I close the CBS file and I’m just sticking it back in my secure document safe when Iris pops her head round the door. “Bob? Are you ready to do battle with BLOODY BARON yet?”

I groan quietly. “I think I need a coffee, but yeah, I’ll be along just as soon as I’ve locked this…” I poke at the keypad and it tweedles happily. Not that an electronic lock is the only security we rely on; anyone who tries to crack this particular safe is going to wake up in hospital with a hangover the size of a whale.

“White, no sugar, right?”

“You’re a star. I’ll be right with you.” Did I remember to say good management cures the King’s Evil and makes coffee, too? Because if not, it’s all true.

Ten minutes later I’m sitting in Room 206 again, with a mug of passable paint stripper in front of me and a printout of the minutes. It’s a very cut-down rump session today. Franz is absent, Iris is tapping her fingers and Shona is looking as if she’d like to be away with the fairies while Choudhury drones on: “No observed deviations from traffic intercept patterns established over the past week, and no notified agent movements yesterday-”

What the hell, I’m bored. I clear my throat.

Choudhury glances at me, irritated: “What is it, Howard?”

“These non-existent agent movements wouldn’t happen to include Panin, would they? Because I’m sure if Panin so much as farted in F-flat minor our boys would be up his arse with a gas spectrograph, wouldn’t they?”

I am pleased to see that both Shona and Iris are paying attention: Shona’s nostrils flare unconsciously and Iris raises an eyebrow at me. Choudhury, however, is a harder nut. He frowns. “Don’t be silly. Of course they’d spot him if he was in the UK.”

“Really?” I lean back, cross my arms, and bare my teeth at him. Maybe he’ll mistake it for a grin. “Explain last night, then.”

“Last n-” He stops dead. “What happened last night?”

I glance at the Sitrep folder. “Panin isn’t in the UK, according to that folder. So how exactly is it that he picked me up as I was leaving work and bought me a pint of ESB in the Frog and Tourettes?”

“Preposterous.” Choudhury glares. Neither Shona nor Iris is smiling.

“You’d better explain,” Iris tells me.

“What I said. Here is a hint: Panin knew. He tried to pump me about Teapot, so I played dumb. He knows the rules; left me a calling card. It’s downstairs in the Security Office safe. For reasons of operational security I didn’t report the contact immediately, but I’m reporting it now. The Plumbers should be able to confirm it from the pub CCTV.” I sit up. “Personally, I find the implications highly suggestive.”

“Why did you not tell Security-” Shona stops, her eyes widening.

“We’re not as secure as we’d like to be. I’d rather not spread it around beyond this committee for the time being.”

Iris’s brows furrow. “You’re taking rather a lot on your shoulders, aren’t you?”

“I’m only doing what Angleton would advise.”

Choudhury has spent the past thirty seconds or so looking hurt and offended. Now he collects his dignity: “This can’t possibly be right-Oversight don’t get their movement reports wrong. Perhaps you were taken in by an impostor? I assure you, you didn’t see Panin last night-he was in Madrid.”

I am getting tired of this shit. “According to your Sitrep he was sighted in Madrid at four p.m.,” I point out. “That’s plenty of time to catch a flight into London City and accost me outside the front door at a quarter past eight. If you had bothered to check the duty rota behind that sighting”-gosh, I didn’t know he could turn that shade of pink!-“you’d know that the Madrid office files their report at five, local time, which is sixteen hundred hours on British Summer Time, and they go home at six. And if you got out from behind your desk once in a while you’d know that the Madrid office consists of two cotton tops and their pet chihuahua, whose job is to take whatever the Guardia Civil feeds them and barf it over the wire on demand, rather than actually running surveillance boxes on visiting opposition controllers. Like I said: the pub CCTV-not to mention the MAGINOT BLUE STARS network and Panin’s mobile phone company’s logfiles-will back me up on this. I’m right, you’re wrong, and I would appreciate it if you’d stop acting like a complete prat and pay attention.”

I find that during my little rant I must have stood up: I’m leaning over the table, balanced on my fists, and Choudhury is leaning over backwards in his chair, not balanced in the slightest. “This is harassment!” he splutters. “Intimidation!”

“No.” I sit down hastily, before Iris can get a word in: “Intimidation is when you’re boxed by a Thirteenth Directorate officer and two Spetsnaz thugs he borrowed from the embassy. I’d recommend it sometime: it’ll be good practice for when the Auditors decide to rake you over the coals.”

Shona has been bottling it up for some time, and now she lets rip: “Bob, what exactly did Panin want? I think you’d better make a full statement right now.” That’s right, she’s with Oscar-Oscar, same as Jo, isn’t she?

“Panin tried to pump me; I don’t pump easily. His specific concern is Teapot. The Teapot is missing, he told me: You’d better find it before the wrong people get their hands on it and use it to make tea. There was a lot of tap-dancing, but that’s the basic substance of it.” I carefully avoid thinking about our inconclusive exchange on the topic of Amsterdam, which is now looking even murkier in context: They do that, you know. To muddy the waters. (Fucking cultists.) “He offered to trade, if we have anything to offer.”

“Wonderful.” Shona is making notes. “So that’s it?”

“Substantially, yes.” Because all I know for sure about the cultist connection is inference-and Angleton’s instructions. (Thus do we damn ourselves, by the treachery of our own words.)

“Okay, I’ll compile this and add it to the minutes, so at least we’ve got it on paper somewhere. That should cover you. Then we can decide how and when to send it up the chain.” She stares at me blackly. “I assume that’s why you brought it up here?”

“Yes. I want to keep it confidential to the BLOODY BARON committee for now. I’m worried about how Panin knew who to talk to and where to find him. Not to mention when.”

Iris speaks up: “Yes, that’s very disturbing.” She looks appropriately disturbed for a split second, then flexes her management muscle. “Vikram, would you be a dear and make sure to accidentally lose the minutes of this session between your desk and your email program? I think it wouldn’t hurt for distribution to be delayed for a few days, until the situation settles one way or the other.”

Despite the aging biker chick style that she affects, the temperament and training of a steely home-counties matron lurk not too far under the skin; put her in twinset and pearls and you can see her biting the heads off hunt saboteurs. When she turns the big guns on Choudhury he runs up the white flag at once. “Ah, certainly, madam.” He spares me a poisonous glance, which I ignore. “SSO 3 Howard’s unfortunate encounter will be thoroughly misfiled until I hear otherwise.”

“Do you expect Panin to make contact again?” Shona demands. “In your personal judgment.”

“Um.” Now that’s a question and a half. “He left me a card in case I want to contact him, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I got the impression he was worried about timing. If the Thirteenth Directorate are running to some kind of schedule we need to know, don’t we?”

Iris looks grimly pleased. “Minute that.”

“Schedules.” Shona stares at Vikram. “What does the calendar have for us?”

“The calendar? It’s August bank holiday in a couple of weeks-”

“I believe she was asking about significant intersections,” Iris interrupts, sparing me a quelling glance. “Summit conferences, international treaties, Mayan great cycle endings, general elections, prophesied apocalypses, that sort of thing. It’ll be in Outlook under events. You’re the one with the laptop, why don’t you look it up?”