Maxim waited, and when Giles said nothing more, asked: "So perhaps God told him to keep the Crocus List going when Langley told him to stop it?"

Giles said slowly: "It's always difficult to remember that you aren't working for anything more than the interests of your own country. One would like to be on a crusade, but… if God doesn't turn up to head the parade, He's a tricky part to replace."

George Harbinger was no fool; he knew he could be walking into trouble at Eastbourne, and had no intention of just vanishing. On the other hand, he was doing something totally unauthorised, bits of which might turn out to be illegal as well. So he could hardly leave a note on the DDCR's desk-or anybody else's-saying Send in the SASif I don't come out by noon. Difficult.

But having thought along those lines, he realised he could leave a sealed envelope with Annette saying much the same thing. It was a nasty thing to do, because he had to pretend it would be good news. He was used to keeping secrets from her, not deceiving her. But anyway, he'd find the place deserted, and after a bit of snooping around, would ring back and tell her not to open the envelope at noon after all.

Mind, he'd better have some good news to tell her as well, not just that he'd got his head out of the lion's mouth with no more than saliva stains. Well, he'd think about that later.

Oxendown House stood alone, a few miles outside Eastbourne where the coast road swung a mile or more inland clear of the high cliff edge. George overshot it the first time past: it was invisible from the road behind a slight crest-presumably the Oxen Down-at the end of a long track studded with cattle grids and surrounded by pasture land. Quite good land, George's country eye noted, and certainly well drained by the limestone beneath.

The house itself was built on a terrace cut into the Down, facing the sea and bracketed by mature trees. It probably -dated from the golden age just before the First World War, but whether it had been the belle of the ball or the ugly duckling nobody could tell now. So much had been added by way of extensions, dormer windows, garage and outhouses that it had become a dowager slumped over the green sofa of the Down, any thought of good looks forgotten in uncorseted comfort.

The track turned into a curling gravel drive that brought the Rover on to a courtyard of York stone at the back of the house. He stepped out boldly, trying to look as if he were there to buy the house, but nobody came to sell it to him. He wasn't too sure that he would want it anyway: the courtyard, shadowed by tall cedars, had a mossy dampness that might have been charming in summer, but on that day gave George twinges of rheumatism just looking at it.

He then made a mistake. A real buyer might have stood and looked around a bit, but would then have gone and rung the bell beside the french windows under the portico. But since nobody seemed to have heard him arrive, George decided to have a snoop.

The courtyard became a flagged terrace running round one side and the front of the house. From there the land went on down to the distant cliff edge in a shallow valley of lawn and pasture that must have been carved by a stream that had long ago dropped underground in the limestone. That was about all that George could remember of his school geography lessons. Beyond was the grey English Channel and tiny pencil Unesthat were ships scratching their thin white wakes.

The lawn should have been mown before the end of the summer, he noticed, and turned to see if the frontage of the house had the same slightly run-down look to it.

A man in a khaki ski-mask was pointing a submachine-gun at him.

"Good God," George said, not acting in the least.

"It's Mr Harbinger, isn't it?" the man said in a pleasant English voice. "Come inside, please."

"Damn it, I came here just to look at this property-"

"All the way from the intelligence and security side of Mo D. Yes, yes. Don't let's waste any more time. Go inside." He made an impatient gesture with the gun – anold Russian one, not that there are any new Russian submachine-guns. I'm in the right place, George thought, but not in quite the right way.

There were French windows in the long rambling frontage as well. They went through a drawing-room where most of the furniture was dust-sheeted humps and into a large kitchen fitted with restaurant-size cooker, dishwasher and sink. It had been built to cater for twenty or more at a time, but only one corner seemed to be used now. There were a few mugs and a half-full bottle of red wine on the corner of the table, beside a bowl of earth with a few fingertip green shoots.

"D'you like flowers, Mr Harbinger?" the man asked.

"Don't know much about them. Out of doors, I'm a farmer, not a gardener. Daffodils?"

"Crocuses."

"I do believe," the DDCR said, "that it would save my voice and blood pressure if I simply had a tape set up in here so I could press the switch whenever you walked in. It would start: 'What the devil have you been doing now?' In fact, I don't think it would need to say more. That simple question seems to cover your total output… Well?"

Maxim smiled uneasily. "Have you seen a report sent over to Security last night, sir?"

"No. Jerry Lomax mentioned it on the phone, in a roundabout way, when he told me he'd deported you. Poor devil, you must have taken years off his life, too; he'd have to be up at four in the morning, Washington time, to make that call. No, I've been trying Security for the last couple of hours but they seem to have pulled up the drawbridge and stuck their heads under the pillows. Do you know what's in it?"

"Sir."

"It sounds asif you are, apart from anything else… just give me the worst."

"I'd like to get George Harbinger to confirm some points, sir. And he may be able to add some more: I sent him some data from America."

"You did, did you?" the DDCR said coldly. "Nowonder he was so bloody anxious to send you over… Well, you'll be lucky to find him. Not in yet as far as I know, and he's hardly been in the last few days, off seeing solicitors and… wasthat all to do with this thing?"

"It could have been, sir. May I try and ring his wife?"

The DDCR pushed the phone across the desk. "Go ahead. But be careful, he says he thinks his phone's bugged. Don't know if he's got the DTs or the RGBs…"

"I think it probably is bugged, sir." But the Albany phone rang unanswered, bugged or not.

In the silence after Maxim had put back the phone, the DDCR leant carefully back in his chair. "You really meant that about being bugged, Harry?"

"I've run across the Bravoes in this thing, sir. And I took one of their mikes out of somebody else's phone-in this country."

The DDCR absorbed that. "I'm just a civil servant now: no authority over you at all. I assume you're working to somebody I don't know about."

Maxim smiled. "Only George, if anybody."

"Who has no authority over you either in such matters. Harry, it sounds as if you're on a lonely road…"He stared at the ceiling beyond Maxim's head. "People on the outside think of the Army as pure woodentops, no thinking allowed, just obey orders as if we were cogwheels inside a washing-machine: warm wash, hot wash, tumble drain, slow spin… if it keeps 'em happy to think that way, fine. But then a war comes along and we're expected to be deep-thinking, imaginative, adventurous but caring. Perfect butler turned into the perfect lover… Is this just the rambling of any old soldier?"

"It doesn't sound like a civil servant, sir."

"No… We're more arrogant than the Civil Service. We don't think anybody could understand us: they're afraid somebody might understand them. The point is, peopledon't understand, particularly about what we mean by orders. They assume they're as simple as hot wash, warm wash; you and I know it's Go and do this by so-and-such hours and report back. We're trying to turn out people who can make their own decisions and choices. With you, we seem to have succeeded. "