'Yes, I've even had members of the staff confiding their fears about it,' said the D-G sadly.

'When a chap is having a difficult time with his wife he can get away to work; a chap having a hard time in the office can look forward to a break when he gets home to his family, Bernard Samson is under continual pressure.'

'I understood that he has formed some kind of liaison with one of the junior female staff,' said the D-G.

'Samson is a desperate man,' said Frank with simple truth. He didn't want to talk about Samson's private life: do to all men as I would they should do unto me, was Frank's policy.

'I asked you about Rensselaer,' said the D-G.

'Samson is a desperate man,' said Frank, 'but he can withstand a great deal of criticism. He is a born rebel so he can fight back when called a traitor or a lecher or anything else. Bret is a quite different personality. He loves England as only the foreign-born romantic can. To such people the merest breath of suspicion comes like a gale and is likely to blow them away.'

'Well done, Frank! Was it Literae Humaniores you read at Wadham?'

Frank smiled ruefully but didn't answer. He'd known the D-G ever since they were very young and shared a billet in the war. The D-G knew all about Frank Harrington's mastery of the Greek and Roman classics, and – Frank suspected – was still somewhat envious of it.

The D-G said, 'Will Bret crack up? If the committee turn upon him – as committees in our part of the world have a habit of turning upon a vulnerable chairman – will Bret stand firm?'

'Has this inquiry been given a name?' asked Frank.

The D-G smiled. 'It's an inquiry into Erich Stinnes, and the way he's been handled since coming over to us.'

'Bret will take a battering,' pronounced Frank.

'Is that what you think?'

'The Department is awash with rumours, Sir Henry. You must know that or you wouldn't be here asking me these questions.'

'What is the thrust of the rumours?'

'Well, it's commonly thought that Erich Stinnes has made a complete fool of Bret Rensselaer, and of the Department.'

'Bret was not experienced enough to handle a wily fellow like Stinnes. I thought Samson would keep Bret on the straight and narrow but I was wrong. It now seems that Stinnes was sent to us on a disinformation mission.'

'Is that official?' Frank asked.

'No, I'm still not sure what sort of game Stinnes is playing.'

'A senior official like Stinnes sent on a disinformation mission can do whatever he likes and damn the consequences. He might well decide to come over to us.'

'I share that view.' The D-G took out his cigar case and for a moment was going to light a cigar. Then he decided against it. The doctor had told him to stop smoking altogether, but he always carried a couple of cigars with him so that he didn't become too desperate. Perhaps it was a silly idea to do that: sometimes it was torture. 'You said that some of the staff were of the opinion that Bret had been made a fool of. What do the rest think?'

'Most of the staff know that Bret is reliable and resourceful.'

'You know what I mean, Frank.'

'Yes, I know what you mean. Well, there are some hotheads who think perhaps Bret was working with Fiona Samson.'

'Working with her? They think Bret Rensselaer and Fiona Samson have both been under Moscow's orders for that long?'

'It's an extreme view, Sir Henry, but they spent a lot of time together. There are stories of them having a love affair – a couple of sightings in the wrong hotels, you know the sort of thing. Even young Samson is not entirely certain that it's not true.'

'I didn't realize that such absurd stories were going around.'

'People wonder what motivated Bret, after a lifetime behind a desk, to grab a gun, rush into that launderette and try his hand at the sharp end. We have people trained to do that sort of thing.'

'It wasn't quite like that,' said the D-G.

'The gunfight at the OK Corral was how one of the newspapers described it. I'm afraid that description has provided the basis for a lot of doubtful jokes.'

The D-G sniffed audibly and then again. 'Berlin smells of beer, have you ever noticed that, Frank? Of course it's not the only German town with that odour but I notice it in Berlin more than anywhere else. Hops or malt or something…'he added vaguely, as if wanting to declare his unfamiliarity with that plebeian beverage.

'You'll have to support him. Sir Henry. Visibly and unequivocally.'

'I won't be able to do that, Frank. He must take his chances.'

'What do you mean, sir?'

'There are good reasons why I can give him no support; no support whatsoever.'

Frank was stunned. Despite the unwavering good manners for which he was famed, Frank was on the point of asking what the hell the Director-General was there to do, if it wasn't to support his staff when they were in trouble. 'Are those reasons operational or political?'

It was as near as Frank had ever gone to open rebellion, but the D-G accepted the reproach. On the other hand, the decision not to confide the truth about Fiona Samson to Frank was a sound one. Stinnes had to go back to Moscow firmly believing that Fiona Samson was a traitor. To say there were operational reasons for not supporting Bret Rensselaer was only a step away from revealing the whole story of Fiona Samson's mission. 'I can't go into that, Frank,' said the D-G in a voice that drew the line across Frank's toes. If Bret Rensselaer was suspected of being Fiona's co-conspirator, so be it.

'One supplementary, Director,' said Frank, his voice and form of address making it an official question. 'Is Rensselaer to be left to die of exposure? Is he to wither on the vine? Is that the purpose of the inquiry? I have to know in order to formulate my own responses.'

'My God, no! The last thing I want to see is Bret Rensselaer thrown to the sharks, especially the sharks of Whitehall. I want Rensselaer to come out of this on top. But I can't go in and rescue him.'

'I'm glad you made that clear, Sir Henry.'

The exchange of views had produced a stalemate, and the D-G recognized it as such. 'I still have a great deal of work for Rensselaer to do, and he's the only one equipped to do it.'

Frank nodded and thought it was some sort of reference to Bret's Washington contacts, which had always been important to the Department.

The story of that shooting in the Hampstead launderette that had worried the D-G and which the newspapers, and Frank Harrington, were pleased to call 'The Gunfight at the OK Corral' starts a week or so before the D-G's visit to Berlin.

Had Bret Rensselaer displayed his usual common sense he would have kept well out of it. It was a job for the Department's field agents. But Bret was not himself.

Bret Rensselaer missed Fiona Samson, he missed her terribly. Over the time when they had been working together they had met regularly and furtively, like lovers, and this had added to the zest. Bret could not, of course, tell anyone of this feeling he had, and his passion was not assuaged by seeing Bernard Samson, deprived of that perfect woman, going about his business in his usual carefree way. No matter what some people said about Samson's anguish Bret could only see the Bernard it suited him to see. He was especially outraged to discover that Bernard was now living with a gorgeous young girl from the office. Heaven knows how the children were reacting. Bret was appalled by this but took great care to disguise his feelings in the matter. He could see no way to influence what happened to the Samson children. He hoped that Fiona wasn't going to accuse him of bad faith at some future time.

Bret's participation in the shooting in the launderette changed a lot of things. For him it was nothing less than traumatic. Traumatic in the literal sense that the violent events of that night inflicted upon Bret a mental wound from which he never completely recovered.