“You had a colleague at Trinity whose daughter was married to a Czech. When he died, she wanted to return to England with her children. The Communists refused to let her go and the British Foreign Office wouldn’t help.” Moro shrugged. “You went in on your own initiative and got them out, sustaining a slight wound from a border guard’s rifle.”

“Ah, the foolishness of youth,” Chavasse said.

“Safely back at Cambridge, you were visited by Sir Ian Moncrieff, known only as the Chief in intelligence circles, the man who controlled the Bureau, the most secret of all British intelligence units.”

“Where in the hell did you get all this from?” Chavasse demanded.

“Sources of my own,” Moro told him. “Twenty years in the field for the Bureau and twenty years as Chief after Moncrieff’s death. A remarkable record.”

“The only thing remarkable about it is that I’m still here,” Chavasse said. “Now who exactly are you?”

“As I told you, I’m from the Tibetan temple at Glen Aristoun in Scotland.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Chavasse told him. “A Buddhist community.”

“I live and work there. I am the librarian. I have been collating information on the escape of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in March 1959.”

A great light dawned. “Oh, I see now,” Chavasse said. “You’ve found out that I was there. That I was one of those who got him out.”

“Yes, I know all about that, Sir Paul, heard of those adventures from the Dalai Lama’s own lips. No, it is what comes after that interests me.”

“And what would that be?” Chavasse asked warily.

“In 1962, exactly three years after you helped the Dalai Lama to escape, you returned to Tibet to the town of Changu to effect the escape of Dr. Karl Hoffner, who’d worked as a medical missionary in the area for years.”

“Karl Hoffner?” Chavasse said.

“One of the greatest mathematicians of the century,” Moro said. “As great as Einstein.” He was almost impatient now. “Come, Sir Paul, I know from sound sources that you undertook the mission, and yet there is no record of Hoffner other than his time in Tibet. Did he die there? What happened?”