For Bret everything suggested that the contact with the KGB team in the launderette would be mere routine. There had been no warning that things would go as they did. One minute he was sitting next to Bernard in an all-night launderette in Hampstead, and the next minute he was in the middle of one of the most horrifying nightmares of his entire life.

They were watching Samson's shirts revolving in the suds. Samson insisted that both of them brought laundry and had even produced a plastic bag of detergent; he said he didn't like the stuff they had in the shop. Bret wondered whether it was a mark of Samson's meticulous attention to detail or some sort of joke. Now Samson was intermittently reading a newspaper that was on his knee. He'd given Bret no indication at all that he had a damn great gun – with silencer attached – wrapped inside the Daily Telegraph. Samson had been chatting away about his father as if he had not a care in the world.

Bernard Samson could be an amusing companion if he was in a good mood. His caustic comments on his superiors, the government and indeed the world around him were partly his defence against a system that had never given him a proper chance in life, but they sometimes contained more than a grain of truth. Bernard's reputation was of being lucky, but his luck came from a professional attitude and a lot of hard work. Bernard was a tough guy and there can be no doubt that Bret's willingness to involve himself in this caper was largely due to the fact that he felt safe with Bernard.

Bret was wearing an old coat and hat he'd bought at the Oxfam shop specially for this evening's excursion. In the bag, under Bret's soiled laundry, there was a heavy manila envelope containing forty one-hundred-dollar bills. It was funding. The money was to be given to a KGB courier when he used the code word 'Bingo'. Positioned in the street outside the launderette there were enough men to warn Bret of their approach and – should Bret decide that they must be arrested – enough men to hold them. To Bret it seemed very straightforward, but it didn't turn out like that.

Things began with no warning from the men in the street. One of the KGB men had been hiding upstairs, in a room above the launderette, and when he came in unexpectedly he was brandishing a sawn-off shotgun. Then a second man entered; he too had a shotgun. One of the men said 'Bingo', the code word. Bret remained completely calm, or that was how he remembered it afterwards, and reached for the money to show them.

The sequence of the events that followed was disputed, although certainly everything happened in rapid succession. Samson said that this was when the car exploded in the street outside, but as Bret remembered it Samson took the initiative before that.

Samson did not stand up and fire his gun, he remained seated. He used Bret as a shield, and the rage that Bret felt when he realized that, stayed with him for the rest of his life. Leaning forward far enough to see the intruders – there were now two of them – Samson calmly took aim and fired. He didn't even take the gun out of the newspaper that concealed it. The gun was silenced. Bret heard two thuds and was astounded to see one of the KGB men reel back, drop his gun, clutch at his belly and fall over the washing machines spewing blood.

Samson was suddenly up and away. Bret remembered Samson pushing him roughly aside and seeing him stumble over the discarded gun on the floor, although in Samson's version he pushed Bret down to safety and then kicked the gun in Bret's direction. Samson had even reproached him for not picking up the gun and following him through the back door to chase the others.

Bret was suddenly left in the launderette watching the young KGB man die, vomiting and bleeding and mewling like a baby. Bret had never seen anything like this: it was brutal and loathsome. From upstairs somewhere there came more shots – Samson killed another man – and then it was all over and Bret found himself pushed roughly into a car and was speeding away into the night, and passing the police as they were arriving. To Bret's amazement Bernard Samson chose that moment to tell Bret he'd saved his life.

'Saving my life, you son of a bitch?' said Bret shrilly. 'First you shoot, using me as a shield. Then you run out, leaving me to face the music.'

Samson laughed. To some extent the laugh was a nervous reaction to the stress he had just been through, but it was a laugh that Bret would never forget. 'That's the way it is being a field agent, Bret,' he said. 'If you'd had experience or training, you would have hit the deck. Better still, you would have taken out that second bastard instead of leaving me to deal with all of them.'

Bret had hardly listened; he couldn't forget the sight of the dying KGB man bent over, holding tight to one of the washing machines, while his frothy blood streamed out of him to mix with the soapy water on the floor.

'You could have winged him,' croaked Bret.

Bernard scoffed at such naive talk. 'That's just for the movies, Bret. That's for Wyatt Earp and Jesse James. In the real world, no one is shooting guns out of people's hands or giving them flesh wounds in the upper arm. In the real world you hit them or you miss them. It's difficult enough to hit a moving target without selecting tricky bits of anatomy. So don't give me all that crap.'

It was no use arguing with him, Bret decided, but bad feeling remained. Bret resented the way that Bernard Samson made quick decisions with such firm conviction and seemed to have no misgivings afterwards. Women admired such traits, or seemed to, but Bret was finding every decision he had to make more and more difficult.

Bret was beginning to see that his own planning would have to entail ruthlessness at least the equal of Bernard's. But Bret's present state of mind didn't make things easy. Sometimes he sat staring at his desk for half an hour unable to conclude even self-evident matters. Perhaps Bret should not have gone to the doctor and asked his advice. The Department's doctor was competent and helpful – everything one wanted from a physician, in fact – but he did dutifully report back to the Department.

It began with no more than a slight loss of his usual power of concentration, and a tendency to wake up in the small hours of the morning unable to get back to sleep. Then Bret began to notice that he was being treated like an outsider. He was aware of being treated in a wary and distant manner even when he was chairing the committee. Substance was given to his suspicions when two subcommittees were formed and Bret was deliberately excluded from them. It meant that about three-quarters of the people on the committee were able to have meetings to which he was denied access.

What Bret didn't know was the way in which his downfall was being master-minded by Moscow. Bret had not been targeted because Moscow suspected that Fiona Samson had been planted in Berlin, or for any reason except that he was suddenly vulnerable to the sort of sting operation that they had proved so expert at many times in the past. Not only was Moscow able to blow upon the embers and help the rumours but as the operation proceeded there was false evidence planted. Some of it was crude enough to convince the real experts – like Ladbrook, the senior interrogator – that Moscow was trying to discredit Rensselaer, but that did not mean that the experts could afford to ignore it.

The Director-General had a rough idea of what was happening and decided to go to Berlin and talk to Frank Harrington. Frank was an old friend as well as a well-established member of the senior staff. That lunch and the subsequent afternoon of chatting with Frank did not set the D-G's mind at rest. What Frank told him was little more than washroom gossip but it prepared the D-G for the phone call from Internal Security that said that Ladbrook and Tiptree would like an appointment urgently. The caller boldly told Morgan – the D-G's assistant – that tomorrow would not be soon enough.