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building, just off Whitehall, which served as clearing house and central headquarters for Special Security. There, at about three-thirty on the previous afternoon, the Chief, having returned from a long and somewhat bibulous luncheon with a former Defence Minister at the Athenaeum , paced his office in a state of supreme irritation. Steady pacing was the Chief’s favourite, and automatic, method for cooling fury; a habit devised long long ago when serving on the bridges of several of England’s more indomitable warships.
    The Chief had been striding—and regularly prodding at the direct-call bell which connected with Mostyn’s office—for about five minutes before his Second-in-Command, short and suave as a high-class con man, arrived through the door at speed.
    “ You wanted me, sir?” Mostyn’s voice rarely strayed from the smooth almost seductive tone of friendly menace.
    “ No, Mostyn. I’m just strengthenin’ me bloody finger muscles for the Olympic Tiddlywinks Team.”
    “ Very healthy exercise I’m told, sir.” Mostyn usually knew just how far he could go with the Chief, but he quickly realised that the crusty old man was not in the jesting vein today.
    “ Where in the name of the Great Whore of Maida Vale have you been?” The strange oath came out coldly, lacking the warmth of true rage.
    Mostyn had, in fact, been dallying with a charming member of the Royal Opera House chorus over a lunch of delicious subtlety at the Tiberio . He could normally handle the Chief when the mood was black. But this, he realised, was not just a black mood. It was a horrible combination of alcohol and Trouble—with a capital and tremolo T.
    “ Something up, sir?” His voice was level, but a tincture of concern plopped uneasily into the back of his mind. The Chief stopped pacing and faced Mostyn.
    “ Something up?” He repeated Mostyn’s words as though they had been spoken in a dead language. It was unfortunate that his secretary chose that moment to tap at the door and enter with the afternoon tea tray.
    “ Your tea, sir.”
    The Chief’s reply was not so much obscene as magnificently unprintable. In an admirable speech of some forty words he outlined half-a-dozen new, and hitherto untried, diversions which he suggested his secretary might try with teacup, saucer and three different brands of tea—including his own favourite Choice Rich Assam.
    The secretary—a blonde whose bombshell had exploded several years previously—had been subjected to many such humiliating moments during her service with the top brass of Special Security. She stood passively holding the tray until the Chief stopped speaking.
    “ Here, or my office?” she asked, unsmiling.
    “ Go to hell!” said the Chief.
    “ Very good, sir.”
    The Chief made a mental note to buy her a dozen pairs of nylons in the morning.
    In the silence which followed the secretary’s departure Mostyn looked down at his elegantly-shod feet and noticed that there was a graze in the centre of the buffalo-hide toe cap of his left shoe. The Chief went over to the window and stared out at the steady stream of June rain which hissed upon London.
    “ What seems to be the matter, Chief?” Mostyn was the first to speak.
    The Chief answered without turning from the window.
    “ Dudley’s dead.”
    Mostyn opened his mouth, but no words came. The news had the surprise effect of an unexpected punch above the heart. For years he had known and liked Dudley—their Field Security Expert with the US High Command in Washington. In the old days they had worked together. Mostyn’s stomach contracted. Dudley was about his age. Strange that, in a business where life was not particularly expensive, the death of a contemporary could give you that dreadful chill intimation of your own mortality.
    “ It’s a bastard.” The Chief’s voice was unusually soft. Dudley had been one of his particular favourites.
    Mostyn took a deep breath: “Accident or ...?”
    “ Oh, accident.”