'S.A.M.S.O.N.,' she spelled it out.

'Yes, I know what you said. No one of that name,' said Bret.

'They are going to kill him,' said Miranda doggedly. 'Have you sent someone to the house in Bosham?'

'That's not something I'm permitted to discuss,' said Bret. 'Even if I knew,' he added.

'Well, these men will kill him if he goes there. I know the sort of men they are.' Wind rattled the windows.

'Russians, you say?'

'You wrote their names down,' she said. She picked up her cup, looked at the coffee, and set it aside.

'Of course I did. And you said there was another woman there too.'

'I don't know anything about her.'

'Ah, yes. That's what you said,' murmured Bret, looking down at his notes. 'My writing is not very elegant, Mrs Keller, but I think it is clear enough. I want you to read through the notes I've made. Start here: the conversation you had in the car at London airport, when you were imitating the voice of this woman you met in Berlin-Grunau.' He gave the sheet to her.

She read it quickly, nodded and offered it back. The wind made a roaring noise in the chimney and the electric fire rattled on its mounting. On the window there was the constant hammering of heavy rain.

Bret didn't take the papers from her. 'Take your time, Mrs Keller. Maybe read it twice.'

She looked at his notes again. 'What's wrong? Don't you believe me?'

'It sounds like a mighty banal conversation, Mrs Keller. Was it worth having you go to all that trouble, when in the final confrontation you simply say things about the children and about laying off this fellow Stinnes?'

'It was just to jolt him: so that he would follow the black girl to find his wife again.'

'Yes,' said Bret Rensselaer doubtfully. He took the sheets of notes and tapped them on the desk-top to get them tidy. Outside a car door slammed and an engine was started. A man yelled goodnight and a woman screamed 'Good riddance!': it was that kind of place.

'And I've asked for nothing.'

'I was wondering about that,' said Bret.

'There's no need to be sarcastic.'

'Forgive me. I didn't intend to be.'

'Could you switch off some of these lights? The glare is giving me a headache.'

'You said it! I hate fluorescent lighting but this place is used as an office. They are all on the same switch.'

'I want nothing for what I've told you. Nothing at all.'

'But?'

'But if you want me to go back there, it's only fair that I get something in return.'

'What do you have in mind?'

'A passport for my five-year-old son.'

'Ahhh!' said Bret in what was unmistakably a groan of agony as he envisaged the arguments that he would have to endure to get a passport for someone not entitled to one. Those professional obstructionists he dealt with in Whitehall would work overtime producing excuses to say no to that one.

'It will cost you nothing,' said Miranda.

'I know,' said Bret in a soft warm voice. 'It's a modest enough request, Mrs Keller. I'll probably be able to do it.'

'If I don't go to Rome tomorrow, or next day at the latest, I'll have a lot of explaining to do.'

'You're British. I would have thought that your son could claim British nationality.'

'I was born in Austria. My father was on a five-year contract there. My son was born in Berlin: I can't pass my citizenship on to him.'

'That's a lousy break,' said Bret. 'I'll do what I can.' He brightened as a sudden solution came to mind. Maybe a counterfeit passport would do: he wouldn't say it was counterfeit of course… 'I suppose any Western passport would serve to get him out of there: Irish Republic, Brazil, Guatemala, Belize or Paraguay.'

The woman looked at him suspiciously. 'Providing I got a certificated right to reside in Great Britain, but I don't want some Mickey Mouse passport that I have to renew every two or three years and bribe some embassy official every time I do it.'

Bret nodded assent. 'Do you have suitable photos of your son?'

' Yes.' From her handbag she took three passport pictures and passed them to him together with a piece of paper upon which she had written the other necessary description.

'So you had this planned before you left Berlin?'

'These Russian pigs are intolerable,' said Miranda. 'I always carry passport pictures.'

How enterprising, thought Bret. That's about all we can do right now,' he said. 'Leave it all with me. How can I contact you in East Berlin?'

'I'll need the passport,' said Miranda – 'Until I have the passport in my hand I'll do nothing for you.'

Bret looked at her. She was an intelligent woman. She must have realized that if she went back to the East she was delivering herself into his hands. But she gave no sign of that: she was one of those people who expected everyone to act fairly. It was good to know that such people still existed: Bret would not disabuse her at this stage. 'Would you accept a small payment?'

'I just want the passport for my son.'

'Okay, Mrs Keller. I'll do everything I can to get it for you.'

'I'm sure you will,' she said.

'One last, and vitally important thing, Mrs Keller. The woman you met in Berlin, Mrs Fiona Samson, is a KGB officer. She is a very smart woman. Don't underestimate her.'

'Are you saying she works for Russian intelligence?'

'Very much so. Mean, I should have said: a mean and dangerous woman. Under no circumstances should you confide anything to her.'

'No, I won't.'

'So it wasn't a complete waste of time, Bret?' The D-G was making one of his rare visits to Bret Rensselaer's magnificent monochrome office, He sat on the black leather chesterfield picking at the buttons and determined not to smoke.

There were times when the D-G's distant joviality reminded Bret of Sassoon's World War One general: ' "He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack… But he did for them both with his plan of attack.'

'No, sir. Very instructive,' said Bret, who was sitting behind his glass-topped desk wearing a white shirt and spotted bow tie.

'It was a plan to kill Bernard Samson?'

'That is her story.'

'And this other young man was killed instead?'

'Yes, but she doesn't know that. And of course I didn't tell her.'

'Did Samson report being approached by this black girl?'

'No, sir, he did not.' Bret tidied the papers on his desk, although they didn't need tidying.

'And what else did the house in Bosham reveal? Have your chaps reported back to you?'

'I have done nothing about the house in Bosham, and I intend to do nothing.'

After a deliberately audible intake of breath, the Director-General stared at him, thought about it, and finally said, 'Very prudent, Bret.'

'I'm glad you approve, Sir Henry.'

'Where is Samson?'

'Samson is alive and well.'

'You didn't warn him?'

'No sir. I sent him away on a job.'

'Yes, that was wise.' He sniffed. 'So they acted on Mrs Samson's information about the Bosham safe house. They were quick off the mark on that one. Ummm.'

'We come out of it very well, sir.'

'I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Bret. We're not out of it yet. I don't like the fact that Samson didn't report back that approach. Do you think he believed it was his wife in the back of that car?'

'Yes, probably. But Samson thinks before he acts. All these ex-field people become ultra-cautious: that's why we have to retire them.'

'You'd better make sure Mrs Samson knows about this impersonation.' He sniffed. 'So Bernard Samson didn't report any of it. I don't like that, Bret.'

'No, sir, but there is no reason to think that Samson is in any way disloyal. Or contemplating disloyalty.'

'This Mrs Keller, is she a potential agent for us?'

'No, sir. Out of the question.'