Inevitable that he'd come himself after the low-key material that had been sent to the capital in transcript each evening. Mawby down from Century House to play the dragon and breathe some fire into the question and answer sessions of the debrief of Willi Guttmann.

'Putting it indelicately, Henry, he knows bugger all.'

'Barely worth the airfare, Mr Mawby,' Carter said mildly. He was aware that some of those in the Service who carried his own grading felt able to address the Assistant Secretary on first name terms. Sometimes it rankled that he had never received an invitation to do so.

'If we're lucky we get one of them a year. Either damned good or bloody useless.'

'I suppose we always hope for the platinum seam, what we're digging into here is barely fool's gold.' Carter often carried in his coat pocket a dried out crust taken surreptitiously from the kitchen. He ground a piece of bread to crumbs in his pocket and threw them discreetly in the direction of a pair of chaffinches, and saw with pleasure how their greed surpassed their caution.

'I'm supposed to report to Joint Intelligence Committee in the morning.'

'You'll not have much to tell them, Mr Mawby. I suppose his Foreign Ministry material is marginally interesting.'

'It's boring, uninformed and not new.'

'We were very thorough, the fellow you sent down here and me, the fellow with armour and missiles and warheads sprouting from eyes, ears, God knows where else. Very thorough, but the boy just stone-walled us.

"My father doesn't talk about his work", that's the hub of it, and the boy's sticking to it.'

'I'm going to put the rod across his back, Henry.'

Carter sighed. It was against all the precepts of a debrief that you hurry. 'If that's what you think right, Mr Mawby.'