Such, at least, was the case so far as Gareth was concerned. Charles was uneasy. Timber Wolf was not a recruited agent. Although he knew he was talking to an intelligence officer and would – or should – assume that anything he said of intelligence or diplomatic interest would be reported, that did not make him a secret agent, secretly reporting to a brief. He would surely, Charles had argued, have spoken in exactly the same terms to any foreign official with whom he had a long-standing personal relationship. In other contexts conversational indiscretions and gossip might amount to intelligence but in the free-flowing, relatively open culture of Brussels officialdom, they did not. The Joint Intelligence Committee had not mandated the EU as an intelligence target for MI6. Nor should Timber Wolf have been allocated a code name, as if he were an agent whose identity merited protection.

Gareth had done this off his own bat while Charles was on leave, issuing to Whitehall customers intelligence reports drawn from what Timber Wolf told him. Eagerly received in Whitehall as the Brexit negotiations spluttered on, they had garnered praise for Gareth and MI6, and would doubtless be remembered when the time came to choose a successor for Charles. Charles himself was congratulated on his return from leave as if it were a significant MI6 achievement. Both these factors had made it all the more difficult for him to refute or countermand what Gareth had done. It would have been difficult enough anyway, given their friendship and their history of successful joint casework, but the fact that everything Timber Wolf had so far reported appeared to check out made it all the more so. He had been careful not to fall out with Gareth over it but it was the closest they had ever come to open disagreement. He had concluded that the best way to ensure control of the case was to involve himself more closely. He had also, discreetly, asked Sonia to look at it.

‘Are you absolutely sure,’ he had pressed Gareth, ‘that our customers understand that Timber Wolf is a loyal EU official who believes in ever-closer union leading to a United States of Europe and may not regard what he’s telling you as secret or damaging? That he doesn’t see himself as a spy?’

‘Absolutely sure. I stressed from the start that these memos I’m issuing are not so much secret intelligence as what used to be called “deep chat”. If you remember the days when diplomats used to be really good at talking to foreigners rather than to London or their screens.’

‘And have you made them aware of the political embarrassment if it got out that he’s talking to you like this and you’re reporting it? Even though you’re calling them memos rather than reports, it would still be dastardly MI6 Brits spying on the innocent, kindly and cuddly EU.’