'He's going to put the arm on you. Bound to. Stick-and-carrot stuff. "What's that mad b.u.g.g.e.r Meredith been telling you? What's he up to, where, who's he hiring?" If that happens, talk to me first, then talk to me again afterwards. n.o.body's kosher in this thing. Everyone's guilty till proven innocent. Deal?'

'I've managed pretty well on the counter-interrogation stakes this far,' Luke replied, feeling it was about time he a.s.serted himself.

'All the same,' said Hector, still waiting for his answer.

'Is it Russian Russian, by any chance?' Luke asked hopefully, in what he afterwards regarded as an inspired moment. He was a Russophile, and had always resented being taken off the circuit on the grounds of supposed over-affection for the target.

'Could be Russian. Could be any any f.u.c.king thing,' Hector retorted, as his big grey eyes lit up again with his believer's fire. f.u.c.king thing,' Hector retorted, as his big grey eyes lit up again with his believer's fire.

Did Luke ever really really say yes to the job? Did he ever, now that he looked back, say, 'Yes, Hector, I will come aboard, blindfolded with my hands tied, just the way I was that night in Colombia, and I will join your mystery crusade' or words to that effect? say yes to the job? Did he ever, now that he looked back, say, 'Yes, Hector, I will come aboard, blindfolded with my hands tied, just the way I was that night in Colombia, and I will join your mystery crusade' or words to that effect?

No, he did not.

Even as they sat down to what Hector happily described as the second-worst lunch in the world, first prize yet to be awarded, Luke was still, if he was true to himself, entertaining lingering doubts about whether he was being invited to join the sort of private war that the Service was from time to time led into against its better judgement, with disastrous results.

Hector's opening shots at affable small talk did nothing to put these anxieties to rest. Seated in the outer regions of his club's sepulchral dining room, at the table closest to the clatter of the kitchen, he treated Luke to a mastercla.s.s in the uses of indirect conversation in public places.

Over the smoked eel, he confined himself to inquiring after Luke's family, incidentally getting the names of his wife and son right, a further sign to Luke that he had been reading his personal file. When the shepherd's pie and school cabbage arrived, on a clanking silver trolley ferried by an angry old black man in a red hunting jacket, Hector pa.s.sed to the more intimate but equally harmless topic of Jenny's marriage plans Jenny, it turned out, being his beloved daughter which she had recently abandoned since, according to Hector, the chap she was involved with had turned out to be the most unmitigated s.h.i.t: 'Wasn't love on Jenny's part, it was addiction same as Adrian except, thank G.o.d, it wasn't drugs. Chap's a s.a.d.i.s.t, she's an old softie. Willing seller, docile buyer, we thought. We didn't say anything, you can't. Hopeless. Bought 'em a sweet little house in Bloomsbury, all fitted out. Vulgar b.u.g.g.e.r needed three-inch-deep wall-to-wall carpets, so Jenny needed 'em too. Hate 'em personally, but what else can you do? Couple of minutes' walk from the British Museum, and just right for Trotsky and her D.Phil. But old Jenny rumbled the little t.u.r.d, thank G.o.d, full marks to her. Good recession price, the landlord was broke, I shan't lose money. Nice garden, not too big.'

The old waiter had reappeared with an incongruous jug of custard. Waved away by Hector, he muttered an imprecation and shuffled off to the next table twenty feet away.

'Got a decent bas.e.m.e.nt too, which you don't often see these days. Pongs a bit. Not offensively. Used to be someone's wine cellar. No party walls. Decent amount of traffic going past outside. Only luck she didn't have a baby by the chap. They weren't taking precautions, knowing Jenny.'

'Sounds a blessing,' said Luke politely.

'Yes, well it could be, couldn't it?' Hector agreed, leaning forward in order to be sure of being heard beneath the din of the kitchen. By now Luke was half wondering whether Hector had a daughter at all. 'I thought you might care to take the place over rent-free for a bit. Jenny won't go near it, understandably, but it does rather need living in. I'll give you the key in a minute. Remember Ollie Devereux, by the way? Son of a White Russian travel agent in Geneva and a fish-and-chip lady in Harrow? Looks about sixteen going on forty-five? Helped you out of a sc.r.a.pe when you f.u.c.ked up a probe-mike job in that St Petersburg hotel a while back?'

Luke remembered Ollie Devereux well.

'French, Russian, SwissGerman and Italian, if we need 'em, and the best back-door man in the business. You'll be paying him cash. I'll give you some of that too. You start at nine sharp tomorrow morning. Give you time to pack up your desk in Admin and take your pins and paper clips to the third floor. Oh yes, and you'll be shacked up with a nice woman called Yvonne, other names irrelevant: professional bloodhound, b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt, b.a.l.l.s of steel.'

The silver trolley reappeared. Hector recommended the club's bread-and-b.u.t.ter pudding. Luke said it was his favourite. And custard would be great this time, thank you. The trolley left in a cloud of geriatric fury.

'And will you kindly consider yourself one of the chosen few, as of a couple of hours ago,' Hector said, dabbing at his mouth with a moth-eaten damask napkin. 'You'd be number seven on the list including Ollie, if there was a list. I don't want an eighth without my say-so. Deal?'

'Deal,' said Luke this time.

So perhaps he had said 'yes' after all.

That afternoon, under the stony gaze of his fellow detainees in Administration, and reeling from the effect of vile club claret, Luke gathered together what Hector had called his pins and paper clips and transferred them to the seclusion of the third floor, where a dingy but acceptable room with a door labelled COUNTERCLAIM FOCUS COUNTERCLAIM FOCUS did indeed await its theoretical occupant. He was carrying an old cardigan, and something moved him to hang it over the back of the chair, where it remained to this day, like the ghost of his other self whenever he dropped by of a Friday afternoon to say a cheery something to whomever he happened to b.u.mp into in the corridor, or put in his week's fict.i.tious expenses which he later religiously paid back into the Bloomsbury housekeeping account. did indeed await its theoretical occupant. He was carrying an old cardigan, and something moved him to hang it over the back of the chair, where it remained to this day, like the ghost of his other self whenever he dropped by of a Friday afternoon to say a cheery something to whomever he happened to b.u.mp into in the corridor, or put in his week's fict.i.tious expenses which he later religiously paid back into the Bloomsbury housekeeping account.

And the very next morning he was just starting to sleep again in those days he embarked on his first walk to Bloomsbury, exactly as he was walking there now, except that on the day of his maiden voyage, sheets of blinding rain were sweeping across London, obliging him to wear his neck-to-toe waterproofs and a hat.

First he had checked out the street hardly a problem in the deluge, but there are some operational habits you can't change, however much sleep you get and hard walking you do one pa.s.s north to south, another from a side street feeding into the road bang opposite the target house, which was number 9.

And the house itself as pretty as Hector had promised, even in the downpour: a late-eighteenth-century flat-fronted terrace house of London stock brick on three floors with freshly painted white steps leading up to a newly painted door of royal blue with a fan window above it, a sash window either side of it, and bas.e.m.e.nt windows to each side of the front steps.

But no separate outside bas.e.m.e.nt staircase, Luke duly noted as he climbed the steps, turned the key and went inside, then stood on the doormat, first listening, then hauling off his drenched overclothes and extracting a pair of dry slip-ons from their carry-bag under his waterproof.

The hall richly carpeted in screaming deep-pile vermilion: legacy of the little t.u.r.d that Jenny had rumbled just in time. An antique porter's chair in strident new green hide. A period mirror, lavishly regilded. Hector had meant to do well by his beloved Jenny, and after his successful foray against the Vulture Capitalists, he could presumably afford to. Two staircases above him, also deep-carpeted. He called out 'anyone here?' and heard nothing. He pushed open a door to the drawing room. Original fireplace. Roberts prints, sofa and armchairs in upmarket close covers. In the kitchen, high-end equipment, distressed pine table. He pushed open the bas.e.m.e.nt door and called down the stone steps: 'h.e.l.lo there excuse me' no reply.

He climbed to the first floor without hearing his own footsteps. At the half-landing, there were two doors, the one on his left reinforced with a steel plate and bra.s.s locks either side at shoulder height. The door on his right was just a door. Twin beds not made up, small bathroom off.

A second key was attached to the house key Hector had given him. Addressing the door on his left, he turned the locks and stepped into a pitch-dark room that smelled of woman's deodorant, the one Eloise used to like. He groped for the light switch. Heavy red velvet curtains, barely hung out, tightly drawn and held together with oversized safety pins that haphazardly recalled for him his weeks of recuperation in the American Hospital in Bogota. No bed. At the centre of the room, a bare trestle table with rotating chair, computer and reading light. On the wall ahead of him, fixed into the angle of the ceiling, four black blinds of waxy cloth reaching to the floor.

Returning to the half-landing, he leaned over the bannisters and yet again called 'anyone there?' and yet again received no answer. Back in the bedroom he released the black blinds one by one, nursing them into their housings on the ceiling. At first he thought he was looking at an architect's plan, wall wide. But a plan of what what? Then he thought it must be a huge piece of calculus. But calculating what what?

He studied the coloured lines and read the careful italic handwriting denoting what he at first took to be towns. But how could they be towns with names like Pastor, Bishop, Priest and Curate? Dotted lines beside solid ones. Black lines turning to grey, then vanishing. Lines in mauve and blue, converging on a hub somewhere south of centre, or did they emanate from it?

And all of them with such detours, so much backtracking, so many turns, doublings and switches of direction, up, down and sideways, and then up again, that if his son, Ben, in one of his unexplained rages, had holed up in this same room and seized a tin of coloured crayons and zigzagged his way across the wall, the effect wouldn't have been much different.

'Like it?' Hector inquired, standing behind him.

'Are you sure you've got it the right way up?' Luke replied, determined not to show surprise.

'She's calling it Money Anarchy Money Anarchy. I reckon it's just about right for the Tate Modern.'

'She?'

'Yvonne. Our Iron Maiden. Does mainly afternoons. This is her room. Yours is upstairs.'

Together, they climbed to a converted attic with stripped beams and dormer windows. One trestle table of the same design as Yvonne's. Hector is no fan of desk drawers. One desktop computer, no terminal.

'We don't use landlines, encrypted or t'other,' Hector said, with the hushed vehemence that Luke was learning to expect of him. 'No fancy hotlines to Head Office, no email connection, encrypted, decrypted or fried. The only doc.u.ments we deal with are on Ollie's little orange sticks.' He was holding one up: a common memory stick with a number 7 branded on its orange plastic sh.e.l.l. 'Each stick tracked in transit by each of us each end, got it? Signed in, signed out. Ollie runs the shuttle, keeps the log. Spend a couple of days with Yvonne and you'll get the hang of it. Other questions as they arise. Any problems?'

'I don't think so.'

'Nor do I. So lean back, think of England, don't maunder, and don't f.u.c.k up.'

And think too of Our Iron Maiden. Professional bloodhound, b.a.l.l.s of steel and Eloise's expensive deodorant.

It was advice Luke had done his utmost to adhere to for the last three months, and he prayed devoutly that he would do so today. Twice, Billy Boy Matlock had summoned him to the presence, to blandish or threaten him, or both. Twice he had ducked and weaved and lied to Hector's instruction, and survived. It had not been easy.

'Yvonne does not exist either in Heaven or here on earth,' Hector had decreed from Day One. 'Does not, will not. Got it? That's your bottom line. And your top line too. And if Billy Boy straps you by your b.a.l.l.s to the chandelier, she still still doesn't exist.' doesn't exist.'

Does not exist? A demure young woman in a long dark raincoat and pointed hood standing on the doorstep on the very first evening of his very first day here, no make-up, clutching a baggy briefcase in both arms as if she had just rescued it from the flood, A demure young woman in a long dark raincoat and pointed hood standing on the doorstep on the very first evening of his very first day here, no make-up, clutching a baggy briefcase in both arms as if she had just rescued it from the flood, does not, will not exist does not, will not exist?

'Hi. I'm Yvonne.'

'Luke. Come on in, for Heaven's sake!'

A dripping handshake as they bundle her into the entrance hall. Ollie, the best back-door man in the business, finds a hanger for her raincoat and hangs it in the loo to drip on to the tiled floor. A three-month-long working relationship that does not exist has begun. Hector's strictures about paper did not extend to Yvonne's bulky bag, Luke quickly learned later that same night. That was because whatever she brought in her bag left in it the same day. And the reason for this again was that Yvonne was no mere researcher, she was a clandestine source.

One day her bag might contain a bulky file from the Bank of England. Another, it would be from the Financial Services Authority, the Treasury, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency. And on one momentous Friday evening, never to be forgotten, it was a stack of six fat volumes and a score of audio ca.s.settes, enough to fill the bag to bursting, from the hallowed archives of the Government Communications Headquarters itself. Ollie, Luke and Yvonne spent the whole weekend copying, photographing and replicating the material any way they could, so that Yvonne could return it to its rightful owners at crack of dawn on Monday morning.

Whether she came by her loot licitly or by stealth, whether she filched it or cajoled it out of her colleagues and accomplices, Luke to this day had no idea. He knew only that as soon as she arrived with her bag, Ollie would whisk it to his lair behind the kitchen, there to scan its contents, transfer them to a memory stick, and return the bag to Yvonne: and Yvonne, come end of day, to whichever Whitehall department officially owned her services.

For that too was a mystery, never once revealed in the long afternoons when Luke and Yvonne sat cloistered together comparing the ill.u.s.trious names of Vulture Capitalists with billion-dollar cash transfers conducted at lightning speed across three continents in a day; or chatting in the kitchen over Ollie's lunchtime soup, tomato a speciality, French onion not bad either. And his crab chowder, which he brought part-cooked in a picnic Thermos and completed on the gas stove, a miracle by common consent. But as far as Billy Boy Matlock is concerned, Yvonne does not and will not ever exist. Weeks of training in the arts of resisting interrogation say so: so does a month of crouching handcuffed in a mad drug lord's jungle redoute redoute while your wife discovers that you are a compulsive womanizer. while your wife discovers that you are a compulsive womanizer.

'So what are we looking at here for whistleblowers, Luke?' Matlock inquires of Luke over a nice cup of tea in the comfortable corner of his large office in la Lubianka-sur-Tamise la Lubianka-sur-Tamise, having invited him to drop by for a chat, and no need to tell Hector. 'You're a fellow who knows a thing or two about informants. I was thinking of you only the other day when the question of a new senior trainer in agent-running came up. A nice five-year contract for somebody just your age,' Matlock says in his homespun Midlands drawl.

'To be perfectly honest with you, Billy, your guess is as good as mine,' Luke replies, mindful that Yvonne does not, will not exist, even if Billy Boy straps him to the chandelier by his b.a.l.l.s, which was about the one thing the drug lord's boys didn't think of doing to him. 'Hector just conjures up his information out of the fresh air, frankly. It's amazing,' he adds, with appropriate bewilderment.

Matlock seems not to hear this answer, or perhaps not to care for it, for the geniality disappears from his voice as if it had never been.

'Mind you, it's a double-edged sword, is a training appointment like that one. We'd be looking for the veteran officer whose career would serve as a role model to our idealistic young trainees. Male and and female, I don't have to emphasize. The Board would need to be convinced there were no suggestions of impropriety that might be levelled against the successful candidate. And Secretariat would be tendering that advice, naturally enough. In your case, we might have to be looking at a little creative restructuring of your CV.' female, I don't have to emphasize. The Board would need to be convinced there were no suggestions of impropriety that might be levelled against the successful candidate. And Secretariat would be tendering that advice, naturally enough. In your case, we might have to be looking at a little creative restructuring of your CV.'

'That would be generous, Billy.'

'It would indeed, Luke,' Matlock agreed. 'It would indeed. And somewhat conditional on your current behaviour too.'

Who was was Yvonne? For the first of those three months, she had driven Luke he could say it now, he could admit it just a little bit wild. He loved her demureness and her privacy, which he longed to share. Her discreetly scented body, if she ever allowed it to be revealed, would border on the cla.s.sic, he could imagine it exactly. Yet they could sit for hours on end, cheek by jowl in front of her computer screen, or poring over her Tate Modern mural, feeling each other's body-warmth, grazing hands by accident. They could share every twist and turn of the chase, every false trail, dead end and temporary triumph: all at a distance of a few inches from each other, in the upstairs bedroom of a secret house that for most of the day they shared alone. Yvonne? For the first of those three months, she had driven Luke he could say it now, he could admit it just a little bit wild. He loved her demureness and her privacy, which he longed to share. Her discreetly scented body, if she ever allowed it to be revealed, would border on the cla.s.sic, he could imagine it exactly. Yet they could sit for hours on end, cheek by jowl in front of her computer screen, or poring over her Tate Modern mural, feeling each other's body-warmth, grazing hands by accident. They could share every twist and turn of the chase, every false trail, dead end and temporary triumph: all at a distance of a few inches from each other, in the upstairs bedroom of a secret house that for most of the day they shared alone.

And still nothing: until an evening when the two of them were sitting exhausted and alone at the kitchen table enjoying a cup of Ollie's soup and, at Luke's suggestion, a shot of Hector's Islay malt. Taking himself by surprise, he asked Yvonne point-blank what sort of a life she led apart from this this, and whether she had anyone to share it with who could support her in her stressful labours adding, with the old sad smile of which he was instantly ashamed, that after all it was only our answers answers that were dangerous, wasn't it, not the questions, if she saw what he meant? that were dangerous, wasn't it, not the questions, if she saw what he meant?

For a long time her dangerous answer didn't materialize: 'I'm a government employee government employee,' she said, in the robotic tone of somebody speaking into camera for a quiz compet.i.tion. 'My name is not Yvonne. Where I am employed is none of your business. However, I don't think you're asking me that. I'm Hector's discovery, as I a.s.sume we both are. But I don't think you're asking me that either. You're asking me about my orientation. And whether, by extension, I wish to go to bed with you.'

'Yvonne, I was asking you nothing of the kind!' Luke protested, truthlessly.

'And for your information, I'm married to a man I'm in love with, we have a three-year-old daughter, and I don't f.u.c.k around even with people as nice as you. So let's get on with our soup, shall we?' she suggested at which, amazingly, they both broke out in cathartic laughter and, with the tension broken, returned peacefully to their separate corners.

And Hector, who was he, after three months of him, albeit in sporadic bursts? Hector of the feverish stare and the scatological tirades against the City crooks who were the source of all our evils? On the Service grapevine it was hinted that in successfully saving the life of his family firm, Hector had resorted to methods honed by half a lifetime in the black arts, and deemed, even by the City's abysmal standards, foul. So was the vendetta against the City's evildoers driven by revenge or guilt? Ollie, not normally given to gossip, had no doubt: Hector's experience of the City's bad manners and his own employment of them, said Ollie had turned him overnight into an avenging angel. 'It's a little vow he's taken,' he confided to them in the kitchen, while they waited for Hector to put in one of his late appearances. 'He's going to save the world before he leaves it if it kills him.'

But then Luke had always been a worrier. From infancy he had worried indiscriminately, rather in the way he fell in love.

He could worry as much about whether his watch was ten seconds fast or slow, as about the direction of a marriage that was null and void in every room except the kitchen.

He worried whether there was more to his son Ben's tantrums than just growing pains, and whether Ben was under his mother's orders not to love his father.

He worried about the fact that he was at peace when he was working, and that when he wasn't, even now walking along, he was a ma.s.s of unjoined ends.

He worried whether he should have swallowed his pride and accepted the Human Queen's offer of a shrink.

He worried about Gail, and his desire for her, or for some girl like her: a girl with real light in her face instead of the glum cloud that followed Eloise around even when the sun was on her.

He worried about Perry and tried not to be envious of him. He worried about which half of Perry would come out on top in an operational emergency: would it be the intrepid mountaineer or the unworldly university moralist and anyway, was there a difference?

He worried about the impending duel between Hector and Billy Boy Matlock, and which of them was going to lose his temper first or pretend to.

Leaving the sanctuary of Regent's Park, he entered the throng of Sunday shoppers looking for a bargain. Ease down, he told himself. It'll be all right. Hector's in charge, not you.

He was counting off landmarks. Ever since Bogota, landmarks had been important to him. If they kidnap me, these are the last things I saw before they put the blindfold on me.

The Chinese restaurant.

The Big Archway nightclub.

The Gentle Readers' Bookshop.

This is the ground coffee I smelled while I was wrestling with my attackers.

Those are the snowy pine trees I saw in the window of the art shop before they sandbagged me.

This is number 9, the house where I was reborn, three steps to the front door and act like any normal householder.

9.

There were no formalities between Hector and Matlock, friendly or otherwise, and perhaps there never had been: just a nod and a silent handshake of two veteran belligerents shaping up for another bout. Matlock arrived on foot, having been dropped round the corner by his driver.

'Very nice Wilton carpeting, Hector,' he said, while he took a slow look round that seemed to confirm his worst suspicions. 'You can't beat Wilton, not when it comes to cost versus quality. Good day to you, Luke. It's just the two of you, is it?' pa.s.sing Hector his coat.

'Staff are away at the races,' Hector said, hanging it up.

Matlock was a broad-shouldered bull of a man, as his nickname implied, broad-headed, and at first glance avuncular, with a crouch that reminded Luke of an ageing rugby forward. His Midlands accent, according to the ground-floor gossips, had become more noticeable under New Labour, but was receding with the prospect of electoral defeat.

'We're in the bas.e.m.e.nt, if you're comfortable with that, Billy,' said Hector.

'I've no alternative but to be comfortable with it, thank you, Hector,' said Matlock, neither pleasantly nor rudely, leading the way down the stone steps. 'What are we paying for this place, by the by?'

'You're not. This far it's on me.'

'You're on our our payroll, Hector. The Service is not on payroll, Hector. The Service is not on yours yours.'

'As soon as you greenlight the operation, I'll be putting in my bill.'