What was I supposed to say – 'I'm sorry'? Had Tessa told him that I knew, or was he just guessing? I looked at him to see if he was serious or smiling. I wanted to react in the way he wanted me to react. But Dicky wasn't looking at me; he was looking into the distance, thinking perhaps of his final tête-à-tête with Tessa.

'It had to end,' said Dicky. 'She was upset, of course, but I was determined. It was making Daphne unhappy. Women can be very selfish, you know.'

'Yes, I know,' I said.

'Tessa's had a thing about me for years,' said Dicky. 'You could see that, I'm sure.'

'I did wonder,' I admitted.

'I loved her,' said Dicky. This was all something he was determined to get off his chest and I was the only suitable audience for him. I settled back and let him continue. He didn't need encouraging. 'Once in a lifetime, perhaps, you find yourself in a trap from which there is no escape. One knows it's wrong, knows people will be hurt, knows there will be no happy ending. But one can't escape.'

'Is that how it happened with you and Tessa?' I said.

'For a month I couldn't get her out of my mind. She occupied my every thought. I got no work done.'

'When was that?' Dicky getting no work done was not enough to give me a reference to the date.

'Long ago,' said Dicky. His arms still folded, he hugged himself. 'Did Daphne tell you?'

Careful now. The red-for-danger light was glowing inside my head. 'Daphne? Your Daphne?' He nodded. 'Tell me what?'

'About Tessa, of course.'

'They're friends,' I said.

'I mean did she mention that I was having an affair?'

'With Tessa?'

'Of course with Tessa.' I suppose I was overdoing the innocence. He was getting testy now and I didn't want that either.

'Daphne wouldn't talk to me about such things, Dicky.'

'I thought she might have poured her heart out to you about it. She pestered several other friends of ours. She said she was going to get a divorce.'

‘I glad it's turned out all right,' I said.

'Even now she's still very moody. You'd think she'd be overjoyed, wouldn't you? Here I've made Tessa unhappy – terribly unhappy -to say nothing of my own sacrifice. Finito.' He made a slicing movement of the hand. 'I've given up the woman I truly love. You'd think Daphne would be happy, but no… Do you know what she said last night? She said I was selfish.' Dicky bared his teeth and forced a laugh. 'Selfish. That's a good one, I must say.'

'A divorce would have been terrible,' I said.

'That's what I told her. Think of the kids, I said. If we split, the children would suffer more than either of us. So you never knew that I was having an affair with your sister-in-law?'

'You kept it pretty dark, Dicky,' I said.

He was pleased to hear that. 'There have been a lot of women in my life, Bernard.'

'Is that so?'

'I'm not the sort of man who boasts of his conquests – you know that, Bernard – but one woman could never be enough for me. I have a powerful libido. I should never have got married. I realized that long ago. I remember my old tutor used to say that the trouble with marriage is that while every woman is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor.' He chuckled.

'I have to see Werner Volkmann at five,' I reminded him.

Dicky looked at his watch. 'Is that the time? How that clock goes round. Every day it's the same.'

'Do you want me to brief him before he sees the Stinnes committee?'

'The Rensselaer committee, you mean. Bret is very keen it's called the Rensselaer committee so that we'll keep control of it.' Dicky said this in such a way as to suggest that we'd already lost control of it.

'Whatever it's called, do you want me to brief Werner Volkmann about what to say to them?'

'Is there something that we don't want him to tell them?'

'Well, obviously I'll warn him he can't reveal operating procedures, codes, safe houses…'

'Jesus Christ!' said Dicky. 'Of course he can't reveal departmental secrets.'

'He won't know that unless someone tells him,' I said.

'You mean we should warn all of our people who are called to give evidence?'

'Either that or you could talk to Bret. You could make sure that each person called to give evidence is told that there are guidelines they must follow.'

'Tell Bret that?'

'One or the other, Dicky.'

Dicky slid off the table and walked up and down, his hands pushed into the pockets of his jeans and his shoulders hunched. There's something you'd better know,' he said.

'Yes?' I said.

'Let's go back to one evening just after you came back from Berlin with that transcript… the German woman who disappeared into the Havel last Christmas. Remember?'

'How could I forget.'

'You were getting very excited about the radio codes she used. Am I right?'

'Right,' I said.

'Would you like to tell me that over again?'

'The codes?'

'Tell me what you told me that evening.'

'I said she was handling material, selected material, for transmission. I said it was stuff that they didn't want handled by the Embassy.'

'You said it was good. You said it was probably Fiona's stuff that this woman was sending.'

'That was just conjecture.' I wondered what Dicky was trying to get me to say.

'Two codes, you said. And you said two codes was unusual.'

'Unusual for one agent, yes.'

'You're beginning to clam up on me, Bernard. You do this sometimes, and it makes my life very difficult.'

'I'm sorry, but if you told me what you were getting at, I might be able to be more explicit.'

That's right – make it my fault. You're good at that.'

'There were two codes. What else do you want to know?' 'ironfoot and jake. You said that Fiona was ironfoot. And you said 'Who the hell is jake?' Right?' 'I found out afterwards that ironfoot was a mistranslation for pig IRON.'

Dicky frowned. 'Did you follow that up, even after I told you to drop it?'

'I was at Silas Gaunt's house. Brahms Four was there. I just casually mentioned the distribution of material and asked him about it.'

'You're bloody insubordinate, Bernard. I told you to drop that one.' He waited for my reply, but I said nothing and that finally forced him to say, 'Okay, okay. What did you find out from him?'

'Nothing I didn't already know, but he confirmed it.'

'That if there were two codes, there were two agents?'

'Normally, yes.'

'Well, you were right, Bernard. Now maybe we see the killing of the Miller woman in another light. The KGB had her killed so that she couldn't spill the beans. Unfortunately for those bastards on the other side of the fence, she'd already spilled the beans… to you.'

'I see,' I said. I guessed what was coming, but Dicky liked to squeeze the maximum effect out of everything.

'So who the hell's jake, you asked me. Well, maybe I can now tell you the answer to that question. jake is Bret Rensselaer! Bret is a double and probably has been for years. We have reports going back to his time in Berlin. Nothing conclusive, nothing that makes firm evidence, but now things are coming together.'

'That's quite a shock,' I said.

'Damned right it's a shock. But I can't say you look very surprised, Bernard. Have you been suspicious of Bret?'

'No, I don't…'

'It's not fair to ask you that question. It makes me sound like Joe McCarthy. The fact is that the D-G is dealing with the problem. Now perhaps you realize why Bret is in Northumberland Avenue rubbing shoulders with those MI5 heavies.'

'Has the old man delivered him to MI5 without telling him?'

'Sir Henry wouldn't do anything like that, especially not to one of our own. No, Ml5 know nothing of this. But the old man wanted Bret out of this building and working somewhere away from our sensitive day-to-day papers while Internal Security investigate him… Now this is all just between the two of us, Bernard. I don't want a word of this to go out of this room. I don't want you telling Gloria or anyone like that.'