And that was the crux of the affair, that was why he, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater of the Royal Navy, was detached upon a secret service, why he occupied this squalid, rented room and played the character of a merchant shipmaster, perpetually drunk, cantankerous and misanthropic. Sadly, it was all too easy in his present state of mind.

'Among that waterside riff-raff, you have only to find Fagan,' Lord Dungarth had finally said, 'and spread this tittle-tattle to him. He's a man known to us, d'you see, Nathaniel, a courier who passes regularly between London and Paris carrying gossip and the odd, planted message. You have merely to indicate the value, content and destination of your cargo, for its departure to be reported to Paris. We are expecting Fagan daily; he keeps rooms above a pie shop in Wapping ...'

Drinkwater peered across the alley. It was almost dark. He struck flint on steel and coaxed a stump of candle into life.

'We want you to bait the eagle,' Dungarth had said as they rose to disperse, 'see that the Emperor takes the lure ...'

It was not quite that easy, of course, his instructions went much further. He had to ship with the cargo, to play the charade to the last scene, to see that it reached Russia safely.

Drinkwater stood stiffly and stretched. If Fagan did not arrive soon the enterprise would have to be scrapped. Perhaps he had already arrived, and was engaged elsewhere; how did one trust or predict the movements of a double agent?

Drinkwater threw himself on the narrow bed and considered Dungarth's warning of the burden of the war, his consuming conviction that only an alliance with Russia would break the stalemate between Great Britain's superiority at sea and France's hold on the continent of Europe.

Drinkwater remembered the Russian army in its bivouacs around Tilsit. The sheer size of that patient multitude was impressive and the cogent fact that the Tsar's ill-trained levies had inflicted upon Napoleon's veterans the near defeat of Eylau and the Pyrrhic victory of Friedland argued in favour of Dungarth's ambitious policy.