Bret Rensselaer's office accommodated him on the top floor along with all the other men who mattered at London Central. From his desk there was a view across that section of London where the parks are: St James's Park, Green Park, the garden of Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park were all lined up to make a continuous green carpet. In the summer it was a wonderful view. Even now, in winter, with a haze of smoke from the chimneys and the trees bare, it was better than looking at the dented filing cabinets in my room.

Bret was working. He was sitting at his desk, reading his paperwork and trying to make the world conform to it. The jacket of his suit, complete with starched white linen handkerchief in his top pocket, was placed carefully across the back of a chair that Bret seemed to keep for no other purpose. He wore a grey-silk bow tie and a white shirt with a monogram placed so that it could be seen even when he wore his waistcoat. The waistcoat – 'vest', he called it, of course – was unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled back.

He'd had his office furnished to his own taste – that was one of the perquisites of senior rank – and I remember the fuss there'd been when Bret brought in his own interior decorator. A lot of the obstructive arguments about it had come from someone in Internal Security who thought interior decorators were large teams of men in white overalls with steam hammers, scaffolding and pots of paint. In the event it was a delicate bearded man, wearing a denim jacket embroidered with flower patterns over a 'No Nukes' sweatshirt. It took a long time to get him past the doorman.

But the result was worth it. The centrepiece of the office was a huge, chrome, black-leather-and-glass desk, specially ordered from Denmark. The carpet was dark grey and the walls were in two shades of grey too. There was a long black chesterfield for visitors to sit on while Bret swivelled and rocked in a big chair that matched the chrome and leather of the desk. The theory was that the clothes of the occupants of the room provided all the necessary colour. And as long as the colourful bearded designer was in the room, it worked. But Bret was a monochrome figure and he blended into the decor as a chameleon matches its natural habitat, except that chameleons only match their surroundings when they're frightened.

'I'm taking over Stinnes,' he announced when I went into the room.

'I heard they were trying to hang that on you!' I said.

He grinned to acknowledge my attempt to put him down. 'No one hung it on me, buddy. I'm very happy to handle this end of the Stinnes debriefing.'

'Well, that's just great then,' I said. I looked at my watch. 'Have I arrived too early?'

We both knew that I was just poisoning the well for Dicky Cruyer and Morgan, but Bret went along with it. 'The others are late,' he said. They're always goddamned late.'

'Shall we start?' I said. 'Or shall I go and have a cup of coffee?'

'You sit where you are, smart ass. If you need coffee so urgently, I'll get some brought here.' He pressed a button on his white phone and spoke into a box while staring at the far side of the room with his eyes unfocused.

They sent coffee for four and Bret got to his feet and poured out all four cups so that Cruyer's coffee and Morgan's coffee were getting cold. It seemed a childish revenge, but perhaps it was the only one Bret could think of. While I drank my coffee Bret looked out of his window and then looked at things on his desk and tidied it up. He was a restless man who, despite an injured knee, liked to duck and weave and swing like a punch-drunk boxer. He came round and sat on the edge of his desk to drink his coffee; it was a contrived pose of executive informality, the kind that chairmen of big companies adopt when they're being photographed for Forbes magazine.

Even after Bret and I had been sitting there for ten minutes drinking in silence the other two had still not turned up. 'I saw Stinnes yesterday,' Bret finally volunteered. 'I don't know what they do to people at that damned Debriefing Centre, but he was in a lousy uncooperative mood.'

'Where have they put him, Berwick House?'

'Yes. Do you know that the so-called London Debriefing Centre has premises as far away as Birmingham?'

'They were using a place in Scotland until last year, when the D-G said we couldn't spare the travelling time for our staff going backwards and forwards.'

'Well, Stinnes isn't having a ball. He did nothing but complain. He said he's given us all he's going to give us until he gets a few concessions. The first concession is to go somewhere else. The Governor – the one you don't like: Potter – says Stinnes has threatened to escape.'

'How would you feel, restricted to Berwick House for week after week? It's furnished like a flophouse and the only outdoor entertainment is walking around the garden close to the walls to see how many alarms you can trigger before they order you back inside again.'

'It sounds as if you've been locked up there,' said Bret.

'Not there, Bret, but places very like it.'

'So you wouldn't have put him there?'

'Put him there?' I couldn't help smiling, it was so bloody ridiculous. 'Have you taken a look at the staff of the London Debriefing Centre lately?' I asked. 'Do you know where they recruit those people? Most of them are redundant ex-employees of Her Majesty's famous Customs and Excise Department. That fat one who is now officially designated the Governor – stop me if you're laughing so much it hurts – came from the Income Tax office in West Hartlepool. No, Bret, I wouldn't have put the poor bastard into Berwick House. I wouldn't have put Stalin there either.'

'So let's have it,' said Bret with studied patience. He slid off the edge of the desk and stretched his back as if he was getting stiff.

'I haven't given it a lot of thought, Bret. But if I wanted anyone to cooperate, I'd put him somewhere where he felt good. I'd put him into the Oliver Messel suite at the Dorchester Hotel.'

'You would, eh?' He knew I was trying to needle him.

'And do you know something, Bret? The Dorchester would cost only a fraction of what it's costing the taxpayer to hold him at Berwick House. How many guards and clerks do they have there nowadays?'

'And what's to stop him walking out of the Dorchester?'

'Well, Bret, maybe he wouldn't want to escape from the Dorchester the way he wants to get out of Berwick House.'

Bret leaned forward as if trying to see me better. 'I listen to everything you say, but I'm never quite sure how much of this crap you believe,' he said. I didn't reply. Then Bret said, 'I don't remember hearing any of these theories when Giles Trent was being held in Berwick House. You're the one who said he mustn't be allowed to smoke and arranged for him to have small-size pyjamas with buttons missing and a patched cotton dressing gown without a cord.'

'That's all standard drill for people we're interrogating. Jesus, Bret, you know the score, it's to make them feel inadequate. It wasn't my idea; it's old hat.'

'Stinnes gets the Oliver Messel suite and Trent didn't even get buttons for his "pj's"? What are you giving me?'

'Stinnes isn't a prisoner. He's come over to us voluntarily. We should be flattering him and making him feel good. We should be getting him into a mood so that he wants to give us one hundred per cent.'

'Maybe.'

'And Stinnes is a pro… he's an ex-field agent, not a pen pusher like Trent. And Stinnes knows his job from top to bottom. He knows that we're not going to rip out his fingernails or give him the live electrodes where it hurts most. He's sitting pretty, and until we play ball with him he'll remain stumm.'

'Have you discussed this with Dicky?' asked Bret.

I shrugged. Bret knew that Dicky didn't want to hear about Stinnes; he'd made that clear to everyone. 'No sense in letting the rest of the coffee get cold,' I said. 'Mind if I take Dicky's cup?'