This was the freedom that Merrick hadn't got,

I said: 'Of course not.'

'But I'm not used to — well, privacy.'

'Must find it refreshing.'

He nodded. 'Yes.'

I turned away. 'What are your orders for this trip?'

'Don't you know?'

'It doesn't matter what I know.'

'I'm to find out everything I can about Czyn and pass it to London. Surely you're meant to be helping me, aren't you?' He sounded uneasy.

'How much training did they give you?'

'Two weeks, if you include — '

'All right.'

I turned and looked through the window at the trees in the park. Their black lacework of branches between the fog-yellowed lamps half masked the pale reflected face that stared at me and waited. Two weeks. There was time, once, to plan things properly. It's no go, Egerton, you can't do it, you can't send this kid out there in the dark without even a candle, or if you want to do it then I won't bloody well help you.

'I suppose,' he said as cheerfully as he could, 'that doesn't sound very long. But I took it all in, and they told me I'd done rather well.' His lips moved on the glass. His voice came from the trees out there, the dark trees. 'I won't let you down.'

Above the haze of the skyline there were vast clouds gathering, coming in from the north. Some people said it could snow tonight.

'There are a few things,' I said, 'they won't have told you.' I didn't turn round. His eyes had shifted from me to my reflection. 'They probably told you that just as a war is an extension of politics, espionage is an extension of diplomacy. The idea is to find out the things you can't find out by asking someone at a conference table: the things nobody will ever tell you, the things everybody badly needs to know. It's a means of keeping the peace, like the bomb is. No one can chuck the bomb without getting it back on his head, and no one can start a conventional war because the enemy's already within his gates, ferreting around and exposing all his plans before he can put them into action.