Salt was attacking his person and he hated it. The foul stuff had crept into the weave and the weft of his beloved suits and shirts. The carnation in his lapel had withered and was about to disintegrate into a reddish dust. His razor-sharp creases were glinting with dirty silver smudges, and his cuffs were covered in flecks of grey. If he were magically transported to the middle of the Gobi Desert, he should be able to survive without water for a few days just by sucking the salt from his own waistcoat.
The small man was seated at one of the highly-polished tables in the high council chamber. The silence was heavy and ominous. Thousands of black and white photographs of the Reich were arranged in straight lines along the walls, alongside large oil paintings of ferocious wolves and dark, f
