Naire-Hamilton frowned but, before the question came, Wilson said, ‘Cape Town was the code allocation we gave Rome. There can’t be any mistake.’

‘That couldn’t be worse.’

‘I thought it might be bad.’

The Permanent Under Secretary splayed his fingers, to tick off the points. ‘In three weeks’ time, Italy is hosting a Common Market Summit; every European president, prime minister, foreign minister and God knows how many other ministers will be there…’ The first finger came down. ‘Chief item on the agenda is an attack mounted by us against Italy, for using Market regulations to avoid their full budgetary contribution…’ He lowered the second finger. ‘We intend announcing our intention to lessen our financial commitment to NATO unless Italy gets into line…’ Down went the third finger. ‘This year Britain has the presidency of the Council…’ He threw up his hands in despair. ‘… and now we’re going to be shown up as the country to have right in the middle of everything a traitor leaking it all back to Moscow…’

‘I understand the difficulty,’ said the intelligence director. Naire-Hamilton seemed to have overlooked that there had been three assassinations; perhaps he didn’t have enough fingers.

‘Discretion,’ announced the civil servant.

‘What?’

‘It’s to be handled with discretion: absolute and utter discretion. No scandal whatsoever.’

‘We haven’t got him yet,’ said Wilson.

‘There can’t be any embarrassment,’ insisted Naire-Hamilton.

Conservative parties, Labour parties and even Social Democratic parties might fight elections and dream of power, but people like Naire-Hamilton regarded the changes like a bus driver allocated a temporary inspector: there might be occasional changes of route, but they were always in the driving seat.