This dramatized report of an Intelligence mission by a shadow executive controlled from London forms part of a series bearing the key-titles of Memorandum, Directive, Portfolio, and so on. It may seem curious that in all these reports the name of the executive rarely appears. The reason is as follows.

It is necessarily a code-name. Further, the policy of the Bureau controlling him dictates anonymity even in confidential speech, as a point of routine security. During a mission the code-name is never used, since a mission demands a cover and hence a cover name, which is used even in signals between the executive and his Control. This name itself must sometimes be changed if the cover is blown and he is thus exposed to great and immediate hazard: a new cover must be arranged and with it a new name.

The identities, therefore, of the Bureau's active staff are confined strictly to its secret files, for the purposes of administration. For the record, the executive whose work is the subject of these reports bears a single code-name: Quiller.

There would be no warning, I knew that.

In the total darkness I thought I could see things: the glint of his eyes, his bared teeth; and in the silence I thought I could hear his breath and the soft tentative padding of his feet as he looked for me; but all I saw and heard was in my imagination and I knew that soon my nerves were going to start playing up because of the worry: the worry that there'd be no warning when he came at me. He'd come the instant he found me. Breathing was difficult because this place wasn’t very big and we were so close that one drawn breath would be a give-away; also it would have to be expelled before the next inhalation and I was afraid of being caught with empty lungs. I breathed tidally, right near the top, part of my conscious mind registering the smell of hemp and coconut.