I looked down at the firefly dance on the stage. The music played softly. It took me three or four seconds. I had booked for the show by phone, asking for a box because I didn't want to sit with anyone: half my six months had been spent sitting wedged between people at the trial and I felt contaminated. This reservation had been made in the name of Schultze, so he could have gone right through the list at the box-office without finding me. There was only one way.

Between us we set three quick traps and sprung them:

"So you've got access to the box-office," I said.

"Yes."

"No go. I used the name Schultze."

"We knew that."

"By tapping my phone."

He said: " Correct."

My leading trap had been set to find out if he were still testing me. He was. Otherwise he would have said, 'No, we didn't go to the box-office.' Instead, he had trapped me back at once with the one word – ' yes ' – to see if I'd spring it. I did: with ' Schultze '. Even then he wouldn't let me off the hook, because I had only gone half-way, telling him that I knew he would have drawn blank at the box-office. That was how they hadn't found me; he wanted me to tell him how they had. He wanted the other half: how had they known about Schultze? So I threw it for him and he took it: ` Correct.'

I didn't like that word. He'd used it twice – it was a schoolmaster's word. I didn't like being tested. Who did he think I was – a fresh scout just out of the training-school?

Down there they'd got off their chests the aerial ballet of intricate patterns that bespelled the eye and the footlights came on again. Under the applause I said loudly: "I don't like being put through the hoop by an unknown contact right at the bitter end of a mission and I don't like my phone being tapped. How long has it been going on? "