Hardt smiled and shook his head. “It turned me into an Israeli – there’s a difference, you know. I saw young men dying for a belief; I saw girls who should have been in school, sitting behind machine guns. Until that time, my life hadn’t meant a great deal. After that, it had a sense of purpose.”

Chavasse sighed and offered him a cigarette. “You know, in some ways I think I envy you.”

Hardt looked surprised. “But surely you believe in what you are doing? In your work, your country, its political aims?”

“Do I?” Chavasse shook his head. “I’m not so sure. There are men like me working for every Great Power in the world. I’ve got more in common with my opposite number in the KGB than I have with any normal citizen of my own country. If I’m told to do a thing, I get it done. I don’t ask questions. Men like me live by one code only – the job must come before anything else.” He laughed harshly. “If I’d been born a few years earlier and a German, I’d probably have worked for the Gestapo.”

“Then why did you help Joel ben David in Cairo?” Hardt said. “It hardly fits into the pattern you describe.”

Chavasse shrugged and said carelessly, “That’s my one weakness. I get to like people and sometimes it makes me act unwisely.” Before Hardt could reply, he went on. “By the way, I searched Muller before Steiner arrived on the scene. There were some letters in his inside pocket from this Lilli Pahl you mentioned. The address was a hotel in Gluckstrasse, Hamburg.”

Hardt frowned. “That’s strange. I should have thought he’d have used another name. Did you find anything else?”

“An old photo,” Chavasse said. “Must have been taken during the war. He was wearing a Luftwaffe uniform and standing with his arm around a young girl.”

Hardt look up sharply. “Are you sure about that – that it was a Luftwaffe uniform he was wearing?”

Chavasse nodded. “Quite sure. Why do you ask?”

Hardt shrugged. “It probably isn’t important. I understood he was in the Army, that’s all. My information must have been incorrect.” After a moment of silence, he went on. “This hotel in Gluckstrasse might be worth investigating.”