"No problem, sir."

Mattie liked the way that Charlie addressed him. That was his father's stamp on the young man, and his mother's too, in fairness to her.

"Long time, dear boy."

"It's a new skill for me, learning to write reports, sir. I hope it will be of use to you." Charlie reached into his blazer pocket, took out a thick envelope, handed it to Mattie. Mattie didn't examine it, just slid it down into an inner pocket of his suit then drew across a zip fastener at the top of the pocket, another old habit. Wouldn't do for a Desk Head to get his pocket picked in the Underground.

"I'm looking forward to it… Heard from your mother?"

" N o. " Charlie said it as if it didn't matter to him that his mother never wrote nor telephoned from California. As if it was nothing to him that the golf course and the bridge club and the riding school filled his mother's days and evenings, that she regarded him as a relic of a former life in Iran that was best forgotten, that was pain to remember.

"I read about your escapade, the good old Tehran Times.

Carried on the radio as well."

A slow smile on Charlie's face.

"… You weren't compromised?"

"There was a search afterwards, plenty of roadblocks. No, they didn't know what they were looking for. They put it down to the 'hypocrites'. It went quite well."

Mattie could almost have recited the text of the IRNA communique reproduced in the Tehran Times. In separate incidents in south Tehran two Islamic Revolutionary Guards martyred in broad daylight by MKO ( Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation) counter-revolutionary mustaqqfin (hypocrites) working in conjunction with American mercenary agents.

Now that Harry had retired, gone more than four years, the IRNA communiques reached him ahead of the BBC's transcripts. He missed the messenger's service.

"We came up with a nice one for the next run," Mattie said. He offered the supermarket bag that was taut from the weight of its contents. "Instructions inside."