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in Vienna, I simply climbed back onto
the same British Airways aircraft that I arrived on, and then flew back to Heathrow. Why, exactly, can’t I do that? Why do you want me to take a week making my way halfway across Europe by
road to Toulouse, of all places, and then fly back to Britain from there?’
    Gibson was silent for a few moments before he replied. ‘That’s the predetermined return route,’ he said finally, though somewhat lamely.
    ‘Predetermined by who?’ Richter asked. ‘And why?’
    ‘You don’t need to—’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Richter interrupted. ‘No doubt that’s just something else I don’t need to know.’
    Gibson studied Richter for a few seconds, then told him to wait, and walked out of the room. Two minutes later he was back, accompanied by a smallish, pinkish man who exuded an unmistakable air
of authority.
    ‘You’re Richter, right?’ the new arrival asked. Richter nodded, but he remained seated. ‘I’m Simpson, and Gibson tells me you’re unhappy with the return route
we’ve planned for this collection.’
    Richter nodded again. ‘That, and just about everything else,’ he said.
    ‘You served in the Royal Navy, didn’t you?’ Simpson continued. ‘You should be used to taking orders, so why can’t you just do what you’re told?’
    ‘In the Navy,’ Richter replied, ‘it was different. There I knew who I was working for, and I knew what was going on. Here I don’t, and I’m certainly not going
tramping around Europe, lugging some unidentified parcel, until I find out.’
    Simpson and Gibson both looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘Right,’ Simpson said to the other man, ‘I’ll take care of this.’
    After Gibson had left the room, Simpson sat down in a chair facing Richter. ‘You’ve signed the Official Secrets Act,’ he stated.
    ‘Twice, I think,’ Richter agreed.
    ‘Right. You are to now consider everything I tell you as being covered by that Act, and never repeat it to anyone. This organization is a part – though a very small part – of
the British security establishment.’
    ‘I guessed that,’ Richter said. ‘It’s presumably why you’re skulking around the backstreets of Hammersmith.’
    ‘We like to keep a low profile.’ Simpson smiled briefly. ‘Now, this package collection is very important to us, but to be frank the package itself is almost irrelevant. I
can’t give you the background, because it’s classified at a much higher level than you’re cleared to. But this much I can tell you: we need to have someone in place in southern
Europe for the next week or so. And before you ask,’ he went on, ‘for reasons I can’t explain, that person has to be somebody totally unconnected to any part of the security
establishment – an outsider in other words, with no existing MI5 or SIS connections.’
    Richter nodded. ‘This is finally beginning to make some kind of sense,’ he said. ‘You’re expecting this person to be contacted, perhaps, by someone who wouldn’t
trust a professional intelligence officer? A defector, maybe? And the slow return journey has been deliberately chosen to allow plenty of time for that contact to be made?’
    This time Simpson nodded and smiled too. ‘You may have missed your calling, Richter,’ he said. ‘You seem to pick things up very quickly. You’re quite right.’
    ‘OK,’ Richter said, ‘accepting all that, why wasn’t Gibson prepared to tell me that, or advise me how to respond if and when I’m contacted by this third
party?’
    ‘You would have been properly briefed, but at this stage we know almost nothing about this possible contact. That’s why we’ve chosen a slow route back, so that we could get in
touch with you whenever we needed to, and brief you on the fly, as it were.
    ‘Now,’ Simpson went on, ‘with that cleared up, are you prepared to undertake this collection?’
    ‘Of course, I am,’ Richter nodded, ‘as long as I know what’s going on.’
    Simpson