“Absolutely not,” said Iris. “Sally, there are exactly two people in the world whom I trust, and they are both sitting on this sofa. We can talk about this with Gwen. I’d trust her with my life. So would you.”

“You’re not including yourself in that total?” asked Sally.

“I don’t trust myself,” said Iris. “Sally, darling, we are not asking for state secrets. We are vetting a marriage prospect for a client, and this Talbot fellow came up as a possible reference. I remembered you mentioning him to me back in training. You thought he was amusing.”

“Amusing and useless,” said Sally. “Fine, to hell with the Official Secrets Act, you Mata Hari. But if I end up swinging for it, I will take you with me.”

“Agreed,” said Iris. “We can have our last meal together, only I’m choosing the wine. Tell us about Talbot.”

“This was back before they knew where they were going to send me,” said Sally, lying back with his eyes fixed on a point on the ceiling. “I was being trained for either Italy or Greece. It turned out that my Greek was more classical than colloquial, but that’s another anecdote entirely.

“They brought in some of the old Greek hands from the Great War. One was this fellow with an absolutely enormous dome of a head, like someone had stuffed five human brains inside a mushroom and stuck the whole assembly on top of a three-piece suit. He was charming enough, but not all that helpful for our missions. He was a spy from an earlier era. He believed that the best way to gather intelligence was to find the best café in town, order a pot of coffee, and sit and pretend to read the newspaper. Eventually, anybody worth spying on would show up, and if they didn’t, at least you’d have a decent pot of coffee before you went off to the office.”

“He makes spying sound like a pleasant, genteel occupation,” said Gwen.

“Oh, no doubt he saw his share of horrors,” said Sally. “He downplayed them—no one wanted to scare us away in training.”

“How long was he posted there?”

“I’m not exactly sure. End of the war, then through the Greek-Turkish hostilities after, maybe three or four years in all. I’m not certain what he did then, being but a wee small lad at the time, if you can imagine me as a wee small lad at any time.”

“I can,” said Iris, resting her head on his chest. “I wish we had known each other when we were children. Any idea where he is now?”

“Probably in a café somewhere, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper,” said Sally.

“In England, at least?”

“I had the impression he was no longer in the Service,” said Sally. “I remember he had this funny little tie pin shaped like a train locomotive. Now, are you going to tell me what this is really about?”

“It’s exactly what I said,” replied Iris. “We’re vetting a prospective groom for a client.”