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chair at the centre of the room, then sat beside him on another. And Landau took to Reg at once, which was usual, for Reg was by trade a welfarer and his clients included defectors, grounded fieldmen and blown agents, and other men and women whose bonds to England might have worn a little thin if old Reg Wattle and his cosy wife Berenice had not been there to hold their hands.
    ‘You’ve done a good job but we can’t tell you why it’s good, because that would be insecure,’ Clive continued in his arid voice when Landau was comfortably settled. ‘Even the little you know is too much. And we can’t let you wander round Eastern Europe with our secrets in your head. It’s too dangerous. For you and the people involved. So while you’ve performed a valuable service for us, you’ve also become a serious worry. If this were wartime, we could lock you up or shoot you or something. But it isn’t, not officially.’
    Somewhere on his prudent little journey to power, Clive had taught himself to smile. It was an unfair weapon to use on friendly people, rather like silence on the telephone. But Clive knew nothing of unfairness because he knew nothing of its opposite. As to passion, it was what you used when you needed to persuade people.
    ‘After all, you could point the finger at some very important people, couldn’t you?’ he continued so quietly that everyone kept still to hear him. ‘I know you wouldn’t do that deliberately but when one’s handcuffed to a radiator one doesn’t have much choice. Not in the end.’
    And when Clive thought he had scared Landau just enough he glanced to me, and nodded to me, and watched me while I opened up the pompous leather folder I had brought with me and handed Landau the long document I had prepared, of which the purport was that Landau renounce in perpetuity all travel behind the Iron Curtain, that he never leave the country without first advising Reg so many days in advance, the details to be arranged between the two of them, and that Reg should look after Landau’s passport in order to prevent mishaps. And that he accept irrevocably into his life the rôle of Reg or whomever the authorities should appoint in Reg’s place as confidant, philosopher and discreet arbiter of his affairs of every kind – including the ticklish problem of how to handle the taxation on the cashier’s cheque attached, drawn on the Fulham branch of a very boring British bank, in the sum of a hundred thousand pounds.
    And that, in order that he be regularly scared by Authority, he should present himself every six months to the Service’s Legal Adviser, Harry, for a top-up on the subject of Secrecy – to old Palfrey, Hannah’s sometime lover, a man so bowed by life that he can be safely charged with keeping others upright. And that further to the above and pursuant to it and consequent upon it, the whole matter relating to a certain Russian woman and to her friend’s literary manuscript, and to the contents of said manuscript – however much or little he may have understood their import – and to the part played by a certain British publisher, be as of this moment solemnly declared void, dead, inoperative and expunged, henceforth and for all time. Amen.
    There was one copy and it would live in my safe till it was shredded or fell apart of old age. Landau read it twice while Reg read it over his shoulder. Then Landau disappeared into his own thoughts for a while without much regard for who was watching him or who was willing him to sign and cease to be a problem. Because Landau knew that in this instance he was the buyer, not the seller.
    He saw himself standing at the window of his Moscow hotel room. He remembered how he had wished he could hang up his traveller’s boots and settle to a less arduous life. And the amusing notion came to him that his Maker must have taken him at his word and fixed things accordingly, which to everyone’s unease caused him to break out in a little burst of