'I see.'

'I'll be living in Budapest as a private citizen. My office job in the embassy will be just a nine-to-five arrangement. So I won't need diplomatic protection.'

'Your father's still there?'

'I worry about him,' she said.

'But he's okay?'

'He was a field agent for years, Bernard. He should never have gone back to live in Hungary. No matter how badly the Russians treated us, there will always be some Hungarians who see what Daddy did as treachery.'

'Your father can look after himself.'

'He's getting old, Bernard.'

'We all are. Except you, of course,' I added hurriedly. 'So you turned down the job with Bret?'

'Bret couldn't believe I didn't want to work with him.' She gave another tight-lipped grin. 'He insists that I think it over. But I've thought it over.'

'Don't be a fool, Gloria. Forget Budapest and all those embassy buggers. If you are working here, as a personal assistant to Bret, you can stop worrying about the Review Board.' When she didn't respond I persisted. 'No time-serving zombie on a Review Board is going to risk firing anyone's personal staff, and certainly not bouncing someone recently appointed to the personal staff of the Deputy D-G.'

She looked at me, thought about it, and then said, 'Too late now.' She shrugged. 'Anyway I've begun to fancy the idea of living in Budapest.'

'Stay here in London Central, Gloria. You'll be no better than a supernumerary over there. You'll have no job security whatsoever. These embassy pen pushers have all got PhDs in self-preservation: they'll dump you the moment they are told to cut back. And if you get into any sort of problems with Hungarian officialdom, you'll find yourself all on your own. I know how it works. It's not unlike what happened to me.'

'I don't want to stay in London.'

'Sometimes you have to do things you don't like,' I said, and immediately heard echoes of my father's voice.

She looked at me. She was so very young and she brimmed over with life and energy. Like so many animated people she subjected the world around her to a constant examination. I knew every mood and every signal. That zany tight-lipped grin, when fleeting, was a harbinger of delight. But the same grin held for a few extra seconds was a reproof. And when accompanied by a flicker of the eyelids was imminent trouble. So it was now. 'You're not human, Bernard. You're just a bloody machine.'

'Don't cry, Gloria. For God's sake . . . What's wrong?'

'It doesn't affect you, does it? You say hello Gloria, and you give me your advice about my job and say you like my new hairdo. But that's all you care about.'

'Your hair-do? What else should I care about?'

'I hate you, Bernard. I really do. I can't take it any longer.' She got out her handkerchief and blew her nose. 'It's tearing me apart, seeing you every day and trying not to care that you go home to your wife each night. But I do care. I can't just stop loving you, the way you evidently can stop loving me.' She got up and turned away so that I would not see the tears in her eyes. From next door there came the relentless noise of the copying machines groaning, sighing and clanking.

'Wait a minute, Gloria. You've got it wrong . . .' But then I stopped. I felt the water grow deeper as I waded onwards.

'Or didn't you ever love me?' she said, without turning round to look at me. 'Was it all just an act? Another of your highly skilled cover stories?'

'No, it wasn't an act.'

'We have a saying in Hungary: When you dine with the rich man, you wind up paying the bill.'

'How could I know she was coming back?' I said, only just managing to conceal the exasperation I felt.

She turned to face me. 'You are the rich man, Bernard. And now I am left paying the bill.'

In other circumstances I might have thought it was some roundabout way of telling me she was pregnant, but I knew it wasn't that. It was all too long ago for that. 'Please, Gloria,' I said. Her eyes were blobby with tears and she looked pitiful. Every cell in my body was telling me to embrace her, dry her tears and comfort her, but my brain said that it would only make matters a thousand times worse. And my brain was right.

'I've got to get away from you,' she said. 'I'll do something desperate if I stay here, working in places where I meet you and hear you.' She sniffed, in a childlike way that, brought back a thousand memories.

'I was going to Berlin anyway,' I said in a desperate attempt to stop her crying. I might have been able to cope with an all-out screaming exchange of insults and recriminations but this surrender to grief affected me. 'Frank has suddenly decided that he can't manage over there without some kind of helper.'

She said nothing but I could see she was making a big effort to pull herself together. She bent her head over her handbag, fiddled with a mirror and dabbed at her eyes carefully enough to avoid smudging her makeup. It was because she was facing that way that she noticed the man walking along the corridor. 'Who is that man?' she said.

My so-called office was little more than a corridor. In a desperate attempt to allow some daylight to penetrate into it, some unknown architect had built the upper part of its interior wall with small panes of glass. At one time they had been frosted glass, but over the years, due to careless slamming of doors, many of the glass panes had been shattered and replaced with clear ones.

'A messenger I suppose,' I answered.

'Yes. Did you hear about Jennifer phoning Dicky last Saturday morning, trying to find out where he'd left the keys to the filing cabinet?' Gloria smiled, trying to show me how cheerful she could be. 'When she got through to him on his mobile phone Dicky didn't recognize Jennifer's voice. He said: "I'm over here by the fish, darling. Do hurry." He was shopping in Safeway's with Daphne. They both have mobile phones.'

'I hope that wretched girl Jennifer hasn't gone round telling everyone that story. It doesn't help to have Dicky made into a figure of fun.'

Gloria held up her hand in a gesture of submission. 'My mistake.' Then in a different voice she said, 'There he goes again. He's walked past three times now. I saw him in the street when I came out of the FO. He's following me.'

'That bearded freak? Are you sure?'

'Call Security. Yes, I'm sure.'

'Let me tackle him,' I said. I was sure it was just some new messenger.

As I was saying it, the door opened and Dicky came in. Dicky's attire had changed since his trip to Poland. Still the trendy Wunderkind, he'd forsaken his cashmere and silk for a more proletarian image. He was wearing a scarred leather jacket with a coarse gray roll-neck and battered corduroy trousers.

Dicky said, 'Do you know anything about architectural structures, Bernard?'

'Not a great deal,' I admitted.

'I think I've hit upon a perfect solution for us,' he said. 'I knew I'd crack it. It was just a matter of sitting down and thinking seriously about what we're trying to do.' He said this as if it was likely to be a recourse as entirely new to me as it was to him. I nodded.

'I mean, look at this place — ' As he turned to indicate the peeling paintwork, and the widening cracks in the ceiling, he caught sight of Gloria. 'Gloria! Darling! What are you hiding from behind the door?'

'You, Mr. Cruyer,' said Gloria. Dicky laughed. 'My God, but you are looking fabulous these days. What are you doing? New hairdo. New coat.'

'It's an old coat,' said Gloria, and smiled. She knew as well as I did that Dicky's outburst was his standard greeting for nubile female staff, but that didn't seem to lessen the boost it gave her.

'It looks wonderful on you,' said Dicky. 'And I love those boots. Sexy!' She gazed at him adoringly as he turned back to me and studied the ceiling again and said, 'We'll get the whole building condemned.' He turned to Gloria and said 'condemned' again. To me he said, 'You get it, don't you?'