Sea of Spies

By Alex Gerlis

A nest of espionage. A break for the border. A race to survive.

The Allies are desperate to stop neutral Turkey supplying vital materials to the Nazis – materials which could help them win the war. But then a British agent makes a fatal mistake, and disappears in Istanbul.

In England, detective turned spy Richard Prince – back from a clandestine mission in Nazi-occupied Europe – is hunting for his lost son. Before long he is drawn into a dangerous follow-up operation, posing as a journalist in Turkey.

The mission soon goes wrong. Out of touch with London and stranded hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, Prince will have to find evidence of the Turks secret trade with the Nazis, as well as a way out.

Chances of survival? Low. Chance of completing his mission? Prince will do whatever it takes.

An astounding WWII espionage thriller from a modern master of the genre, Sea of Spies is a triumph, perfect for fans of Alan Furst, John le Carré and Robert Harris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Action
• Release date: Jun 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788639026

Alex Gerlis

Alex Gerlis was a BBC journalist for nearly thirty years and is the author of nine Second World war espionage thrillers, all published by Canelo. His first four novels are in the acclaimed Spy Masters series, including the best-selling The Best of Our Spies which is currently being developed as a television series. Prince of Spies was published in March 2020 and was followed by three more in the Prince series. His latest series is the Wolf Pack novels, with Agent in Berlin published in November 2021, with the second in the series due to be published in July 2022. Alex was born in Lincolnshire and now lives in west London with his wife and two black cats, a breed which makes cameo appearances in all his books. Alex has two daughters and two grandsons and supports Grimsby Town, which he believes helps him cope with the highs and especially the lows of writing a novel. He’s frequently asked if he’s ever worked for an intelligence agency but always declines to answer the question in the hope that someone may believe he actually has.

Book preview

Character List

British

Richard Prince aka Michael Eugene Doyle

Sir Roland Pearson Downing Street intelligence chief

Tom Gilbey Senior MI6 officer, runs Prince

General Mathers British general to Winston Churchill

Bernard RAF Group Captain on Commando

Mike American pilot on Commando

Christine Wright Works for Gilbey, runs and trains Prince

Martin Mason Journalist who trains Prince

Professor Miles Harland Metallurgist, Imperial College

Anthony and Mary Couple in London safe house

Cooke British agent, Istanbul

Bryant MI6 station, Istanbul

Stone MI6 station, Istanbul

Lord Swalcliffe Scientific adviser to Winston Churchill

Henry Prince Son of Richard Prince

Colin and Jean Summers (Terence and Margaret Brown) Adoptive parents of ‘Neville’

Chief Superintendent Newton Policeman searching for Henry

Cedric Woods Burglar

Martindale MI6 station, Baghdad

In Turkey

Harun Cooke’s taxi driver

Vasil Bulgarian brothel owner

Yvette Prostitute

Ulrich Swiss man

Besim Driver

Ismet Concierge at Hotel Bristol

Inspector Uzun Secret police officer, Istanbul

Mehmet Demir Head of Turkish intelligence service

Heinrich Scholz Abwehr head of station, Istanbul

Manfred Busch Abwehr deputy head of station, Istanbul

Alvertos Kamhi Smuggler from Thessaloniki

David Alvertos’ assistant

Joseph O’Brien Irish intelligence officer in Istanbul

Salman Driver

Georgi Bulgarian working for Alvertos

Suleiman Dock worker

Buchan Journalist, The Times

Mike Silver Journalist, Los Angeles Times

Colin Alexander Journalist, Globe and Mail, Toronto

Pierre Rochat Journalist, Le Courrier, Geneva

Greece

Perla Kamhi Wife of Alvertos Kamhi

Moris Kamhi Son of Alvertos and Perla

Eleanora Kamhi Daughter of Alvertos and Perla

Klara Mother of Perla Kamhi

Benvenida Kamhi Mother of Alvertos Kamhi

Mihalis Theodoropoulos Thessaloniki police lieutenant

Thalia Theodoropoulos Wife of Mihalis Theodoropoulos

Apostolos Owner of Bar Parnassus

Stefano Conti Captain of the Adelina

Domenico and Giacomo Officers on the Adelina

Romania/Czechoslovakia/Germany

Hanne Jakobsen Prisoner at Ravensbrück

Captain Cristian Moraru Master of the Steliana

János Hungarian in charge of chromium shipment

Zora, Karel, Jozef, Radek Czech resistance, Pilsen

Father František Prince’s driver

Tomáš Czech resistance, Prague

Rudi Professor hiding with Prince in Prague

Inge Brunner Swiss consulate, Prague

Sigrid Schneider Swiss consulate, Munich

Lieutenant Colonel Crameri Swiss military intelligence, Munich

Henri Gerber Head of mission, Swiss consulate, Munich

Untersturmführer Jacob Schmidt Gestapo, Munich

Pierre Martin Dead Swiss national at Munich hotel

Switzerland/France/Portugal

Basil Remington-Barber MI6, Bern, Switzerland

Stanton Security officer, British embassy, Bern

Francesc Catalan smuggler

Angus British embassy, Madrid

Morgan British embassy, Lisbon

Prologue

The dead impersonating the living.

His encounters with death had planted that thought in his mind, one he couldn’t shake off. And when it was all over – in so far as it was ever really over – he had an opportunity to reflect and that was where his mind would go: the dead looking as if they may be alive while those alive were never too far from death.

Richard Marius Prince wasn’t someone normally given to reflection. For a start the nature of his work hardly allowed much time for it. As a police officer he’d regard it as an unnecessary indulgence and as a British agent in enemy territory reflection would be a dangerous distraction which could cost him his life.

But once this mission had ended, he did have some time to reflect on six months in which he’d assumed every day could be his last.

And if there was one enduring memory from that time it was after the air raid in the bar of the Bayerischer Hof hotel Munich, in that brief no-man’s land towards the end of the night and before the start of the day. There the four Swiss men were sitting at the table nearest the window, another guest at the bar, the barman leaning over the counter. All six were perfectly still and oblivious to the chaos around them. All six killed so fast it was as if they hadn’t had time to move, all looking as if they were impersonating the living.

It wasn’t as if coming across the six bodies – and the nightmare which then followed in the hotel’s basement – served to remind Prince of the thin and very frayed line between life and death. If anyone was aware of that it was him. By that stage in his mission he had walked that line every day.

But what it did do was make him think about the nature of the mission. London had drummed into him how vital it was he identified the chromium trail, how establishing the route of this metal into the German Reich could be the difference between the Allies winning or losing the war.

But for so much of the time the purpose of the mission seemed to be incidental. On reflection, finding the chromium trail had become almost a sideshow compared to the more serious side of espionage: the constant need for subterfuge, the extreme pressure of operating clandestinely, the sense of being on a journey but unsure of his destination.

And added to that the guilt his son may become an orphan. And he may never see the woman he loved again.

Like the no-man’s land between the end of the night and the start of the day, Richard Prince inhabited a no-man’s land between life and death.

Chapter 1

Mersin province, Turkey

January 1943

‘You have to be joking…’

The young American pilot let out a long whistle which turned into a groan before he glanced anxiously at the RAF officer alongside him in the cockpit. The older man – a group captain who technically outranked him but was actually the co-pilot on this flight – said nothing, though the American noticed his forehead was dotted with beads of perspiration and he seemed to be breathing hard.

‘I’m seriously expected to land there?’

‘Apparently so.’ The RAF officer was attempting to sound calm.

‘I don’t think there’s enough runway.’

‘I’m not terribly sure we have much alternative.’

The pilot shook his head and muttered something inaudible but almost certainly profane under the roar of the four engines. ‘I was assured this was a proper airfield, Bernard.’

The group captain – the man called Bernard – bristled. The American not only insisted on addressing him by his first name rather than ‘sir’ but also insisted on pronouncing Bernard with a heavy emphasis on the second syllable: Bernard. He’d been doing that since they’d left England two weeks previously and he regretted not taking the opportunity to correct him earlier. Now didn’t seem to be quite the right time.

‘It is a proper airfield.’

‘It’s not a proper airfield for a Liberator, Bernard. What did you say you flew in the Battle of Britain?’

‘Hurricanes actually – 238 Squadron.’

‘Well Bernard, this beauty is over twice as long as a Hurricane with nearly three times the wingspan. It’s seventy foot long for Christ’s sake. We’ll have to find another airfield. If we try to land here we might not make it.’

‘That’s impossible, Michael, you saw the flight plan yourself and said—’

‘It’s Mike, not Michael, I keep telling you that and sure, I saw the flight plan, less than half an hour before we left Cairo. It simply said the airfield met the requirements of a Liberator. You guys insisted this is a top-secret flight but forgot to let the pilot in on the secret.’

‘You were told—’

‘I was told we were flying to Turkey, Bernard. You didn’t even tell me we were flying to this place – what’s it called again?’

‘Adana.’

‘You didn’t tell me we were flying into Adana until we were off the Syrian coast. You either trust your pilot or you don’t. What’s the nearest major airfield to here?’

‘Ankara, I guess.’

‘How far’s that?’

Bernard consulted a chart as the American made his third pass over the airfield. As much as it annoyed him having to admit it, Michael – Mike if he must – was a brilliant pilot. No wonder the top brass at the RAF had insisted he be kept on to fly the plane once he’d brought it over from the States: the passengers were too important to risk a less experienced pilot.

‘Nearly 250 miles…’

‘We don’t have enough fuel. I’m going to head back over the coast and turn around so we can come in nice and low, and nice and slow as we say in West Virginia. You may want to warn your prime minister to get ready for an interesting landing.’

---

‘Winston wants you to sort it out, Roly – the ball’s in your court.’

They were sitting on uncomfortable wooden stools spread out under the giant wings of Commando, code name of Churchill’s personal aircraft – the one the young American pilot called Mike had somehow managed to land at the Adana airfield the previous day. The specially adapted long-range Liberator had flown the prime minister to Morocco a fortnight earlier for the meeting with Roosevelt at Casablanca and then on to Cairo before setting off on a secret mission to Turkey.

Sir Roland Pearson hadn’t wanted to be there. He liked his home comforts and felt uneasy whenever he left central London, let alone England. He had an aversion to ‘abroad’ as he called it and particularly hot places where the food was not, in his opinion, ‘normal’. But once Churchill had persuaded the somewhat reluctant Turks to meet with him he’d ordered his intelligence adviser to join him in Cairo.

‘You’ve put on weight, Roly…’ had been the prime minister’s first words to him when they met up at the British embassy. ‘Could have done with you in Casablanca. Never mind – we’ll get our money’s worth out of you in Turkey, eh?’

And now Sir Roland Pearson was sitting in the hangar at Adana airfield and even though the temperature was a long way from the heights of the Turkish summer it was nonetheless unbearably hot. His companions were half a dozen of Churchill’s top generals and military advisers who’d spent the day with Churchill and the British entourage at the nearby railway station in Yenice where, in a luxurious train carriage, they’d met with President İnönü and his advisers. Their objective had been simple enough: to persuade the Turks to abandon its neutrality and join the Allies in the fight against the Axis powers.

The meeting had not gone at all well.

‘God knows we’ve tried,’ said General Mathers, wiping his head with a large handkerchief which he then used to noisily blow his nose. ‘We’ve pretty much offered to re-equip their whole damn army with all the German weapons and vehicles we captured in North Africa. Winston promised them two hundred tanks right away.’

‘We could do with another two hundred tanks,’ said another general. ‘Winston was coming up with promises – bribes really – off the top of his head.’

‘We’ve told them we’ll move a dozen RAF squadrons out here and shore up their defences. We promised to sort out their railway system so it can move armaments and troops around. We know the Turks are worried – they don’t trust the Soviets for a start and most of their other neighbours are on the Germans’ side or occupied by them. We’ve tried to scare the living daylights out of them, said the Germans are bound to lose the war – look at what’s happening in Stalingrad at the moment – they don’t want to end up on the wrong side.’

‘And even then they don’t want to play ball, eh?’ Sir Roland Pearson shifted uncomfortably on his stool which he wasn’t confident could continue to take his weight.

‘I wouldn’t sound so smug about it, Roly.’

‘I’m not being smug, I am simply observing that notwithstanding Winston’s entreaties and his considerable skill in advocating our case the Turks are determined to remain neutral. They’re convinced there’s a large German army in Bulgaria poised to invade them the moment they join us, despite us reassuring them that is not the case. I don’t think we’ve taken enough account of their sensitivities, after all it’s not been much more than twenty years since they lost their empire. Imagine how we’d feel? I worry we’ve revealed our hand too early. I can see why Roosevelt and the war cabinet back home were worried about that and weren’t keen on this meeting.’

‘Nothing ventured nothing gained, eh Roly?’

‘Perhaps I can play devil’s advocate?’

‘I thought you already were, Roly – go on.’

‘If we keep on about how well the war’s going… Germans taking a pounding at Stalingrad, tide appearing to take a turn in the east, our victory at El Alamein et cetera, then perhaps the Turks are going to wonder why on earth we’re quite so keen to have them on our side. In fact, I’m wondering why we’re making such a fuss about buttering up the Turks… dragging us out here with all the heat and the bloody flies.’

‘Because,’ said General Mathers, ‘it’s about much more than seeing how many people we can get on our team, Roly, so to speak. We also have something very specific in mind which may be best achieved through your kind of channels. What do you know about chromium?’

Sir Roland Pearson looked up, confused. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Chromium, Roly…’

‘I fear I must have been dozing when we did that particular mineral in science. Tell me, Mathers…’

‘It’s a metal, Roly. It’s a vital ingredient in the manufacture of stainless steel. The Turks are supplying it to the Germans in unacceptably large quantities. Without it their manufacture of armaments and the machinery of war is – not to put too fine a point on it – buggered. With it, our chances of winning the war are buggered. There’s a real danger of complacency on our part, Roly. Certainly things are going in our favour at the moment but all that could change. Nazi Germany is still a formidable war machine. But we may be able to salvage something from this. We may have failed in persuading the Turks to switch sides, but we could ensure that if they’re going to remain neutral then at least it could be our kind of neutrality, if you get my drift. Apparently that chap Mehmet Demir’s here?’

‘Yes, but very much in the background, like me. We nodded from a distance.’

‘How well do you know him?’

‘Not terribly well, but well enough for him to know who I am and vice versa.’

‘Tell me a bit more about Demir.’

‘A career army officer captured by us in the Great War and held in one of our prison camps in India for five years, which doesn’t make him terribly well disposed towards us. Joined their intelligence outfit the MAH sometime in the late 1920s, we think – promoted to number two in the mid-thirties and to head of it a couple of years ago. Very smart, holds his cards close to his chest – not the clubbable type. Certainly not to be trusted from our point of view but then one would hardly expect that.’

‘I think you ought to meet him while we’re here, Roly.’

Chapter 2

Istanbul

February 1943

In the end he was undone by a stupid mistake: a basic, schoolboy error – such an obvious trap to fall into they’d hardly even bothered to cover it during his training. He could have kicked himself, except three or four men were already in the process of doing a pretty good job of just that.

In the shockingly short amount of time he had to reflect he thought what a shame this all was. Things had been going so well. He knew he could sometimes be accused of overconfidence – a degree of cockiness bordering on arrogance perhaps – but even taking that into account he felt he had good cause to think he’d made a pretty good fist of things.

---

The chaps at Istanbul station had been hand-wringing in their caution. Bryant and Stone came as a pair and Cooke felt they sounded like the manufacturers of matches, a far safer profession.

‘Don’t jump into anything, Cooke. Be careful. Be sceptical,’ said Bryant.

‘And don’t forget to run everything past us – any little thing you’re told,’ was Stone’s advice.

‘That’s right, Cooke, keep us informed,’ echoed Bryant.

‘And don’t go gallivanting around the city. Turkey may be neutral but this is a dangerous place,’ said Stone.

‘In fact, Cooke, all the more dangerous for being neutral.’ The last piece of advice came from both of them, speaking in unison like an out-of-tune choir.

‘And if you make any contacts let us know. We can run their names past our contacts in the police. We’ll soon flush the wrong ’uns out.’

He honestly didn’t know why Bryant and Stone bothered. After all, if they’d been half decent at their jobs they’d have already found out about the shipments. Because they hadn’t, he’d been sent out by London.

He’d nodded along to Bryant and Stone’s words of wisdom. Of course he wouldn’t do anything rash, of course he’d keep them in the picture, and of course he knew he was part of a team.

But in just a couple of weeks he had made more progress than they’d managed in months and he was damned if he was going to hand everything over for them to take all the credit. He’d see this through to the end; it would be a feather in his cap, not theirs.

He’d met a charming taxi driver called Harun who’d been in the rank round the corner from his hotel and who offered to be his driver for a very reasonable daily rate. As far as Cooke was concerned, Harun was above suspicion: after all he’d found him on the rank – not the other way round – and he didn’t seem to ask awkward questions. There certainly wouldn’t be any need to check Harun out with Bryant and Stone.

On top of that Harun loved Britain: he was a passionate Anglophile. Harun assured him he loved Winston Churchill almost as much as he loved Kemal Atatürk.

So Cooke was happy to let Harun drive him around the city. On their third evening, Harun took him to a bar run by his very good friend Vasil, in Unkapani. Vasil turned out to be Bulgarian and he soon assured Cooke – whom he knew as Gilbert, the cover name Cooke was using – that he already regarded him as a brother and a man he could trust with all the money in the world.

They were sitting in Vasil’s private lounge, a bottle of raki on the table between them, Vasil pressing more and more of it on Cooke who was drinking it neat. By the time he realised the Bulgarian was diluting his with water the Englishman was feeling quite light-headed. Vasil’s bar turned out to be a front for a brothel, though Cooke had to admit it was such a tasteful and friendly place where the exchange of money was more of an afterthought than anything else that it wasn’t really a brothel as such, certainly not in the way people like Bryant and Stone would understand it. Not at all like the one he’d visited in Paris before the war with such unpleasant and frankly embarrassing consequences.

Vasil’s place, Cooke decided, was more like an upmarket hotel where one made friends and where one thing naturally led to another. The particular friend Cooke made there was called Yvette, and Vasil told him Yvette was French which Cooke doubted: her inability to speak more than the odd word of French was a clue and he suspected she may be Turkish. But he didn’t push the matter, so to speak. Yvette was enthusiastic and experienced and seemed to be genuinely fond of him; he was happy to give her money if only to help with her widowed mother who lived in Izmir, which also cast doubt on her being French.

Harun took him to Vasil’s place most nights and on the fourth or fifth occasion Yvette asked why he was in Istanbul. It wasn’t that he volunteered the information as such – she’d asked him what he was doing in the city and he’d told her he was a salesman. A couple of nights later, propped up on the same pillows and smoking the same cigarettes, she said she didn’t believe him because he was too smart to be a salesman. So he mentioned – in passing really – that actually he worked for the British government and he hoped she’d understand if he couldn’t tell her any more than that, which he immediately regretted; however, fortunately it appeared Yvette hadn’t been listening.

Two evenings later Vasil took him aside before he had the chance to join Yvette. ‘Yvette will be with you soon, my friend. And as a special treat she will be joined by her sister – she’s just seventeen! Have you ever been with two women?’

Cooke shook his head, the rest of him shaking in anticipation.

‘It is a wonderful experience, I can promise you. And because you’re an Englishman, this will be on the house, as you say.’

Cooke said he was terribly grateful…

‘…but first,’ said Vasil, ‘you’ll meet a friend of mine!’

Which was how he met Ulrich, who according to Vasil was a Swiss gentleman, a good client of his and a very big admirer of the British – if anything, Ulrich loved the British more than Vasil.

Cooke did wonder whether he’d been a bit too forthcoming with Ulrich. While one didn’t want to be as cautious as Bryant and Stone suggested, nor did one want to be careless. But Ulrich was a particularly charming and, it had to be said, persuasive man. He was the kind who moved a conversation along with a series of seemingly innocuous but perfectly timed questions which it would have been rude not to answer. It also had to be said Cooke was perhaps distracted by the excitement of what lay ahead with Yvette and her seventeen-year-old sister.

Ulrich told him he was from Zurich and was a shipping agent: he arranged the transportation of goods by sea and beyond. ‘The Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black Sea, even the Danube… my clients are from all sides of this dreadful war, but my heart is with the British.’

Cooke reckoned this was too good an opportunity to miss. Did Ulrich by any chance know anything about chromium shipments?

Ulrich’s face remained impassive and then there was a frown which seemed to indicate the question needed to be more detailed, as if he was waiting for Cooke to finish.

‘By which I mean specifically from Turkey to the Nazi territories.’

Ulrich nodded as if he knew exactly what he was talking about. He paused while he lit up a Turkish cigarette, its distinctive aroma soon filling the small room.

‘I think I can probably help you – perhaps if you come back here this time tomorrow night? And between now and then I think it would be best not to say anything to anyone about our meeting. There are so many enemies of the British out there.’

He was now distracted; so much so the evening with Yvette and her sister was a dismal failure, which made him feel even more uneasy. Whatever age the sister was it was certainly not seventeen and she was quite evidently not related to Yvette; if anything she looked older, and whereas the former was tall and olive-skinned, the sister was short with a pasty complexion. The meeting with Ulrich had disconcerted him; he found he couldn’t stop thinking about his wife and of how appalled she’d be at his behaviour.

So Cooke hadn’t said a word to anyone, even though by now it occurred to him that maybe he ought to have mentioned something to Bryant and Stone. After all it was standard operating procedure to let the station know if you’d arranged a meeting or had a strong lead. But he’d decided against it: to do so would have meant him having to explain about Vasil and the brothel and then about Ulrich, whom he’d perhaps told too much.

---

The next day Harun wasn’t there. As he approached the side road behind the hotel where he normally met him, he was met by a whippet of a man who introduced himself as Besim. Besim led him by the elbow to a car which was obviously not a taxi. It was a large ancient Fiat, the letter ‘i’ missing from the badge and almost as wide as the street. Besim explained that Harun sent his apologies but his son was unwell, which took Cooke by surprise: Harun had told Cooke in unnecessary detail about every member of his family. He even knew about second cousins. Not once had he mentioned a son.

Besim drove Cooke to Beyoğlu on the European side of the Bosphorus, the car’s chassis seeming to sway every time Besim changed gear or turned a corner. Cooke had become familiar with Beyoğlu; it was called the new town but in fact the area was older than most European cities. It was only new compared to Sultanahmet. It was where most of the city’s Jews lived and its winding roads led into the Karaköy district. Just off Bankalar Caddesi, Besim pulled into a courtyard and before Cooke had got out of the car high iron gates had closed behind them.

Ulrich was waiting in a basement, the room hazy with cigarette smoke.

‘Do you know where you are, my friend?’

Cooke said he thought he was most probably in Karaköy.

‘There is a dock near here from where they ship chromium across the Black Sea and from there into the Danube where it is taken up to Czechoslovakia – or at least what used to be Czechoslovakia. There is a ship in the dock at the moment which is taking on board a cargo of chromium – they prefer to do it late at night. You’ll find the dock very near the Galata bridge.’

‘Will someone show me?’

‘It will be safer for you to go on your own – you can’t miss it. It looks less suspicious if you have no one with you. The ship is a Romanian vessel called the Alina. When you get back here, Besim will take you to Vasil’s – you’ll be able to relax there. Are you armed, my friend?’

Cooke assured him he wasn’t, though he was beginning to wish he was. He let Ulrich search him nonetheless and then set out to find the Alina.

A bitter wind had picked up as he walked towards the Golden Horn. It seemed to be coming from every direction, down the Bosphorus from the Black Sea and up from the Sea of Marmara. Cooke was now worried. Something about the Swiss made him uneasy; he hadn’t associated the jetties on the Golden Horn with freight traffic.

He paused a few times, checking he wasn’t being followed. He thought about turning back or maybe entering one of the bars whose rear entrances opened onto the alleys he was walking down. His training had been clear enough: if he had reason to doubt, pull out. One of his trainers had made a rhyme out of it and another had made a particularly crude joke out of the phrase.

But he carried on, his loping gait giving the appearance that he was stepping over puddles. It was when he was in a lane close enough to the Golden Horn for him to smell the sea and the diesel, and to feel the spray and hear the waves, that he committed the schoolboy error, the stupid mistake.

‘Timothy Charles Cooke.’

The voice rang out clearly from behind him on the lane, above the wind and the noise of the Golden Horn. His name was announced in the formal way his mother used when she was angry or the head teacher at boarding school on the one occasion when he was awarded a prize on speech day.

And of course Timothy Charles Cooke should have carried on because as far as he was aware, no one in Istanbul other than Bryant and Stone knew him as Timothy Charles Cooke. He was James Gilbert. Maybe he’d have got away with pausing before carrying on or even – at a stretch – with turning round to see who’d called out, but Timothy Charles Cooke stopped and said, ‘Yes, can I help you?’

A stupid mistake: a basic, schoolboy error.

---

They’d bundled him into a doorway and from there into what appeared to be an empty building and were now kicking him. But he managed to think clearly: the beating-up he was receiving was little worse than he’d got used to at prep school, and as he did then, he rolled himself into a ball, taking care to protect his head. If they’d wanted to kill him, he reasoned, they’d have done it straight away. And if it was the enemy, they certainly wouldn’t want to kill him: they’d want to know what he knew, they’d want names.

He reckoned if he could hold out until the morning, when he’d miss his seven o’clock call to Bryant or Stone, then he’d be all right: they’d press the alarm bells and put the word out to the Turks, ‘…one of our chaps missing, perhaps you could check with the Germans if you’d be so kind…’ and eventually he’d be released once he’d given them some low-grade stuff to be happy with.

But then the kicking stopped and the men who’d been doing it parted. Ulrich stared down at him as if he was a piece of dirt.

‘Timothy Charles Cooke.’

It was a statement rather than a question.

Ulrich shifted his gaze from Timothy Charles Cooke to the man on his right: Besim, the driver. Ulrich nodded and two men grabbed Cooke by the arms while another grabbed his head and jerked it back, exposing his neck.

It was only then that Timothy Charles Cooke noticed the blade in Besim’s hand, long and highly polished, its touch ice cold against the Englishman’s skin.

Chapter 3

Thessaloniki, Nazi-occupied Greece

March 1943

They came late at night on the first Friday of March towards the end of the second year of the German occupation of Thessaloniki.

The knocking at the door was tentative at first but became louder and more urgent while the three women hesitated, huddled together in the back room as they tried to decide whether they should answer it.

Perla looked at her mother and mother-in-law, sitting uncomfortably close together on the small sofa. The two women had an intense dislike of each other going back even before she and Alvertos had met. Perla had little doubt that if she asked either woman why she disliked the other it was unlikely they’d remember: it was more a general dislike; two strong-willed women who didn’t get on. But since the beginning of February they’d been thrown together in the ghetto when Perla, the two children and her mother Klara had been forced to move into her mother-in-law Benvenida’s small basement apartment off Mitropoleos in the heart of the city’s Jewish district.

Since then the two grandmothers had become unlikely allies and even friends. The fear that gripped the fifty thousand Jews in the ghetto bound them together. They would sit on the sofa, rocking back and forth, holding hands, sipping strong mint tea and bemoaning their ill fortune; one breaking down in tears before being comforted by the other. A few minutes later they would reverse the process. All this time, Perla would be trying to look after Moris and his younger sister Eleonora. She was wracked with fear herself but tried hard not to show it in front of the children. When she needed it the most she received scant help from her mother and mother-in-law, other than at meal times when the two older women would get in each other’s way in the cramped kitchen, hostilities resumed as they argued over the correct ingredients for centuries-old recipes.

‘We don’t answer the door, not