‘I suppose I’m a sort of liberal Tory if anything.’

‘You weren’t tempted to go and fight for the Spanish Republic, like Piper?’ Jebb asked. ‘The crusade against fascism?’

‘So far as I’m concerned, Spain before the Civil War was rotten with chaos, and the Fascists and Communists both took advantage. I came across some Russians in ’37. They were swine.’

‘That must have been quite an adventure,’ Miss Maxse said brightly. ‘Going to Madrid in the middle of the Civil War.’

‘I went to try and find my friend. For his family, as I said.’

‘You were close friends at school, weren’t you?’ Jebb asked.

‘You’ve been asking questions at Rookwood?’ The thought angered him.

‘Yes.’ Jebb nodded, unapologetic.

Harry’s eyes widened suddenly. ‘Is this about Bernie? Is he alive?’

‘Our file on Bernard Piper’s closed,’ Jebb said, his tone unexpectedly gentle. ‘So far as we know he died at the Jarama.’

Miss Maxse sat upright. ‘You must understand, Harry, if we’re to trust you to work for us, we do need to know all about you. But I think we’re happy.’ Jebb nodded, and she went on. ‘I think it’s time we got down to brass tacks. We wouldn’t normally dive straight in like this but it’s a question of time, you see. Urgency. We need information about someone. We think you can help us. It could be very important.’

Jebb leaned forward. ‘Everything we tell you from now on is strictly confidential, is that understood? In fact, I have to warn you that if you discuss any of it outside this room, you’ll be in serious trouble.’

Harry met his eyes. ‘All right.’

‘This isn’t about Bernard Piper. It’s another old schoolfriend of yours, who’s also developed some interesting political connections.’ Jebb delved in his case again and laid another photograph on the table.

It was not a face Harry had ever expected to see again. Sandy Forsyth would be thirty-one now, a few months older than Harry, but he looked almost middle-aged. He had a Clark Gable moustache and heavily oiled hair, already starting to recede, swept back from his brow. His face had filled out and acquired new lines but the keen eyes, the Roman nose and wide thin-lipped mouth were the same. It was a posed photograph; Sandy was smiling at the camera with a film star’s smile, half enigmatic and half inviting. He wasn’t a handsome man but the photograph made him appear so. Harry looked up again.

‘I wouldn’t have called him a close friend,’ he said quietly.

‘You were friendly for a time, Harry,’ Miss Maxse said. ‘The year before he was expelled. After that business involving Mr Taylor. We’ve spoken to him, you see.’

‘Mr Taylor.’ Harry hesitated a moment. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s all right these days,’ Jebb said. ‘No thanks to Forsyth. Now, when he was expelled, did you part on good terms?’ He jabbed the paperclip at Harry. ‘This is important.’

‘Yes. I was Forsyth’s only friend at Rookwood, really.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you had an awful lot in common,’ Miss Maxse said with a smile.

‘We didn’t, in a lot of ways.’

‘Bit of a bad hat wasn’t he, Forsyth? Didn’t fit in. But you were always a steady chap.’

Harry sighed. ‘Sandy had a good side too. Though …’ He paused. Miss Maxse smiled encouragingly.

‘I sometimes wondered why he wanted to be friends with me. When a lot of the people he mixed with were – well, bad hats, to use your phrase.’

‘Anything sexual in it, Harry, d’you think?’ Her tone was light and casual, as when she spoke of the bombs. Harry stared at her in astonishment for a moment, then gave an embarrassed laugh.

‘Certainly not.’

‘Sorry to embarrass you, but these things happen at public schools. You know, crushes.’

‘There was nothing like that.’

‘After Forsyth left,’ Jebb said, ‘did you keep in touch?’

‘We exchanged letters for a couple of years. Less and less as time went on. We hadn’t much in common once Sandy left Rookwood.’ He sighed. ‘In fact, I’m not sure why he went on writing for so long. Maybe to impress – he wrote about clubs and girls and that sort of thing.’ Jebb nodded encouragingly. ‘In his last letter he said he was working for some bookie in London. He wrote about doping horses and fake bets as though it was all a joke.’ But now Harry was remembering Sandy’s other side: the walks over the Downs in search of fossils, the long talks. What did these people want?

‘You still believe in traditional values, don’t you?’ Miss Maxse asked with a smile. ‘The things Rookwood stands for.’

‘I suppose so. Though …’

‘Yes?’

‘I wonder how the country got to this.’ He met her eyes. ‘We weren’t ready for what happened in France. Defeat.’

‘The jelly-backed French let us down.’ Jebb grunted.

‘We were forced to retreat too, sir,’ Harry said. ‘I was there.’

‘You’re right. We weren’t properly prepared.’ Miss Maxse spoke with sudden feeling. ‘Perhaps we behaved too honourably at Munich. After the Great War we couldn’t believe anyone would want war again. But we know now Hitler always did. He won’t be happy till all of Europe’s under his heel. The New Dark Age, as Winston calls it.’

There was a moment’s silence, then Jebb coughed. ‘OK, Harry. I want to talk about Spain. When France fell last June and Mussolini declared war on us, we expected Franco to follow. Hitler had won his Civil War for him, and of course Franco wants Gibraltar. With German help he could take it from the landward side and that’d be the Mediterranean choked off to us.’

‘Spain’s in ruins now,’ Harry said. ‘Franco couldn’t fight another war.’

‘But he could let Hitler in. There are Wehrmacht divisions waiting on the Franco-Spanish border. The Spanish Fascist Party wants to enter the war.’ He inclined his head. ‘On the other hand, most of the Royalist generals distrust the Falange and they’re scared of a popular uprising if the Germans come in. They’re not Fascists, they just wanted to beat the Reds. It’s a fluid situation, Franco could declare war any day. Our embassy people in Madrid are living on their nerves.’

‘Franco’s cautious,’ Harry ventured. ‘A lot of people think he could have won the Civil War earlier if he’d been bolder.’

Jebb grunted. ‘I hope you’re right. Sir Samuel Hoare’s gone out there as ambassador to try and keep them out of the war.’

‘I heard.’

‘Their economy’s in ruins, as you say. That weakness is our trump card, because the Royal Navy can still control what goes in and out.’

‘The blockade.’

‘Fortunately the Americans aren’t challenging it. We’re letting in just enough oil to keep Spain going, a bit less actually. And they’ve had another bad harvest. They’re trying to import wheat and raise loans abroad to pay for it. Our reports say people are collapsing from hunger in the Barcelona factories.’

‘It sounds as bad as during the Civil War.’ Harry shook his head. ‘What they’ve been through.’

‘There are all sorts of rumours coming out of Spain now. Franco’s exploring any number of schemes to gain economic self-sufficiency, some of them pretty crackpot. Last year an Austrian scientist claimed to have found a way of manufacturing synthetic oil from plant extracts and got money out of him to develop it. It was all a fraud, of course.’ Jebb gave his bark of a laugh again. ‘Then they claimed to have found huge gold reserves down at Badajoz. Another mare’s nest. But now we hear they really have found gold deposits, in the sierras not far from Madrid. There’s a geologist with South African experience working for them, one Alberto Otero. And they’re keeping it quiet, which makes us more inclined to think there’s something in it. The boffins say that geologically it’s a possibility.’

‘And that would make Spain less dependent on us?’

‘They’ve no gold reserves to back the currency. Stalin made the Republic send the gold reserve to Moscow during the Civil War. And kept it, of course. That makes buying anything on the open market very difficult for them. At the moment they’re trying to get export credits from us and the Yanks.’