'Kearns,' Shatner said, 'is still here in London.' He was fumbling in his worn tweed jacket for a cigarette.

'The DIF was sent out ahead of him?'

I felt Holmes touch my sleeve, but didn't take any notice: I'd been inactive for six weeks and the nerves were getting a bit strung out. I needed a mission, would steal one if necessary.

'Yes,' Shatner said, and looked at his battered wrist-watch.

'Why don't you send me out,' I asked him, 'now this has happened?' Kearns wasn't a senior shadow, would have his own nerves on edge now that his intended DIF had been blown all over the front of the Hotel d'Alsace in Paris.

Holmes touched my arm again, and this time I looked at him and got the message in the dark of his steady eyes.

'Oh,' Shatner said, 'I don't really know what's going to happen next. We might call the whole thing off.' He ducked his shaggy head and went hurrying along the corridor before I could say anything else.

'Spot of tea?' Holmes asked me.

'Not in the Caff.'

'Why not?'

'I've seen enough of that bloody place in the last six weeks.'

'Let's go and see a little more,' he said gently. I suppose Holmes knows better than anyone in this beleaguered backwater of the keyhole game that I can be led but not driven.

There were three other people in the Caff, a couple of them wearing club ties — down here from Administration to show how terribly democratic the Bureau is — and Kearns, sitting alone in a far corner staring into his teacup, legs crossed and one foot swinging the whole time, understandably. He hadn't looked up when we came in; I don't think he would have looked up if a herd of buffalo had come through.the door; all he could see was his very own director in the field going through the roof of his car — they would have shown him the tape, of course.