'That's a load off my mind. I could never pass myself off as her. She's very beautiful.' She looked at the two Russians. 'In fact I like her.'

'We all do,' said Stinnes. 'We are doing this to help her.'

'I didn't know that,' said Miranda doubtfully.

'But she mustn't know,' added Stinnes.

'Under no circumstance must she guess,' said Moskvin, and he slammed his hand down on the table. 'Or you'll wish you'd never been born.'

'Okay,' said Miranda more calmly than she felt. She hated to admit it but Moskvin did frighten her, and she was not a person easy to frighten.

'She gets the message,' said Harmony. 'Can I eat my apple now, boss man?'

Bosham, Sussex, England. October 1983.

Few actions within the law can provide more joy than the dispassionate evaluation of a colleague's failure. And so it happened that the field operation that Pavel Moskvin planned against London Central became celebrated in speech and writing, and perhaps in song too, for long after Moskvin was dead and buried.

Some blamed the failure entirely upon Moskvin. He was a desk man, without the practical experience that service in the field provides (it was field agents in particular who inclined to this view). Moskvin was, undeniably, a bully; he was always in a hurry and he failed to understand the English. But then, many of his peers were bullies, very few of them were not in a hurry and even in England it was difficult to find anyone who claimed to understand the English.

A more convincing explanation of the fiasco came from less passionate observers, who located the flaw in the duality of the leadership: Pavel Moskvin, a career KGB officer too dependent upon his influence in Moscow, in partnership with Erich Stinnes, experienced field agent who, although senior to Moskvin, had no reason to expect benefit from the operation's success.

Others looked at the two women in the team: the black Jamaican woman who had never responded to KGB discipline in all the years of her service, and the Englishwoman who had been bullied into a vital part in the operation simply because she could imitate voices. Some said the women were truculent, others that their English mother-tongue bonded the two of them and created a potential rebellion. Others, all of them men, believed that no women were suited to such jobs.

'First prize for booboos, shit-face,' said Harmony Jones to Moskvin. They were in a small cottage in Bosham, near the south coast of England, where Moskvin was laying his trap for Bernard Samson. 'London to Berlin, then back to London again. This is the dumbest operation I was ever on, honey.'

Moskvin was not used to such defiance. He controlled his terrible anger and said, 'It is all part of the plan.'

Erich Stinnes looked up from his guidebook: Chichester and the South Downs. He watched them dispassionately. It was not his operation, and even if the British caught him he'd already put out feelers to them about defection. He'd told Moscow that the first approaches came from the other side and got permission to continue his contacts, so he would survive come what may.

Pavel Moskvin had reasoned along lines of equal infallibility. This operation was going to make his name, so it had to be dramatic. He was going to entice Bernard Samson into a trap, interrogate him to the point of death and then leave his mutilated body in an SIS safe house in England! If Samson's interrogation revealed something to question or destroy the reputation of his new superior, Fiona Samson, so much the better. Even the safe house had been chosen because Fiona Samson had revealed its existence during one of her initial debriefing sessions. Should the location prove compromised it would be Fiona Samson's treachery, not his failure.

Miranda looked at her three colleagues and shivered. She had never expected it to be like this. Miranda had played her part exactly as briefed.

Miranda had been standing on a grass verge, on a section of road near Terminal 3 at London Airport, when she saw Bernard Samson driving a car with Harmony sitting in the seat next to him. The car stopped very near her and then she had climbed into the back seat and mimicked the voice of Fiona Samson.

There had been a moment, when she got into the car behind this man Bernard Samson, when she thought she was going to fault. But it was just like being on the stage: at that final moment her professionalism took over and it all went smoothly.

'It's me, darling. I hope I didn't terrify you.' That sweet and careful upper-class voice with just a hint of taunting in it.

'Fiona, are you mad?' said Samson. He didn't look round and in any case the driving mirror had been twisted away from nun. It went just as Harmony said it would. Bernard Samson, Harmony told her, was a professional; pros don't do and die, they reason why.

Samson was convinced. It was the most successful performance of Miranda's career: what a pity that there were only two people in the audience. But an allowance had to be made for the fact that fifty per cent of the audience was startled out of his senses and being threatened by a very nasty-looking hypodermic syringe held close against his thigh.

Miranda continued, 'To come here? There is no warrant for my arrest. I have changed my appearance and my name… no, don't look round. I don't want you unconscious.' She had rehearsed every syllable of it so many times that it was automatic. The poor devil was completely fooled. Miranda felt sorry for him. Of course he would try to follow Harmony afterwards, what husband wouldn't?

When Miranda returned to this fisherman's cottage, from her performance at London Heathrow, Moskvin had given no word of appreciation. Miranda hated him.

'Suppose Bernard Samson doesn't track Harmony's movements?' said Miranda. 'Suppose he doesn't come? Suppose he tells the police?'

'He'll come,' said Moskvin. 'He doesn't get paid to send for the police; it's his job to find people. He'll trace Harmony's movements. He'll think his wife is here and he'll come.'

'Then what?' said Miranda. She was still wearing the expensive wig and make-up that Moskvin had chosen for her. She hoped to keep the wig.

Harmony smiled sourly. She had been the one who had laid the trail for Samson, asking the way three times before buying the tickets, doing the stupid things that mere common sense would have avoided. Moskvin's final obvious vulgarity had been to choose a beautiful black girl just in case anyone should miss her. What kind of jerk wouldn't be suspicious following that brass band parade to get here? And her brief confrontation with Bernard Samson gave her reason to suspect that he wasn't a jerk. She didn't want to be here when he arrived.

'Who cares?' said Harmony. 'Us girls are getting out of here, Miranda baby! Go upstairs and scrub that damned make-up off your face, and then we'll scram. A day in Rome is what we both need after three long days with this fat fart.' She got to her feet.

'Give me thirty minutes,' said Miranda.

Moskvin was annoyed at the way that Harmony Jones had sweet-talked him into routeing the two women through Rome. She'd given him persuasive operational reasons at the time but now it was clear that she just wanted to enjoy a sidetrip.

'I might need you,' said Moskvin, but his former ability to terrify the two women had gone, largely due to the insolence with which the black woman treated every order he gave her.

'What you need, boss man…' she began but then decided not to provoke him further. She took Miranda's make-up box and went to the stairs. Miranda followed.

'And don't call me shit-face,' said Moskvin solemnly as the two women went through the low door that led to the stairs.