At Ipswich, with little help from the uncommunicative station staff, he grumbled his way to the branch line bay platform where his opinion of trains was not improved by finding two elderly matrons occupying the only first-class compartment in the single coach, each clutching a yapping dog. He doffed his hat to them and settled next door in third-class. It was a no-corridor coach and he was pleased that he had the twelve seat spaces to himself. That would do nicely.

The guard blew his whistle and almost as the train started the door was flung open and two cardboard boxes followed by a garishly dressed man tumbled in. Turville jumped up and closed the door. There were angry shouts from the platform.

"Thanks, squire," gasped this strange apparition, trying to get his breath back and dust himself down at the same time. Having lifted the boxes onto the seat each side of him he looked across the aisle into the eyes of Turville and smiled a wide, crinkly smile. Turville returned the gesture with a civil nod and felt it best to immerse himself in something.

He opened his despatch case on the seat beside him. Its contents, including his spare vest and underpants, were in full view but it was of no matter, they were both men and there was no cause for either to be embarrassed.

"You in it as well? Know what I mean?" The strange double question was followed by a lick of all the finger tips on his left hand in quick succession.

"Pardon?" Turville was getting out his file of notes. The man pointed to the underwear in his despatch case.

"Clothes. Selling. Cheap. Not room for us both in this area, squire. My patch, you see."

Turville wondered if there was an East Anglian syntax of the English language with which he was not acquainted - and yet this extraordinary man sounded more like East London.

He closed his case and smiled in an attempt to terminate this impossible dialogue. Opening the file, the brochure on Flaxton fell to the floor.

"Oh dear Lordy no." The strange man bent and picked it up. "Certainly no room in Flaxton old man. Clothes and knick-knacks are my department. Know what I mean?" Another flick of the fingers. Turville bent over his papers.

"Jolly good."

The man sat forwards and tapped him on the knee. "Better push off back then."

Turville lowered his notes and eyed this extraordinary person with a look that had reduced many an adversary to jelly. It worked.

"Sorry squire. Just checking. Know what I mean?" Again the fingers.

Somehow the grotesqueness of the gesture went with the outfit, a strangely tartanned sports jacket, yellow flannel trousers, a wide garish tie and brown and white brogue shoes, all topped with a brown trilby hat at a rakish angle.

A hand shot out from somewhere in the sea of tartan. Turville was about to take it, swing it in a half circle and deposit its owner on the floor of the carriage with his foot crushing the back of his neck but just in time he realized that the hand was being offered to shake! Gingerly he took it.

"Tad Stevens." It was a perfunctory shake.

"How do you do. John Smith. And I am not in clothes and knick-knacks I assure you, Mr Stevens."

"Thank gawd for that, John. Call me Tad, everyone does. Know what I mean?" Another lick.

"Thank you Ted. Now if you'll excuse me I must concentrate..."

"Tad."

"Pardon?"

"Tad. That's me."

Turville buried himself in his notes and, uncharacteristically, Tad Stevens took the hint but in a most infuriating way. Looking out of the window at the slowly passing countryside he murmured a very doubtful setting of a well-known army song whilst, at the same time, tapping the fingers of each hand on the adjacent cardboard boxes as if they were side-drums.

The one-man band stopped its performance in mid-bar.

"What's your business then?"

Turville used that look again. "Private."

Tad, who had started to search through his boxes, looked up.

"Come again, John?"

"My business is private, Mr Stevens. Let's just leave it at that."
Tad started to lay out a strange array of clothing, bottles and small containers from his boxes. "All right by me, squire. Know what I mean?"

Turville wondered what he had done to deserve this and, not for the first time, considered the extreme contrasts happening in the world around him. This morning he had been briefed by the Head of the Secret Service who himself had just been briefed by no less a person than Winston Churchill and now, a few hours later, he was having to experience the antics of a madman!

He tried not to notice but he found himself gazing in amazement as the long seat opposite him was rapidly converted into a market stall. There were bottles of scent, medicaments, handkerchiefs, ladies manicure sets, hair brushes, brooches and bangles and, with a final flourish, a dozen or so pairs of white lace knickers. Tad noticed Turville's curiosity.

"Mostly for the refugees, old man."

Quickly this strange character counted everything. Mental arithmetic was obviously a strong point. He was multiplying in pounds, shillings and pence using his well licked fingers as beads on an abacus. He seemed well pleased with the result and started to pack everything away again. When, finally, he got to the knickers he held up a pair for Turville's inspection.

"Two and a tanner to you, squire. For your little lady." To add insult to injury he tapped the side of his nose.

In any other situation Turville might have found these antics mildly amusing but here he could only see sadness and, anyway, the sort of morning he'd had was no prelude to such crassness. He disappointed himself with a show of pomposity.

"Thank you, no. I do not have a little lady."

Tad, to whom all comment was literal and whose friendliness missed even the most obvious put-downs came straight back.

"Any sizes, John. Any sizes. Give me her size and I'll fit her out all snug for the summer. Know what I mean?"

As the fingers were licked again the train mercifully stopped with a jolt and a hiss of escaping steam. "Flaxton-on-Sea. Flaxton-on-Sea." Such had been Tad's performance that, uncharacteristically, Charles Turville had lost all sense of time and place; he could have been wiped out by anyone. No-one before had ever achieved that with him.

Tad threw everything back into the boxes, dropped the window and opened the door.

"See you again, squire."

Turville watched him saunter down the platform greeting everyone and evidently having to sign small books to get himself out of the station.

"I do rather hope not," said Turville to himself but, as on the train, he was no match for Tad Stevens. He'd see him again. Very soon.

They came for Freddy at seven thirty that evening in the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw. Two guards entered his room and roughly ordered him to follow them. He felt very confused. Here he was, a prisoner in Warsaw's Gestapo Headquarters about to be entertained by the most senior SS Officer in Poland, General Friedrich Streyer, in his private apartment, wearing clothes looted from the homes of his fellow countrymen who had either fled or been murdered on the orders of the thug who was about to be his host! He entered the Presidential Suite having no idea what to expect.

"Ah, my dear Professor. I have been looking forward to this meeting for so long."

The small man advanced, almost waddled, across the deep pile carpet with his hand outstretched. How often people had said that to him as his fame as a scientist had grown through the thirties but never, he felt, as insincerely as now.

This little man, ridiculously dressed in his black SS uniform with breeches and highly polished long black jackboots looked like a character from a Strauss operetta. He expected a tenor aria from Der Rosenkavalier to burst through his thin, mean lips at any moment!

There was something icy about his hand-shake as his staring eyes pierced right through Freddy. Although his eyesight was perfect he wore pince-nez spectacles having, very wisely as far as his career path was concerned, modelled himself on his master, Heinrich Himmler.

Released from his icy grip, Freddy was ushered to a chair in the Presidential Suite. The room was as sumptuously decorated as he remembered it. It was hard to believe in this desolate land, but it actually smelt of fresh paint! It was decorated in the style of a palace, the cream plaster-work richly moulded and ornate with the detail picked out plentifully in gold, the long windows framed with rich crimson curtaining. The heavy furniture matched the room colours and stood on a heavily designed Indian carpet. Freddy knew that there were bedrooms and bathrooms leading from the entrance hall; he'd used them in years gone by!

He sat in a deep armchair apparently more at ease than his host whose upbringing, until he joined the National Socialist movement in the early thirties, had been in surroundings which were the very antithesis of this: a slum dwelling lacking any form of indoor sanitation whatsoever. But Hitler had put that right and now General Friedrich Streyer was head of all SS troops, second only to the Governor-General, the ultimate Master of Poland.

The Führer, on appointing him to this coveted post, had told him that his orders were "to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish race or language." This was music to the ears of Friedrich Streyer but, of course, there would be exceptions and, provided he gave his full co-operation, such a one was sitting opposite him now. And who would not fully co-operate, given the gruesome alternative?

Freddy had guessed correctly. With his brain functioning normally for the first time since he had been taken from his villa he had spent a useful afternoon planning his tactics. Outright refusal to co-operate would be the hero's way but achieve nothing. An unbelievably painful death would either mean that his secrets died with him thereby setting back Project Omega for years - long enough for Germany to vanquish all its enemies - or, before the last moments, he would give way and recite everything stored in his remarkable brain, in which case the Third Reich would be able to wipe out civilisation whenever they wished to do so within a year - two at the most.

There seemed to be no choice but he had spent much of the afternoon thinking calmly - an unusual luxury these days - and he saw a middle way. He would apparently co-operate until such time - if there could be one - when he was able to get information to England preferably, please God, in person. What he must do was to play for time.

"I must congratulate you, Herr General, on a quick victory. Our forces were overwhelmed before they could properly organise themselves." He choked on the words. This was going to be more difficult than he had imagined.

Streyer wasted no time. "The Führer is a master strategist. But you must realize, Herr Professor, that we and our good allies, the Russians, do not accept that we have occupied this land. We have, rather, liberated it. Annexed our former provinces." He chuckled. It was a chilling sound. "You have been working here, in Germany and living here, in Germany all your life." He was warming to his subject but Freddy couldn't resist interrupting.

"At the Treaty of Riga in 1920 Poland took back its lands..."

Streyer did not deign to hear. He ploughed on.

"And it is to Germany that you owe the priceless information you have concerning …" he coughed hastily, struggled upright, and went to a bureau bringing back a file of papers. As he dropped back untidily into his chair he glanced, apparently nonchalantly at an inside page and recited slowly like a child "... nuclear physics."

He was angry now, not as might be thought, with Freddy, but with himself. He had spent time trying to understand the detailed background notes on this matter which was evidently of such overwhelming importance that Hitler, the great Führer himself, had broken with all precedence and penned a page of orders in his own handwriting. Streyer had ludicrously stood at attention as he read the page of scrawl!

He had been breathless and shaking but the euphoria had evaporated rapidly when he'd discovered that his failed academic education, interrupted so early in his life by the more stimulating opportunity to learn the act of indiscriminate murder and mayhem as a National Socialist street fighter, had made most of the background notes indecipherable.

Now he had revealed this inadequacy before the evening really started by forgetting the very name of this new science on which his Führer placed so much importance.

Streyer attempted - failed - to cover his confusion by pouring two glasses of Szampan and handing one to Freddy who remembered, like a knife in the ribs, when he had last drunk Russian champagne. It had been at the villa the night of his wedding feast...

He sipped the champagne; this was no time to dull his mind with alcohol. Streyer gulped his and poured another for himself.

"Yes," he slurred, "We are the liberators. In the east of what you call Poland are four million Russians - Ukrainians - and in the west a million Germans."

He emptied his glass and poured himself another. He didn't offer one to Freddy; the effort of displaying any form of manners was past him. Freddy nearly interpolated with, "and squashed in between these immigrants are nineteen million Poles," but he didn't. He must stick to his plan and say as little as possible.

This was made easier by the obvious intention of Streyer to do all the talking.

"You may, in your ignorance of these matters, Herr Professor, be interested to know that one of our illustrious Generals, during his rapid conquest in the west passed through his old family estates and occupied, as his headquarters, the very place where he was born!" He ended this on a note of triumph, slapping his knees with glee.

To Freddy his laugh sounded like a witch's cackle and his anger boiled over.

"Conquest, you say? Occupied? Not, I would say, the words of a liberator, Herr General."

Streyer's face darkened and he staggered uncertainly to his feet. Freddy wondered for a moment if he was going to be assaulted by this absurd little man. Then what? Freddy could lay him out with one blow but doubtless guards were on hand. All would certainly be lost.

The General unwittingly calmed the tension by marching unsteadily to the dinner table.

"We will eat." He waved his arm to a chair and sat in the other. Freddy felt that he shouldn't be surprised when his host tucked his table napkin into the top of his tunic.

Belvedere, George and Norman left the theatre next. They needed to get to the bar at The Pier Head Tavern - a non-Tad pub - in time for some very much needed alcoholic refreshment. It had been a gruelling evening making all of them on edge because of a very thin 'house', a rowdy group of soldiers who had been loud in their lack of enthusiasm for the 'class' acts and, to cap it all, Tad's disgraceful humiliation of that poor old Polish gentleman. Drinking - and a suitable anti-Tad action plan - was on the agenda. Nothing, Belvedere had warned them, was to be said about Peggy. You could trust no-one these days.

George and Norman were all too aware of the established procedure when the three of them entered the saloon bar. Belvedere removed his heavy black overcoat with its astrakhan collar, which he wore in all weathers, and doffed his floppy wide-brimmed hat to the ladies present. The rain dropped off it onto the floor.

"Dear ladies," he murmured and they tittered, flattered, in return.

He placed the hat and coat with loving care on a nearby hook sporting a label which said, grandly, 'Belvedere Galbraith Esq.' He then took up a commanding position in a large Windsor carving chair behind the table by the fire. A 'reserved' sign was placed on it each evening by the landlord in return for occasional free tickets to the show.

George and Norman were in charge of buying the drinks and bringing them to the table. They all shared the cost with scrupulous preciseness but Belvedere had never understood the strange self-service procedure common in British pubs, having been used, in the good old days, to waiters fussing around him.

Now he sat back, his hands smoothing the brown knitted cardigan which he had been reduced to wearing. A large gold chain spanned his ample stomach, threaded incongruously through a button-hole, but the evidence of better days still manifested itself in the nonchalantly knotted crimson silk cravat which certainly caught the eye but tended to accentuate rather than hide his many chins.

"Make it a large one, dear boy," he bellowed in his fine baritone voice to George at the bar. Everyone paused and looked at him with respect. The three of them were 'stage stars' and you didn't share the same pub with many of them in Flaxton. Aside from Belvedere's commanding presence was the remarkable wobbling of his many chins when he loudly proclaimed. It was a moment not to be missed.

George and Norman carried across the drinks. The evening's 'slate' had been opened behind the bar and was, as a matter of honour, settled in full each Friday pay day. With Belvedere's large scotch, diluted with soda to make it last longer, would be George's pint of mild and bitter and Norman's Guinness. Norman's pint would last all evening, George's about ten minutes.

Their dress, once the mackintoshes were removed, was a great disappointment to the regulars in the bar. George wore a rather threadbare three-piece dark blue suit and looked for all the world like a bank clerk. Norman, on the other hand, much preferred the schoolmaster look in old fawn corduroys and a Fair Isle jumper which had certainly seen better days.

They now sat at their reserved table and all three of them, in unison, raised their glasses to their mouths. It was surprising to the onlookers that the return of them to the table top was also in unison because considerably differing amounts of fluid had been transferred. Belvedere reduced his whisky and soda by half, Norman sipped the cream off his Guinness and George poured in a third of his pint which seemed to be taken in one gulp. This done, the business of the evening could be started.

"It was inexcusable behaviour, and Elaine agrees with me." George wiped some beer froth from his upper lip with the back of his hand. He invariably included his partner in his pronouncements and she did likewise. Welsh Nightingales must stick together.

"Up North they'd pelt him." Norman's Halifax brogue matched his bluntness. "I've seen all kinds of fruit, old shoes, even a ferret hurtle through the air onto the stage." He added as an afterthought, "not always at me though."

George was concerned - for the ferret, not Norman. "I didn't know ferrets could fly."

"Nor did this one," Norman was mournful, "but it soon learnt how to. It landed with a thoomp and scuttled off back stage shaking its..." George broke in, "Fist?"

"No," even more mournfully, "its head."

*

Tad was the last of the artistes to leave the theatre. All except the emergency lights were now extinguished and he felt his way carefully towards the rear stage door and opened it onto the dark night.

As he stepped outside, a fist propelled with considerable force, landed with perfect accuracy onto his right eye and, with a frightened yelp, he collapsed back into the building. The pain was immense, as if a thousand sharp pins had been driven into his eyeball.

Crawling to his feet he staggered back into the dressing room. The sight in his mirror was horrendous. Where there once had been a perfectly serviceable right eye there was now a most unpleasant black, blue and purple swelling. He sat at his dressing table in shock.

It was much later that he remembered the last image he had seen before the fireworks display invaded his brain. Advancing towards the now fully closed, swollen eye had been a bright pin-prick of light surrounded by a cluster of five smaller ones.

*

Back in the Pier Head Tavern, blissfully unaware of the splendid fate which had befallen Tad, Belvedere had been sitting through all the chatter about ferrets no more amazed now than he usually was when George and Norman got going. He knew it was he who would have to provide the serious, meaningful content of this important meeting. "When I was at The Theatre at Stratford" - 'the theatre' was said very grandly. He got no further.

George sank the rest of his beer. "Did they ever find the ferret?" he asked Norman.

"I don't know." Norman was even more mournful now. He took another sip of his Guinness. "The management released me after that night's performance. They said they couldn't risk more damage to the back-drop - and anyway rodents weren't allowed backstage."

There was a silence.

"When I was at The Theatre at Stratford..."

George leapt up. "Time for another round." He collected his and Belvedere's empty glasses and went towards the bar. Norman rubbed some Guinness blobs into his Fair Isle jumper.

"I had an Auntie who lived in Stratford. When I stayed with her she used to take me for walks on Hackney Marsh. I'd never seen men and women doing - that - before." He shuddered, "It put me right off it …" the pub was silent, Norman took another sip, "for life."

The sigh from Belvedere was more of a rumble.

"Not Stratford in London, you northern know-nothing. Stratford-upon-Avon. Home of the Bard. The shrine of the English theatre."

The inhabitants of the bar shuffled uncomfortably. They felt they'd all been admonished.

The Dornier 17 bomber dropped to two thousand feet some five miles from the coast. The crew of five were tense now; excited. This is what they had joined the Luftwaffe for and to them their pilot, Leutnant Rechtner, was already a hero.

In only a few moments they would reach the coast and involuntarily they held their breath as the pilot dropped to a thousand feet. Very low. The land rushed at them. They skimmed over a small cluster of houses and a tower or two but none was worthy of three of the Third Reich's five hundred pound bombs.

Rechtner pulled the control column to port and the aircraft banked steeply towards the south. He corrected the plane's trim and altitude so that it was flying low along the shingle shoreline towards a sizeable town dead ahead and, having carefully checked that there were no barrage balloons on his flight path, he pushed the throttle forward to attain maximum speed: two hundred and twenty miles an hour.

There was no retaliation; no guns fired, no enemy fighters intercepted them. It was eight a.m. Hans Rechtner, on his twenty-first birthday, had the skies over Flaxton-on-Sea to himself. The bomb-aimer in the nose of the plane rested his finger gently on the release button...

On the ground the throbbing of the two mighty Daimler-Benz engines of the Dornier grew louder and louder until they became a deafening shriek. The terrible sound bounced off the ground making it vibrate, shaking all the buildings and the objects inside them.

In terror the citizens of Flaxton froze, immobile, staring at each other, their ears pounding with the noise and then, in the last moments, the explosions.

The earthquake struck once - twice - three times in quick succession. Fifteen hundred pounds of TNT.

As the ground rocked people fell, not crumpling, but rigidly, like poles being snapped and in an instant the air was filled with flying debris of every kind. Daylight disappeared as a pall of smoke blotted out the sky.

The noise was still shattering even though the aircraft had disappeared to the south, the shriek of the engines being replaced by other terrifying sounds. Debris was landing heavily in the street and through the roofs of buildings, screams of pain and fear came from all directions as people staggered around, some unscathed, but many clutching wounds and dripping blood. With it all was the never-ending crash of breaking glass.

It seemed an eternity but, in fact, it had all happened in seconds. The clanging bells of the fire engines and ambulances grew louder as they sped in from the town stations inland, and the military machines joined them from the surrounding camps.

The sight that greeted them as they turned into the High Street was apparently one of complete devastation. Buildings had collapsed into the road, some were on fire, bricks and masonry were everywhere and a dazed population was staggering around clutching at each other for support. There was no panic. The screaming had died away now and in its place was a deathly hush.

As the fire engines, ambulances and other emergency vehicles picked their way through the rubble the extent of the damage became more clear. Most buildings on the High Street and in the surrounding roads had superficial damage - roofs and windows mainly - but only a handful had been destroyed, amongst them the cinema, thankfully empty, which had taken the first direct hit and was now a blazing mound of rubble. At the far end of the street the Methodist Chapel had suffered a similar fate from the third bomb and taken the Minister's house and another two with it.

It was the second bomb's direct hit which was drawing most people to it. The Post Office had been destroyed. There was no fire; just a high mound of rubble and twisted masonry and digging frantically into it a beautifully sleek black Labrador dog. Mountjoy was searching for his mistress.

*

The crew manning the Bofors gun on the end of the pier had no hope of at last firing their highly polished weapon at the Dornier: it came and went far too quickly and anyhow the gun's arc of fire was seawards and not inland; they would have taken the roof off the theatre if they had tried a shot at the speeding plane.

The soldiers sat around the gun as immobilised as the rest of the population, but with a grandstand view of the low-flying bomber and the three bombs that lazily fell from it, first horizontally and then, nose heavy, dropping down behind the buildings to be replaced by enormous sheets of flame and billows of smoke and that ear-splitting noise.

But theirs was not the only anti-aircraft gun in Flaxton. At the furthest end of the narrow spit of shingle which ran for half a mile along the shoreline south of the town was a Martello Tower. Built in 1815 it was designed as a defence against earlier feared invasions and had four large 24lb cannons mounted on it. Now, alongside them, sat another sleek, highly polished Bofors gun and, as luck would have it - about the only bit of luck in and around Flaxton that morning - the crew were at action stations carrying out their morning drill.

The detachment commander, a sergeant with a row of First World War medals on his chest that suggested he was long past the 'caught napping' stage had shouted, "This is for real, boys," as soon as he had heard the tell-tale throb of German aero-engines and to see the Dornier coming straight at them had been too good to be true.

Other guns were now firing from inland, but they had a low, sideways-on, fast moving target and no real hope of hitting the plane. The Martello crew only had to fix the plane in their sights and watch it grow bigger and bigger.

With more experience they would have scored a number of hits with the rapid-firing gun in the seconds it took to fly over them - but they did score once - and once was enough. The forty millimetre shell went straight through the under-belly of the fuselage just behind the wing roots and, exploding, severed all the control lines to the tail unit.

*

On its bombing run along the High Street the big plane, nicknamed the 'Flying Pencil' because of its long, sleek shape, bucked and rocked as the shock waves from the explosions hit it. The crew, hanging on for dear life, were deafened in their intercoms by the ecstatic and almost maniacal yelling coming from their pilot.

And then the Bofors shell hit, killing one of them outright.

Rechtner tried in vain to keep control of the aircraft. He was a good pilot and instantly calmed as the plane ceased to react to the controls. The rudder bar did nothing, the control column was sluggish and, with both engines still screaming at maximum power, the plane slipped, almost gracefully, towards the sea. They were too low for the crew to bale out - and there was no time anyway. The impact came in the shipping lanes approaching Felixstowe harbour.

What made Leutnant Rechtner decide to descend to five hundred feet to drop his bombs will never be known. It was a foolish height for a heavy bomber and the hours of discussion in pubs, clubs, homes and more official quarters which followed the horrific event came to the conclusion that it was the act of an over-excited, impetuous young dare-devil.

The bodies of the five crew members were recovered by an Air-Sea Rescue Launch and brought ashore and, in accordance with the tradition of the time, they were afforded a full military funeral. Leutnant Rechtner was eight and a quarter hours into his twenty-second year. It was ironic that he and his crew would be buried some time before his Flaxton-on-Sea victims.

He was jerked awake by the paralysing sensation of a hand pressed over his mouth. The room was pitch dark and he could make out nothing, no object, no person. It was as if he had been gagged but he knew by the tiny muscle movements that it was a human hand on him encased in some type of glove. As his eyes grew accustomed to the very slight light coming through the window he saw that the hand was part of a figure dressed entirely in black. It motioned him upright and instructed him to be completely silent.

As if in a dream he allowed the man to help him into a black overall, rather like a boiler suit, and put a black Balaclava helmet over his head. Black socks over his shoes and black gloves made him as invisible in the dark as his visitor. In complete silence he was motioned to the window. Would he be given wings with which to fly? Stupid thought. He now saw a rope inside the room to which was attached a harness which the man now strapped around his waist and under his thighs. It was like - and actually was - the lower part of a parachute. The visitor checked the buckles and then led him to the opening. He fearfully closed his eyes guessing what would happen next.

He was gently eased out of the window, the rope tightening as his weight was transferred to it and then, amazingly, he was hanging a foot or so away from the wall - and rising very slowly. He gyrated on the rope as the fibres took the strain and up he went, past the curtained windows of the Herr General's splendid suite of rooms on the sixth floor and past a top floor of small windows which will once have been the hotel staff quarters, but now were probably barrack rooms. His heart, if it was beating at all, seemed to stand still as he rose silently within a foot of the sleeping soldiers, but all was well, their curtains were also drawn and they slept on.

He was now level with the parapet and found himself staring into the eyes of a man only inches away from him. The man's feet were against the top of the wall and his whole body was projecting outwards and upwards like the jib of a crane, the rope supporting Freddy fed over one of his shoulders keeping him away from the wall. The 'jib' was, in turn, held in that position by a rope around his chest fastened to another man on the roof. A fourth man was helping to lift Freddy's weight by pulling on the lifting rope. All of the team were dressed as he was, in black from head to foot.

Freddy had only a moment to credit the ingenious geometry of all this before he was being rushed through the gully of the pitched roof to the side of the hotel. Doubtless the man who entered his room was being lifted in the same way. They all paused, breathing deeply. There was no acknowledgement between any of them. No word was spoken. They had rehearsed this whole exercise many times until each knew precisely what their next move would be.

They waited for what seemed to Freddy to be an interminable time but was, in fact, little more than a minute and then the other three joined them and the entire procedure was repeated in reverse. The jib man was eased out over the edge with the largest black shadow wrapping the man's supporting rope around himself and lying back against the sloping roof with his feet against the parapet wall. The lowering rope was passed over the jib's shoulder and re-attached to Freddy who, with his eyes tightly shut again, was launched out into the night. Then, faster this time - much faster - he was dropping.

He dared to open his eyes. It was extraordinary. He could tell that he was in a lift shaft. He passed holes in the walls where the gates had been, but there were no floors beyond them, just space. These were obviously the ruins of the gutted building adjoining the hotel. Freddy realised that he was descending as if he was in the lift that had once been operating in this shaft.

Suddenly he was grasped by two sets of hands, the harness was undone and two black-clad bodies took each of his elbows and literally carried him at a canter along a path in the rubble to the road running behind the hotel.

Then he was dropped, like a sack of coal, down a black hole into even blacker darkness.

He was safely caught by hands that had obviously practised receiving a body thrown from above. These must be strong men; he was no light weight - although certainly lighter than when he first became a guest of the Gestapo - and, at six foot, he was a large object to be carting around.

The first thing that struck him was the smell. There was no need to try and guess where he was. In less than ten minutes he had exchanged the comforts of a fine suite in the Hotel Bristol - for the sewers of Warsaw.

He wanted to cry with relief. For the first time for so very long he was amongst friends. At the very worst he would die with them rather than in the presence - and to the delight - of the most evil men on earth, Hitler's SS.

*

In the deserted kitchens in the basement of the hotel the little Polish lift attendant afforded himself a tiny smile. His cold cell-like bedroom, which had once been a pantry, had a small grime covered window slit set high in the wall but at pavement height on the road running behind the building. The room was in the far corner of the kitchens and, by standing on tiptoe on the ledge which was his bed, the attendant had a fine view of a sewer manhole cover at the near edge of the road. In the darkness of the night it is doubtful if a casual viewer would have seen anything but this man knew what he was looking for. He saw the dark shapes moving at great speed, the cover lift and their bodies dropping into the hole. First three and then, a moment later, another four. The cover was replaced. All within a minute.

He climbed off the bed and collected his few belongings. Within the hour he would follow their same route; the Hotel Bristol would be no place to be tomorrow morning.

All his careful planning had paid off. He had offered to help clean the 'Polish Pig's' room which gave him access to the bathroom, the writing on the mirror had worked, the constant reference to his smell had ensured that he had a bath and also that the windows would be unbolted. Now his work was done and with considerable relief he would return to his comrades in the Armia Krajowa.

She told them the news with no preamble or embellishments. The loss of the theatre, the offer of a London venue - now probably too late, and her and Vi's impending retirement. They all were, of course, deeply shocked but not really surprised. As with grief everyone's mind was quickly tuning to a new wavelength made up of doubts and fears, anger and uncertainty. Nell's latest information would slot comfortably into that format and the fatalistic 'we can take it', 'stiff upper lip', 'business as usual', culture would from now on govern all their actions.

Individually they were planning their futures even as Nell was giving them the news. For Peggy it was, of course, particularly hard. If the troupe disbanded how would Freddy find her if he really were free and Ludovic Henschel kept his word now he had the diaries? Would she have to rely on the odious man, even - and she shuddered - even put herself under his protective custody again?

Nell sensed that she had lost them all - in more senses than one. She could see that their thoughts were all miles away. George and Elaine were whispering to each other and so were Rita and Rena. Marvo was busily scribbling notes, Tad was fiddling with the catches on his knick-knack suitcase, Norman could almost feel a khaki uniform enveloping him and was fingering his tight collar, Belvedere seemed to be in communion with his precious Bard and Pat was gently stroking Peggy's shaking hand.

Don and his team kept quiet as befitted the back-stage crew. Nell's stick banging on the floor galvanised them into rapt attention as she exhorted them to give all that they had this evening and tomorrow evening, the last night. Tomorrow would be clear-out day and then after the final Show that night she would need to know their decision: London - or disband.

"Let's give Flaxton everything we've got. We won't let that pot-tin Hitler defeat us." She stood up. "We'll go out with our hands held high..."

Vi quickly scotched this inadvertent reference to surrender.

"Heads, dear."

Nell was into her stride now, her voice was strong, she was standing to her full five foot three inches brandishing her stick above her head, the ostrich feather on her hat waving like a conductor's baton.
"Heads it is Vi, and always will be."

Her audience was now beginning to lose the thread which she had already lost but she was not deterred.

"The Flaxton Pier Theatre Pier Company will go into suspendered amination for the durexion of this terrible war."

They were all spellbound. It was a bigger performance than even Belvedere had ever dared. The theatre, in all its long years, had never seen or heard anything like it. She ended almost in a screech.

"Britain never, ever, never - ever - shall be Slavs."

With a wobbly about-turn she strode off the stage to a stunned silence. She was back in her office in floods of tears, clutching the photograph of her beloved husband, Masters, when she heard a distant sound, rising to a great pounding that seemed to make all the paraphernalia in the room shake and dance.

Tad had started it. With a feeling of emotion that he had never experienced before he stood up and clapped. In no time the whole troupe joined in and then, almost frantically, they were stamping their feet. If the theatre had never witnessed such a stage performance, neither had it experienced such spontaneous love and affection welling up from the stalls for one small, very determined Scottish lady. At that moment Masters would have been - probably was - brimming over with pride.