were oblivious that they had only minutes left to live.

Myles shook his head in disgust, cursing the bureaucrats …

He walked on. He had not come here to browse, but to help Frank, his old university friend of almost twenty years.

Myles held the glass door open with his foot as he heaved the last cardboard box inside. ‘When do the public arrive?’

‘Ten,’ replied Frank. ‘We’ve still got time.’

Myles nodded, as he continued through the main entrance area. ‘Downstairs with the rest?’

‘Yes – thanks. I’ll come with you.’

With Frank limping behind him, Myles led the way down the metallic stairs, careful to duck his head under the beam. The museum’s walkways had been designed for children, not tall university lecturers. Frank pointed to a pile of other possessions, and Myles placed the box beside them.

‘Cheers, Myles,’ said Frank, tapping the box with his walking stick. ‘That’s the last one.’

Together they stared at the cardboard dump. Half a lifetime: just three boxes.

‘Really, that’s all you’ve got?’

‘It’s all I could salvage before it sank - but on the bright side, if I’d been asleep when my houseboat started leaking, I might have drowned!’ Frank tried to laugh, but the chuckles came out flat.

‘You sure the museum won’t mind you using their space, Frank?’ Myles asked.

Frank held his stick while he pushed his glasses back into place. ‘I hope not – I am the curator. And if they do sack me, I’ll have to ask you for advice …’ Then the curator’s face reacted, as he had another thought. ‘In fact, I think …’ He started to limp along the underground corridor, looking up at the small cards which explained what each storage unit contained. He stopped opposite a tall cabinet labelled Terrorism - UK, then climbed on a small stool to retrieve a box file. He called back to Myles. ‘We’ve still got it somewhere …’

Myles’ fingers rubbed his forehead. He didn’t want it. ‘It’s OK, Frank. I’ve seen it before.’

But Frank had already pulled out the file. He hobbled back down the ladder, and unfolded the tabloid as he returned to Myles.

The headline still screamed at him, all those years later.

Myles Munro: Misfit Oxford Military Lecturer is Runaway Terrorist

Frank was grinning. ‘You see – we still have all sorts of war records!’ He paused with a half-smile, realising he’d just told an unfunny joke. Then he folded the newspaper back up and patted Myles on the back, realising he needed to change the subject. ‘You did well to recover. Very impressive.’

Myles didn’t respond. ‘Impressive’ didn’t matter to him.

Frank nudged him. ‘Come on – how’s it all going?’

Myles tipped his head to one side. ‘Predictable, sometimes.’

‘Predictable bad or predictable good?’

Myles paused to frame his thoughts, tried to explain. ‘Most people have very set ideas. Military history just means Hitler to most of them. Even the open-minded ones aren’t open to anything too challenging.’

‘So you’re looking for something else, Myles?’

‘Maybe,’ accepted Myles. ‘Not looking very hard though …’ Myles was distracted by the large vaults looming above them both. ‘So what’s the Imperial War Museum planning next?’ He could see his old friend become enthused.

‘My new exhibition: War and the Natural World.’

Myles raised his eyebrows. ‘Interesting …’

‘It’s joint with the Science Museum – you know, for kids,’ explained Frank. ‘We’re trying to show how natural events have a big impact on war.’ Frank hobbled around, guiding Myles towards a half-finished display called World War Two and the Moon. Then he gave Myles a handout to read.

Myles was impressed. ‘Looks like fun.’

‘Yes - and the displays go right back to Alexander the Great. The eclipse just before his greatest battle was an omen that the Empire of Persia would be defeated – and it was!’

Myles smiled, only half buying it. He let Frank continue.

‘And it wasn’t just ancient times,’ lectured Frank. ‘The Crusades, the Korean War - even World War One began with an eclipse, too. Did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘That’s right – in August 1914, on the day that German and British troops first clashed. And the centre of the eclipse was exactly over where the first big battle took place. It was probably the most important battle of the whole war.’ Frank lifted his stick towards a map of Europe.

‘Battle of Tannenberg?’

‘Correct – and World War Three started with an eclipse, as well.’

Now Myles knew he was being ribbed. ‘We haven’t had World War Three.’

Frank chuckled. ‘No – but we almost did. Remember 1999, when the NATO commander ordered his troops to take Kosovo’s main airport – the one held by the Russians? The attack was only stopped when a subordinate refused to obey. He “Didn’t want to start World War Three”, he said. Well, I discovered the centre of the big eclipse in the summer of 1999 was just a few miles from ... wait for it … Kosovo!’

Myles looked sideways at his friend, wondering whether Frank was taking the eclipses too seriously. Frank hadn’t noticed – he was too absorbed.

‘… And there was also a very local solar eclipse, exactly over Iceland in October 1986, when Reagan and Gorbachev held their big summit there. Some people say it was the summit which ended the Cold War. Did you know that?’

Myles didn’t answer, as he realised his old friend had become even more eccentric with the passing years. Trying to find sense in the movement of planetary bodies was not a good sign.

Ting …

The faint metallic noise came from far off, further down the corridor. They looked at each other, surprised.

Both men remained silent for a moment.

Frank shrugged, but Myles couldn’t dismiss it. He started walking, then jogging towards the noise – along the underground corridor, to where the lighting wasn’t so good.

He stopped to listen again.

Nothing.

His instincts were confusing him. He halted, tried to sense what could have caused the sound, then wondered if he had imagined it. He was about to turn back when he noticed an empty box file on the vault floor.

He picked it up and called over to Frank. ‘Was this you?’

Frank indicated it wasn’t.

Myles looked at the label on the empty file.

De-Nazification interviews, 1945 – box 4

It must have fallen down somehow – although that didn’t explain why it was empty.

He peered into the darkness, looking for a shelf with a space on it.

Something didn’t seem right. The shelves were messy, as if someone had been rummaging through the archives. But there was something else, too.

Myles froze, and heard movement close by.

Someone was there.

He peered into the gloom, searching for whatever he could find, whatever didn’t belong.

Then he saw them: a pair of eyes.

Scared eyes.

They were looking straight back at him.

Suddenly a man rushed out, ramming into Myles who tumbled to the floor, box files raining down on his head.

He could see the intruder running away. The man had something clutched in his hands. He was heading back towards the stairway.

Myles called out, ‘Frank – stop him!’

But Frank was too shocked to react. The thief fled past him.

Myles jumped back to his feet and started chasing him down the corridor, pounding up the museum’s metallic stairs three steps at a time. His clumsiness made him trip, but he recovered.

Myles raced back past the trench exhibition, ducking under the beam as he ran up the main staircase and towards the ground floor.

He heard Frank’s call out behind him. ‘I’ll get the police …’

But it was no time to get the police.

Myles stumbled again as he reached the top of the stairs, falling onto the polished surface of the main hallway. Quickly he pushed himself back up.

He scanned the exhibits: rockets, the American army jeep, tanks, information displays, a submarine ... The museum was full of hiding places.

Then he heard a clank: the outside doors.

Myles swivelled to see the exit doors were still moving – the thief must have just barged through them and escaped.

Myles dodged a donations bin near the entrance and grappled with the heavy glass door which swung back in his face, slowing him down. Finally he reached the park outside. At last he could see the thief again. The man was racing away from him – past the souvenir section of the Berlin wall, over the well-kept grass, towards the main road...

Myles tried calling. ‘Hey you…’

The thief turned around to see Myles’ tall frame at the entrance of the museum, and his eyes filled with terror.

Quickly he turned and kept running.

Myles sprinted on as fast as he could. Gradually he was catching up. He could see the thief’s rucksack. The man’s canvas jacket. His trainers …

The thief was approaching the end of the path, forced to slow down as he approached the busy road. The rush-hour traffic was too fast to cross. Myles had him trapped.

Myles saw the man turn and face him again, his eyes flickering around in panic. Myles was getting closer, still running straight at the man. His arms reached out to grab him, but the thief swiftly stepped aside and Myles stumbled, off balance again.

Myles saw the man dash into the traffic. A small car braked as the thief ran in front of it. Back on his feet, Myles manoeuvred around the stopped car. An angry commuter honked at him, but Myles kept on, still chasing the thief.

Their eyes connected again.

That was when Myles felt the huge force of a van smash into his side. He felt his leg bend, and his body twist away. For a moment, he was weightless as he was flung high into the air.

Then agony surged through his leg.

Cars stopped around him, and backed up all along the road. People climbed out and moved towards him.

But Myles soon realised the people were not interested in him. He tried to see through the crowd, through the cars and through the pain and saw people helping the thief, desperately trying emergency medical procedures on his blood-covered face. None of them were any use.

The man Myles had been chasing was dead.

Sonnenuntergang (Sunset Nursing Home),

Potsdam, Berlin

8.45 a.m. CET (7.45 a.m. GMT)

The breakfast maid who discovered Werner Stolz’s body was not shocked by it. It was the third dead body she had found in three weeks. People came here to die, she’d been told, so dead bodies were only to be expected.

Still, she didn’t want to look at the corpse too closely. That was for the nurse. Calmly, she pressed the buzzer and waited.

Stolz hadn’t left much, so there wasn’t much for her to tidy. There were a few framed pictures on his desk. She made sure they were arranged neatly. She recognised America in one – the middle-aged Stolz seemed to be enjoying a holiday. She tilted her head to see the pictures of Stolz as a young man in military uniform. He had been quite handsome back then, she thought.

Then she saw his computer, and his ‘ephemeris’ book. She flicked through it: lots of tables and numbers, with dates and funny symbols. Old Werner had been reading some odd things before he died.

Her thoughts were disturbed by footsteps in the corridor. A nurse appeared.

The nurse acknowledged the maid with a nod, then moved straight to the body. She knelt down, ready to place two fingers on his neck and check for a pulse. It was a routine confirmation: the old man was obviously dead, but she had to follow procedure, just to make sure …

Then she noticed his ear. It was bloody. And behind it was a small dark red hole. She turned Stolz’s corpse on the floor, to reveal a much greater mass of body fluids on the carpet underneath him.

A gun tumbled from the dead man’s hand: an old 7.65 mm Luger pistol with a long silencer.

The breakfast maid felt the need to leave immediately. ‘Entschuldigen Sie,’ she apologised, hiding her eyes from the sight by staring down at her cleaning trolley.

The nurse held the door open for her, and waited until the maid had gone. Then she began the next test on Werner Stolz’s body.

Quietly, she bent down to examine the dead man’s mouth. She peered closely and, as she expected, the dead man’s lips were blue and covered in a white froth.

She nodded to herself, her diagnosis confirmed. Like so many men of his generation, one-time SS Captain Werner Stolz had chosen to die a short time before death was inevitable. And his preferred method of death, a cyanide pill followed closely by a self-administered bullet through the brain, copied the most famous suicide in history: Adolf Hitler’s.

It was only as the nurse was leaving that she noticed a scratch on the door frame. The nurse looked closer: the mark looked clean. It must have been made recently. Then she saw the metal doorframe was buckled, as if the door had been barged open.

Someone had broken in.

St Thomas’ Hospital,

Central London

10.45 a.m. GMT

The accident had happened not long before the peak of the morning rush hour. The A3202, the main road outside the Imperial War Museum and one of London’s main thoroughfares, was blocked.

Within a minute, traffic had backed up half a mile to the river Thames. Several of the drivers stuck in the jam had called for an ambulance, and just four minutes later a team of paramedics was on the scene.

Myles was checked, loaded onto a stretcher and quickly driven to nearby St Thomas’ Hospital. Then he was rushed through a series of procedures: X-rays, an MRI scan, blood tests, an injection, a drip … Finally, Myles’ trolley was pushed into a private room.

Myles was oblivious to it all – he could only think about the thief. What had the man been trying to steal? What had been worth rushing into the traffic to protect?

The door creaked open. Frank poked his head in. ‘Myles, I’m so sorry.’ Frank’s face was sweaty and apologetic.

Myles waved his hand. ‘No need to apologise.’

‘What do the doctors reckon?’

‘Might just be a ligament thing,’ said Myles, looking down at his leg. ‘No real damage. But there’s also something to do with the brain scan. They won’t say what.’

‘If that’s your only injury, then you’ll just be limping around like me.’ Frank raised his own polio-ridden leg, trying to make a joke of it.

Myles smiled, then felt a shot of pain from his tibia.

Frank looked apologetic again. ‘You better stay still,’ he said. ‘They’ll put something on it soon.’ Frank was about to tap Myles’ leg in sympathy but, when his hand was mid-air, he decided not to – just as both of them realised it would hurt.

Frank looked embarrassed again, still out of his depth. Same old Frank - he’d always been that way, ever since Myles first met him.

‘Frank, can you get Helen for me?’

‘Your American woman? Yes, I’ll get her,’ nodded Frank.

Myles watched as Frank limped off to make the call, then wondered exactly what it was about his brain scan which had interested the doctors so much.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Central Moscow, Russia

11.51 a.m., Moscow Standard Time (8.51 a.m. GMT)

Zenyalena Androvsky stopped in the middle of Smolenskaya Square to admire the twenty-seven-storey building in front of her. She felt comforted by the Stalinist architecture: it was a steadfast monument to Soviet glory which had never compromised with capitalism; a single finger poking up into the Moscow skyline, telling the defeatists where to go.

Then she felt her orange trousers swish in the wind, and saw the security men at the entrance to the Ministry react to her femininity. She flirted back. It felt good to be home.

She was soon in her new office, back in the European Affairs Directorate after assignments in Cuba and Venezuela which had seemed more like distractions than proper foreign affairs work. Anonymous staff had already unpacked her effects, right down to the picture taken in 1987 of her father in his full uniform kissing goodbye to Zenyalena, then a gawky teenager. The photograph was the last image of Colonel Androvsky alive. Just ten days later, his helicopter had been eviscerated by a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile, fired up by a lucky Mujahedeen guerrilla. Zenyalena had never blamed the Afghan who pressed the initiator. Responsibility for her father’s death, she was sure, lay with the cowardly organisation which had supplied the hardware: the CIA.

Eager to work and to make her mark as quickly as she could, Zenyalena Androvsky spent just a few moments leafing through the general briefing pack which had been left for her. Then she pressed a buzzer.

An older man entered, grey-suited and pale, refusing to notice Zenyalena’s bright clothing. ‘Ms Androvsky – welcome to your new post.’

‘Don’t tell me what I know already.’ She tossed the briefing pack to a distant part of her desk. ‘What’s happening in Europe today?’

Trying not to undermine his new boss’s authority, the man reached into the discarded briefing pack to pull out a one-page list of news items. ‘Your headlines for today, Madam.’

Zenyalena ignored the slight – her eyes were already devouring the list. Single-sentence headlines outlined events in Ukraine, Spain, Liechtenstein … she stopped when she reached an item two-thirds of the way down the page. ‘What’s this? And who was “Werner Stolz”?’

The older man turned the page towards him