However, that morning Agnes intended to be neither forgettable nor invisible. Only a few hours earlier an unexpected Meeting Notice had been issued, the agenda being simply 'To consider the conduct of Major H. R. Maxim'. Since her job was to maintain liaison with Number 10, which made Maxim technically a colleague, she was to represent the Security Service at the meeting. She had no idea what that 'conduct' had been – a few early morning phone calls had produced more bad language than information – but she knew what 'to consider' meant in Whitehall, and frankly Harry had had it coming. Not that she had anything against him. She had no prejudice against any of the Army's trigger-happy desperadoes – not in the right place. Number10just wasn't that place, and she didn't mind who heard her say so.

But what concerned her even more was that the Notice had shown the meeting would includetwo members of the Secret Intelligence Service. That sounded bad. Long ago, the legend said, the security (or spy-catching) service and the espionage (or spy-hiring) service had been born next door to each other in rooms 5 and 6 of the corridor where Military Intelligence first nested in Whitehall. Nostalgically, the old door numbers still stuck among the mass of code and jargon names slapped on the services since then. Thus the Intelligence Service could be MI6, just Six, or The Firm, The Friends (said with a knowing, slightly twisted, smile) or, if you were one of Agnes's mob, the Other Mob.

That is, unless you happened to be about to meet them across a conference table. Then you reminded yourself that they were a bunch of gilded pederasts who spent what little time they could spare from betraying the country's secrets in stealing the Security Service's territory, influence and share of the Secret Funds. If it had ever existed, the cosy Whitehall corridor was long gone, though Agnes sometimes wondered what it would be like to concern herself with frustrating only other countries' spies. But she always dropped the thought as frivolous speculation.

"The room was swept just three days ago," the uniformed messenger said, and Sir Anthony Sladen thanked him automatically, although everybody knew the remark was meaningless. Listening devices didn't grow like bacteria: they had to be planted. The room might have been 'swept' three minutes or three months ago, but what mattered was what had happened since then. Three minutes is a lifetime to a good wire man.

The complete absence of windows gave the room a sense ofbeing right out of time and place, abetted by the bland neon lighting and acoustics which made everyone's voices sound flat and small. The walls were covered in oatmeal-covered sackcloth, and in the centre two heavy tables had been pushed together to form a single one that looked absurdly big for the eight tweed-covered office chairs around it.

"Lock the door when you go out," Sladen added. "And tell the coffee ladies that we'd like ours in, say, three-quarters of an hour?"

He looked around for support and everybody nodded, but the messenger became doubtful. "I expect they'll be here when they get here, sir."

Sladen sighed. "Far easier to change our entire defence policy than alter the timing of one coffee-trolley. Very well, then."

The messenger ambled out and for no good reason everybody stopped talking until they heard the lock click.

"How is the PM, do you hear?" Sladen asked George. "It's been almost a week, now. " He lowered himself very carefully into the chair at the head of the table. He was a stiff man by nature and now his back had seized up on him. The Assistant Secretary from the Cabinet Office, a motherly woman with very neat grey hair and fashionable spectacles, clucked around him, adjusting the embroidered cushion she had brought along.

"Quite chirpy on the phone," George said. "Probably the worst thing wrong with him is Frank Hardacre." Sir Frank, who had earned his knighthood by making house calls only at houses where there might be photographers waiting outside, had once told George he drank too much. "If he survives that he should be back in town next week."

"In the House? Taking Questions?" the Foreign Office asked. He got Mummy's Chair at the opposite end, the natural place for Sladen to look first when asking for comment.

George shrugged. "Tired Tim's quite happy playing Sorcerer's Apprentice. Why close a show that's taking money?" He had to settle for the seat at Sladen'sright hand, opposite the Assistant Secretary. Agnes came next to him and Major-General Sir Bruce Drewery next to her. Across thetable, the younger of the two men from Six had already torn up his place card and put it in his pocket as a gesture of security.

The Assistant Secretary gave Agnes an all-girls-together smile and flipped open her notebook.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I must apologise for dragging you in here at such short notice, but as you will have guessed from the Meeting Notice the urgency…" Urgent or not, Sladen was experienced enough to give them thirty seconds of platitudes while they kicked their briefcases under the table, tugged at their waistcoats – both MI6 men wore them even on a hot June day – and shuffled their papers, although few of them were prepared to put much paperwork on view. One of two Second Permanent Secretaries to the Cabinet, Sladen's whole life was committees, conferences, meetings. He was a thin, thin-faced man and a bad back suited his dignity. His one concession to the heat was a grey suit in place of the usual Cabinet Office blue, with a Trinityist amp; 3rd tie.

"Chairman -" the first off the mark was Guy Husband from Six "-I'm sorry to be singing the school song so early, but the Meeting Notice was classified merely as 'Secret'. Could my service assume that any rrswould only be distributed as 'Top Secret'?"

Sladen glanced down the table. '". air," the Foreign Office said cheerfully. That was Scott-Scobie, a swinger from their harmlessly-named 'Research Department'; forty-fiveish, healthily plump, curly dark hair and wearing a rumpled linen suit.

George nodded. "Agreed. But does this mean that our friends from Dixieland -" the Intelligence Service lived south of the river "- are going to give us a hint of what they're up to these days?"

"We hope everybody will be giving hints of what they're up to," Husband said smoothly. His voice was pleasant but characterless, as if he were mostly concerned with avoiding mistakes; a provincial schooling or all the years in the spy business?

"Sir Bruce?"

"By all means. Classify it any way you prefer. " He was a big Scottish pussycat with a contented purr of a voice.

"Splendid." Then Sladen remembered Agnes; she gave him a happy smile. "Splendid, then. You'll make a note?" The Assistant Secretary already had. "Good. Now, I think we all know that the matter before us concerns Major Maxim, currently attached to the Private Office at Number 10. Guy, perhaps you'd like to…?"

"Yes, Chairman. But first…" Husband had the good looks of a schoolboy football star who had reached forty with one mighty bound: a strong nose, high forehead, brown hair set in tousled wiry waves. Even in a service which had a reputation for snappy dressing, he was an exquisite. His Italian suit was a little too shaped, too light in colour and probably too expensive. He adjusted his blue-tinted pilot-style glasses with a hand that wore a broad gold ring backed up by a gold cufflink in the shape of a reef-knot. Agnes disliked rings on men, although to be fair to Husband – which she had no intention of being – she had little trouble in finding something to dislike about everybody from Six.

"But first, " Husband said again, glancing quickly at Agnes; "may I ask why onr sister service is represented here?-no matter how pretw'i‹r'4 ask only because of the need-to-know principle."

You bastard, X¿'".ísthought. You peacock's prick. She waited for George to answer, but he sat hunched beside her, turning a gold pencil in his fingers. She realised she was on her own; George must be expecting a true Conflict Situation if he was already saving his last bullet for himself.