So this is when the nerves start working on us, and they know that, the people in operations. They know that if they don't handle us with kid gloves they're going to lose an agent, not out there in the field but safe at home here in London, ready at any second to take offence, to read double meanings in whatever they say to us, to flare up at the slightest thing, at a tone of voice, like tonight when that bastard Trench tried to throw his weight around, I'd rather not have to ask Mr Croder to come on the line, as if he'd been talking to a bloody trainee down from Norfolk on his first bloody mission, as if. Slow down. This is just the waiting time, the worst time. I'd seen Bradley coming out of Clearance last week — he hadn't even got that far — with his face white and his hands flying all over the place for something to hang onto, some sort of spiritual lifeline, while he'd gone on shouting at them — You'll have to get someone else for this one, God damn your eyes, you'll have to get someone else. He'd been back only ten days from the Beirut thing and his nerves were still like a disco hall after what they'd done to him in the interrogation cell.

When you're that far gone, it's finis. They'll write you off the books and send you home with a final handshake, their eyes not quite meeting yours, and you'll end up pruning the roses and washing the Mini to pass the time before you can go along and pick up your pension cheque. Mother of God, don't let it ever happen to me: let them find me out there somewhere with my arms spreadeagled on a minefield and the earth still coming down and the stink of cordite on the air, not with a whimper, gentlemen, with a bang when it's got to come.