Charles tried to look interested without too obviously gazing across the lawn crowded with other wedding guests. He was recalling ever more about his interlocutor, but still not the name. A genial cove – a word the man would himself have used – helpful, friendly, dependable, limited, loyal. Above all, loyal, the most important quality in an intelligence officer. Lack of any other quality could be compensated for or worked around but lack of loyalty undermined everything. It was probably the most common, and therefore most underrated, quality among people in the Office. It was a given: you were part of the family, you could have rows and disagreements daily but loyalty, absolute loyalty, was taken for granted. Rightly, in almost every case. And therein lay its danger.

Interesting that the man should name Gareth Horley as his possible successor as chief. Charles had discussed his likely recommendation with no one apart from Sarah, his wife, and the cabinet secretary, to whom he answered. Gareth was director of MI6 operations, effectively Charles’s deputy, promoted by him because he was everything that this nameless interlocutor was not – hard-working, with a good operational record of recruiting and running important agents, an effective bureaucrat who understood how to work Whitehall without appearing too manipulative, a charming, effective and amusing colleague. Granted, he wasn’t universally popular in the Office, being seen – by his own generation in particular – as nakedly ambitious, a smiling assassin whose chief loyalty was to himself. But that was not incompatible with loyalty to the Office and to his country, and ambition was now regarded as creditable so long as it furthered the cause as well as the individual. It was different when Charles had joined decades before, when to call someone ambitious was a serious criticism. The trick then was to be ambitious without showing it; now, you were marked down on your annual assessment if you didn’t display it. The change had favoured Gareth.