His eyes watched me, vulnerable, submissive.

'Send you home.'

He nodded. 'How — how long will they give me?'

'What's that mean?'

'For what I've done.'

'You think you've done anything that matters?'

'I worked for them. For Moscow.'

'Don't get any illusions of grandeur. You made a mess and I've cleared it up, that's all.' The poor little bastard was trying to get rid of some of the guilt by picturing a stretch in the Scrubs. 'You'll be declared persona non grata for having engaged in inadmissible activities and put on a plane. They might try fixing you up with a bad smash on the way to the airport because you've been witness to their operation but I'm going to stop that one.' Then suddenly I saw what he meant. 'Listen, Merrick. Once you're in London the whole thing's over for you. In a case like this there won't be any muck-raking because it won't suit anyone's book: we've bust their project wide open and the press handouts are going to be strictly propagandist. Even the F.O. won't know the full story and it won't ask any questions because they'll be too busy putting the flags out. You'll leave the Diplomatic Service and go into some other ministry with first-class recommendations and that'll be that, so if you're thinking of trying another trick with a tram you can forget it.' Slowly I said: 'Your father will know absolutely nothing. Nothing about the photographs, nothing about your involvement with the K.G.B. Nothing.'

His face was perfectly blank. I couldn't tell if it had got through to him. Then I knew it had.

'I'm just going to be let off.'

'Christ, haven't you paid enough? Stop thinking about crime and bloody punishment, will you, it's old hat. You got caught in the works, you're not the only one. And you've been lucky, so settle for that.' I was fed up with his chocolate-box morality, with his inability to know that in the Intelligence services you've got to wrench your sense of values round till they face the other way. 'Look, I want to know some things: what were they after, specifically, when they told you to volunteer for a U.K. espionage job while you were on sick-leave in London?'

'I'm sorry, I don't quite — '

'Oh come on Merrick.' He was still lost in his dreams of atonement. 'The K.G.B. recruited you and you tried to kill yourself and it didn't come off so you went on leave and while you were in London they told you to fish around for a job in one of the hush services and I'm asking you why they did it.'

Because I couldn't make it fit. They'd picked him for the show trial, not for infiltrating the opposition.

'It wasn't their idea.'

My head seemed to freeze and thought went cold. After a bit I said

'Whose was it?'

'Mine.'

'You'd better tell me.'

Then he had to get the bloody thing out and pump it. 'Excuse me.'

'Get a chair.'

'Yes.'

'Right.'

'When I was on leave I told Mr Frazer about — '

'Who's he?'

'Head of Personnel at the Foreign Office. We all like him, because he takes a lot of real interest in us and — '

'All right, Dutch uncle, well?'

'I told him about the photographs, and asked him what I could do. He was very worried — '

'Oh my, God.'

The whole picture began coming up: the one I hadn't been able to see when I'd stood at the window scratching the ice away with my nails. At that time I didn't have the facts. I had one now.

Egerton had known.

'What's the matter?'

'He was worried. What did he do?'

'He said he'd get someone's advice.'

Frazer could have gone to someone he knew in M.I.6 or the O.I.B. or the Security Service but it had happened to be Egerton. Frazer was in a bad spot because the press wouldn't have any mercy on him if it came out that yet another homosexual had been posted to a Curtain embassy, a high security risk because of his susceptiblity to being compromised. Since the Vassall case the public had lost patience and this time there were added dangers: the person of Sir Walford Merrick increased the menace of the photographs and at the same time brought the risk of explosive scandal close to the Throne.

'He didn't say who's advice he was going to get?'

'No. He just said it was someone who knew about things like that.'

'Then the bastards did a deal.'

'I'm not sure — '

'Never mind.'

Cosily, over a glass of sherry. Well what d'you expect me to do about it? I don't know, but I'd be grateful for any advice. Think he'd be willing to do a bit of work for us? I'd imagine so — he's in a pretty awful state about those damned snapshots. All right then, send him along and we'll find a little job for him, then you can both stop worrying.

The time had been right. Things looked like getting rough in the Polish Republic and the U.K. was interested in what the chances were of revolt and subsequent invasion and what the effect would be on the East-West talks. Merrick could keep his ear to the ground and at the same time pass back info on the K.G.B.: their orders to him would be analysed in London to provide an insight into the way Moscow was thinking.

A bargain's a bargain, however foul: a word in the ear of Sir Walford across the coffee-table or in the calidarium or on the eighteenth green: if he should hear anything, or receive any kind of evidence, to the detriment of his son, he should discount it totally, since certain duties of high value to his country might expose him to false accusations.

It was horrible of them, to do that.

And those bastards in London no better.

'I suppose you told them you doubted your capabilities, no experience in hush operations, so forth?'

He watched me from above his hands. His hands were cupped against his face, as if he were trying to hide. He'd get over that, given time. given peace.

'Yes I did. But they said I'd be among friends at the Embassy, and they'd send someone out here to look after me.'

'Who directed you?'

He'd only met Egerton once, and I'd been there.

'I never knew his name.'

There was a question he wanted to ask but he knew it might sound naive and make him look silly. He'd had enough humiliation. I did it for him: 'He said I wasn't to be told you'd been entrapped by the K.G.B. I wasn't to know.'

He nodded, his hands sliding away from his face.

Because Egerton had seen the risk: that Merrick was doubling for Moscow and his cover-story was the photographs and his job was to infiltrate the Bureau. And he'd wanted me to find out.

If a Control director knows his executive in the field, knows his style and potential, he can do things with him that would otherwise be impossible. The director-executive relationship is peculiar to the trade and has immense value for both parties but especially for Control. Egerton had selected me for a mission that I didn't even know was being given me — a little trip abroad, only a few days — and he'd sent me in blind, knowing that if I worked to form I'd find the target for myself, sniffing out the directions and scratching away at the earth like a good little ferret until I reached what he knew must be there, somewhere east of the Oder, and made my kill.

He had known, essentially, that most of us would have refused to take on a job as diffuse as this with no local control, no communications except through the Embassy and no positive leading-in data to work on; and he'd selected me because he knew I'd want to go in deeper the minute I sensed the field, simply because I like being left alone when I've found something to play with. It had been the only way to rope me in.

The mission had been to make contact with the K.G.B., discover their project and inactivate it. Define, infiltrate and destroy. That was now accomplished. This operation now defused:

The risk hadn't been high: he'd known I wouldn't go nearer Merrick than I'd go to a rabid dog until I'd got the scent of the field and located its hazards.