'Does Ned know?' I ask, when I can get a word in.

'He can't. None of us can. We're talking the highest strategic classifications.'

'I meant, does he know you've made them a present of his joe?'

'I want you to come down to Langley immediately and thrash out terms with your opposite numbers here. Randy will arrange transport. Palfrey?'

'Does he know?' I repeat.

Clive makes one olf his telephone silences, in which you are'supposed to work out all the ways in which you are at fault.

'Ned will be brought up to date when he gets back to London, thank you. That will be quite soon enough. Until then I shall expect you to say nothing. The r6le of the Russia House will be respected. Sheriton values the link. It will even be enlarged in certain ways, perhaps permanently. Ned should be grateful.'

The news was nowhere morejoyfully received than in the British trade press. Marriage with a Future , trumpeted Booknews a few weeks later in its trailer for the Moscow book fair. The long-rumoured engagement between Abercrombie & Blair of Norfolk Street, Strand, and Potomac Traders, Inc. of Boston, Mass., is ON! Seventeen-stone entrepreneur Jack Henziger has finally weighed in beside Barley Scott Blair of A. & B. with a new joint company titled Potomac & Blair, which plans an aggressive campaign in the fast-opening East Bloc markets. 'This is a shop window on tomorrow,' declares confident Henziger .

Moscow Book Fair, here they come!

The newsflash was accompanied by a warming photograph of Barley and Jack Henziger shaking hands across a bowl of flowers. The photograph was taken by the Service photographer in the safe house in Knightsbridge. Flowers by Miss Coad.

I met Hannah the day following my return from the island and I assumed we would make love. She looked tall and golden, which is the way she always looks when I have not seen her for a while. A Thursday, so she was taking her fourteen-year-old son Giles to some spurious consultant behind Harley Street. I have never cared for Giles, probably because I know that he was conceived on the rebound, too soon after I had sent her back to Derek. We sat in our usual evil caf6 drinking rancid tea,. while she waited for him to come out, and smoked, a thing I hate. But I wanted her, and she knew it.

'Whereabouts in America?' she said, as if it mattered.

'I don't know. Some island full of ospreys and bad weather.'

'I bet they weren't real ospreys.'

'They were, actually. They're common there.'

And I saw by the strain in her eyes that she wanted me too.

'Anyway, I've got to take Giles home,' she said, when we had sufficiently read each other's thoughts.

'Put him in a cab,' I suggested.

But by then we were opposed to each other once more, and the moment was dead.