The arm of the crane surged upwards.

She died painfully, struggling, but quickly.

For two hours, high above the street, her body hung from the arm of the crane.

The old man made his way along the corridor.

He was an institution in the building, a throwback really to the days before the Service had been equipped with consoles, software and instant communications. In his own way the messenger was something of a celebrity at Century House because of the time he had been with the Service. He, almost' alone, had known intimately the warren of the former offices that spanned Queen Anne's Gate and Broadway; he had been on the payroll under seven Director Generals, and it had become difficult for any of the older people at Century to imagine being able to cope without him. His approach was slow. He had never quite mastered the artificial limb fitted below the right knee cap. He had been a young man when he had lost his leg, a corporal of infantry on garrison duty in Palestine when he had stepped on a crude anti-personnel mine.

He was paid for a 38-hour week, and not a week went by when he was inside Century for less than 60 hours.

Across the Thames, muffled by the sealed windows of the tower block, Big Ben struck nine thirty. The steel toe and heel caps of the messenger's shoes scraped along the composite tiles. There was silence around him. Office doors locked, rooms darkened. But he could see the light at the distant finishing post of the corridor. This evening, every weekday evening, the messenger performed a personal service for Mr Matthew Furniss. He carried by hand the transcript of the main evening news bulletin on the Home Service of Tehran Radio, monitored and translated at the BBC premises at Caversham, relayed by telex to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and thence to Century.