William agreed that it must be interesting. But what qualifications, he wondered, did Angelica have for the job? Or was a job at GCHQ like a place in the Windward Islands - allocated with no regard to desert?

“They took me because of my degree in Russian,” Angelica said. “I don't know if you were aware that I studied Russian at university.”

William was not.

“Well, I did,” said Angelica. “I went to St Andrews. Russian was quite a popular subject in those days. I didn't use it very much, of course - not when I was running the bookshop. But then it came in very handy when I went to GCHQ.”

“It would,” said William, picturing Angelica at a desk, in headphones, in front of a crystal radio, a frown of concentration on her brow.

“And then I was transferred,” Angelica continued. “Back to London. To MI6.”

William thought that he had misheard her. “MI6?”

“Yes,” said Angelica calmly. “Intelligence work. But of a different sort.”

Chapter 4: The Dangers of Boeuf Stroganoff

For a few moments after Angelica's revelation, William said nothing. He had read of MI6, of course, and had passed its building near Vauxhall Bridge on numerous occasions. For an organisation whose business was secrets, the building seemed hardly appropriate, being, as it was, quite open-looking, and apparently not at all suitable for shady work of the sort that MI6 - and presumably Angelica herself - engaged in.

He knew, as everybody did, that it was MI6 headquarters and had speculated on what went on within. He had seen people going in and out of the front door - quite openly - and they had seemed to him to be no different from the people who went in and out of any building in the City, for example.