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KORVETTENKAPITÄN VON Strehssen looked old for his rank; as, indeed, he was. If it had not been for the machinations of that lunatic, the Fuhrer, he would have been enjoying by now an easy and peaceful retirement, which was the one thing to which he had looked forward all through his naval career. He hadn’t joined the Navy to become an Admiral or to win medals: the whole project had been his father’s, or perhaps his grandfather’s, at a time when he himself was still in the cradle and consequently was not consulted or told anything about it. But by the time he was four he’d known all about all of it, and from that stage it seemed to him now whenever he looked back on it, which he did more and more frequently, that he had sprung almost directly from a pram into a suit of uniform; and now
