Four men in a line together with their arms around each other's shoulders; one was taller than his companions and had a face wrapped in privacy, not wearing the bold grin of the others. 'Lubeck, January 1945. Your father making warheads for the Nazis. Otto Wilhelm Guttmann. Born in Magdeburg in 1912. Expert in short range missiles. Taken to the Soviet Union in 1945. Married Valentina Efremov Guttmann, killed in a car accident in 1968…' Mawby reeled off the information, referred to no notes… 'One daughter, Erica. One son, Willi. Technical Director of Research at Padolsk for the last seven years. Expert now in MCLOS, that's Manual Controlled Line of Sight. Developing the successor to the AAICV, we call it Sagger over here. That's what we brought you here for,

Guttmann. That's what we've got to be talking about if you're to find yourself between Lizzie Forsyth's thighs again.'

'Bastard.'

'Good boy, Willi. Now you're understanding me,' Mawby chuckled with satisfaction.

For four hours, with Mawby wielding the pickaxe and Carter handling the scalpel, they kept at him, dogs in a pit with a dying bear. Willi shouting and Willi whimpering, alternating courage and submission. A bright light in his face, the rattle of the questions from behind its beam, and never the answer that they sought.

'My father didn't bring work home to the flat.'

'At home he hardly ever talked of Padolsk.'

'If he had to work then he had a room in the flat where he would go.

Right from the time I was a child I was never invited into that room.'

'When I disturbed him and he was working, then he was angry. I didn't do it.'

'He never spoke of difficulties and solutions.'

'Maybe he talked with my sister. Erica is at Padolsk with him, she is his secretary there. He never talked with me.'

'I hardly saw him after I went to the Foreign Ministry. Before that I was at the University of Kiev. I have a room at home, but I was working or at night classes for languages.'