"Of course, " George went on, "if they've had ten days and not found any link with a British soldier – and we'd certainly know if they had – then it may never happen. Just blow over."

"Blagg would still be a deserter," Maxim pointed out.

"He'd given himself a rather limited choice of futures. I imagine he wouldn't rather be a murderer."

"I got the idea," Maxim persisted gently, "that he feels much worse about the desertion than the shooting. "

George went frog-eyed. "Harry, hekilled somebody. "

Maxim nodded. "Yes. Soldiers do."

George opened his mouth to say something, then remembered he was talking to a soldier who had most certainly killed people, one of them since he had come to work at Number 10. Quite likely Blagg had killed before, too.

Maxim went on: "Blagg was chaperoning somebody heknew worked for The Firm. Working for his country. When that German started shooting, he became The Enemy. Now Blagg expects his country to back him up."

"Was there any hint of blackmail?" George asked, suddenly sharp.

"No, I don't think so. He's not a bloody fool, of course -well yes, he is, in a way – but he knows it could be a big scandal that could hurt Britain, and particularly the Army. In a way, that's why he went over the hill: to protect the Army. "

"That is romantic twaddle."

"Soldiersare romantic," Maxim said evenly. "They watch war movies and like dressing up in funny clothes and calling themselves funny names like Dragoon Guards."

A quarter of a century before, George had done his two years' National Service in a Dragoon Guards regiment. They had been the happiest years of his life – or at least they increasingly seemed so, in retrospect – butromantic? He looked at Maxim suspiciously. "Well… what did he expect you to do?"

"Wash him clean and send him back to square one."

"Does he know what he's asking?"

"I doubt it. He doesn't know how an atom bomb works, either. He just knows that it does and assumes we do, too."

"Where do such mad ideas originate? All right: you pop round to the embassy and see what you can turn up. Do nothing else. We'll have to play this hand ourselves – I can't tell the Headmaster and I'm certainly not bringing Tired Tim into this." He paused with his hand on the doorknob."Romantic?"

When George had gone, Maxim rang the German embassy and made an appointment to visit the press office files. Then he filled in time by filing his cuttings and tidying the desk generally. It was a new desk: the Housekeeper's Office hadjust got around to replacing the old rolltop that had been there when he first joined Number 10nearly six months ago. He had spent most of those months complaining about it, with its drawers that were the wrong size for standard files and usually jammed anyway, but now he missed it. Now he had anindestructible grey metal box, just like a quarter of a million civil servants, and it was trying to digest him, to turn him into a civil soldier.

That was a childish (or romantic?) thought, but he was feeling the itch of a problem he wasn't supposed to scratch. Abruptly, he picked up the phone and asked for the Bradbury Lines at Hereford, and then for the adjutant of 22SAS.They knew each other well, and the talk was cheerful, rambling, casual. But when he rang off, Maxim had learned that Captain Fairbrother had finished his SAS tourand rejoined the Brigade five months ago. For the last six weeks he had been in Alberta liaising with the Canadian Army about the live-ammunition exercises to be held there later in the summer.

"Bugger it," Maxim said aloud. Somebody had been lying. Probably everybody had been lying to some extent – that was only to be expected – but bugger it nonetheless. He sat frowning down at the desk and it crouched there, square and smug, knowing there were already more desks than soldiers and that all it had to do was wait.

Chapter 5

Bush House was both different and the same in unsettling ways; always they changed the things you didn't expect and kept the things that should have changed long ago. Security was much stricter: now everybody walked about with security passes clipped to their lapels showing a coloured photograph of themselves. Visitors got a sticky label like a large coin. All ridiculous, of course – but then she remembered the Bulgarian and the Libyan who had worked for the BBC's External Service, both murdered. They never caught the killer of the Bulgarian; 'The arm of justice is longer than the legs of a traitor'. She shivered and asked for the lavatory and there finished the last of the brandy, then tried to wash the smell out of her mouth. She should never have come, and anyway, Leni couldn't still be here.

But incredibly, she was. After a lot of reluctant telephoning around, the man at the reception desk grunted that Leni was corning down and wrote out her own sticky label.

Dear sweet Leni, always small and frail, now smaller and frailer, but the blue eyes still bright behind the big glasses and the thin white hair carefully set in tight curls. And of course the long drooping cardigan that was almost a BBC uniform.

They hugged each other, close like men, not standing right back so that their breasts wouldn't touch, and tears were already trickling from under Leni 's glasses. "Darling Mina, you should have called me… why didn't you let me know? I thought you must be dead… Oh, Mina, Mina, it's so good to see you, but you should have called, you were lucky to catch me, I only come in on Mondays as a relief, just to give the young ones a full two days off… Oh, to see you again, why didn't you call?…"

The corridors were different ones but comfortingly still the same: roofed with all sorts of meaningless pipes and cables, walled with flimsy wood-and-frosted-glass partitions covered with junction boxes and noticeboards. How the BBC loved noticeboards! – she had forgotten that. All the dreadful warnings about fire and flooding and abandoned parcels, the cheery invitations to disco evenings, hockey clubs and hiking holidays…

At the door to theoffice Mina suddenly stopped and seized Leni 's thin arm with her twisted hand. She saw Leni lookdown at the hand, then quickly up again. "No -Leni, I don't want to meet anybody. Just you. I came to see just you. "

"Nobody will know you. They're all gone, they change so often… Only old Hunke. They won't know your name. Tell me – do I know your name?"

Mina ignored the question. "Somewhere we can talk together, just you and I. "

"Of course. "Leni led the way along the corridor, trying doors until she found a small empty room. She shut the door and started rummaging in a cupboard while Mina stared uncomprehending at the data system screen and the purring teletype. Leni came up with a half full bottle of vodka and two dusty glasses. She poured two tots."Prosit."

They sipped, and Mina asked: "The machines – do they do all the work now?"

"They can't translate. Not yet, anyway. "Leni smiled, still moist-eyed. "Do you hear us?"

"Oh yes, I hear it when I can. But where I live-" she stopped abruptly, shaking her head. "And now I don't know any of the voices…"Leni herself didn't broadcast. "Do they still jam you?"

"The Russian service. And they tried to jam the German, since the strike, but now we have this big Army transmitter in Berlin, on 90.2. It isn't so easy to jam that."

"The strike…"Mina took a quick drink. "What do they say about Gustav?"

"He's a big man, now. One of the new members of the Secretariat."

"Oh. That is important?"

Mina had always been totally vague about political structures, even one she had lived with for years. Leni said patiently: "It is the most important, the Secretariat of the Polit-bureau. There are now only eight members, including Manger who will not last more than a year, and your Gustavis one of the youngest. He has moved up fast: he came onto the Politbureau only five years ago. In a few years, who can tell?"