“It all looks too good to be true,” he said.

“That is, of course, possible, Herr Reichsminister.”

“People don’t suddenly become spies, for no good reason, Herr Moyzisch,” said von Ribbentrop. “Especially the valets of English gentlemen.”

“Bazna wanted money.”

“And it sounds as if he has had it. How much did you say that Schellenberg has given him?”

“Twenty thousand pounds, so far.”

Von Ribbentrop tossed the photographs back onto the table and one of them slipped to the floor. It was retrieved by Rudolf Linkus, his closest associate in the Foreign Ministry.

“And who trained him to use a camera with such apparent expertise?” said von Ribbentrop. “The British? Has it occurred to you that this might be disinformation?”

Ludwig Moyzisch endured the Reichsminister’s cold stare, wishing he were back in Ankara, and wondering why, of all the people who had examined these documents provided by his agent Bazna (code-named Cicero), von Ribbentrop was the only one to doubt their authenticity. Even Kaltenbrunner, the chief of the Reich Security Service and Walter Schellenberg’s boss, had been convinced the information was accurate. Thinking to make the case for Cicero’s material, Moyzisch said that Kaltenbrunner himself now held the opinion that the documents were probably genuine.

“Kaltenbrunner is ill, is he not?” Von Ribbentrop’s contempt for the SD chief was well known inside the Foreign Ministry. “Phlebitis, I heard. Doubtless his mind, what there is of it, has been much affected by his condition. Besides, I yield to no man, least of all a drunken, sadistic moron, in my knowledge of the British. When I was German ambassador to the Court of St. James, I got to know some of them quite well, and I tell you that this is a trick dreamt up by the English spymasters. Disinformation calculated to divert our so-called intelligence service from their proper tasks.” With one of his watery blue eyes half-closed, he faced his subordinate.