‘The EU official Timber Wolf and your number two, Gareth Horley, are old friends. They meet regularly over lunch and Timber Wolf passes information on EU thinking on the Brexit negotiations, which Horley reports as intelligence. The reports appear so far to be true and have been appreciated here. However, fearing that Horley may have exaggerated or even made up some of his reports, you have now met Timber Wolf. Your assessment was that Horley may have exaggerated or put words into Timber Wolf’s mouth but that he has not invented. You also discovered that Horley has been dishonestly pocketing half of the expenses he claimed to be paying Timber Wolf, who in fact has no expenses and clearly sees the money as payments for his information. You conclude that he sees himself as a paid agent of SIS, spying on his employers for us.

‘Your suspicions were aroused by a recent report purporting to give the EU’s secret fallback position on the so-called divorce settlement. You met Timber Wolf. When you asked him about this he was reluctant to name his sources or sub-sources. You concluded that although it is possible he is making the whole thing up, it is more likely that he was put up to it by the EU and is feeding us information in order to get us to increase our offer. Thus, the EU is using him as a double agent, pretending to be spying for us while in reality working for them. You believe this to have been the case from the start, that they tricked us into mounting an intelligence operation against them, something we would not otherwise have done and which would be a grave political embarrassment should they choose to reveal it. It could even bring down the government, given its small parliamentary majority. However, you also suspect that embarrassing us was not their aim in mounting the operation; that, you believe, was to persuade us to make the concessions they require.

‘Given all this, you now propose that, instead of breaking off the relationship, we turn it against them by using the untrustworthy but unsuspecting Horley to reveal that we have a secret divorce settlement ceiling significantly less than the minimum they demand but higher than what we have so far offered – which happens to be true – and that we would leave without a deal rather than exceed our secret ceiling. Which may or may not be true depending on the time of day and which minister we speak to.’

‘But which is true of our own minister.’

‘Probably true of the foreign secretary.’

‘Whose authority we would need to do this.’

‘Not only his.’ Robin sighed and sat back, folding his arms. ‘It won’t surprise you to know it won’t get my vote – too many ifs. But my worry is that he might rather like it. He’s keen on doing things.’ He emphasised the two last words. ‘Appeals to his gung-ho side.’